The Weirdly Conservative Politics of ‘The Expanse’
Image; screen-captured via Amazon Prime
The Syfy, and later, Amazon property The Expanse (2015 — 2022) was a space opera set several hundred years in the future. It was about a group of people navigating the geopolitics of our solar system, particularly the crew of the "Roci," a ragtag team of mercenaries-turned-freedom-fighters who come from the three major polities (i.e., Earth, Mars, and The Belt, as in the Asteroid Belt). The lead of the show is arguably James Holden (Steven Strait), who tries to lead the crew to a middle ground so that they can do the "right thing."
This series had a lot going for it. It falls into what many nerds like myself would call "hard science fiction" for its willingness to portray space travel as it would actually be with our current understanding of science. Ships are designed so that they can move backward and forward in the directionless void. Characters strap in to deal with the effects of thrust and gravity. It's truly an incredible sight to behold for any lover of spaceships.
The show is also great from a representation standpoint. There are countless strong (and weak) female characters, from UN Representative Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) to Belter administrator Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) to Martian commando Bobbie Draper (Frankie Adams). These characters come from a wide range of races and ethnicities, which is refreshing given how white traditional hard science fiction has been in the past (and now). These characters have a spectrum of sexualities and political ideologies that make them three-dimensional and enjoyable to watch.
It's the show's politics where we start to run into some problems. Even though gritty political realism is supposed to be a selling point, we end our final season with a political message that is ultimately very conservative: align with "nice" establishment types or stand aside.
The crew of the Roci fights against various threats throughout the series, but it's the last major one that highlights the problem here. The antagonist isn't a corporate CEO manipulating alien technology or a high-ranking Inner, but a Belter dictator that rises to power by taking advantage of "anti-Inner" sentiment from Belters. Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) establishes a free Navy that, with the help of superior technology from rogue Martian separatists, begins to chuck asteroids at the Earth, killing millions of people. To recap, the Belters, the formerly oppressed group, gain political autonomy, and one of the first things they do is an attempt to genocide their oppressors.
If you follow any conversations online about “land back” (i.e., giving land back to indigenous people) or black nationalism, this trope is probably familiar. Whenever people advocate for redistributive policies, one of the most common counterpoints is to bring up the strawman of "White Genocide." We see this, for example, in South Africa, where conservatives are erroneously claiming that land seizures, which have mostly been nonviolent, are the result of some plot to kill white farmers. These false claims are made all while ignoring why there is such a massive disparity between white and black landowners in South Africa in the first place. "The violent, ethnic cleansing of white farmers by armed, black gangs is infuriating & heartbreaking," falsely claimed columnist Katie Hopkin in 2018, "And the world doesn't care. Or at least the mainstream media doesn't care. Do you?" Conservatives have a habit of portraying any attempt at redistribution as being just as bad as the original stealing of said resources (context be damned).
We see the same logic sometimes used in the US with conversations of giving land back to tribal governments, and this example is even more ludicrous. While any group of people can do horrible things (people are people, after all), the idea that an oppressed group is materially capable of performing a genocide against a country like the United States is laughable. The US has both larger numbers and has one of the most advanced militaries on the planet. Also, Native American tribes endured a genocide under United States rule. They cannot turn around and do the same thing in kind, even if they want to. It's a pointless hypothetical because it's simply not possible under current material conditions.
In the realm of fiction, however, such strawmen narratives can be entertained, especially in science fiction, where the oppressed group can gain control of some magical technology to level the playing field. The "oppressed being no better than the oppressor" is an all-too-common trope in pop culture. We see this in the video game Bioshock Infinite (2013), where protagonist Elizabeth (Courtnee Draper) uses her powers of being able to move between alternative realities to find the one where anti-racist freedom fighter Daisy Fitzroy (Kimberly Brooks) has overwhelming odds against the technologically superior state of Columbia. Daisy uses that advantage to press for white genocide.
We see it again in Black Panther (2018), where N'Jadaka AKA Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (Michael B. Jordan) threatens to destroy the current white supremacist political order using Wakanda's magical-seeming vibranium weapons so that he can establish Wakandan imperialism. "The sun will never set on the Wakandan empire," he monologues in the thrown room as he prepares to distribute arms across the world to topple white governments. The pen allows writers to create a world where this conservative strawman can come to life.
The Expanse falls into a similar pattern. The people of the Belt have suffered under exploitative capitalism for generations. We start with Earth and Martian polities (and corporations) controlling Belter resources, and as a consequence, Belters have to pay a premium for necessities like air and water. Even with some independence following efforts by Fred Lucius Johnson (Chad L. Coleman) and Anderson Dawes (Jared Harris), they were still massive inequities between Belters and Inners that would take generations to fix. If current history is a guide, there would be even more suffering from the fallout, as corporate actors and corrupt Mars and Earth officials try to sabotage equipment and resources as they pull out of the Belt.
Colonizers are very petty when it comes to giving up power. For example, Haiti was, for years, forced by the US and France to use their national income to service debt repayments. These debts were mainly reparations to French slaveholders — something it took more than a century for the former slave colony to pay off. Yes, you heard that correctly: these governments forced formerly enslaved people to pay back their tormentors. It's straightforward to imagine resource-starved Inners demanding a similar arrangement with the Belt, where they lock them out of critical systems and infrastructure and establish blockades and embargos unless their former subjects pay an obscene amount for leniency.
Yet The Expanse creates a narrative where everything falls into place just right so that this oppressed group, which before the rise of fascist Marco Inaros barely had the resources to feed all of its people, forms a new Khanate that challenges the great powers of the solar systems. Reality is filled with stories of imperialists massacring, genociding, and assassinating emergent independence movements, but instead, we get a story where a population of tens of millions, scattered across the void of space, oppresses a civilization in the billions. It's not that the narrative isn't beautifully constructed or that it doesn't make sense within the logic of the story — it is, and it does— but that so much had to go right in this show just so that we could get another metaphorical "White Genocide" trope.
This narrative is reactionary, and this conservatism doesn't stop and end with the show's villains but with the characters, the show chooses to focus on.
The most powerful POV character we focus on in the show is UN Representative Chrisjen Avasarala, who has a high role in Earth's government throughout the series. Avasarala starts out as an awful human being. She's a military hawk who contributes to the Belt's exploitation in the first season. She is racist against Belters and freely tortures OPA operatives (one of the main factions of the Belt) to maintain Earth's imperialist hold in the region.
Yet we are also supposed to like her. She has some of the best lines in the entire series. I was mesmerized whenever she was in a scene, and her witty one-liners only get better when Martian Bobby enters her orbit, and the two have a playful back and forth (seriously, I ship them). And while I am all for lovable villains, I don't think we are meant to entirely disagree with her positions, even in her most xenophobic first season. Avasarala is portrayed as practical and reasonable. That firm head on her shoulders helps her uncover Chairman Jules-Pierre Mao's plot to weaponize the alien protomolecule in the first season. As written on Syfy's website (the network producing the show at the time):
“Avasarala is the Deputy Undersecretary of the United Nations, but the only reason she hasn’t risen to the very top of the ego-powered political hierarchy is because she like getting shit done. We’d say she’s a “walk softly and carry a big stick” type of politician, but she doesn’t walk softly, and her stick is more like a rail gun. Most importantly, she can walk manipulative circles around anyone she deems an adversary (or a friend for that matter), and she swears like sailor.”
We as the audience are meant to think that she gets things done, but until she evolves to become slightly less racist in the last two seasons, that trait was being used to perpetuate imperialism. The show seems to initially want us to admire this person who can work the system, even though the system itself is toxic. We are worshipping a political fixer, an upholder of the status quo who would most likely be the villain in real life. The person who embargos the Belt so that rich Inners can receive reparations from the loss of profits they suffer during the Belt's independence — all while convincing everyone that it's for the common good.
Yet the show truly wants us to believe that an individual like Chrisjen Avasarala can work against the system from within, even as she serves it. The show talks a lot about "good" and "bad" apples in the final season. There is a scene near the end where Avasarala is talking to a reporter named Monica Stuart (Anna Hopkins) about a botanist, Praxideke "Prax" Meng (Terry Chen), who leaked information about experimental biotech to the Inners. When learning about this selflessness from Avasarala, Stuart replies, "Well, one good apple, sometimes that's all it takes."
The show's talking about Avasarala here. She is one of those good apples who will reform the system. Yet this entire sentiment misappropriates the original saying, which is "one bad apple can spoil the barrel." The phrase is talking about how negativity is not an isolated incident but can be systemic. The concept of a practical politico who alone bends the system for the common good is fiction. You do not get that high up, on your own, without already being bent.
However, in the fiction of The Expanse, they seem to suggest that imperialists can change the system by being friendlier and having better values. Avasarala becomes less awful, and she uses the same tactics she employed to bully the oppressed to bully fellow imperialists. "The government would fall if I even proposed the debate," the Martian Prime Minister threatens over the possibility of Belters controlling a new trade union administering trade outside the solar system — a plan Avasarala eventually endorses. This dissent and hatred from the Prime Minister seem very real to me, but it never really happens because the plot dictates that we wrap things up. Avasarala quiets the PM, and nothing comes of his fear. The political and corporate actors who would oppose her in our world are somehow silent.
This magical thinking gets even worse in the closing moments. The other main protagonist Holden helps establish that aforementioned trade union to govern the pocket dimension that connects the solar system to thousands of other habitable worlds (it's this whole thing). He is appointed to head it under the condition that Drummer, a Belter, be the Vice President. He then immediately resigns to give Drummer, and by extension, the Belt, greater political autonomy, but no one does anything to subvert this action because Avasarala has decided to be nice.
Avasarala: I will undo this.
Holden: Don’t. Please don’t even try. It was the only way to secure the peace. The only way we all move forward together. And you know it.
Avasarala: Oh, James I hope you’re right.
And she doesn't resist Holden's decision. The Belt gets equality because one powerful, arguably conservative woman chooses to be agreeable. I am being facetious here. Other people fought for this future too, especially Drummer (who sacrifices so much throughout the series), but Avasarala's consent is still central to the Belt's independence.
It happens because colonizers let it happen.
The narrative of The Expanse does try to highlight some interesting dilemmas. I loved its depictions of oppression and its representations of queer life. For me, Drummer's polyamorous family was a highlight in the entire series because it's a rarity in modern television. There are many good gems here, but its foundation is still built on conservative politics, even as it makes overtures to progressive identity politics.
I think a scene in episode five of season six highlights this well. Drummer and the Roci member Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper) argue about what to do in the war against Marco Inaros. It comes down to a binary — fight against him with the Inners or do nothing. Drummer wants another option, but she cannot find one. Naomi drives home the point that there isn't one, pushing Drummer to help her in the fight against the Belt's Free Navy:
Drummer: so what is it for me? I can choose to wait for the bounty to go high enough that someone kills me, or I can put a collar on my neck and hand the Inners the leash. This universe has no place for me.
Naomi: I wish there were another way. I tried to find one, but there isn’t.
Ultimately, despite the revolutionary rhetoric, this show is very invested in the status quo. Its solutions to inequality boil down to either helping the "good apples" in the system or ejecting yourself from it entirely. Entities that attempt to go against the grain, such as Marcos Inaros or Fred Johnson, are all washed aside when this series comes to a close. The only workable solution we, as the viewer, have is working within the system through the creation of government institutions that the Inners will respect. The Belt wins power through negotiation and fealty and by letting principled Inners make space for them.
I think that's a fascinating message to close out with because, again, it is a conservative one — maybe not conservative as we think about it in a US context, but one that ultimately reinforces the status quo. Work within the system and let friendly privileged people lead the way — either on Earth or amongst the stars — or stand aside.
But hey, at least Avasarala looks fabulous doing it.