I’m back.
Okay I should really finish my review for The Witcher 3, and I have a lot of stuff for it written, but I just need to sit down and finish it. I want to do that before I really get into doing more essays about Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, because, as my Tumblr peeps and the fam will attest, I have a lot to say about it.
Also hey I remembered what it was that I was going to talk about a couple of weeks ago, and then forgot. It’s The Expanse.
---
Esteban Sorrento-Gillis Sucks
Okay, so I probably need to do some explaining on who the fudge I’m talking about and why this man sucks. And to be clear, he’s far from the suckiest man on the show, not by a long shot. But it was just the way in which he sucks that struck me as a biting commentary on some things I think about sometimes so let’s get into this.
I’m going to spoil some of The Expanse.
The Expanse by James S.A. Corey (who is actually two people using a pen name) is a book series that was adapted into a television series by SyFy (which is what we’re actually going to be talking about today) who then cancelled it after three seasons, and then it was bought by Amazon, who also cancelled it after another three seasons or so. The show is pretty good. The books are better, but the show’s pretty good.
The premise is something like this: in the future humans have interplanetary travel and have colonized the solar system, but have yet to go beyond that limit. The big political powers are Earth, Mars, and the OPA/the Belt, the latter of which is made up of colonists on the different moons of gas giants and asteroids and stuff. They get stepped on by Earth and Mars a lot, who basically hate each other but avoid war.
And then a piece of advanced technology unlike anything anyone’s seen before is developed, and tensions between Earth and Mars dial up to eleven.
Enter Esteban Sorrento-Gillis, Secretary General of the United Nations, the government of Earth at this point in history. Plotwise, he doesn’t get that much done. His Deputy Secretary, Sadavir Errinwright does some, but his Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala gets most things done, and avoids the public eye. When Avasarala actually does get into the spotlight, she laments that it’ll be harder to get things done.
So Errinwright turns out to be in on the big conspiracy in the overall Plot, and when Avasarala finds out, she gives him a chance to turn himself in and try to get out with as little damage to his career as possible. Instead, he tries to have her killed, has his Martian contacts killed, and starts a war between Earth and Mars. He maneuvers his boss Sorrento-Gillis by playing to his ego and doing his best to get this man to consider how he will be remembered as Earth’s leader during the first interplanetary war in human history. When Sorrento-Gillis thinks that maybe Errinwright’s too bad of an influence, he calls his old college friend Anna Volovodov, a pastor and activist, to help him write speeches to inspire hope instead of just war. It doesn’t work because he still lets Errinwright influence him.
Throughout this entire story arc, Errinwright, Anna, and Avasarala (who is on the run and having space adventures because Errinwright tried to have her killed) all lament how easily bendable Sorrento-Gillis is, with Avasarala even calling him “a bobblehead.” Because Sorrento-Gillis doesn’t care about Earth, or humanity, or the solar system. No, what the leader of humanity’s homeworld cares about is his legacy and reputation.
When Errinwright is finally exposed as a traitor, and Sorrento-Gillis has him arrested, Errinwright monologues about how spineless the man is, and how Errinwright was at least fighting for Earth’s supremacy, whereas Sorrento-Gillis was only leading Earth in the war because he was fighting for his reputation. He only wanted to look good in the history books.And after he’s led away in handcuffs, Anna approaches Sorrento-Gillis to congratulate him, only for the Secretary General to be like, “Thank you, because thanks to you, I won’t go down in history for causing millions of deaths! That’s all on him now!” And a horrified Anna realizes that this man is just as garbage as Errinwright said he was.
There is this common religious belief I see marched around quite often on the Internet by all sorts that Esteban Sorrento-Gillis subscribed to--the notion of the “the Right Side of History.” You see this all the time, and it’s a handy thing for historical fiction and dramas; see “History Has Its Eyes on You” in Hamilton. But as an actual belief to subscribe to, I have to classify it as a religious belief that I cannot subscribe to. I say “religious” because it’s not something based on fact but belief. Specifically, the belief that future generations will hold the same ideology that the person saying it does, whether that is progressivism or conservatism or whatever ideology one subscribes to. It is the notion that in the future people will be more inclined to be moral. And this isn’t something we know will happen for a fact.
History says quite the opposite, in fact. We know for certain that people’s opinions of history change all the time. We are having something of a national conversation about this in regards to which historical figures should be honored with monuments and which shouldn’t. What was the “Right Side of History” fifty years ago certainly isn’t today, and I don’t think our morals today will be viewed the same way in fifty years. That’s just how it works.
And look, there are a lot of people, some of whom subscribe to this belief, that tell me that we’re about to be overrun by authoritarians of one sort or another. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can tell you I don’t care if the followers of the potential fascist regime don’t like me. They can suck a brick!
The belief that there’s a “Right Side of History” is belief in an afterlife. That future generations will remember us as good people. And maybe they will, I don’t know, but making that your goal in life? That somehow, after death, you will get to live on as a sainted figure? That’s one of the weakest afterlife beliefs I’ve ever heard, and yet I keep seeing it touted as a definite thing, about how this or that currently living person will be remembered well or badly, or how we’ve got to keep in mind how future generations will see us.
But here comes The Expanse, which shows the potential dangers of this line of thinking. Esteban Sorrento-Gillis is the politician who wholeheartedly believes in the notion of the Right Side of History, and he’s an idiot. He’s the worst kind of politician. A weak, spineless coward who is so desperate to define his legacy that he barely ever considers what the right thing to do is. Sorrento-Gillis doesn’t care about the right thing.
Compare this to Avasarala, who prefers working behind the scenes with none of the publicity, and has the foulest mouth of any character in the series. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her (except maybe her family), much less future generations. She can’t afford to. She’s busy getting things done.
And we have this problem with politicians today, don’t we? Politicians who care more about appealing to voters of one side or the other than actually getting stuff done? Who introduce and vote on bills not to pass them, but to be able to say that they voted on the Correct Side of that issue in their campaign ads when an election comes up. They don’t care about us, they don’t care about the country, they care about holding on to their seats and getting their name somewhere shiny.
I don’t know, politics on The Expanse spoke to me in a way that most shows involving politics don’t. And while yes, I suppose antagonist characters obsessed with legacy aren’t new, I think this one stood out because Sorrento-Gillis isn’t a villain, he’s just… one of their puppets. And until the end of his role in the story, he never even realizes how stupid he is. I suppose he does resign, but we don’t see him on screen doing that, so I imagine even with that he thinks it’s some noble act that people will love him for.
Idiot.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment