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alias_sqbrOverall I'm enjoying the show, it's a nice big diverse ensemble space opera with some clever ideas and a lot of compassion for it's morally complex and varied characters. Also there's Big Cool Space Stuff with some thought and visual panache put into it.
But it sometimes feels very...well meaning middle class white American dude. There are THREE super-competent WOC characters who deliberately choose to be a loyal second in command to a less awesome, generally white dude. And I mean, I adore these characters! They're great! But the subtext is Not Great. And while there's lots of cool, competent women there's also a lot of women and little girls who exist to be in peril to make dudes feel bad.
And speaking of Not Great Subtext, there's the Belters...
Spoilers for all of Season 2 below the cut, though I'm only a bit over halfway through that season myself and would rather not be spoiled for anything else unless you think I'd really want to know.
Convo 1:
Me: I'm liking that the Expanse is sympathetic to the Belter's plight, as mistreated space workers whose bodies have become strange(*), but don't like how in the end any Belter who tries to gain power for themselves or change things is demonised. The only good Belters choose to work for people from Earth, the planet exploiting them.
Cam: Uh...yeah. I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out, but thinking about how the plot plays out... it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth :/
Convo 2:
Me: Oh no, the Belter farming hub has been destroyed by alien tech super soldiers, that's not going to end well.
Cam: Yep :/
Convo 3:
Me: Wait the super soldiers are called the Caliban Project? And the season finale is called Caliban's War? Guess I know where this is going.
Cam: Ha... I never connected those names until much later.
Me: Do you know who Caliban was?
Cam: Nope.
Me: It's from Shakespeare's The Tempest. A nobleman, Prospero, ends up on a desert island and encounters a physically strange indigenous child called Caliban, who is the son of a witch. Prospero forces Caliban to become his servant and Caliban hates him for it, eventually turning on Prospero, and the white hero kills him. It's pretty unfortunate.
Cam: ...ah D:
Me, internally: Haha what did they expect, naming their supersoldiers 'Caliban'. Of course they declared war!
The next day:
Me: WAIT. DAMMIT.
Convo 4:
Me: So I was vaguely pondering our conversation yesterday about the symbolism of Caliban and went wait. You know who ELSE is a physically unusual resentful servant in the Expanse... :/
Cam: Who?
Me: The Belters?!
Cam: I thought that was what we were talking about last night!
Me: I thought you were making that face because Shakespeare is racist!
Me: So we're going to watch the Belters slowly starve because their farms are destroyed and then they declare war? That sounds really depressing :(
Cam: Oh, no, the farming plot is completely dropped and they ignore the fact the Belter's entire food source has been largely destroyed. The war is all about the alien tech.
OK THEN
Like to dig into my initial complaints a bit more: TWO of the super-competent WOC characters who deliberately choose to be a loyal second in command to a less awesome, generally white dude are Belter women who deliberately choose to be a loyal second in command to an Earther dude. Literally every positive Belter character I can think of either chooses to work for Earth/Earthers in some capacity (mostly but not always Earthers who chose to push back against Earth's mistreatment of Belters) and/or is a tragic victim, often of Bad Belter Leaders. I can't even think of any Good Belters who work for Mars, which is sort of the post-revolutionary war America to Earth's Old World Europe.
EDIT: Also there is also a Belter white dude who initially works for the Earth-run Belter police, then becomes obsessed with rescuing a hyper competent Earther WOC who sympathises with the Belt and was taken advantage of by a Bad Belter Revolutionary Leader. Eventually they merge as a weird alien thing to save Earth from 100K dead Belters under the turned into alien goo by Evil Earther Scientists, with the goo personified by the Earther woman. That feels both totally different and exactly the same :/
The individual Belters are often interesting complex characters, including some of the Bad Belters. The casting is about equally ethnically diverse for Earthers/Belters/Martians, including people with a variety of real world etc accents(**), and the worst Belters are all white. But the Belters are the only ones with a notable unique (if not always consistent) accent and...yeah.
There's also that typical double standard between states and people engaged in state sanctioned violence like torture, killing innocent civilians, police corruption etc vs equivalent behaviour from political organisations created by the underclass. It's more subtle than a lot of media, but definitely there.
Still, the alien stuff is cool! Maybe it'll make the war interesting and not just annoying!
(*)This mostly manifests as invisible health problems, but they're supposed to generally be super tall and thin. Alas the casting director made zero effort to cast even slightly taller than average actors as Belters (or slightly shorter ones as Earther/Martians) asides from the occasional Notably Tall Belter when they want to remind you that's a thing.
(**)I do sometimes wonder how, like, the Belters almost all speak with a mixture of American and made-up-Belter-dialect accents except for ONE who afaict had a pretty standard Belter upbringing yet has an English accent. But I assume it's all a metaphor for various Future Accents anyway.
But it sometimes feels very...well meaning middle class white American dude. There are THREE super-competent WOC characters who deliberately choose to be a loyal second in command to a less awesome, generally white dude. And I mean, I adore these characters! They're great! But the subtext is Not Great. And while there's lots of cool, competent women there's also a lot of women and little girls who exist to be in peril to make dudes feel bad.
And speaking of Not Great Subtext, there's the Belters...
Spoilers for all of Season 2 below the cut, though I'm only a bit over halfway through that season myself and would rather not be spoiled for anything else unless you think I'd really want to know.
Convo 1:
Me: I'm liking that the Expanse is sympathetic to the Belter's plight, as mistreated space workers whose bodies have become strange(*), but don't like how in the end any Belter who tries to gain power for themselves or change things is demonised. The only good Belters choose to work for people from Earth, the planet exploiting them.
Cam: Uh...yeah. I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out, but thinking about how the plot plays out... it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth :/
Convo 2:
Me: Oh no, the Belter farming hub has been destroyed by alien tech super soldiers, that's not going to end well.
Cam: Yep :/
Convo 3:
Me: Wait the super soldiers are called the Caliban Project? And the season finale is called Caliban's War? Guess I know where this is going.
Cam: Ha... I never connected those names until much later.
Me: Do you know who Caliban was?
Cam: Nope.
Me: It's from Shakespeare's The Tempest. A nobleman, Prospero, ends up on a desert island and encounters a physically strange indigenous child called Caliban, who is the son of a witch. Prospero forces Caliban to become his servant and Caliban hates him for it, eventually turning on Prospero, and the white hero kills him. It's pretty unfortunate.
Cam: ...ah D:
Me, internally: Haha what did they expect, naming their supersoldiers 'Caliban'. Of course they declared war!
The next day:
Me: WAIT. DAMMIT.
Convo 4:
Me: So I was vaguely pondering our conversation yesterday about the symbolism of Caliban and went wait. You know who ELSE is a physically unusual resentful servant in the Expanse... :/
Cam: Who?
Me: The Belters?!
Cam: I thought that was what we were talking about last night!
Me: I thought you were making that face because Shakespeare is racist!
Me: So we're going to watch the Belters slowly starve because their farms are destroyed and then they declare war? That sounds really depressing :(
Cam: Oh, no, the farming plot is completely dropped and they ignore the fact the Belter's entire food source has been largely destroyed. The war is all about the alien tech.
OK THEN
Like to dig into my initial complaints a bit more: TWO of the super-competent WOC characters who deliberately choose to be a loyal second in command to a less awesome, generally white dude are Belter women who deliberately choose to be a loyal second in command to an Earther dude. Literally every positive Belter character I can think of either chooses to work for Earth/Earthers in some capacity (mostly but not always Earthers who chose to push back against Earth's mistreatment of Belters) and/or is a tragic victim, often of Bad Belter Leaders. I can't even think of any Good Belters who work for Mars, which is sort of the post-revolutionary war America to Earth's Old World Europe.
EDIT: Also there is also a Belter white dude who initially works for the Earth-run Belter police, then becomes obsessed with rescuing a hyper competent Earther WOC who sympathises with the Belt and was taken advantage of by a Bad Belter Revolutionary Leader. Eventually they merge as a weird alien thing to save Earth from 100K dead Belters under the turned into alien goo by Evil Earther Scientists, with the goo personified by the Earther woman. That feels both totally different and exactly the same :/
The individual Belters are often interesting complex characters, including some of the Bad Belters. The casting is about equally ethnically diverse for Earthers/Belters/Martians, including people with a variety of real world etc accents(**), and the worst Belters are all white. But the Belters are the only ones with a notable unique (if not always consistent) accent and...yeah.
There's also that typical double standard between states and people engaged in state sanctioned violence like torture, killing innocent civilians, police corruption etc vs equivalent behaviour from political organisations created by the underclass. It's more subtle than a lot of media, but definitely there.
Still, the alien stuff is cool! Maybe it'll make the war interesting and not just annoying!
(*)This mostly manifests as invisible health problems, but they're supposed to generally be super tall and thin. Alas the casting director made zero effort to cast even slightly taller than average actors as Belters (or slightly shorter ones as Earther/Martians) asides from the occasional Notably Tall Belter when they want to remind you that's a thing.
(**)I do sometimes wonder how, like, the Belters almost all speak with a mixture of American and made-up-Belter-dialect accents except for ONE who afaict had a pretty standard Belter upbringing yet has an English accent. But I assume it's all a metaphor for various Future Accents anyway.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-06 10:33 pm (UTC)Oh, this is explained later, when Naomi starts code-switching. But overall many of your complaints will linger into future seasons. I think the books handled this a lot better, not least because Jim Holden is the genetic product of six parents and not all are white.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 05:17 am (UTC)That's good to know! And yeah, Cam hasn't read the books but looked up the differences and every now and then says "So apparently that gets explored in the books but don't expect much from the show".
no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 05:41 am (UTC)Cam found the later seasons frustrating, looked up a summary of the books and went "That sounds so much cooler :(" so it's not just you! Could I read the later books based on show knowledge or would it be too confusing? I could try reading from the start of course but it's nice to have options.
no subject
Date: 2023-06-08 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-12 02:41 am (UTC)Thank you!