ABSTRACT
In August 2013, Claire Danes appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine wearing a golden trench coat. The Fox 21 series, Homeland, which features Danes as a feisty, bipolar CIA agent, had just won critical acclaim for its seemingly realistic portrayal of American intelligence operations in the 21st century. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, the six-page spread featured Danes and Damian Lewis (the male lead for the first three seasons) in a series of erotically charged photo spreads that traded on a kind of Cold War spy chic. Danes modeled designer dresses in scenarios that ranged from interrogation cell to master bedroom, all rendered in a suburbangothic color palette reminiscent of the film American Beauty (1999). The Vogue feature portrayed counter-terrorism efforts as sexy and enigmatic in the immediate aftermath of the Snowden affair. But Homeland has more generally been praised for its sophistication and complexity. The show has been received as a more mature version of “terror television,” a genre that first emerged through shows like 24, which featured the Rambo-like “patriot” character Jack Bauer who typified the good-against-evil snapshot of world politics that has become standard fare in mainstream television and Hollywood film.1
