Because of the ambiguities inherent in the job, spy dramas tend to have morally grey characters, mutable moralities and can, though do not have to, engage in subversive critique of geopolitics and governments (cf Oldham 2017). These elements, to some degree or another, occur in Canadian espionage drama The Romeo Section (CBC 2015-2016, hereafter TRS) which, though ostensibly focusing upon a freelance element of the (fictitious) Canadian ‘Federal Intelligence Service’ which specialises in honey traps, is an extension of themes present in creator Chris Haddock’s previous series Intelligence (CBC 2005-2007) and DaVinci’s Inquest (CBC 1998-2006): American overreach and heroin addiction,respectively. As such, the series engages in multiple, weakly-related storylines focusing on the operations of Scottish-born Professor Wolfgang McGee (Andrew Airlie), particularly his romantic relationship with Professor Lily Song (Jemmy Chan/Leeah Wong), both of whom are involved in espionage and seek to turn the other to their own side. I have discussed concerns over American overreach elsewhere; in this blog I will instead focus upon how both series of TRS engage with contemporary anxieties about Chinese espionage operations in Canada, including its perceived connections with the heroin trade.
Burton (2015) argues that relations between Canada and China, though having ‘fundamental incompatibilities’ have Canadian security as one of its main foci (Burton, 2015: 46). In particular, concerns relate more to counterespionage rather than transnational repression, which Burton (2015: 54-55) argues may imply concerns on the part of the Canadian government to avoid economic/trade repercussions. This focus upon espionage as expressed in TRS, however, leads to the series’ main problem: representation. All Asian characters are either Chinese spies, part of the Triad drugs trade, or both. While this can be read as a generic choice, in that this is a series about spies who are all morally grey, when coupled with this type of exclusive representation, it becomes problematic.[i] This is coupled with an oversimplification which ties the Opium Wars, in which Britain did forcibly open Chinese markets to trade via opium (Melancon 1999), to Wolfgang’s explicitly stated argument that the heroin trade is ‘revenge’ against the West by China/elsewhere in the world, which I have found no academic work supporting. There are two linked issues that arise from this oversimplification of history. The first issue is that Wolfgang connecting the contemporary global trade in heroin (but focused upon Vancouver) to British history implies that the British—specifically the English—are to blame for the global drugs trade.[ii] While this is clearly a vast oversimplification, it also can be read as excepting Canada (particularly its government) from any culpability with regard to any aspect of the trade (geopolitically, economically or otherwise). While this is not to say Canada itself bears more responsibility than any other country whose citizens consume heroin, it does focus the blame onto one of Canada’s former colonisers. Jackson (2018) notes that British history and culture were key parts of Canadian education through the nineteen-sixties and contemporary cultural views of the UK are more ambiguous (Champion, 2005). This anti-British sentiment is then the context for the other aspect of oversimplification: Hong Kong.
As noted above, all of the Chinese characters are associated with the Triads and/or the Chinese Ministry of State Security (the Chinese equivalent of MI5 and MI6) and all are associated with Hong Kong specifically. At the end of series one and continuing through series two, the actor wife of Triad leader Wing Lei (Manny Jacinto) is introduced. Her name, Mei-Mei (Fei Ren), is key to understanding the analogies being made within her storyline and its wider connections. In Mandarin, the official dialect of Chinese, mei-mei (妹妹) means ‘little sister’ (literally ‘beautiful-beautiful’). The Cantonese for ‘little sister,’ mui-tsai (妹仔; literally ‘beautiful-young’), was also used of young women in Hong Kong who had been sold by their impoverished families to wealthier families (Carroll, 2007). While the majority were domestic help, the mui-tsai were often assumed to be (and occasionally were) concubines (Carroll, 2007). Mei-Mei says that she has been bought by Wing Lei from her former manager Jimmy Wah (Hubert Tran) and views making a period drama about the Opium Wars (as she does during series two) as her way of finding independence from the Triads (and their purported connections to the Chinese government). Ultimately, however, it is Rufus (Juan Rieslinger), a white Canadian drug trafficker who is laundering money through the film for the Triads, who effectively ‘buys’ her in order to give her (limited) freedom.
For those in the audience who are conversant enough in Mandarin, Cantonese and nineteenth-century Chinese history,[iii]this can clearly be read as mimicking the negotiations for control over Hong Kong between the Chinese and British, with Mei-Mei as a metonym for Hong Kong. The implication, of course, is that her limited freedom would be short-lived had the series not been cancelled. Yet this analogy is problematic in a number of ways. First it implies that Mei-Mei/Hong Kong needs a white man to ‘save’ her, implying that Hong Kong cannot save or protect itself. While the most recent developments in Hong Kong can be read as supporting that (e.g., the multiplicity of security laws) this can still be read as Eurocentric, particularly for those in the audience who read this strictly in terms of gender and race rather than as history. But this also can be read as a commentary (though not quite critique) of Canadian geopolitics. Canada is sometimes considered to be a middle power (i.e., not a global superpower) and, particularly with regard to apartheid, is often (self-)mythologised as a force for social good functioning as an intermediary rather than for geopolitical and/or economic power (Manulak, 2020). Within TRS, Wah notes that one of the reasons he likes working in Canada (in addition to the tax incentives) is that everyone leaves him alone. This can, of course, be simply read as referring to Chinese state control over media. On the other hand, it can also be read as implying that Canadian non-intervention in favour of economic and political relations, as was the case with regard to human rights and other abuses in China (Burton 2015), allows for criminal enterprises like the heroin trade to flourish. Rufus, then, can be read as a Canadian stopgap rather than a Canadian-brokered solution to a geopolitical problem, whilst simultaneously critiquing the contemporary Canadian and historic British governments.
In the famous Shakespearean quote in this blog’s title, Juliet finds herself asking ‘wherefore’—a dialect form of ‘why.’ Why must Romeo be Romeo/a Montague, she asks. TRS, through its main romance-ish arc between Wolfgang and Lily, asks something similar. But, in trying to explore that question the series raises many questionable interpretations and representations. Because the series ended after a mere twenty episodes, it is unclear how the analogies would have developed; we are left only to ask why such problematic choices were made by the production team and why they chose not (or were not allowed) to engage in the level of subversive, explicit critique which can be found in the best spy dramas.
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Dr Melissa Beattie is a recovering Classicist who was awarded a PhD in Theatre, Film and TV Studies from Aberystwyth University where she studied Torchwood and national identity through fan/audience research as well as textual analysis. She has published and presented several papers relating to transnational television, audience research and/or national identity. She is currently an assistant professor of liberal arts at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. She is under contract with Lexington for an academic book on fictitious countries and Palgrave for a book on Canadian crime dramas. She has previously worked at universities in the US, Korea, Pakistan, Armenia, Ethiopia and for a brief time in Cambodia. She can be contacted at tritogeneia@aol.com.
FOOTNOTES
[i] Connecting espionage to foreign-born/foreign-linked academics is also exceedingly problematic as such assumptions of spying are already often applied to foreign-born academics in many countries (with occasional justification, e.g., Tang and McKelvie, 2024). In this instance it is made worse by Lily’s insistence that she is Canadian, reinforcing the fallacy that migrants are always spies.
[ii] Wolfgang (and his actor Airlie) being Scottish-born and accented reinforces this.
[iii] Though ‘mei-mei’ was a common term used in Firefly (Fox, 2000) for ‘little sister’ the interpretation requires more cultural competency than that.
REFERENCES
Burton C (2015) Canada’s China policy under the Harper government. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 21(1): 45-63.
Carroll J M (2007) A Concise History of Hong Kong. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Champion C P (2005) Eminent Pearsonians: Britishness, Anti-Britishness, and Canadianism. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 16(1): 319–340.
Jackson S (2018) Constructing National Identity in Canadian and Australian Classrooms: The Crown of Education. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Manulak D (2020) ‘An African representative’: Canada, the Third World, and South African apartheid, 1984–1990. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, online first, n.pag. DOI: 10.1080/03086534.2020.1783474
Melancon G (1999) Honour in opium? The British declaration of war on China, 1839–1840. The International History Review 21(4): 855-874.
Oldham J H (2017) Paranoid Visions: Spies, Conspiracies and the Secret State in British Television Drama. Manchester: MUP.
Tang J and McKelvie T (2024) US historian found guilty of working as Chinese spy. Radio Free Asia (6 August).https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-united-states-spying-08062024133913.html (accessed 6/8/24)
