I just wanted to highlight this rather simple comment and suggestion from @@TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net. This youtube series is a great watch.
Avatar: The Last Airbender might have some rather lib’d up parts, but there was so much more interesting philosophy in that show. Specifically surrounding the idea of rehabilitation regarding Zuko. It handles the nature of empire far better as well when dealing with the Fire Nation.
There are so many things about Korra that could have been interesting things to explore. It’s mentioned in the video series, but the thing that has always stood out to me is the cheapening of bending as a form of both labor and cultural and personal expression.
In ATLA, there are many feats of bending that are held in extremely high regard, especially in terms of the skill required to perform them. Metal Bending is the result of Toffs extremely developed earth bending skills. Lightning Bending is a skill reserved for only elite fire benders, and the power to redirect lightning is held by only two characters in the whole series. Aang learns the power of the Avatar State through much struggle, and also learns the ability of energy bending from an ancent mythical creature.
There is this real sense of connection between Bending and Nature expressed on ATLA. The idea that some of the original benders were natural creatures, like Dragons, or Badger Moles or Lion Turtle drives home this idea that in order to bend an element, you must be in tune with that element, understand it in both a physical and spiritual capacity.
But in Korra all of that uniqueness is wiped away. Now, tossing lightning is the work of Power Grid laborers. Something your average fire bender can perform for a wage at the electrical company. Pro Bending is a kind of distillation of the bending art form into extremely narrow base components and movements that restricts the kind of creativity and expressiveness found in ATLA, and all performed in a hyper-competitive environment for the chance at becoming rich and famous. Blood Bending, once something only capable of being performed under a full moon, is something that can be trained to perform under any conditions. It’s become a powerful bending tool that can even take away someone’s bending. The implications of which are beyond the scope of what I’m writing here, but just another example of the cheapening of ATLAs feats. Even Aang is thrown into the mix, being shown to use his energy bending ability to punish low level criminals (by comparison).
In the case of lighting bending and pro bending, these are expressions of a kind of alienation we all understand to be a core attribute of Capitalism. This is an interesting idea that the show never explores. What does it mean to be an Earth Bender, in a world where the cultural norms associated with earth bending and the earth kingdom have been destroyed, or warped, by these new social relations? What kind of techniques and skills could have been lost under seeking this new, more efficient form of bending? And what does it mean to be a “master of all 4 elements” in world where increasingly, bending is being whittled down to only its most useful forms in support of this new industrial world?
One could imagine an avatar series that draws on similar themes to that of Princess Mononoki or Castle In The Sky. One that tries to find the “balance” between industrialization and our existence within nature (aka the connection to the elements). Instead, what we get is a show that undermines the achievements of its predecessor, while having almost nothing of value to say at all.
some of the characters become cops. cops! harry potter ass storyline.
Making Toph the übercop should be counted as a deadly sin
What is it about making your most anti-authoritarian characters into cops? They did the same shit to DW when Arthur ended.
Justice for anarchist little girls everywhere 😔
Girlboss feminism and its’ consequences
By the end of season 4, the cops are like a make-work program for the Korragang
Airbenders as the world police should get the writers executed.
Damn, just like small town America today. I’m sold that Korra really is neoliberal propaganda
Legend of Korra is part of a cycle of bad media that one couldn’t critique without being called a chud because it had gay people in it. I don’t know if that was a psy-op or what, but it was fantastic agitation material for anti-sjw dipshits.
As much as users like to trash “dirtbag left” that whole concept did something much needed for the movement in the west - It allowed us to say The Last Jedi sucked.
the power to redirect lightning is held by only two characters in the whole series.
Three. Iroh, who invented the technique, Zuko who learned from him, and Aang who learned from him.they made this sequel without any idea where they wanted to go with it. All they seemingly did know is that they didn’t want to tread the same ground again, so they changed a lot about the setting and made sure that the new avatar would not have the same problems and personality as the previous protagonist. Hence why there is an industrial revolution of staggering speed, with benders suddenly applying their bending in super mundane ways and why Korra has mastered 3 out of 4 elements at the start super easily.
But then they clearly had no idea where to go with the story and started to spin their wheels retread the old ground anyway. Korra can’t air bend. Let’s make pro bending a thing. And then let’s do the most obvious thing ever: the non-benders have better technology now so they will rise up against the benders! They will finally be equal! By turning bending off for everyone!
Nevermind that we have no indication that tells us benders are overwhelmingly better off then non-benders. Do the guys who shoot lightning as their day job make huge bank? We don’t know, because the show didn’t care. Tunring everyone’s bending off would result in nothing short of a collapse of society because they don’t have the means to run the tech they made without it, in fact!
None of it is thought out and all of it falls flat. And that is just season 1. The later seasons are even worse for their world building.
Part of the problem was that the creators were only given one season so everything had to wrap up in that one season, then at the end the execs went to them and went “cool, what do you got for season 2?”, then the same thing happened again at the end of seasons 2 and 3, at least I know that’s what happened at the ends of S1 and 3. Which explains why the quality dipped from 1 to 2.
Tbf, the comics do go into the bender/non-bender economics (benders make more money than non-benders and have better job opportunities, capitalists aim to create machines to lower the value of bender labour etc)
Also the industrial revolution in ATLA/Korra isnt rly any faster than our worlds (if anything, its unreasonably slower). Sozin had steamships and flying machines at the beginning of the hundred years war, and by korra (well over 150 years later) they have 1920s style buildings and ships. In contrast, our world went from “basically no steamships” in the early 1800s to “basically all steamships, often oilpowered” by the early 1900s
I disagree because while the technologies existed in the first series, they were not based on, well, technology, it’s all powered by benders directly. Airships are a fire nation thing because, well, they can make air hot. Public transportation using water or earth moving etc etc.
But then in Korra stuff is electricity powered and it destroys the magic of the setting instantly.
Setting aside the definition of technology, the fire nations complicated equipment, with dials, wheels, pumps, simple and complex machines are steam powered in atla, including by coal (e.g. the episode where the earthbenders imprisoned on the ship are able to break out after they realise the ship is powered by coal), and by benders as you describe. Not all the tech in atla is powered by benders directly
Airships and other fire nation tech being exported and displacing native modes of transportation is exactly what happened in our world
Destroying the magic is also exactly what happened in our world with the industrial revolution. As marx wrote: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”. So too in Korra (and in atla when we get glimpses into lower class fire nation life)
Glad you added the second to last paragraph, it’s exactly how I see the series failing. It ends up being capitalist propaganda “industrialization, specialization, and capitalist relations have made everything much easier” without the “at the expense of so much that can be won back in new relations”
ATLA is about a feudal society and follows aristocrats, but at least it explores the natural world. And the world changes through the process. Korra just continuously says “we are not changing anything, because all change is bad now”
ATLA is about a feudal society and follows aristocrats, but at least it explores the natural world.
It’s been a long time since I watched AtLA but from what I recall it also didn’t do apologia for aristocracy. Like, part of how we perceive Zuko’s reform as serious and sincere is that we see him living more or less happily without his aristocratic privileges at a few points. Aristocracy is perhaps not depicted as inherently evil, but it’s often corrupting, cloying, and limiting in AtLA. The earth queen is a tyrant, Ozai is literally Hitler (I first watched it as an adult and was shocked at the extent to which he really is just… Hitler. Pretty brave for a kids show!) Bumi is corrupted by power, Zuko is arrogant, Toph is constrained and restricted. Iroh, a man we know to be capable of great kindness and wisdom at the time of the show, is made callous and cruel by his position within empire. It’s kind of the opposite of the way LoK depicted liberalism I think.
The earth queen is a tyrant
That’s Legend of Korra. In ATLA the Earth Kingdom is ruled by the spooky scary communist secret police known as the Dai Li, with the Earth King as a useless powerless figurehead.
Bumi is corrupted by power
Bumi is just kooky, he’s unambiguously presented as a hero and a good leader in the show, no matter how nightmarish a ruler he would realistically be if we take what we see at face value.
Yeah the whole “there is no war in Ba Sing Se” and how its enforced through Dai Li brainwashing, turning people into Manchurian sleeper agents to be activated at a whim is extremely lib. Every so often they can’t help but inject some liberal anticommunist trope in the show. It’s not as explicit here like it is in Korra, but you only ever see these ideas attributed to the left (mostly).
Aristocrats are just complex in the show, but literally every major character is an aristocrat. I think it doesn okay in its representations of them, but only because the contradictions with the new coming world aren’t yet present! I guess maybe the cabbage guy is the representative of the coming capitalist relations, and he just gets his day ruined by the aristocrats all the time…
There’s probably an analysis here to be made
Aristocrats are just complex in the show, but literally every major character is an aristocrat.
Aang, Sokka, and Katara are not aristocrats.
Like the other poster said, Sokka and Katara are aristocrats whose tribes have been decimated and their culture destroyed. Makes them revolutionary characters, but aristocrats can be revolutionary in national-liberation struggles. That’s them. It’s not like a critique of them, but they could’ve just been random kids instead of related to all the most politically powerful people. (wasn’t the dude leader of the other tribe like also dating their grandma? So even inter-pole aristocratic intermarrying lol)
but to be clear, I like ATLA. It’s aristocratic in class relations , but the characters are great anyways. I love the show, but I know how class shaped their world. I think the show writers were fairly aware, too, though, and that makes it good. I wish there had been more random poor kids from working families that got power instead, but almost none of them make it out of a single episode. Still a good show
yeah, grandma was set to marry the leader of the other tribe, fled in the middle of the night, made her way across the planet and somehow ended up marrying into “our” water tribe’s leadership… very aristo.
- aang comes from a line of monks who presumably had serfs to feed them, cos they sure as hell werent growing potatoes while monking out. a’la tibet before mao.
- sokka and katara are literally the children of the chief of their tribe. they’re aristocrats, it’s just that their whole polity has been destroyed by the fire nation so it’s not as apparent. aristocrats forced to be guerillas because bigger, badder aristocrats pushed their shit in.
Yeah, this was my reasoning exactly. Aang was like the favorite monk-kid of the monk-tribe leader. Not literally son, but that’s because he vaguely has no parents or something.
were there any women monks shown at all? i kinda just assumed airbender monks were celibate or some shit, and got kids to teach in some other way. like, taking in orphans, stealing children, getting second or third born kids of landowners, the usual stuff
i guess the whole dynamic of aristocrats vs “the masses” maps neatly onto protagonists vs NPCs in a story, which reinforces this trend of only ever telling stories about landowners.
The previous air bender avatar before aang was a woman. Its very underdeveloped because they wanted to do a free Tibet thing with the smol baby monks getting wiped out by an aggressor force.
were there any women monks shown at all?
The most recent avatar from the air nomads prior to Aang was a woman named Yangchen, so there are some.
There was a woman avatar monk like 4 generations before or something. So they existed I think, but but it is kept very vague for sure
There were four Air Temples. 2 for women, 2 for men.
From what I recall, it also has two seasons whose main villain was a ridiculous libbed up stereotype of some kind of left winger - Amon, the leader of the equalists (ugh) is the stupidest version of the “communists think everyone should be the same!!!” propaganda that I’ve ever seen, and Zaheer is an anarchist and his depiction is maybe a bit less silly but still not good.
Amom was only the first season. Second season was his religious traditionalist brother. The pattern goes:
- Season 1 Communist villain.
- Season 2 Theocratic villain.
- Season 3 Anarchist villain.
- Season 4 Fascist villain.
All are the perceived enemies of liberalism and all are aggregious misrepresentations of the ideologies they’re meant to represent. The communist gets the most distortion to the point that he’s basically a Tsarist’s idea of a communist; he hates people for their noble blood and is in active collaboration with the industrial bourgeoisie. And the fascist gets by far the most sympathetic treatment.
And then there’s fucking Varrick, who I personally find to be the most heinous crime of the show. He’s peak liberal bourgeoisie ideal. Its impressive how well they nailed it. But then he’s a good guy because he such a cute little scoundrel despite having made a nuke for the fascist. He should’ve been the main villain.
Was Varrick the arsehole who got a cute wedding scene at the end where he married a woman who iirc was literally his employee and direct subordinate? Typical bougie behaviour…
Yup. And its also extremely forced narratively. Basically every relationship in Korra is forced an inorganic.
Whose name is literally ‘assistant’ 助理 (zhuli) until they retconned it to 朱莉
I appreciate the original pun.
Harry Potter but everyone is named cho Chang type shit
Hey here’s our big monster that’s a big black and white kinda like panda? Let’s call it heibai (black white)*
Hey here’s a lake that’s scary and mysterious apparently people go missing around it. Wait, what??? You’re telling me its name ‘laogai’ means ‘labour camp’??? Wow, in a universe where we supposedly write in Chinese characters you’d think that would be more obvious.
*What gets to me more is that they missed an opportunity to tie into Chinese mythology with 黑白无常 heibai wuchang, two deities one dressed in white one dressed in black, who guide souls to the underworld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heibai_Wuchang
Yes, heibai in atla is one of angs first encounters with the spirit world, and helps ang leave the spirit world, bit as a panda he is essentially a forest spirit not a mediator of souls passage to the afterlife, which could have tied in deeper to the spirituality pf the series
(I’ve already made the mistake before in getting the wrong etymology of daili, so won’t rehash that)
he’s basically a Tsarist’s idea of a communist
I can’t believe Amon made everyone share one giant blanket 😔
Imagine writing Harrison Bergeron unironically
Zaheer is an anarchist and his depiction is maybe a bit less silly
Zaheer is a right wing anarchist. He literally says everyone should look out for only their own family. Which is a shame because he had badass aesthetics.
Three. Three seasons. Kuvira is also a commie stereotype, the personification of horseshoe theory and “literally Stalin”.
She read as straight up fash to me, not redscare BS.
If you’re already left-leaning you’ll see her as purely fascistic. But more rightwing people or even libs will see Stalin and Mao red scare all over her.
Being a warlord in an armored train does not make you a communist. I don’t care how much you think you’re communist and want to be a warlord in an armored train.
YOU TAKE THAT BACK OR I WILL USE MY ARMORED TRAIN’S PRINTING PRESS TO SEND IN A SILLY LETTER ABOUT YOU
How much Kuvira is actually redscare bullshit? Because back in the day everyone in my class saw Kuvira as Hitler and not Stalin.
She’s actually north Korea because they literally do a “escape from camp 14” (NK atrocity propaganda) reference in the show.
Also we never actually see these reeducation camps in the show (very touché) and our comic relief characters that followed kuvira were just too stupid to figure it out despite being in her inner circle.
She runs “reeducation camps”. She industrializes the feudal Earth Kingdom. She’s clearly Hitlerite, but also “Stalinite”. She’s LITERALLY horseshoe theory personified.
This one I can’t remember how they translated to portuguese but I can’t remember the word “reeducation”.
She industrializes the feudal Earth Kingdom.
Hmmm right.
Industrialize is funny because she makes a giant eva mech with a removable nuke blaster on its arm powered by a super compound.
I took her as a (libbed up) analogy of the Chinese revolution. She’s rallying a nationalist movement against fire nation colonialism, and even tries to free Hong Kong. Is she Sun Yat-Sen? Chiang Kai Shek? Mao Zedong? Who knows.
But also the creators are liberals, so in order to make her clearly the bad guy they have to make it so she’s also running concentration camps. Where did she learn to be such a vile racist? Who knows! - the culture she was raised in are the good guys in this conflict.
honestly didn’t even pick up on that with Amon at the time. not sure the authorial intent comes across on that one.
He’s like a communist from a royalists fever dream. Hates you because of your noble blood. Secretly in league with the bourgeoisie. Also secretly a disgraced noble because normal people can’t be real threats.
Lib “envy” discourse in the only format where it almost works – a fucking children’s cartoon
It’s how I read it, but it’s been a while, so I could be misremembering. My dad is convinced that communism involves, among other things, everyone being paid the exact same and I definitely get that vibe off Amon.
Amon is supposed to be a Left Wing Authoritarian. It’s pretty much impossible to get anything published if you wrote a character who wants to establish a “state” and genuinely serves the cause of common prosperity.
They have to be villains like Amon.
Eeyup, the “everyone has to be exactly the same>:(” concept of communism that certain liberals are completely convinced by.
yeah i’m sure that’s what he’s meant to be, it’s just so cartoonish and they didn’t do a good job that it loses any connection i might’ve made as a radlib
I’m surprised you didn’t see Amon as a stereotype of communism. I thought it was extremely obvious that’s what they were going for at the time and I was super libbed up. The “everyone has to be the same” thing tipped me off It’s probably more obvious when watching future seasons that they’re going for a criticism of various political thoughts though.
I did think he was really cool though and was mad at his reveal that he didn’t actually believe in his cause, which should have been the first sign I was going to be a commie eventually lol.
At least Zaheer believed in his cause. Unfortunately it was the stupidest, most propaganda and stereotype filled depiction of an anarchist ever.
The White Lotus had made the Avatar into an reactionary agent. We got the villains POV. Simple as. Lol
The avatar is an inherently reactionary force because all their balance shit is about maintaining the status quo. Literally the Avatar of returning to tradition
wait, do you mean in ATLA or LoK??? I agree about LoK, but pretty sure ATLA has the avatar as a revolutionary element against genocidal imperialism… but I guess he was trying to restore a feudal society with new, less fight-y rulers.
Yeah, sadly it feels that to capture the 1920s noire pulp feel initially (and then also steampunk added in) they tossed aside the spiritual side of bending with it being subsumed into the labor force of Republic City and it’s new capitalist interests but none of the commentary of what being in that labor force was actually like (tldr it was shit being a factory worker in 1900s America). With better writers this could have been a critique of industrialization displacing workers and destroying nature (or even corrupting the spirits themselves) as well as the creation of artificial hierarchies with benders being used for specific labor whilst former skilled artisanal labor is marginalized under mass production (might be a bit Luddite in theme though). The first Avatar had some great moments regarding war, not the conflict but instead the damages it inflicts on people both physically and mentally. Katara not having much of her cultural knowledge due to being the only waterbender of her tribe with an entire generation wiped out including their history and traditions; and then there’s Aaang being the last survivor of a complete genocide. I’m honestly interested in the third show but don’t have much in the way of hope regarding anything beyond common liby storylines.
they tossed aside the spiritual side of bending with it being subsumed into the labor force of Republic City and it’s new capitalist interests.
Such an incredible premise and they did nothing with it. Could have made some sort of “what if the luddites could do magic?” with it.
Not to mention them not really doing anything with the emergence of the modern concept of nations. A whole 30 years war had to be fought over that, in LoK it’s more or less treated as just a naturally occurring next step of development.
What’s wild to me is the Earth Kingdom still had a dysfunctional monarchy and they boom right into fascist takeover which is glossed over and then rehabilitated later on. Like every season was so disjointed doing a weird villain of the week/arc story line.
might be a bit Luddite in theme though
Hey, at least it would be a theme one would have to think about. Which is more I cam say for TLoK’s half baked, lib-brained, “themes”
hopeully the next avatar series will be less lib, but then again its looking to be a post-apocalyptic setting so it will probably will be be libby.
also the kay&skittles doesnt mention the comics from what i remember and those are very lib too, specially the fascist kuvira redeption arc
all change is bad and all ideologies are bad (except the non-ideology of Fordian progress), but maybe Kulvira had some good ideas…
Pretty telling that the libbed up creators chose to redeem fascist Kuvira rather than either of the left wing villains from the show… “She couldn’t help it, she had been scratched”
If we’re lucky the next avatar will be about how capitalism devours the world, destroys balance and annihilates the spiritual, and treats any attempts to restore balance as “extremism”
Unfortunately, i dont trust the writers or our luck
Back when it was just the first season (it was just going to be a mini-series), teenager me was hyped up because I saw Amon and the equalists as a stand-in for “SJWs” and I thought “finally, someone is recognizing that they’re the bad guys now!”
That should tell you all you need to know about Korra.
Honestly, what mainstream entertainment isn’t neolib propaganda these days…
the openly fascist ones maybe?
Korra’s liberalism is more obvious, but imo this is bc it actually carries through the material consequences of ATLA’s ending into peacetime i.e. the fire nation does imperialism, pollution, etc, but its treated as hecking wholesome bc the good guys are in charge. But for all that, I appreciate the realism of Korra. It is a true believer in liberalism making a show about liberalism, and it actually depicts liberalism/capitalisms development in a world with fantastical elements really, really accurately.
Like we must remember that AtLA ends with Zuko’s fire nation promising to share their innovations “but we’ll be nice this time” (you know who else said he’d be nice about it? Sozin!!). It ends with every single fire nation bureaucrat, aristocrat, general, businessmen etc still in power. Theres no mention of a purge or restructuring of society. The monarchy continues, the businesses continue to export capital and exploit cheap labour and pollute the world. We dont see this until the comics and korra, but the seeds are already present in atla.
Zuko and Iroh’s redemption arcs are also very personal, based on family dynamics with little/no focus on how they make ammends to the people they wrong. Earth Nation victims of the fire nation are used merely to develop the internal feelings of the colonisers. Mass movements against imperialism are basically non-existent in the show, its all groups of elites fighting either other elites or faceless goons. The entire ideology of the show is left-liberalism.
All that is to say, imo theres much more ideological and artistic continuity between korra and atla than most people admit. Part of this imo is we agree more with liberals on the subjects of atla (liberals and communists both generally agree that invading countries is bad), but when it comes to the subjects of Korra (what should happen after the invader is defeated, how should the economy and politics develop) we have much harsher disagreement with liberals.
Overall I generally agree with most of your cricisisms of the society korra depicts; but imo the fact that the show depicts the alienation, the homogenisation, the commodification, etc, isnt the issue so much as the fact that all of it is framed uncritically as just the “natural progression of society”.
Metal bending was brand new, never done before Toph and it’s fine that she was able to teach it to others. The fundamentals are all earth bending.
Lighting bending was hoarded knowledge exclusive to the Fire Lord’s dynasty. It was shared to the masses to enable electrification.
But you’re right about the themes being liberal propaganda.
Kay and Skittles has a good analysis of korra iircGuess who didn’t read the oop
I really liked that video series. I remember watching it forever ago and it really put into words what I didn’t like about Korra. I could feel something was off, but I couldn’t describe it.
I watch it today and the only thing that I can say is ignorance is a blessing holy fuck. I also didn’t like Korra much and couldn’t figure it out why but I could at least focus on the good parts.
After the fourth video, the one about Kuvira, holy shit this show is the most libshit ever written, why the fascist and ultra capitalist villains are the one they tried so much to redeem? Why spend so much time making Kuvira sympathetic, why make the characters verbalize how she has a good heart? I hate this shit.
Gotta be the cia set up the equalists plot
I wasn’t fully radicalised when I watched it but I was a Chapo listener and the equalists plot drove me insane. In hindsight I dunno how I finished it. Cool action sequences and loving avatar I guess.
Amon’s voice actor killed it, the same guy who played Spike from Cowboy Bebop, so that helped a lot lol. His terrifying, kick ass performance helped. Also, just being desperate for more ATLA at the time.
