The first thing I thought, seeing the name, was how
peculiarly British it sounded. It has echoes of decadence and empire. The
fifties. A decade which acts as the parent of the UK’s contemporaneity. A
country which inverts the ageing process, becoming a childish imitation of what
it once was, as it seeks to cling to a memory of a time when the map was red.
‘Our’ red.
Then I watched the video. A brief shot of a harbour in Hong
Kong. Then his face. With the back of his head caught in a mirror. No sign of
the interviewer. His face a blank, IT face. Which is described as 29 years old
but could easily be older. An anonymous face, you might say, which is perhaps
perfect for a spy, except that Snowden wasn’t that kind of spy. More Smiley
than Bond. A backwater fish. A face which doesn’t look like it knows how to
look after itself. Which knows its way around a computer, but might get knocked
over crossing the road.
This lack of worldliness might be the clue. As to why he
should have the guts or the temerity or the stupidity or the vanity to take on
the might of his former proxy employers, the US National Security Agency. Bond
would never be so foolish. Bond emerges, counter-intuitively, as a company man.
Always back for more. Snowden, his nemesis, is prepared to burn his bridges.
He’s articulate. His way of talking, or rather, his way of
responding to an interviewer’s questions, is precise, clear-headed. He’s
condensing months, years, of thoughts into clear, simple answers. The interview
technique of one whose decisions are grounded. It’s a ten minute conversation.
Only bare details of his life emerge. But these are enough. To make the viewer
think about the fate of this man’s family, his girlfriend, his life. He doesn’t
seem lost or confused or bewildered. It’s not as though life has overwhelmed
him, although at one point, in the last fortnight, that must have been what
happened. The point at which consideration became action. When he contacted the
journalists. Sent the Powerpoint presentations. When he spoke to someone or
sent the email requesting sick leave for his epilepsy. When he spoke to or
didn’t speak to his girlfriend. When he went to the airport. Did he pay in
cash? How did he cope with the weight of the world on his shoulders during
those days? The days when he finally felt like a spy, a real spy, a spy like
the ones in the novels and the movies, working undercover, risking everything.
Only then, of course, did he realise that he was a spy
spying on his own. As indeed his government constantly acts as a spy, spying on
its own.
And, let’s be honest, there’s nothing particularly shocking
in all this. We all know, in this age, this database, this mainframe, that the
chips have been implanted and that They Know Everything. That’s modernity,
baby. You have no secrets in modernity. Even the things you don’t type, you
don’t buy, you don’t dream about. They Know These Things Too. They are your
jealous partner, wedded for life.
There’s nothing shocking about this, for all the liberal
shock and awe. It’s part of the new religion. God merged with State. They are
all-seeing. Foucault saw it first. Dick saw it second. Bourne made the movie.
Which might be why the story as such didn’t impact on me
particularly, the first days it broke. It was only yesterday, when the hero
emerged, that the story acquired body. Which reveals something about stories.
Without protagonists they’re just more data. Part of the mainframe. Stories
can’t run on their own. To really work, they need people to front them. Snowden
has made this story his own and in so doing he has made the story real.
Unless, that is, he is no more than another plant.
