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| No no NO. Not this one. |
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| This one! |
I first discovered Avatar: the Last
Airbender through the method that is probably any pre-2010 fan’s worst
nightmare: I saw the movie. It was a transatlantic plane ride in August, I was
tired, bored and a little despondent (rather like the Bright Eyes song except
without the life-affirming aquatic crash sequence) and for some reason, M.
Night Shyamalan’s version of “magical warrior monks save the world” was the
best thing on the in-flight entertainment. So I sat through 3 hours of muddy,
sanctimonious, racist rubbish, saved only by the deadpan use of the word
“bender”, and at the end of it came out thinking “there might be something in
this.”
I went home and, as I still had a month of
holiday left before starting my incredibly important finals year, spent the
time wisely downloading and watching all three seasons of the cartoon, as well
as learning exactly how racist the film was. Seriously, don’t watch the film. What
began as a harmless resolution to watch a couple of episodes a day quickly
turned into a several-day marathon. I returned to college with an A:TLA
obsession and a 30” Appa plush toy, determined to share the Avatar world with
as many people as possible.
I quickly converted two of my
besties/Doctor Who watching buddies, but we didn’t get too far through the
series due to the pressures of the term. We then went on a college ski trip
with some other friends and took the series along, hoping to watch a couple of
episodes in between trips on the pistes. Two of our roommates subsequently
became so obsessed with watching the series that they blew off one of our
evenings out to sit and watch this cartoon instead. We returned several hours
later to discover them sat in exactly the same positions, surrounded by
takeaway, midway through Season 2.
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| Never too old for toys! |
Luckily, it’s a pretty satisfying obsession
to indulge. The action unfolds in a neat three seasons with barely a poor
episode among them (even the widely-hated ”the Great Divide” isn’t that bad… and you can learn the Chinese
words for “clean” and “dirty” while you watch!) When so much TV is so clearly
compromised through scheduling and casting and being dragged out endlessly for
profit, it’s refreshing to sit down and watch something that’s almost entirely
unaffected by those problems when watched in boxset form. The tone is also
amazing, especially for a children’s show: the humour gets quite lowbrow and
silly (with a few “how the hell did they get that in there?” moments), but the
overall plot and its implications are pretty deep and definitely interesting no matter what your age.
But let’s talk feminism for a while. This
series is amazing, but is it good to
watch as a woman? Well, it is the journey of a boy. It’s a
sad fact that even now (and I’ll get onto A:TLA’s sequel in a minute), it would
be impossible to pitch an adventure like this as a story fronted by a girl. But
as boy protagonists go, our hero Aang is pretty refreshing to watch. He is
(spoiler!) the Avatar, the only person in the world who can control the four
elements of air, fire, earth and water. People in the A:TLA world are born into
nations which each correspond to one of these elements, and Aang is from the
Air Nomads, meaning that his original element is air. He’s also a pacifist
vegetarian who doesn’t really want the status thrust upon him and has to learn
how to cope with his destiny whilst remaining true to his own values, which is
a good portrayal of non-standard masculinity in my book.
What is his destiny? Ask anybody who has
watched the series and they can probably narrate it to you word for word:
The world is out of balance! Aang has been
trapped in an iceberg for a hundred years and in that time the Fire Nation have
ruined everything with their fiery
ways. They kill all of the air nomads except Aang, hence why he's the last Airbender.
Luckily, Aang has met two plucky kids from the Southern Water Tribe
(waterbenders live at the north and south poles, although the north is significantly
more developed for Reasons) to help him on his way.
This is where it gets good. Aang’s main two
allies through the entire series are a brother and sister called Sokka and
Katara. Sokka is a brilliant character in his own right (who has a feminist
awakening in episode 4, no less!) so it pains me to gloss over him, but oh my
goodness his sister. Katara is a
waterbender, which means that she can control water in all its forms (ALL of
them… *ominous foreshadowing*). Her desire for training is a plot motivation in
the first season and by the end of it, she’s overcome sexism and worries about
her inadequacy to become one of the most powerful waterbending masters in the world, all in record time. She
then continues to be consistently one of the best fighters right up to – and including
– the finale. On top of this awesome fighting the series also gives a lot of
time to her feminine traits, particularly her maternal attitude towards her
brother and friends. Rather than suggesting this is her natural place, the
series actually explores the positives and negatives of this trait and allows
her and other characters to react and grow because of it.
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| Classy classy |
The second season introduces several more
exciting women (and… no exciting men, ha ha). The “Gaang” is expanded with the
introduction of an earthbending master for Aang, who is a twelve-year-old blind
girl whose character development process was literally “we are going to think
of a hilariously stereotypical disgusting, brash twelve-year-old boy and then
make him blind and female”, and whose crowning glory in the series is inventing
a form of earthbending that had been thought literally impossible since the
dawn of time. Meanwhile, the antagonist stakes get upped from “angry but
traumatised teenage boy” (I’m so sorry that’s all you’re getting here about
Prince Zuko) to “sad, deep teenage boy’s psychotic sister and her two powerful
friends.” Said sister, Azula, is
probably the most powerful firebender on the series, meaning that aside from
Aang himself all three of the consistently strongest fighters on the show are
girls. That’s quite exciting!
So, Aang and his friends kick arse all the way across the four nations,
meeting freedom fighters, mad kings, sexists, deadpan hunter ladies with crazy
giant starmole mounts, brainwashed clones, fortune tellers, painted warrior
women, schoolchildren, a spirit panda and a recurring cabbage salesman. As you
can probably tell from the fact that this is a finite, ended series aimed at
children, in the end the day is saved by both male and female characters, romance
blossoms and balance is restored to the world again. And when it’s finished,
you can read the comics! Then you might finally get your life back.
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| Did I mention the completely accurate Chinese characters and distinct martial arts styles? Those are pretty great too. |
Despite having great quality female
representation, and avoiding the tokenistic approach to quantity that so many
stories seem to fall into, A:TLA isn’t the perfect feminist fable. Whilst there’s brilliant parity and subtle emphasis on female
strength among the younger cohort, the older characters – those in authority
who shape the world – are almost exclusively male. The final antagonist is the Fire Lord, who is attacking the Earth King’s realm while his usurped
older brother acts as mentor to the
angry but traumatised prince. The brother is also a member of an all-male transnational
secret society of old people who play a big role in the finale, and Katara and
Sokka’s father also plays a significant fighting role. Meanwhile, Aang is
guided through his journey by the spirit of the male avatar before him. Although
there are one-shot older women who are important and awesome, and some consistently
relevant mother figures, representation of women in the non-teenage cast is
depressingly closer to the default crowd scene ratio where having 17% women seems
like equal representation. This gets worse in Avatar’s sequel, The Legend of
Korra, where the ensemble focus and updated setting makes it screamingly
obvious that everyone with authority and agency in the world are old men. It’s depressing
that the only strong older woman in that series is also the only older
character to fall prey to the season’s Big Bag (whose M.O I won’t ruin because
you should still go watch it even with its flaws). As Legend of Korra is about
the woman avatar who comes after Aang, it’s sort of sad that they seem to have
created a female lead and then decided that to even things out, everyone who
influences her life will be male. Even more depressingly, Korra’s interactions
with her iteration of the “Gaang” are completely overwhelmed by a very rushed
romance plot, meaning that she barely has any interactions with the other young
woman character as it would apparently ruin the “rivalry”.
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| Also everybody got really upset about Korra's biceps, because women trained daily in several martial arts form the age of 4 should still look feminine goddamnit. |
Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn’t turn
cartoon gender representation on its head, and to be honest you wouldn’t expect
it from a mainstream Nickelodeon cartoon. What it does provide is a brilliant,
well-told story that’s worth watching even if you’re not a habitual cartoon
watcher. The show is beautiful, it has a clear ending, the story is good and
the women are incredible, even if as ever there aren’t quite enough. Go watch
Avatar! You won’t regret it.
