Legend of Korra Season One - Politics of Republic City

 The very premise of Avatar: the Last Airbender suggested an eternal cycle, and a structure by which you could have new adventures. In the original show, Aang has visions of past avatars - such as Kyoshi and Roku - who serve as guides to him, even as they are, in a way, also his past selves.

But as is often the case with fantasy, the world of Avatar seems mostly stagnant in The Last Airbender - our flashbacks of Sozin during Roku's time show a Fire Nation that isn't really that different than the "modern" one we see 100 years on. There's a bit of fun in the third season when Aang is using some very outdated slang (remember that he's actually 100 years older than he looks) while they're undercover in the Fire Nation. It's true that the Fire Nation does seem to have some kind of industrialization going on, but to what extent that's a new development versus a feature of their culture is sort of left to your imagination.

In Legend of Korra, the world has profoundly changed, and the technological level of Republic City is explicitly meant to evoke early-20th-century New York - with cars, airplanes (though to be fair that's a bit of a reveal toward the end of the season) and radio.

With that 20th Century feel, though also comes a change in politics.

Obviously, claiming that the 20th Century was more politically revolutionary than the previous ones is a little disingenuous - while the 20th saw the competing forces of fascism, communism, and capitalist liberalism, the 19th of course also saw the rise of nationalism and socialism, and the 18th saw, well, you know, the American Revolution. Political change is a constant.

But the big bad of Korra's first season definitely uses the 20th century tools of politics - propaganda, rallies, symbolism, and mass media.

Amon and his Equalists have an agenda that, while extreme, seems based on some genuine grievance. One element of the world of Avatar is that some people are just born lucky, getting the power to magically manipulate one of the four elements, giving them both the obvious supernatural power, but also a leg up economically - if you can shoot fire from your fists, you'll probably be pretty welcome in a factory that might require that fire to drive its machinery.

And we see in the first episode that bending gangs exist - using their elemental bending abilities to intimidate non-benders into paying them protection money.

It's actually one of the big problems in any setting in which magical powers are granted to some but not all, earned not by their own work or study, but by sheer luck, which is that you inevitably create two classes of people.

Now, we do get some clear examples of how this impediment is not universal - the richest man in the city is Hiroshi Sato, whose Future Industries provide the city with cars and other fancy technology, and he (and his daughter Asami, who's one of the core cast members of the series) have no elemental powers at all.

Still, between a police force (yes, founded by the fan-favorite Toph Beifong from the original series) that uses magical metal-bending to overpower civilians and gangs that use their powers to intimidate, you can hardly blame people from being attracted to a guy who wants to take power away from these super-powered people.

At the same time, Amon just screams villain, always wearing a mask, so I was actually sort of surprised that they didn't subvert things.

Ultimately, it's revealed that Amon is the worst kind of villain - he's a hypocrite. Being a waterbender himself, Amon is just using these injustices as a path to power.

This series of course came out before our current political moment. While the U.S. prior to 2016 certainly had its problems, nowadays everything feels like a political minefield of problematic messages.

You could read Amon in different ways: the "law and order" reading, which I find a lot more problematic, is the notion that movements toward equality are all just mislead masses being manipulated by some disingenuous leader or conspiracy. One of the most common tactics to oppose civil rights movements in America has been to invent some evil ulterior motive, given that opposing the stated motive (which tends to be just "please let us enjoy the rights that this country promises") is an immoral position to stand upon.

At the same time, you could also read Amon as someone who has chosen a scapegoat minority (while not uncommon, Benders are, I think supposed to be less common than non-benders) and cultivate bigotry toward said group in order to score a political following.

Of course, this latter reading, while it makes the Equalists more vile villains (and thus makes it easier for us to root for heroes fighting them) also breaks down a little when you see how benders are, in fact, quite privileged in Republic City society.

The truth is that we don't really know what kind of class divisions would occur in a world where people had supernatural powers, because, well, what makes them supernatural is that they don't exist in nature, i.e., this reality.

The politics of Legend of Korra are thus a bit muddled. While some might cry "it's just a kid's show," in some ways I think that makes getting the politics right all the more important. Now, what politics are "right" is naturally a matter of political opinion, but I'll just say that I think generally promoting tolerance of people who are different from you ought to be one of those easily-agreed-upon values. For what it's worth, especially given the anti-imperialism message of the first series, I assume that the writing crew for Korra (which has many of the same people) has their heart in the right place.

One of the consequences of making your setting more reminiscent of the modern world is that modern ideas about authority, class, and politics start to become more relevant. I think that's extremely fertile, but also behooves the writers to be careful about the message they're delivering.

All of this is also, of course, going on as the backdrop of a story about a teenager who is trying to make her way in this new environment. Korra herself gets swept into politics, becoming an agent of the state for a time before breaking off to do her own thing.

I suspect the choice to have Korra be older than Aang was during his series is a conscious one - coming five years after the first show, they probably expected to have many kids who grew up on the original tuning in as an older audience. As such, it makes sense for Korra to be both older to be more relatable to that audience, but also to deal with more complex issues (not to say that ATLA was without its clever nuances.)

The Legend of Korra

 Newly added to Netflix, the sequel series/spin-off of Avatar: the Last Airbender tells the story of Aang's successor as Avatar, the headstrong Water Tribe girl, Korra.

I've now watched the first episode, and immediately I'm eager to see more. This is the familiar world of elemental benders, but several decades on, in a world profoundly changed by the events of the original series.

Naturally, that means that there are ATLA spoilers abound here, and they won't be hidden behind a cut.

The Legend of Korra's intro is narrated by Tenzin, the son of Aang and Katara, who has grown up to be the world's Airbending master. What we find is that the end of the 100-year war saw the creation of the United Republic of Nations, with the Fire Nation and its colonies in the Earth Kingdom unifying into a diverse and multicultural whole where members of all the four original peoples can live as equals.

At the center of this republic is the capital, Republic City, founded by Aang and Zuko to be the shining example to the rest of the world of peace and cooperation.

After Aang's death, the White Lotus gathers to find the new Avatar among the Water Tribes, and when the sages of the White Lotus arrive at a particular hut at the south pole, it's immediately obvious that Korra, who looks to be about two when they find her, must be the Avatar, as she immediately displays a prodigious capability with Water, Fire, and Earthbending.

Growing into her teen years, Korra demonstrates mastery of the physical aspects of Firebending while her instructors - including an elderly Katara - watch. Yearning to move forward with her training, she eagerly anticipates Tenzin's arrival from Republic City, but even as he arrives (with kids and pregnant wife in tow,) he explains that complicated matters in Republic City call him away, and he informs Korra that her training will have to wait.

Impatient and headstrong, Korra stows away on a ship to the city, and arrives there along with her Polar Bear Dog, Naga (wouldn't be an Avatar sequel without delightful hybrid animal companions.)

Republic City is a sight to behold - essentially an East-Asian-flavored New York City from the 1920s, complete with steampunk amenities like airships, it's clear that in the 60-or-so years since the original series, Fire Nation technology has been broadly adopted, such that there are now cars and skyscrapers.

Korra explores the city, but discovers that not everything is as perfect as it seems from afar - there is poverty, organized crime, and political unrest, with some non-benders resenting the power that benders have over them (which, you know, not an unreasonable concern.) Playing the hero, Korra beats up some members of the "Triple Threat Triads," (a gang employing what appears to be squads of Earthbenders, Waterbenders, and Firebenders) only to find that the destruction caused by her superheroics are also cause to land her in jail as well.

Korra winds up arrested and questioned by Lin Beifong - Toph's daughter - before Tenzin comes to bail her out. While initially Tenzin intends to send her back to the South Pole, Korra convinces him to let her stay in the city, continue her training, and help him bring balance to the city and work toward achieving his father's dreams for what could be.

Immediately, I've found that the show seems to strike a great balance between familiarity and novelty - I could imagine some complaining at how much things are linked to the characters of the original show, but given that this is meant to be a sort of inter-generational story, I think I'm happy to acknowledge the lasting impact of the original show's ensemble.

The idea of a fantasy world developing modern technology is 100% up my alley, and I'm really excited to see this magical world existing alongside a more modern world (with not only new technology, but also potentially new philosophical and political ideas.)

While we're clearly still waiting to meet more of an ensemble, Korra is immediately likable, and also comes with some clear character flaws that have already driven conflict and obstacles. She seems to be older than Aang was in his series, which I imagine might come with more mature (teenage, rather than pre-teen) style stories.

Anyway, it's not like it's been a huge amount of time since I saw the original show (though 2020 seems to be a real decade of a year) but it's fun to return to this world, tone, and storytelling style.

Dark and What Paradise Might Be

I've always found it interesting that there's a huge distinction in the assumptions of Eastern versus Western religions regarding our fate after death. And before I get into this: huge caveat to anything I say is that I'm just some white dude who I guarantee you does not understand all the nuances of religions like Buddhism or Hinduism (and this argument is really more on the Buddhist side of things, again, something can't claim any expertise in.) But if you look at Western religious traditions, even dating back to Ancient Egypt (which is not strictly-speaking Western, but was a culture that had enough influence on Western thought that it's worth mentioning,) there is an underlying existential angst. Death is the great evil to be feared. And death, it's assumed, takes the form of some kind of endless darkness - an extinction or annihilation of the consciousness, of memories, of everything that made us what we are.

In Ancient Egyptian religion, the journey to the underworld saw your soul being evaluated, and only those who were unburdened by sin and evil were allowed to persist. The others are fed to a chthonic crocodile, with no life to go on beyond this one. In Christianity, salvation is the defeat of death - Jesus is supposed to grand us eternal life, and while the interpretation of the alternative has often been another sort of eternity, but one of suffering and pain in hell, you could also interpret Jesus' gift to humanity being simply the ability to persist, never perishing entirely, allowed to live on forever.

And so it's funny that, for all the parallels between Christianity and Buddhism, it seems like there's an opposite goal. In Eastern religion, or perhaps more specifically Indian ones (again, I'm ignorant here, and just writing this as a ramp up to talk about a German TV show) the baseline assumption that is made is that we all are reincarnated when we die - that our consciousness and soul is placed in another body, ignorant of our past lives, but still judged and punished accordingly. Buddhism identifies the cycle of reincarnation as a wheel of endless suffering - that all of existence is suffering. Therefore, the goal, it would seem, is to no longer exist, which Buddhism (if, again, my interpretation is correct) seeks to achieve through Enlightenment.

(Now, I'm pretty sure that there are very different interpretations of Nirvana - perhaps not so much an existential extinction as much as a transcendence of individualist identity and ego, which I have to say sounds infinitely better to me.)

One of the things about time travel narratives is that it can mimic both the idea of endless cycles and also existential annihilation. Indeed, while one might fear that death brings with it an existential erasure, at the very least we believe that our past existence is not undone (though from a solipsitic perspective, if you cannot exist to remember your past, does it even exist?)

Let's talk Dark.