'The Border' Extras - The Wesley Wark Interview

My final interview for the article on The Border was with renowned expert Wesley Wark.  In some ways, Wark was a great interview because he took the opposite interview that Littlewood did in many cases, and in fact, he wasn't much a fan of the show.  On the other hand, I thought that many of his criticisms were unfair because he had only seen the two screeners provided--episodes 201 and 203--and hadn't seen how many aspects of character development (which was one of his complaints) went over the broader scope of the season.  As well, I think that had he seen 108 as Littlewood had--or even gone to the website to look at the episode synopses--some of his criticisms may have been a bit more tempered.  However, as he was able to participate at almost the last minute was greatly appreciated.

Here is more of what he had to say:

Q: First impressions?

A: I found to be honest, The Border to be a little bit of a disappointment, and I say that for a couple of reasons. Partly because it strikes me to a certain extent it’s unnecessarily imitative. Where’s the imitation coming from, what’s the model? Well, obviously if you watch the program any of its segments I think, you’ll feel some similarity between The Border and its more famous American cousin 24. Similarity in terms of the pace of the action, the subject matter, the sense that it wants to situate the program in the kind of contemporary security environment and draw some energy from that. Similarity down to some of the circumstances, life circumstances of the character. In 24, we have Jack Bauer saddled with a troubled daughter, a problem child. In The Border, we have a similar circumstance, the lead protagonist, the agent who is in charge of this fictional unit ICS, again sort of has a sort of problem child daughter who pops in and out of the segment. Imitative and to some degree perhaps its trying to feed off a successful formula in the United States, which is an understandable calculation, but I think that it could have had a little more spark of the new. It is certainly a fast-paced program, but in a way it’s not just imitative but disappointingly formulaic from my reading of it—maybe I come at this with too high expectations. But if you think about the history of this genre if you like, and what we’re talking about are television programs or movies that try to take up the themes of spying and counter-intelligence and security work in general, there are really two paths to follow that have been set down in the history of this whole enterprise. One path really goes back to the unbelievable success of the Bond franchise. What is the Bond franchise, from its earliest moments in the 1960s on to the present? Well it’s something that emphasises the kinds of fast-paced, adventure, high-tech gadgets of the world of spying, unbelievably successful in doing all that, and it’s evolved over time but the essence of it is unchanged from the very beginning in the sixties. The other alternative pathway to success and interest in terms of producing a cultural product, trying to imitate the reality of spying security matters is the LeCarré franchise, going back to the first and most important of the LeCarré films, which is The Spy Who Came In From The Cold which is much more cerebral, much more thoughtful, and much more concerned with the complexities of the world of security and intelligence and with moral dilemmas and in fact with character and plot development, and I would say—I mean I’m not in the business so it’s easy for me to stand on the outside as an academic observer of this—that the twenty-first century gambit to make a successful program like The Border is to know the history of the genre and say to yourself if you’re the scriptwriter, producer, director, any of the main characters, is that what we want is some interesting Canadian blend of what makes both of these different kinds of models tick. So let’s have lots of fast-paced action, and let’s have a good amount of technology, and a good amount of thrill and some degree of glamour and some degree of romance, and let’s get that from the Bond franchise, but let’s also take some part of the LeCarré franchise onboard as well. Let’s make it a little cerebral, let’s make it a little morally conflicted, let’s make it a little complex, let’s show some of the Machiavellian world of politics in this particular realm of high politics, and I would measure The Border in terms of how well it does that, how well does it blend those two things, and I would say that I can see some degree of effort on the part of the creators of this program to do that, but if it has a future I would say that’s a work in progress. It could use a little more of the cerebral side, the LeCarré side of things. It could use certainly a larger discussion of the kinds of moral dilemmas of the work. It could use more character development, and it could certainly use better dialogue. I mean, the dialogue that you get from The Border is not really even a compromise between development of the characters and the need to push the plot forward quickly and to emphasis the beat of the program and action of it. You just don’t get a lot of dialogue, and I think to be honest that’s a bit of a failing of the program, and to a certain extent suggest that if what it’s doing is trying to find some contemporary blend of Flemming, LeCarré and sort of feeding off of 24, it’s just not managed really to take that heritage and really turn it into something impressive and to a degree new.

Q: The issues that two episodes raised were stop-loss as a border security issue, and drug trafficking from Africa. In terms of the way that show raised the issues and explored them, how well do you think it fared in comparison to how shows in the genre do in other countries, like Spooks of 24?

A: It’s an interesting question, and obviously what The Border is trying to do is feed off the contemporary security issues. It’s chosen good subject matter I think to do that. The issue of the difficulties that are created when American soldiers trying to essentially desert from the US armed forces and come into Canada, I mean there’s a real contemporary resonance there and some really high-profile cases that continue to be contested in the courts about how our immigration and refugee process is going to handle such American deserters and whether we’ve forgotten the legacy of what we did in fact during the Vietnam War, so that’s good by all means, that’s a great subject to explore. Equally in terms of drug trafficking, not only is this a real-world concern for ICS’ contemporaries, who are essentially the Canada Border Services Agency, but the kind of thing that suggests the very dangerous criminal underworld run by gang king-pin members, ruthless and violent, equipped with all the toys of the trade—armoured cars, body guards and the usual kinds of high-powered weaponry and so on—all of that is fine. What it seems to me is missing in The Border even compared to commercially successful variants of this in the US and the UK, both longer-running series, is again that sense of just deepening the issue a bit, giving us more of the complexities of it, making it a little less caricatured, giving it more of a sense of what is going on in the minds of those on the Canadian side of this problem who are trying to tackle this issue. It really has I think sacrificed a lot of what I think we can legitimately expect to see, which is character development and dialogue as part of anything that’s going to be successful by way of a longer-running TV series. So to sum all that up, I would say that the choice of subject matter is perfectly good and the ways in which in general they portray these threats from drug traffickers and this kind of thing is also close enough to the reality, but it is really in the way that it situates the response of this Canadian unit, its principle protagonists, unfolding the action without really giving us the thought behind the action or the morality behind the action, or any of the constraints behind the action. I think it’s notable in terms of the drug trafficking episode that we have a supposedly Canadian outfit which is not all that concerned with what we would say are the laws of Canada at the moment, so maybe again feeding off of 24 a little bit in the sense that it can bend the laws to its own interests, but we don’t have the right in Canada to hold people at the will of any particular law enforcement agency for as long as it takes them to decide whether there’s a case against such a person. And I thought it was a little bit funny that The Border is in a way trying to play off Spooks arguably by presenting us with this rather Machiavellian but certainly attractive British secret agent who sort of swims into the plot and kind of confounds her Canadian competitors. It’s an interesting little take, but I think that the work that The Border has ahead of it again is to give us more of the cerebral side of the work, and give us more of the realism of the landscape. The trouble with these programs it that it suggest, and it’s often said either with regard to 24 or Spooks, it’s competitors—these are interesting scenarios that it’s presenting us with, but it’s also wanting us to believe that these are real-life scenarios, given the kinds of choices of topics that they’re dealing with. Well, give us more real life. Give us more a sense of where political decision making comes in, where the laws come in, where the calculations come in. Give us more of a sense that these things don’t operate in a tiny self-enclosed and perfect world in which information flows very rapidly and everybody is on top of the game, and everybody can move out on a moment’s notice. One of the things in which I think 24 has a lot to explain itself for is the notion that these kinds of operations run on a clock like this, and that the speed and pace of these operations is of this nature—that’s not the reality. And because they’re so wedded to that notion that everything has to be so fast-paced, they’ve left themselves no time for dialogue, character development, moral complexity, or any kind of intellectual complexity in the program. And maybe they feel that there is always this commercial calculation that you dumb-down these things in order to make a good piece of entertainment, but at the end of the day, that argument always boomerangs in terms of the long-term survivability of a program like this. People just won’t come back to see it if they know that all they’re going to expect is another fast-paced episode that at the end of the hour, is not going to leave them with anything but a sense that something has zipped across the screen and in front of their eyes and has left nothing behind. I think that The Border is a kind of fascinating idea in that it’s trying to bring a discussion of the world of security and intelligence and the complexities of Canada’s position in the world, living opposite the United States on a border that the Americans are determined themselves to reinforces and stiffen. It’s a great idea and a great vehicle for discussing issues and indeed for producing a kind of action drama, but the ideas I think are what’s missing so far in sufficient degree.

Q: About that discussion that it generates—how well do you think it contributes to it?

A: My take on this is from an academic perspective. I’d have to say that I don’t think it contributes anything to the discussion, partly because I don’t think that it’s interested the discussion, it’s interested in exploiting a concern and a fascination with security and intelligence matters and the border, and I think that the most obvious dimension of this in that you have good guys and bad guys as you must in programs of this kind, but that the good guys and bad guys aren’t very interesting in terms of how they’re profiled. The bad guys in the program are not just the villains but their also this rather Machiavellian CSIS agent who’s constantly trying to undermine the work of the chief of ICS, and to be honest, this is pure caricature. Now it may be what the producers, directors and scriptwriters believe is the reality, but someone has to say ‘man, this is just pure caricature, give us something more interesting than this.’

Q: I was speaking to one of the writers and producers and she was saying that they do have someone high-placed in CSIS who is now consulting with them to try and gently correct some of their misapprehensions, although some people from other agencies have said that there is someone that rather resembles Agent Mannering in CSIS that they rather hit on quite accidentally.

A: The thing that makes these programs difficult, and the thing that is a challenge for producers, scriptwriters, directors and the rest is that modern intelligence services consist by and large of people sitting behind computer screens trying to assess an immense flow of information. There’s not much room to be honest for rogue agents out on the streets taking the law into their own hands and coming up with their own Machiavellian schemes, and CSIS describes itself as one of the most heavily reviewed agencies among all its worldwide counterparts. The problem is this is how we like to imagine CSIS, we like to imagine these very powerful, very nefarious kinds of characters who are out disturbing and roiling our sense of how Canadian democracy works and so on. Reality is very different. Reality, though, can be interesting, and I think that anyone who works in this field either from a professional or academic perspective will tell you that truth is in this world, always more interesting than the fictional variant, so get a little closer to the truth would be my suggestion for the makers and creators of The Border and give us a better sense of what is the real dilemma for an agency like CSIS, which is how do you separate truth from fiction, how do you really know what’s going on. It’s not like they have a Machiavellian notion, not that they’re out their plotting and conspiring—they’re struggling with trying to understand what the hell is going on, and a program that could even begin to approach that issue would be a more fascinating program. But I suspect that we’re stuck with the caricature, because it’s so deeply embedded in our popular culture sense of what espionage is all about.

Q: How did you think that the fictional agency stood up?

A: The fictional agency is pure fiction, but what would you expect? One of the difficulties I think that people confront is that you can’t have too high expectations about matching fiction against reality, and in some ways I would say that the entire genre is about anything to do with the popular culture of security and espionage, counter-terrorism and the rest. It’s not really about imitating reality, it’s coming up with an interesting kind of parallel universe that’s imagined that has enough connections with reality that it can be interesting but it is a parallel universe. As a parallel universe, as an imagined world of border security, it just doesn’t partake enough of reality by giving us the complexities. It makes it all, if you like, a little too easy. It’s all a little to self-enclosed, hermetically-sealed and too fast-paced and too high-tech, and what it doesn’t get is that all kinds of problems will emerge, all kinds of complexities will emerge, all kinds of screw-ups will happen, and that the really interesting thing that could be exploited is the nature of those problems, challenges, complexities, screw-ups. So somehow to get, and this is where I think that The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is quintessential classic Cold War spy film, has a lot to teach a twenty-first century series of this kind. Give us a complex plot, give us conflicted characters, unfold that plot in such a way that it’s not so obvious where it’s going. Don’t be quite so worried about the pace of action—viewers are smarter, more tolerant than you might think. Mix in a little more complexity, and at the same time, you’ll mix in a little more reality.

[Reviews the episode synopses in the press kit]

A: I think what the line-up suggests is that they are trying to cover some of these issues that a real-life border security agency has to deal with, so they’re trafficking in the reality. There’s the strong pull of the cop show and the crime themes, and maybe you could suggest that there’s a little desire to steer away from some of the sensitive issues that might impact on the ratings? Where in all of this do we see any kind of treatment of a terrorist threat?

Q: They did a couple in the first season.

A: But it’s kind of drifting into the purely crime side and where do we really see the intelligence side of things, counter-intelligence, intelligence operations? It’s part of the colour of the program, but it’s not really part of the plot. Partly because maybe a CBC program, government-funded organisation, a potential Conservative government coming into a majority, not necessarily favourably disposed—maybe there are topics that it has to be a bit careful about, but it also has to have the courage to push back a little it against what it might imagine to be political stricture. So I think kind of a mixed message in the next season apply now. Some topical issues being addressed, but at the same time, there are maybe a few topical issues being shied away from, and always that concern that a program of this kind is just going to be dragged into the banality of a cop program of which we’ve seen countless examples. The Border is not going to win over an audience from Law & Order, who are going to watch the re-runs before they watch The Border, so be careful of the magnetic pull of a cop show, but it’s a work in progress, and from my perspective, if they can just get the balance right between the Bond franchise model and the LeCarré franchise model, they’re onto something that could be a winning thing.