The Tragedy of Macbeth is a 2021 American historical thriller film written and directed by Joel Coen and based on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. It is the first film directed by one of the Coen brothers without the other’s involvement.
Leah Greenblatt wrote in Entertainment Weekly that the production designer Stefan Dechant “sets the idea of Sir William’s [sic] traditional Scottish moors against a kind of surreal Calvinist dream world of screaming birds and sharp geometries” (wiki)
The Expanse has received critical acclaim, with particular praise for its visuals, character development and political narrative. (wiki)
There is no denying The Expanse (now in its 6th and final season) has marked and will continue to mark the recent history of SF world-building – as a new phase in the development of the genre, especially in its socially aware forms.
Divergence 1
This it has done in two ways – by finally catching up with his literary material – the works of James S. A. Corey (none of which I have read) and the current world affairs. Most of the current blockbuster big-epic production of current SF (last year’s Foundation series and Dune by Denis Villeneuve are prime examples) have a nearly 60 years cinematic delay in regard with their original works. Besides what we could term the certain ‘neo-feudal’ or ‘techno-feudal’ (after Yanis Varoufakis) traits of both Foundation and Dune adaptations, including cloned emperors, barons, warring ruling families, there might be high time to look beyond the generally universally accepted and canonical. It is for the first time Earthers are not imbued with nostalgia – but with a sort of general reproach (both from Martian society and the Belters) as a planet of wasted resources and exploitative catabolic collapse civilizations. While antagonism remain in place even in peace, there is a lingering emotional involvement with all of the three branches of humanity. The Corvette-class light frigate Rocinante rag-tag team of Belters (humans from the Asteroid Belt), Earthers and Martians (humans on Mars) and their winded stories along the course of 6 seasons (which is a long time for today’s streaming) encourage the viewer away to avoid latching onto the good/bad dualist divisions that have characterized previous space operas.
Yes, I get why there is all this accumulated historical pressure or emotional investment built upon investment in SF sagas. Yes, I appreciate the ongoing interest of big production in established franchises and foundational SF cycles. Yet when will some current contemporary classics hit the big (or home) screen? Do we have to hope that someday, some huge Big Tech brother or geek entrepreneur (akin to Amazon Bezos or Apple+ or Disney+?), after light-years of lobbying might deem it worthwhile? There is signs that in reality, a broad-based and devoted new fandom can play its hand in the lobbying for the continuation of favorite SF series. Amazon Prime has taken up on The Expanse reviving the series, picking it up from Syfy channel after it was canceled.
So apart from giants like Asimov and Herbert, what else is there new old? Why not dig into 1930s masterpieces by Olaf Stapeldon like Star Maker or the 1960s ‘Instrumentality’ of Cordwainer Smith or say Professor Jameson by Neil R. Jones? They are the example that something does not have to be actual or timely, and that even ‘forgotten’ works might still offer some welcome surprise. Why not expand into other directions?
The Expanse (uniquely and encouragingly so) has a certain breath, an outward expansion that emboldens us to think about our current tribulations, and that keeps on addressing current topics via a careful (never carefree) world-building effort. I call it divergent in this particular sense that it did not have to grow-up, ‘mature’ over decades to finally get released. The Expanse finally is catch up with current concerns, implications and irreducible complexities of now. One can say all the other big space adventures have tried their hand at such a cosmic scope (both Hollywood ones – ST and SW), at the same time The Expanse does not have to try, because it just feels timely and involved.
a chronological guide to the early Expanse universe
Divergence 2
Second divergence with the Expanse is its exploration that works from a different premise (a situational and consequential SF) than say the usual cycles of either placidly mythic (timeless) space opera material (in G. Lucas’s Star Wars universe), or what might strike one as totalizing & bland promoters of a blind (absolute) tech- progressivism (say in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek). My bet is that the Expanse achieves this by being socially acute in its diagnosis – class struggle does not end on Earth, it will be carried in space. Both exploitation and emancipation will not evaporate once our spaceships will start mining and settling other worlds, no matter what the early Russians cosmist said that lack of gravity will unshackle humanity (of economic, racist or patriarchal status quo). For the first time post-cinematically at least, in recent memory, space exploration is not a romanticized ‘final frontier’, the bland off-world advertisment – but a timespace continuum full of consequences and warps that merit our full attention. The Expanse nurtures an attentive concern for what it might mean to insure a more equal (fair!?) re-distribution of resources and consequences in space (where they count most) as well in spite of all war-mongering enterprises, try hard to solve conflicts via diplomatic means.
Terrorism does not equal anarchism
There is already a Reddit dedicated to discussing why the traditional anarchist symbol is associated to the OPA sign during the later seasons of The Expanse (season 5). Why is this symbol present during Marco Inaros speech? Some have seen here the usual association of violence and destruction that gets instantly blamed on anarchism from James Bond villains to Batman. At the same time, the visible nationalist tint of Marco Inaros’s cause (according to Chris Nunn) makes it hard to fit under a black-red flag.
There is no mistake that the black-bloc as well as antifa during the Trump presidency have been depicted in mainstream media predominantly as terrorists and trouble makers, while far-right terrorism has been historically been played down. Now that neoreaction and nationalism is globally on the rise, even mainstream channels have had to acknowledge (especially after the Washington Jan 6 failed coup) that far-right plots historically outnumber left-wing ones or even outweigh the concerns about the called Islamist ‘threat’. Romania, pretty much a satellite state of the US, has upped the ante with such overly exaggerated responses in its rabid media response tothose that might feebly oppose the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest. Overwhelmingly the mainstream media has been blaming all disruption on the ‘anarchist’ element (in RO always a ‘necessarily foreign’ element), because the locals are all honey and milk, while local destructo-capitalism is left to roam free. So this is how The Expanse – arrives at its weakest point, although I might also add that we should always follow the women of this universe. There is a gender critique at work here, and in fact one can see women being much more capable than men overall in difficult situations, and men, especially rebel leaders tend to make fools of themselves. At the same time I do not want to let US off the hook nor rush in with labeling it US progapanda akin to the usual contras or anti-Cuban sentiment in Florida. Even in space and even with such an incredible series at the Expanse it is good to be on the lookout. I am keen to see how this villainous image of the Belter rebel hero evolves – although it feels blocked in the egotistic militaristic and violent maniac mode.
ScavengerTechnologies
Technologies – are for the first time not just stolen gifts from the Gods nor magick laser swords that can accomplish just about anything. Alien, Martian or Belter tech – no matter their true source or mysterious origin, stealth tech, they are all socially embedded in their uses and misuses, in social and economic systems and pliable only up to a point to our bidding and utilitarian aims. The Ring gate portals allow a new access towards various unknown exoplanets. These Ring portals are not just places of transit, they always seem to be responsive, always gauged and feeding on and off their ‘simple’ transit function. They are as much alien as the protomolecule, both carriers of historically -materialistic pronoucements, as well places of immigration, full of hope and danger, yet entirely prone to military-industrial exploitation. These are not easy pickings, not just appliances that await their capable human users. Beside the usual corporate vested interests, there is also scientific interest and genuine concern with using the protomolecule tech for pacific means (as there is today a drive for developeing patent-free SARS vaccines!). These incoming technologies (be it the Ring gates or the protomolecule research) get rapidly enmeshed in wider Sol system politics, most of the he times exacerbating already existing inequalities and conflicts. In the latest seasons, the protomolecule gets in the background and human factionalism and tribalism tend to take over. Each eps of the 6th season of The Expanse gets an intro from a parallel storyline on a distant world (Laconia) where a daughter of the colonists learns to use the resurrection powers of the local dog-like social creatures that are able to bring organisms (both local and foreign) back to life. Again – even if their is an unspecified sinister air to all of these ressurections (the creatures, including human ones are changed when they get back), nothing is developed – and we get the sense that human colonists are also very resistant to these changed and to difference in general.
I would actually say that the protomolecule in the Expanse is not so much about an alien tech – but about matter as such, the protean, in-itself, intrinsique qualities of a physical universe that is pretty large and full of suprises. Here I think that both The Expanse and its protomolecule and the last Star Trek (Discovery) cosmic mycelial networks – tend to integrate this enlivened scientific and speculative perspectives (one might even say a sort of pan-experientialist or recently popular panpsychist) on what was considered inert, passive matter. Life technosciences implicily work up from this new ‘animatedness’ of basic matter building blocks. In the Alien franchise, corporations where interested only in sampling alien organisms and developing them as bioweapons. In the Expanse, in tune with current technoscience developements, there is a further expansion into the very building blocks of matter. It is almost like this thourougly privatized endeavour has finally the means to try and retro-engineer (very like the methods of Synthetic biology) and unleash the hidden potentials of inoquous alien bits of matter. Today’s biocapitalism is being exploitated in a similarly retro-enginering way – pushed by both biomedical advenaces and corporate biotech vested interests that try to mine historical (non-human or inhuman) capacities that have arisen during millions of years of coevolutionary existence between bacterial cells and viruses let’s say (like the CRISPR-Cas system used in editing genes and believed to have evolved out of bacteria-bacteriophage interactions).
Cosmic Solidarity
Rocinante – and its crew is a diverse cast of characters that enacts all those conflicts as well as building up an unexpected solidarity. Initially, it was hard to dig for them. They all seemed quite uncharismatic or bland. It was much more easy to be enthusiastic for the detectivistic hard boiled characters and the strange realism of labour relations that get depicted right from the very start. Embodiment and alien-human or transformative space life hybridisation is important and with numerous after affects in the Expanse universe. Nobody is indifferent or impervious to the effects of long term-living under low gravitation or in dependency from supply chains. We see how this effects are being felt – experienced – along the whole lenght of the series seasons. Complete limb regrowth is possible, yet it is painful. Endocrine mods are possible yet, but even if they convey super human speeds they might be deadly on the long term.
Nothin is just instant future medical magic but a lengthy process that can go wrong and involve difficult and precarious decisions. Pilots can die during dangerous in-flight High G maneuvers, and gravitation affects each and everyone, yet some more than others. The threat from militarism is everywhere in the Expanse and there is the feeling that the industrial-military complex is always a constant threat to any terraforming activities and the balance of future beneficial living. No none is immune and all are united under these dire future circumstances.
Solidarity – seems to have at least one wellspring from these harsh general conditions but also from the way the Inners and especially Earthers have exploited and denied Belter (workin class) autonomy and equal rights. Beside the linguistic and cultural specificities (what one might call ethnic, racial or cultural element) and internal affinities of Belters (that have their own Idiom that reminds one of Creole or Caribbean English), there is also the economic class solidarity of the Belters. The common plight of asteroid miners, mechanics, labor migrants of the larger Asteroid Belt that have always suffered for generations as cheap and disposable labour pool for the ‘Inners’ (inner planet Earth and Mars) is a strong undercurrent in the series. I can only say that I can see a certain direct concern here with the growing number of actual climate migrants or migrant workers and displaced persons everywhere – in my case, the reality of this East European migrant pool after 1989 and the real inequalities (both economic and symbolic) exacerbated within the European Union (or Sol system unity in the case of The Expanse) highlighted by political scientist Eszter Kováts in a recent article. This is not just a case of hard scifi getting the science right or solving material contradictions – it is also about less easy to quantify traumatic effects, the scars of radiation sickness or severe trauma endured during prolonged exposure to the space vacuum that seems to afflict Belters more than everyone else. Earth in the Expanse series, even if united under a world governement and no blocs (something that feels very far from the current UN influence in the newly antagonistic US/China world) is itself a place of climate crisis immigration, growing inequality, raptorial capitalism, prisons and joblessness.
Naomi in one of the most beautiful and painful scenes of the show
High G Emotions
I found myself completely swayed by this series which from the very beginning was not about ‘pew-pew’ but about step by step complex developments and negotiations in almost impossible situations and for further than your planetary or asteroid mining – goals. From the first scenes, wearing magnetic boots – gravity and outer space life has felt palpable. I am usually get very emotionally involved with movies, but it has been a long time since I have been as much affected by a series (to tears). The Expanse has managed to do that for me. Some have commented on the pessimistic tone – of the later 6th season (just being screened). While I am feeling pretty harsh about Amazon Corp picking up from Syfy channel and making it theirs and also pushing this Belter terrorist Red-Brigade-RAF platitude to the max, I also trust J S A Corey’s friendly but firm grip on it:
Oh I disagree. Humanity still existing in a couple hundred years is feeling REALLY optimistic to me right now. https://t.co/zRCrDZG4Ql
It is not a SF ‘weepy’ (which I would gladly watch) – there is a lot of hearfelt encounters that feel very close now to early conditions now that much of solidarity is done online, and much of what comes from climate summits is really disheartening and ludicrous (no concerted action and ineffectual politicians). There is a lot to be learn just following Chrisjen Avasarala (magnificently played by Shohreh Aghdashloo – also known for her roles in Abbas Kiarostami’s films), Secretary-General of the United Nations. As on and off Secretary-General she serves as the head of state and government of Earth and chief executive of the United Nations (UN). I find her development arc more interesting than let’s say Filip- Marco Inaro’s son. She basically starts like your run-of-the-mill War on Terror – CIA operative organizing black site type Gravity torture or Obama drone warfare support against revolting Belters. In politics and in contrast with a lot of recent US presidents, Avasarala is definitely not a war hawk. I refuse to see The Expanse as Games of Thrones in space, since this would again push a neo-feudal outlook, and what I prefer is a historically grounded development not these supposedly ‘human nature’ – or ‘eternal concers’. She, i think also changes during the series, and ends up preferring negotiations, opening channels and is always in a sort of counter-intelligence war with her own military arm, that seems to try and escalate and retaliate on each occasion.
gravity torture
Another incredible character is Camina Drummer (played by Canadian actress Cara Gee) that comes trough as a very tough and incredible determined Belter that is torn between her allegiance to the emancipatory cause of the Belters and the OPA and her vengeful actions towards testo male leader Marco Inaros. She is one of the most enduring and critical characters of the whole – she is always potrayed in a complex way that makes her (for me) a sort of emblem of the whole series.
Wain, Louis 1860–1939. “Kaleidoskop-Katzen: Katzenmuster auf Grün”. Gouache auf Papier, 22,4 × 17,5 cm. London, Bethlem Art and History Coll.
L0026931 A cat in “gothic” style. Gouache by Louis Wain, 1925/1939. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.ukhttp://wellcomeimages.org A cat in “gothic” style. Gouache by Louis Wain, 1925/1939. Gouache 1925/1939 By: Louis William WainPublished: – Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Radioactive is a 2020 British biographical drama film directed by Marjane Satrapi and starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie. The film is based on the 2010 graphic novel Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss.
Although the film is actually based on a 2010 graphic novel, it is marketed as a “biopic” on Marie Curie. Geraldine McGinty of Cornell University severely criticised the film not just for altering many historical events for dramatic effect, but for misrepresenting her character and that of her husband, McGinty said that its misleading analogies, misrepresentation of principal characters, and inappropriate nudity and violence, all make it unsuitable as an educational or biographical source. (wiki)
During an interview on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron in November 2021, Scott blamed the film’s box-office failure on millennials, arguing: “I think what it boils down to — what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones. The millennian do not ever want to be taught anything unless you are told it on the cell phone” 🙂 (wiki)
The Photographer of Mauthausen (Spanish: El fotógrafo de Mauthausen) is a 2018 Spanish biography drama / historical film starring Mario Casas as photographer Francisco Boix during his life in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex. (wiki)
This keynote lecture brings together research and books by other authors, be it cyber-feminist or digital culture – a different history of computing, biding carefully and imaginatively together old and new material practices that subtend computation (by XX women artists let’s say or adopted from specific work done by indigenous people) as a common weave of ‘uncomputable’ computer history.
In a sense he is just tying together several knots and threads, adding more to wider web of inclusive and non-reductionist histories of (unconventional) computing. There is an incredible visible and tangible built-up that made computing happen starting from down below. One that allows us to better feel and understand that it could not exist without this processual practices. An instantiated (and mostly underrated and unwaged) work specific to all sorts of weaving process – from childhood games such as Cat’s Cradle (Donna Haraway) to DNA molecular folding. Textile art and textile production for a long time considered ‘minor’ arts and ‘decorative’ (even inside men preserves such as Bauhaus) – are taken as better examples of parsing both industrial history and understanding mathification in various other ways than just visiting your local computer museum or technical museum. Here are a few rapid notes on it:
-on the way it discusses both the work of early industrial weavers, the worker’s own resistance and distraction of machines as boycott against automation and the ‘intellectual’ aesthetic critic against pieces (observations by Lord Byron) made in the new factories as opposed to the previous handicraft work. New lower quality work coming out of these early factories was disconsidered and called in the day’s cant: ‘spider work’.
-early employers preferring married women as workers since they would be more docile, and more ready to give everything in order to provide for their families (a quote from Marx that quotes an early social reformer.
-the way Ada Lovelace largely considered the first programmer – at the same time (as Sadie Plant has pointed out in 1997) the context of her ground braking mathematical work is as telling as the work itself (if not more for non-mathematical minds as mine), it is an addenda to a proto-vapourware, an annex written by a women to a footnote of a translated review from Italian about the first “computer” – a machine thought by Charles Babbage (the Analytical engine in his words), but that did not yet exist!
-a very nice example of fraying of margins, of falling apart. This is no smooth or continuous and unaltered history. It follows the same way carpets or woven products get most intense friction or use at the margins. There is I think a long-standing interest of AR Galloway in the role of error, of the glitch in programming and the way all these proto-computers were always incredibly noisy, clunky and prone to failure all the time and had to be always rebooted or debugged from early on.
-the way spiders interpret or percieve any improvement to their work (as in the work of the artist Nina Katchadourian was mending damaged spider webs) as something unwanted, an event that actually made them come and extract the ‘repaired part’ and continue with their own work
“Narrating a series of lesser-known historical episodes, Alexander R. Galloway’s keynote lecture addresses the computable and uncomputable. These stories are drawn from the archives of computation and digital media, broadly conceived. The goal is to show how computation emerges or fails to emerge, how the digital thrives but also atrophies, how networks interconnect while also fraying and falling apart. Such alternations–something done something undone, something computed, something uncomputed–constitute the real history of digital machines, from cybernetics and networks to cellular automata and beyond. And while computers have colonized the globe in recent years they also excel at various practices of exclusion. Since the 1970s “protocol” technologies have played a key role in this transformation. Galloway concludes with an interrogation of the concept of protocol in 2020, revisiting his groundbreaking 2004 book Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization.”(VLC Forum 2020 description)
TimeSpace Warps 