From Hackman to Renner: binary spying in 1974 to digital spying in 2012

I love the Bourne movies and I also love the fact that the (amazing) Waterloo station scene where the Gruniad journalist is killed took place without any commuter noticing.

So I took to the cinema this week to see the latest offering in the franchise, the first time without Matt Damon who is surely priming himself as a Presidential candidate. It was great, a clever bridge between the two actors and a really enjoyable movie. I’ll definitely watch it again.

But the subliminal message (actually not subliminal at all, it’s very clear to see) is how easy it is to find anybody anywhere at any time. Cameras, mobiles, the lot.. you know how it is. It’s almost as if film-makers collude with the authorities to show how easy it is for them to control us.

So I thought about two other movies that centre on monitoring and chasing. The first is Ford Coppola’s 1974 near-masterpiece The Conversation where a paranoid Gene Hackman spies on a couple who he thinks are about to be murdered.

This spying consists of microphones and huge tape machines, you could almost call it binary spying, you could certainly call it innocent spying.

Twenty-four years later in 1998 Enemy Of The State was released where the (underrated) Will Smith and Hackman again are on the run from the Old Bill and the devices and methods to chase them are now sophisticated; this is the beginning of digital spying.

So to 2012 and Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz in The Bourne Legacy. Now, we’re seriously into digital spying. It’s no longer about sound recorders or mobile phone signals, it’s serious satellite shit. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.

The difference between The Conversation and The Bourne Legacy is so wide that it as if a different humanity existed in 1974. It’s as if we were more beautiful then, America appears at the top of its game, even Hackman aches cool as he practises his sax.

The writer Thomas Pynchon once said that we all hanker back to the decade we were born into and perhaps such an observation is nostalgic whimsy. But what looks weird in 1974 from the vantage point of 2012 means that in 2050 our current year is going to look daft.

Will there be films in 2050, will we be then inured to machine control or will we be machines ourself? Will all be watching ourselves, will watching others become a significant career option?

Either way it doesn’t look too dusty, although it’s a reasonably safe bet that Jason Bourne, er I mean Matt Damon will be President and I, like a lot of you, will most probably be dead.

Happy days!

Monty (709 Posts)

Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.