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The quite successful supernatural horror film Obsession turns on the protagonist Bear gaining a wish by way of a magical and apparently mass produced gag gift, the One Wish Willow but the wish-granting twig is not in my opinion that aspect of the film that is at odds the most with our objective reality and the element that fits that category is syptomatic of an issue across Hollywood.

Bear, the girl he has an unrequited crush on, Nikki, and their friends, Ian and Sarah, in addition to comprising a bar hopping trivia team, all work in the musical instrument and sheet music shop of Sarah’s father. They are young college-aged persons with their lives currently unmoored by deep responsibilities and serious careers, ideal characters that could have an affinity with horror’s prime demographic, the under-30 movie goer. And yet there is an element in the film that is utterly unrealistic — apparently not one of them is a roommate arrangement.

Nikki lives in a house, we see Bear drop her off there in the film’s first act, a small but nice standalone structure, with no mention of anyone expecting her home. Bear has a house that he apparently inherited from his grandmother. These four young adults, holding down minimum wage retail jobs, have credit cards, can afford to go bar hopping, and all live alone with the privacy and seclusion that works so well in a horror movie.

I have worked a number of dead end, low wage, retail jobs, and not one of them afforded me the ability to live alone. When I did live alone for a short while working that sort of minimum wage job it took two of them and even then, every penny mattered. I certainly did not have the resources for repeated nights out visiting multiple bars. (Even if I had been the sort of person for whom that would have been attractive.) The idea that three of them, discounting Sarah because her family owned the business, would even get full time employment and not something more realistic like a work week under 30 hours is stretching credulity to the breaking point.

This highlights a systemic issue in Hollywood, fewer and fewer of the creatives have had personal lived experience outside of upper-middleclass lives that afforded easy access to college, and all that opportunity affords. I recall in the later seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer after her mother had passed away, Buffy needed to get a job at a fast-food burger joint in order to take care of her and her sister. Again, even if her mother had somehow managed to purchase a California house outright with no mortgage, it would be impossible for Buffy to support herself, maintain the home, and raise her sister on the meager wages afforded by such a menial job.

This extends beyond low wage jobs that are below the poverty line. The lack of military personnel also affects the quality of storytelling in the film and television industry. Sure, they bring in consultants and such when they are making a war movie but all too often the writers, producers, and directors work from a state of ignorance when they attempt to have military characters that are not specifically working in battlefield condition. It is that sort of blindness to how things really work that allows J.J. Abrams to have someone go to a military-style academy and graduate not as an ensign but as captain despite having no actual command experience.  or for Joss Whedon to have elite special forces that blindly accept a briefing with no questions asked about the particulars. Those sorts of unit are comprised of some of the smartest people in the military. Far from perfect, granted, and prey to any other human failing, but they are not dumb just accept what is presented types.

The stratification of the people and the limited backgrounds that they represent are a far more damaging force to film and television than any ‘nepo-baby’ troubles.

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While the Spy craze of the 60s is long behind us with only the property that ignited that boom, Bond, James Bond, still commands the attention of popular culture — that phrase always implies to me that there is an unpopular culture. Stories of spies and espionage continue to be written and produced. In my opinion there is a spectrum upon which stories of the covert services are told and the ends of that spectrum are anchored by the authors that towered over the field during the height of the ‘spy boom’, Ian Fleming and John le Carré.

Ian Fleming created James Bond, the first novel, Casino Royale, written just before Fleming’s marriage with the author plucking the character’s name off a birding book because he felt the name had a grey forgettable quality to it. While that originating novel had a few not too spectacular gadgets and battled the spy services of the Soviet Union not global criminal empires it wasn’t long before those elements were introduced, then became mainstay tropes of Bond’s adventures. Bond’s stories are adventures, filled with colorful characters, beautiful willing women, fantastic technology and always with clear heroics both in the nature of the threat and the heroic people fighting evil, unredeemable bad guys. (We will set aside that in Casino Royale Bond in the confines of his private thoughts muses on the ‘sweet tang of rape’ an aspect of the character that was mercifully never translated to the screen.)

John le Carré, real name David Cornwell, crafted espionage fiction that very much reflected the real world. His characters were not the fantasy of ‘gentlemen spies’ but working people trying to do their best in a system that in order to achieve its goals often employed the same despicable tactics of the enemy until recognizing one from the other became nearly impossible. Disillusionment is a common theme in le Carré’s work, work which questioned whether our methods define us no matter the nobility of our ends. What gadgets exist in le Carré’s world are ones that actually exist or at the very least are very possible, here you will not find powerful electro-magnets that can pull boats to you from yards away. Heroes often find at the end of the missions not that they have triumphed over evil but rather that they have employed evil, often for questionable results. It is a world so thoroughly gray one wonders if any color can be found anywhere.

The explosive success of the Bond movies dictated that swarms of spy thrillers would flood the screen chasing that sweet, sweet box office money. Most of these, The ‘Matt Helm’ and ‘Flint’ movies sit quite comfortably near the Fleming end of the spectrum, attempting to dazzle the audience with derring-do and fantastic gadgets. Len Deighton’s ‘Harry Palmer’ series mixed the style of Fleming’s fantastic plot with le Carré’s cynicism placing this series near the middle of the spectrum. Get Smart the successful spy parody series is clearly at the Fleming point, if not far beyond it. It would be difficult to imagine a similar program for le Carré’s style of fiction, after all how funny can a parody of the dark, cynical, and morally gray world of le Carré be?

Slow Horses, currently adapted into a quite successful series on Apple TV, hews closer to le Carré than to Fleming, there is a distinct lack of gadgets, and the world the characters inhabit very much mirrors the gray and morally questionable world that is found in works such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but overlaid with a modern ironic sense. Here there isn’t the common mistake of confusing cynicism for wisdom, but rather a recognition of the flawed world, the flawed systems, but an understanding that beyond all that somethings are right and somethings are wrong.

I find this spectrum a very handy method of classifying espionage fiction, how likely it is to resonate with me. It’s even applicable at the espionage genre is adapted in all sorts of new and exciting way, such as Charle Stross’ Laundry Series which clearly take it’s parody aspects from Fleming with all sorts of fantastical gadget, combined with a sharp satire of office and corporate culture while battling Lovecraftian forces beyond comprehension.

The spy trope is alive and well, even if we don’t have as many as we used to and its pleasing that we still get both our glorious heroes inspired by Fleming and dark cynical take that follow le Carré.