Well, I really need to get on the carapace reviews, but I wanted this done with more.
So, last time, I went over how Wan had failed to be the inherently good fairy tale hero who won for his kindness and consideration, but neither had he made mistakes and learned from them. There are all these moments that would work in either type of story, but nothing comes of them. Let’s see if he actually shows character development this episode.
Anyway, we flash quick to still broken Korra.
“We can only hope that she survives her ordeal,” says the fire sage. So, Aang risked death because he had to deal with external problems. Korra risks death just dealing with her past lives.
I really cannot hammer in how shit this entire thing is. Why is Korra amnesiac? NO FUCKING REASON, THAT’S WHY. They just felt it was necessary to make her extra vulnerable and strip any agency she might have had away. There was absolutely no fucking reason she couldn’t wake up on the island and have the monks be all “Thank god you’re here we have to tell you something important with past life meditation.” There is no fucking reason Korra couldn’t have been AWAKE and ACTUALLY FUCKING HERSELF for the story of how important Wan is. And instead of it being about how this is important knowledge for her to actually have, it’s that plot device says she’ll die unless she does it. In fact she might just die anyway. Because.
But back to what we’re really here for, more fucking Wan.
Wan who is not particularly sorry about freeing chaos death ribbon, since he responds to to her saying this shows why humans shouldn’t stick their noses into spirit business with BUT WE ALL LIVE IN THE WORLD! Yes you fucking asshole that’s why she was saying your stupid interference is going to get you killed too!
Girl spirit of light and peace concludes her leisurely lecture about how very much the world is totally going to end unless she gets right on beating up that other spirit by insisting she’s in a hurry and finally heads off. It’s obvious that Wan will have to save the day regardless because she got smaller as soon as he separated them and so she’s weakened already.
Wan keeps wandering. Although he claims to be upset about how he accidentally the world, there’s no sign he decided to, on his own, try to help out. He says he’ll help her, she says no, he moves on.
He then sees airbenders. Who run from him in obvious fear, so he pursues.
This is what I mean about this all just being wrong. It’s derivative without including the important part. Hero sees people who instantly run is done over and over, and you know what the hero does? They take a couple steps forward shouting they’re not going to hurt anyone, then stop and feel discouraged and sad. Wan spurs his kittydeer faster because they will be his new friends if he has to kill them both to do it. And indeed he nearly dies.
By the way, airbenders can now fly on clouds, so last episode’s attempt to cover the retcon with “okay he could fling fire but he learned to do it better from the dragons” is now gone, past airbenders are a thousand times superior to current airbenders.
(Also, airbender party is five people, all guys.)
Anyway their lionturtle city is floating! So he flings himself over there because fuck them thinking they could escape him.
Airbender lion turtle is a nice place full of friendly spirits and because who cares about consistency or characterization, now everyone’s fine with him wandering around even though they were terrified before, because ???????????????????
Continuing to demonstrate how there is absolutely not a fifty-fifty change of a person being either gender on this show, upon entering the village, Wan walks past women (who are doing chores and appear to be covered head to toe) to find some guys to talk to.
Meanwhile, the issue of what the lion turtle’s connection to human cities is just gets more confusing. The fact humans can safely live there free of spirits suggested the lion turtles might just not like other spirits living around them, and humans found it a safe place for that reason. Now apparently spirits can wander freely there. So why aren’t the spirits wandering freely in the city Wan came from? Considering how much they struggled to use fire to defend themselves from spirits outside the lion turtle’s domain, it doesn’t seem that it’s just the lion turtle empowers humans who, in Wan’s city, happened to use that power to keep out the other spirits. So we’re left with the idea that the lion turtles are doing this explicitly to preserve humanity, yet they don’t seem to much care about humanity wandering off on them since they’re fine handing out fire to people who want to leave, and they don’t seem to care how functional their civilization is.
Moreover, if the airbenders live in peace and harmony with the spirits already, why can’t they live further out? Wan seems to be doing fine on his own and they’re presumably even more attuned. Especially when they’re vegetarian and don’t seem to even be doing farming, so they’d need to be much more widespread to feed themselves. It can’t be that the lion turtles only give out temporary gifts, because we saw the lion turtle was fine handing out permanent fire to anyone who asked to leave. In fact, there’s as yet no mention of why the lion turtles take the gifts back at all, it seems to just be a thing they do – if in city, no power, if outside of city, power.
Anyway, then the spirits turn evil because the evil spirit is there, and then…Wan appears to attempt to murder them all. It’d help if we had any idea if spirits can be killed. It sure seemed possible back last episode and Wan’s self appointed spirit defender role requires it, but Wan doesn’t seem concerned at all that he’s attempting to charbroil spirits who only turned aggressive because he fucked up in the first place.
Rava shows up in time to tell everyone what he did, at which point the first fucking words from his mouth are “It wasn’t my fault.”
Incidentally, we then pull back to see a crowd, which contains nine men, two children, and two women who are there holding those children as is their womanly duty.
All children who’ve actually appeared on screen that are bigger than infants appear dressed in the same clothes as the men, so either they’re all boys or the male clothes are default and the red covering the women are wearing is to mark them as other and probably hide their sinful flesh so it doesn’t tempt the men.
(Seriously why the fuck are they completely covered what is with that. In Aang’s memories the air nomads wore the same clothes.)
Light spirit explains that light sucks because as soon as darkness is free to do anything, it grows in power and she’s weakened. Purifying the tainted spirits and adding them back to her portfolio doesn’t seem to be an option. Nope, she just sucks. If she didn’t, there would be a split second where it wouldn’t be completely inevitable Wan would have to beat up the spirit instead.
Note we still don’t have any Bechdel test passing. Even if they’d allow Rava to have a conversation with one of the women instead of only the male members of this group speaking with her, it’d still have failed because the only topics are 1) how the male spirit is going to kill everyone and 2) how it’s Wan’s fault. There is literally one single female character in this who has a name and any relevance to the plot, and I’m pretty sure she’s just here to realize she was wrong about Wan and anoint him as most specialest.
Also note that even if, because there have been zero other women with speaking parts. It’s not that Wan is the only one speaking. The airbender guys get to speak just fine.
At this point I’d have rather Rava was just another guy because at least then it wouldn’t be the one female character is pathetic and needs to be saved by the guy.
Speaking of. Wan again insists he’ll find a way to fix this, so he goes to the lion turtle and asks for another power, because him having fire was such a great idea and obviously “fixing” it means he should get bonus powers. Lion turtle says no one’s done this, which makes sense when it’s hard to think how this could’ve happened before when everyone lives on isolated lion turtles and also they have this whole thing about temporary power only, but forget that, no, it’s because IT’S IMPOSSIBLE because we have to explain that only Wan is special enough for the extra powers, so, with no evidence whatsoever, Wan says he’s not like other people, because OH WAIT THERE’S NO REASON HE JUST IS OKAY and can totally do it. So the lion turtle agrees! But says Rava will have to hold it for him while he learns it, because apparently the fact no eone’s done it before doesn’t mean the lion turtle can’t know exactly how it’s done.
When she rightly asks why the fuck she should do this, she’s wrong because she’s all “Why would I do that for a human?” and not “Why the fuck are you distracting me from my important goal with this shit?”
But Wan says that his manpain about fucking up means she has help him help her. Sorry Rava! We have to cater to his feelings, because it’s more important he get to atone for maybe destroying the world than just focus on actually stopping that.
Seriously, NOT ONCE has he made a decent argument for why he should help. He doesn’t ask for an airbender to join the quest, learn to master it like he has fire so the two of them might stop this terrible danger. He doesn’t ask the lion turtle for advice on the best way to stop evil death spirit and get told only a single human who can throw four elements will manage it. He doesn’t pursue any options that are about actually based on the problem at hand. It’s all about him. It’s not like there couldn’t have been reasons why Wan had to do it alone, but no, we don’t even need reasons, everything revolves around him no matter what.
And doing this involves combining energy, which should probably mean it’s draining her even faster. But he’s obviously better than she so it’s no concern.
She now explains that the two spirits are eternal blah blah even if one’s killed they just regrow, except he said he’d destroy her forever. But it’s not like anything else has made sense. …oh wait that’s probably going to feature where it’ll turn out the dark spirit had figured out a way and those are our stakes this time.
Then we learn that spirits are actually invaders and that’s where all the conflict comes from. That’s right! The nature spirits who care about nature are completely unnatural, and also they’re the cause of the conflict. Also, why do they care about nature? Because spirits and nature are a thing, I guess. Also, they arrived through the portals, so I guess Korra’s dad was right about keeping the two things separate! Even if opening the portals wasn’t inherently evil because the evil spirit can get powered by them, it’d just have lead to a spirit genocide. Because Korra can never ever be right and the neglectful to abusive adults in charge are the only ones who she should’ve listened to. (Also, why no spirit genocide now that one portal’s open and the spirits can escape again?)
Also: how does this interact with the idea spirits are capable of manifesting in both worlds? WHO KNOWS. How about that whole thing about the moon and water spirits being so old they’d taken physical form? WHO KNOWS.
Then we get this exchange:
“Most people think they live in the only human cities around.”
“Most humans think only of themselves, no matter how many others are around,” Rava replies.
Where the fuck did that come from? Humans think they live in the only surviving human city because the spirits wiped out almost all humanity! It’s entirely possible there are only four total lion turtle cities, since that’s all he needs for the four elements. Even if there’s redundancy, the fact he could travel for years with no sign of any means they can only be supporting a pitiful number of people overall. Nearly going extinct and being unable to contact anyone else because travel is death does not mean you’re self-centered!
Moreover, fuck you humans are among the most social creatures.
Wan goes on more about how great the thing where she gives him power is and how he can feel it changing him, so yeah, totally going to end with him eating her and taking on her job.
Ah, and now they’ve found the firebenders who are doing slash and burn. So firebenders have always been evil. They come from the evil city, using evil fire to evilly eat meat, and now they’re evilly attempting to evil build an evil settlement so they can evil not starve and die.
They’re all guys by the way.
This is explicitly confirmed by the guy speaking of the group as being men.
Note also that presumably they’re flattening everything because they need to drive off the murder spirits who invaded their world. Ah! And indeed we have that confirmed that it’s because the spirits killed lots of them.
“What happened to you? When did you become so violent?” “You showed me that we could change the world if we just stopped being so afraid!” So status quo = god, still. Changing the world is evil.
Wan does, finally finally finally, act like the avatar by trying to block the two groups from murdering each other. But of course he does this by avatarstating into superform and everyone stops to stare because threatening people by looking scary = peaceful solution. We also get all ambiguity stripped away because instead of dealing with the fact the spirits are naturally pretty murderous and indeed have murders lots of these people, they turn evil now because of evil spirit, but don’t worry, murderdeath avatar form can turn them good again because.
He doesn’t even succeed at it, which makes sense when his entire plan was just yell at everyone.
Also, avatar state is apparently powered by good light spirit. So she definitely gets subsumed into him, because there is no better capstone to this than hearing people explain to me how this is super feminist because the power comes from a female spirit and all it takes is her getting devoured and used as a battery for it to happen.
Now is the obligatory scene where she explains she was wrong because he’s really awesome and noble. From his teapot where she’s resting because she’s almost dead.
Incidentally, no, Wan has still had no character development unless we count gaining powers as development. In a halfway decent plot his attempt to stop the fight between the firebenders and spirits would’ve been that, but that’s completely consistent with the rest of his behavior since he knows the people involved and Wan’s only moral code throughout this has been to protect his friends and cute animals. He sure didn’t try to nonlethally deal with the spirits when they were attacking the airbenders, and those ones hadn’t murdered anyone beforehand.
So anyway, he enters into the spirit world to sling around some bending even though bending doesn’t work in the spirit world because if we kept that, we couldn’t have the climatic finale on how to defeat the spirit powered by conflict be a giant fight.
And yup now he’s jammed her in him forever by touching the spirit portal for no reason, therefore he can make a forever cage with his super bending and shove it in a giant tree that’s just there and he’s blocking off the spirit world with spiritworldbending so apparently that was good. Boy, it’s sure a shame no one bothered to know jack about spirits so they’d know Obviously Evil Guy was lying about the portal’s closure being a recent problem, and he’s sending all the spirits back which they just do because but at the same time saying he’ll make humans respect the now-gone spirits I’m sure that’ll work great.
Lion turtles say no more element gifts, cut to people using element gifts to fight (I don’t know how they even manged to find each other when outside of every current human settlement is untapped resources as far as you can walk)(or how they knew how to conduct war for that matter, we’re talking about people who didn’t even know other people existed), so Wan spent the rest of his time trying to stop them: “This is my mission, to guide the world toward peace.”
Which is apparently best accomplished with a lot of murder. The dead are pretty peaceful, I admit.
He finally dies having totally failed to do this but avatar spirit says not to worry they’ll keep being reincarnated together. And by “together” it apparently just means her energy because we’ve sure not seen any sign of her actual mind coming along.
So Korra, our supposed protagonist, wakes up and amnesia is cured, hammering in that there was no point to that but to take away her agency and make her vulnerable. Then there’s some air bison they’ve kept since the firebending genocide war, which, uh, they’re very cute I guess. Also, guess Korra will not be managing the apparently very easy cloud flying trick non-masters could use back then, which is about all I can think of for justifying requiring her to sit through the entire story and not just a flash about opening portals=bad.
…Well.
As an alternate fantasy story, that was fine. Not good, it doesn’t hold up upon any examination, and I sure didn’t like the fact there was one female character and her goal was to shrivel up so a guy could take over her job and eat her. But unlike the main show it’s fast enough to give you other stuff to look at besides its flaws and most of the plot problems come from its ties to the current show, be it airbenders who fly or the part where to make this happen they decided to have Korra lose a fight, lose her memory, lose consciousness, and then nearly die. I’m actually trying now to think of it there was any way they could’ve removed more agency from her here, and I can’t come up with anything.
But I will admit that it was better than the main show, in that there were things, and they happened, instead of it being a decompressed mess of intrigue politics where characters have flashing arrows above their head indicating if they’re good or evil. The only thing the main show has going for it is women existing, and thinking about it, it feels like that’s actually an artifact of the romance. The only women I can think of who isn’t connected to that is the fire sage.
Plus there none of the women have actually being used as a powerup. Is there a term for this? It seems like it’s something similar in motivation to but distinct from fridging.
Random aside, but you know that fire sage woman? Is there any chance that she might be an elderly Azula?
And, yeah, I agree about these episodes being miles better than the current sub-plot. Gosh, even Bolin was pissing me off for the whole random-as-hell hopeless suitor/sexual offendor mini-plot that came the hell out of nowhere.
YES! I am not alone in thinking that =’D dat hair. And the fact that I loved that crazy bitch >>
that aside, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before because my short term memory is terrible and I repeat things constantly, but I’ve created a drinking game where I watch an episode, write down all the things ‘Farla will disapprove’ and then when you’re review comes out I start taking shots. It is fantastic.
I need to do this. I’ve been intending to MST the Beutiful Creatures movie with boyf, and this would make it amazing.
There’s a movie? Dear God.
“Dear God” is the correct response to that revelation! I was actually somewhat skeptical of Farla’s assertion that Claiming is a rape metaphor until I saw how they filmed Riley’s. Now I am not.
Never doubt that something is a rape metaphor in American lit!
I wish I had read this earlier. Just finished the season finale…would have been nice to have been drunk. But, then again, following the rules would probably send me to the hospital.
Unless the show is going to pick up lots from here, I hope you aren’t using hard liquor!
Whelp, it’s time for some more ideological debates on our feelings on this episode, haha. ^^
[So, Aang risked death because he had to deal with external problems. Korra risks death just dealing with her past lives.]
Actually, no, Korra risks death because she gets eaten by a giant dark spirit, nearly drowns, and then deals with her past lives.
Although, yes, the tie-in with amnesiac Korra was a ridiculously stupid sub-plot that was only necessary to hammer Wan into the plot. I didn’t like how these two episodes fit in with the rest of the series,but they had to fit in somewhere, I guess?
[(Also, airbender party is five people, all guys.)]
It’s almost like they based the airbenders off of a culture that already exists that basically mandates that its practitioners are only male!
Snark aside, the airbenders = Tibet parallel was something that was always in the series, down to Aang = most recent Dalai Lama. I don’t see the all-male practitioners as blatant sexism because they’re drawing from real-life subject matter, and as it turns out, the group on whom the airbenders are based were, in their roots, mandated to be all male. No, it’s not a fair system, but I’d rather historical accuracy?
[red covering the women are wearing is to mark them as other and probably hide their sinful flesh so it doesn’t tempt the men.]
MY GOD IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY’RE BASED OFF OF NUNS OR SOMETHING.
I know that Aang’s memories of the air nomads were more gender neutral, but his culture did have the benefit of existing with ten thousand years more of tolerance under its belt. While this episode wasn’t as hammer-head-in-your-face about how women get no rights as the Katara-and-the-guy-who-wouldn’t-teach-her-waterbending-because-kitchen, it honestly made sense to me. Yes, it’s not fair, and yes, it’s gross and stupid that women had no rights or voice, but it’s historically accurate and I’m not sure if it’s fair to accuse the universe of LoK of being stupid in its crowd-cast balancing when it’s trying to emulate a people who had unbalanced gender roles to begin with.
[They come from the evil city, using evil fire to evilly eat meat, and now they’re evilly attempting to evil build an evil settlement so they can evil not starve and die.]
I thought it was a nice parallel to everything changed when the fire nation attacked, but hey.
[They’re all guys by the way.]
See above note on the monks. I can probably name the amount of pre-Industrial Revolution cultures that actually had fair treatment of women on one hand.
[bending even though bending doesn’t work in the spirit world because if we kept that,]
In-universe explanation is that walking through the portals allows you to keep your bending, whereas entering via meditation (as done in AtLA) doesn’t. It’s a ridiculously stupid ret-con that seems to exist only for the technicolor fights, but you should know this so the next few episodes make sense.
…it’s still a ridiculously stupid ret-con, though.
“No, it’s not a fair system, but I’d rather historical accuracy?”
Normally I don’t comment on this show because I don’t watch it, but that irks me.
Mostly because I’m familiar with F.A.T.A.L. RPG which used “historical accuracy” (that exact phrase) as an excuse to include some awful stuff.
That’s, by the way, the game in which the botch table for spellcasting includes “you accidentally summoned a group of orks who proceed to rape everyone in sight” effect, so you can guess how well that went.
Anyway, historical accuracy is not an excuse when we are talking about a fantasy setting with cultures only loosely based on their real life counterparts. I’m pretty sure Tibet monks couldn’t, in fact, fly on clouds, so airbender society is historically inaccurate by default.
Basically, there is no reason why writers couldn’t borrow cool elements from Tibet or some other culture to flesh out their setting and stripped them from casual sexism and similar issues.
It would be excusable if the show had a strong sub-plot about exploring various cultures with different gender roles, social structure in general and so on. I can only judge based on Farla’s comments, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. It seems to be just the thing that exist without anybody commenting on it which is what makes it sexist.
Of course, I could be wrong as I’m not actually familiar with the show. If that’s the case, you are welcome to correct me and give me the context which makes the picture look better.
tl;dr: Historical accuracy works as an excuse for questionable content only when you are actually writing a historical novel (in which case, yeah, you have to stick to the facts) or when you want to explore said content in your work.
They pulled the entire premise of AtLA from the life and times of the fourteenth (I think fourteenth) Dalai Lama. I’m not saying that they’re writing historical fiction here, but the entire show is very heavily steeped in Eastern traditions.
And, yes, in one of the previous episodes of AtLA, there’s an entire arc devoted to how the traditionalists of the water tribe refuse to let the main girl learn waterbending, because women=kitchen=healing only, and the team eventually gets the elders to rethink the misogyny and it’s all great. Given that this was a two-episode tangent, I didn’t expect much from this pair of episodes in regards to complex soci-economic gender roles, but I figured the writers proved that they understood how gender roles in that society were unfair and they weren’t trying to be overtly anti-feminist.
Am I wrong? Quite possibly.
I just think there are far more deplorable and pertinent criticisms to make in this series than “this crowd is all male hate hate hate.”
“They pulled the entire premise of AtLA from the life and times of the fourteenth (I think fourteenth) Dalai Lama. I’m not saying that they’re writing historical fiction here, but the entire show is very heavily steeped in Eastern traditions.”
That doesn’t really matter. When you are writing fiction loosely based on some historical period, mythology or whatever, it is generally accepted to take the cool elements that work well with themes and ideas of your work and leave everything else behind as useless.
There is no need to recreate every aspect of a culture you use as a basis for its fiction counterpart. Only parts that are actually important to the plot.
“And, yes, in one of the previous episodes of AtLA, there’s an entire arc devoted to how the traditionalists of the water tribe refuse to let the main girl learn waterbending, because women=kitchen=healing only, and the team eventually gets the elders to rethink the misogyny and it’s all great.”
That’s a good example of what I’m talking about: sexism in those episodes was presented as a plot point. Perhaps it wasn’t explored in detail (again, can’t say because I didn’t watch the show), but it served an actual purpose in the scenario.
What purpose serves “no airbending women” there? From what I understand, nobody in-universe comments on it, it doesn’t foreshadow anything, etc. It simply exist.
So, the question is: why the version with only men is better than the version with men and women? Does it add some depth to the situation? If not, it’s wrong.
“I just think there are far more deplorable and pertinent criticisms to make in this series than “this crowd is all male hate hate hate.”
Perhaps. I can’t say. I’m just really annoyed by people who use “historical accuracy” or “realism” in an argument about a fantasy setting. It just doesn’t work that way, and more people should know about it.
[That doesn’t really matter. When you are writing fiction loosely based on some historical period, mythology or whatever, it is generally accepted to take the cool elements that work well with themes and ideas of your work and leave everything else behind as useless.]
Conversely, you could take the difficult way out of things and attempt to deal with the problems that ideas in said historical age presented rather than pick and choose, because the former would actually preserve the nuances of that historical era rather than shamelessly recycling the bits that we consider “acceptable” today. I enjoy the AtLA mythos because of how closely they pull from their source material, and they take a unique approach to dealing with the problems that said source material presents rather than daisy-picking the nicer aspects.
[Perhaps it wasn’t explored in detail (again, can’t say because I didn’t watch the show), but it served an actual purpose in the scenario.]
The episode itself had some flaws, but I think it dealt with the issue nicely. I bring it up now to back up my claim that the writers of the show aren’t sexist pigs and that they are aware of the gender role issue in the societies they constructed, and then I go out on a limb to claim that they cannot, in the span of two episodes, attempt to deal with every single problem that their constructed societies create.
[What purpose serves “no airbending women” there? From what I understand, nobody in-universe comments on it, it doesn’t foreshadow anything, etc. It simply exist.]
Iunno, the series isn’t over yet, and I like to think that the finale left room for us to go back to Wan for an interlude (although Farla will hate that, haha). They can deal with it then if they so choose. I still pull historical accuracy, whose strengths and weaknesses I’ll address in a second, but to each their own.
I mean, if we’re really going to go into the whole excluded thing, let’s get mad because the cast is only made up of people of vaguely-Asian heritage! Since the writers can create the world however they want, how dare they choose to only have Asian people! So racist! So terrible! I mean, sure, everything they did is based on some combination of Asian traditions (interjection, I’m not the biggest fan of the word “Asian” to describe everything, but since the writers of AtLA pulled from basically every type of mythology on the Asian continent, I’m going to use the blanket term), but that shouldn’t matter, because that’s silly! It doesn’t add to the plot that everyone is Asian, and the fact that they happened to pull from subject material that’s entirely Asian doesn’t help at all!
I mean, hell, why are we even limiting ourselves to people? Would the show be much different if it were about element-bending monkeys? No? Let’s do that instead!
There’s my strawman argument for the day. Back on point.
I think we might be able to agree that there’s a fine line between “remaining historically accurate” and “being offensive to modern-day thoughts.” We both agree that it’s not fair that the crowd/the airbenders/the rebels are mostly/only men (depending on which); I happen to think that the line wasn’t crossed, while you don’t.
I believe, however, that they were trying to maintain the integrity of their source material, at least with the “airbenders are only guys ten thousand years ago.” Basically every culture is more liberal in the present than it was in the past. The current airbenders (or, I guess, airbending society one hundred years ago, when they weren’t all dead) showed no signs of gender segregation, and the actual current airbenders actually have more females than males (there are, however, five living airbenders, so that’s probably something to consider).
Basically everyone in the past!AtLA universe is a guy. Misogyny runs rampant, patriarchies everywhere, the whole world is basically a giant dick-fighting contest between the guys and there are one or two notable females. Yes. That sucks. I get it.
But basically everyone in the past of human society (and by past, I mean, like, anything more than four hundred years ago) who was allowed to do anything of importance was also a guy. Yes. That also sucks. I get it.
Maybe the writers weren’t so blatantly obvious as to shove the “HEY LOOK AT HOW MALE-DOMINATED THIS PAST SOCIETY IS AIN’T IT TERRIBLE” aspect in people’s faces, and maybe they should’ve drawn more attention to it if they were trying to prove a point, but I don’t see this level of messed up ratios as accidental/unintentional. The writers of AtLA have historically done a pretty good job of actually doing balanced casts, something that very few Nickelodeon shows even do. I don’t see these two episodes as indicative of some general trend to hate on women.
[I’m just really annoyed by people who use “historical accuracy” or “realism” in an argument about a fantasy setting.]
If it were for the entire series, yes, I’d get super-pissed as well. However, most of the cast discrepancy occurs ten thousand years before the main arc (I say most in case I missed something blatantly obvious, and also for the Southern Water Tribe Men Only Rebels Group, which was annoying) for a whopping two episodes, and the story spends all of ten minutes in airbending patriarchal land anyway.
“Conversely, you could take the difficult way out of things and attempt to deal with the problems that ideas in said historical age presented rather than pick and choose, because the former would actually preserve the nuances of that historical era rather than shamelessly recycling the bits that we consider “acceptable” today.”
That’s what I’m saying. If you don’t want to deal with sexism, don’t bring it.
“I bring it up now to back up my claim that the writers of the show aren’t sexist pigs and that they are aware of the gender role issue in the societies they constructed”
From what I understand, the writers are different now, so they should be judged on their own merits.
“and then I go out on a limb to claim that they cannot, in the span of two episodes, attempt to deal with every single problem that their constructed societies create.”
If they are going to deal with it, good for them. If not, they shouldn’t create the problem in the first place.
“I mean, if we’re really going to go into the whole excluded thing, let’s get mad because the cast is only made up of people of vaguely-Asian heritage!”
That’s not how racism works. There is a trend in Western media to always have a white protagonist and preferably white cast as well. If the trend didn’t exist, portraying all-white cast wouldn’t be a problem.
The similar trend doesn’t exist for Asian-looking characters.
It also should be noted that explaining why all characters are of one race is much easier than explain sexism in many fantasy setting: sexism has specific reasons for existing, namely men on average tend to be stronger than women and women had a high mortality rate during pregnancy combined with a high child mortality rate.
Both problems are fixed by bending from what I understand.
Racism has a different reason for existing, namely xenophobia, which is implicitly present in most settings. I still normally expect diverse cultures from fantasy settings, and I like to see when writers are actually dealing with racism, but I’m more tolerant to it.
“I think we might be able to agree that there’s a fine line between “remaining historically accurate” and “being offensive to modern-day thoughts.”
My point is that there is no historically accurate fantasy by definition, so every instance of problematic content must be justified by being important to the plot or overall themes of the work.
I mean, if you care about historical accuracy, then why include sexism but not the lack of working magic?
“I believe, however, that they were trying to maintain the integrity of their source material, at least with the “airbenders are only guys ten thousand years ago.” Basically every culture is more liberal in the present than it was in the past.”
If the progress and its positive (and perhaps negative) consequences is an actual theme within the show supported by a sub-plot, then cool. If not, then not.
“But basically everyone in the past of human society (and by past, I mean, like, anything more than four hundred years ago) who was allowed to do anything of importance was also a guy. Yes.”
That’s… not entirely true. Sexism is an invention of higher classes. Peasants and workers were too busy trying not to starve to the death to care about gender that much.
And the higher classes were sexist because the whole feudal system is based on the “strong rule the weak” principle. It was basically a legal mafia.
But bending works as the equalizer here since women can kick ass just fine.
The second reason was high mortality rate during pregnancy which resulted in bloodlines inherited by women being unstable. That lead to some civil wars and later to the law prohibiting women from inheriting titles… Which lead to more civil wars because now there were plenty of people closely related to the king who couldn’t inherit the title.
Anyway, I don’t even know if the society in question runs on bloodlines to begin with. And I presume that they have an access to some form of advanced healing. Don’t they have magic for this?
And despite all of this, there were plenty of female rulers if you look closely. Not as many as men, but they were hardcore. Like Olga of Kiev who was really into burning the shit out of her enemies.
“Maybe the writers weren’t so blatantly obvious as to shove the “HEY LOOK AT HOW MALE-DOMINATED THIS PAST SOCIETY IS AIN’T IT TERRIBLE” aspect in people’s faces, and maybe they should’ve drawn more attention to it if they were trying to prove a point, but I don’t see this level of messed up ratios as accidental/unintentional.”
Eh, I can’t say if it’s subtlety or the lack of awareness without actually watching the show. Perhaps it was the point writers tried to make, but from what I know other elements don’t seem to fit into “social progress is awesome” paradigm. Like the “changing the world = bad” thing they seem to have going.
My screencaps are because there is literally not the slightest mention of it in the episode itself.
It’s the regular kind of sexism.
[From what I understand, the writers are different now, so they should be judged on their own merits.]
Wasn’t aware of the change in writers, but Wikipedia is telling me that there’s been a massive overhauling in that department, so hey. I guess we can also call the current gender ratios for the Avatars 1:1 now, since we’re discounting AtLA entirely, though.
[That’s not how racism works. There is a trend in Western media to always have a white protagonist and preferably white cast as well. If the trend didn’t exist, portraying all-white cast wouldn’t be a problem.]
Right, so it’s only racism when the white people get the good things!
Hi, I’m Chinese American and I’m not actually offended by having everyone in the cast be Asian, so let’s clear that up in the event we want to start throwing the race card around in the future.
Racism is to judge people by their race. That is what it means. There is no pre-defining factor that says it can only be racist against this minority or in favor of this majority or with this subset of anything. It’s judging people by their race. If there were a cast of all [insert minority of choice here], that’s still racist, and see how this word is starting to get really vague? It’s a less conventional racism to have an all-[minority] cast, and it goes against the current whitewashing brand of racism that we see today, but it’s still racism.
[It also should be noted that explaining why all characters are of one race is much easier than explain sexism in many fantasy setting: sexism has specific reasons for existing, namely men on average tend to be stronger than women and women had a high mortality rate during pregnancy combined with a high child mortality rate.Both problems are fixed by bending from what I understand.]
Men on average tend to be stronger than women: conventional magic would fix this. Bending, however, is basically martial arts with the added bonus of shooting an element from your hands. When you bend, there’s tons of athletic exertion involved, you get hit by rock/fire/water/air with bone-crushing force, and you basically end up doing everything you would in a conventional fight with some added firepower. There is a very pertinent physical aspect involved in bending–there’s a reason why Korra has tons of muscle, and it’s not because she spends her days in the kitchen.
High child mortality rate: healing from bending only comes with the water tribes (which happened to be the home of the breaking the gender barrier episode mentioned earlier). There’s very little cross-nation interaction, so most of the other nations are left with “oh, you’re dying in childbirth, but we can’t do more than throw rock/fire/air.”
[That’s… not entirely true. Sexism is an invention of higher classes. Peasants and workers were too busy trying not to starve to the death to care about gender that much.]
And nomads, like the airbending ones we see here, ended up defining gender roles as we know them because men would hunt while women raised the children.
[And despite all of this, there were plenty of female rulers if you look closely. Not as many as men, but they were hardcore. Like Olga of Kiev who was really into burning the shit out of her enemies.]
…plenty is a really kind word to use. It’s nowhere near the 50/50 ratio that I wish it was, so let’s not kid ourselves.
[Eh, I can’t say if it’s subtlety or the lack of awareness without actually watching the show. Perhaps it was the point writers tried to make, but from what I know other elements don’t seem to fit into “social progress is awesome” paradigm. Like the “changing the world = bad” thing they seem to have going.]
Perhaps we could agree to disagree on this, and you call it lack of awareness while I call it subtlety? I’m literally only defending the airbending crowd of guys and Wan as male Avatar is not the end of the world at this point (explained in a response to Farla somewhere in the reply pyramid), and I feel like we’re getting way too deep for this.
“Right, so it’s only racism when the white people get the good things!”
There are two kinds of racism. Lets call them passive and active.
Active racism is, as you said, to judge people based on their race, to invoke and enforce specific racial stereotypes.
Passive racism is to simply not care about people of other races, to think of them as unimportant, to shove them into background. There are not that many people who practice passive racism and identify themselves as racists. Ask them directly, and they will say that they are very much for equality.
Having an all-white cast falls under this category because it enforces the view that people of other races can be ignored and ultimately don’t matter.
Having all-asian or all-black cast doesn’t fall under this category unless it also exploits racial stereotypes in which case the scenario turns into “a funny film about those wacky blacks/asians/etc.”.
And yeah, I’m talking specifically about all-white cast because there is a trend for putting all importance in white characters. If the trend didn’t exist, if across the media there was an equal chance to find protagonists and other important characters of any race, than cast’s race wouldn’t matter, it would be a purely aesthetic choice or coincidence in casting.
A good example of what I’m talking about would be “black guy dies first” trope. It is not inherently racist. In fact, once upon a time it was a counter to racism. People complained that there was no important non-white characters in media, so producers tried to fix it. They were, however, hesitant to cast non-white protagonists. Obviously, villains or secondary characters with two lines of dialogue wouldn’t satisfy people. So an important supportive character, a friend of protagonist was the logical choice. Unfortunately, this character archetype is rather prone to death for narrative reasons (it’s a cheap way to buy audience’s sympathy and give the protagonist a motive for revenge or justice or whatever). And since everyone was doing it, the trope was born.
“Bending, however, is basically martial arts with the added bonus of shooting an element from your hands.”
…We are talking about a show where a bunch of kids could defeat an empire, right? Or do something similarly impressive if I’m mistaken about the empire. Children tend to be weaker than adults of either gender. If they can fight just fine, women should fight just fine.
Besides, magical kung-fu tend to work well for agile but not particularly strong characters, for weak but skilled, etc. There is, after all, an old archetype of old, fragile master who can still kick everyone’s ass. If it is wrong, if physical strength matter to the point where women can’t successfully compete with men in it, I would rather question why writers designed it in such a way.
“High child mortality rate: healing from bending only comes with the water tribes (which happened to be the home of the breaking the gender barrier episode mentioned earlier).”
OK then. I would question why sexism was even a thing in that tribe, but if it was the first one to drop it, it would be actually clever.
I should emphasize that the hight mortality rate was important only to the ruling class, though.
“And nomads, like the airbending ones we see here, ended up defining gender roles as we know them because men would hunt while women raised the children.”
I’m not very familiar with nomadic cultures, but is there a reason why women can’t hunt before getting pregnant or after they children are old enough?
“…plenty is a really kind word to use. It’s nowhere near the 50/50 ratio that I wish it was, so let’s not kid ourselves.”
The fact is, they existed, and there is no reason why the ratio can’t be better in a fantasy world. You can design the setting in any way you want, what’s the point in designing it in a way that enforces sexism? At least if you don’t want to actually explore it.
“Perhaps we could agree to disagree on this, and you call it lack of awareness while I call it subtlety?”
Eh, I’m not the best guy to talk about sexism, racism and other prejudices. I just really dislike the “historical accuracy” excuse because fantasy setting always contains only as much bias as its creators wanted it to contain, intentionally or not.
I’m not very familiar with nomadic cultures, but is there a reason why women can’t hunt before getting pregnant or after they children are old enough?
The culture is actually vegetarian gatherers only. But you know women, it’s just so historically inaccurate to have them gathering fruit from trees, unlike having bright dyes for clothing.
Meanwhile, in AtLA, one of the best earthbenders of all time was a twelve year old girl because it has absolutely nothing to do with physical strength.
Everything here is just the usual snake eating its tail that it just makes sense women don’t exist, because, well, women! They just can’t do stuff! Because! It doesn’t happen! No matter what it is, there’s got to be some reason why women can’t have it! Which at the same time explains why everyone we see poor and oppressed is also a guy, because women can’t be that either. They have to wait for sexism to be over before they can be starving.
“The culture is actually vegetarian gatherers only.”
Huh. I seem to recall that in gatherer societies women did work alongside men just fine because, well, human body requires a lot of plants to sustain, so every pair of hands counts.
So it doesn’t even make sense from “historical accuracy” perspective.
In either case, it’s always good to remember that fantasy settings are created by modern writers, they are not something that evolved naturally. So when sexism or other prejudices are present in them, we should ask why writers included them.
Judging by your reviews, there isn’t any practical reason that I can see. Which is rather sad.
On another note, since we are talking about “historical accuracy”, would you like to do F.A.T.A.L. review? Or is the level of awfulness too high for you to survive the experience?
I don’t think even the FATAL guys thought it was historically accurate, they just put that in as some sort of defense against ending up on sex offender lists.
Also, some good points here. Such good points, in fact, I regret getting to the final reason and now want to go rock in the corner.
I think Hall escaped the sex offender list only because of his obscurity as far as authorities are concerned. I mean, when your game is regarded as THE worst RPG while the second worst is called “Racial Holy War”…
“Also, some good points here.”
Ah, yes, I remember this. And the last reason… yeah, that summarize everything wrong with the game that you never wanted to know.
Anyway, I know a few bad games if you are interested in reviewing them*, but it’s understandable if you don’t want to start a new thing or just don’t want to bother with RPGs, especially since you have enough on your plate already.
*Some of them are actually funny Like deadEarth which reliably produces weird insane and strangely appealing characters due to character generation including giving your character a few “mutations” which have strange synergy. Like a character who dies from a single wound, explodes when she dies and resurrects at a sunrise.
I honestly have very little experience with RPGs, I just know some of the basics because it overlaps with storytelling and I’ve read some of the books. And I have no way of inflicting it on a group to see how it actually plays, which seems like it’s at least half the fun of it. They’d really need to be done by someone with more than a teaspoon’s experience with them.
OK then. It is indeed hard to fully appreciate why the game is bad if you don’t have much experience with different systems.
If you are interested, here is a link to rpg.net review of deadEarth which quickly devolved into character generation thread because it’s rather fun. I think you may enjoy it:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?473443-deadEarth-why-isn-t-this-game-on-anyone-s-quot-Worst-Games-List-quot
P.S. Oh, I forgot that you actually can kill your character during generation. A fun game indeed.
[Meanwhile, in AtLA, one of the best earthbenders of all time was a twelve year old girl because it has absolutely nothing to do with physical strength.]
Because Toph was a badass.
No, really, there’s a reason why the Fire Nation portrayed her as a fully grown, ripped adult male in the play, and it’s not sexism.
[it just makes sense women don’t exist, because, well, women! They just can’t do stuff! Because! It doesn’t happen! No matter what it is, there’s got to be some reason why women can’t have it!]
Yes, I’m so glad you’ve accurately encompassed my argument. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. I simply cannot comprehend the fact that women exist, which would certainly explain why I am one. You’ve certainly hit the nail right on the head. This is not a strawman argument at all!
It was a pleasure debating with most of you, but I feel like we’ve reached the point where none of us will recant our views, and to argue further would achieve nothing. I tried to respond as best as I could to the comments left, but there were a ton, and if I missed them, it’s not because I was ignoring you [s]because clearly I hate women[/s] or didn’t know how to respond.
And, yes, I’m actually a girl. I’m probably just brainwaished into buying into the oppression of myself, though, so let’s just call it a day. :>
Because Toph was a badass.
No, really, there’s a reason why the Fire Nation portrayed her as a fully grown, ripped adult male in the play, and it’s not sexism.
What the fuck is wrong with you.
To think I respected you at some point for making fair and considerate responses to subject material that was far more outrageous than anything I ever said (Fever and Unwind come to mind, although if I’ve topped them in terms of atrocity in your eyes, then I don’t even).
Toph was an extremely powerful earthbender and an anomaly, to the point that no one believed in her strength until they saw it. Her teachers, her parents, and even Aang at some point suspected that it was a trick because they couldn’t believe that a twelve year-old girl was that strong. There’s a scene in the Ember Island Players episode where they cast her as a man who sees through supersonic vision because they can’t comprehend the idea of a child doing all of the amazing shit that Toph did (fine, let’s call the Fire Nation sexist because fuck all). If we actually cared about conducting a civil debate at all, you might–
No, fuck it, I’m fairly certain that you don’t care, and that I’m wasting my time with all of this. What’s wrong with me is that I don’t see things the way you do, and that’s apparently so utterly despicable that you won’t even listen to my entire argument and instead see it fit to pounce upon whatever you deem as most offensive.
Please, feel free to make fun of me and bring me up in your future analyses of Legend of Korra, and please, feel free to respond to this with something like “so much butthurt” or another round of mud-slinging at my character or, god forbid, a final sarcastic “you must be too dumb to function try again plz” response. I understand that that’s also one of your tactics in comporting yourself as a mature, understanding human being who can comprehend the idea of someone who doesn’t share her views.
You said:
The Fire Nation portrayed her as a ripped man because only ripped men can be strong earthbender anomalies, not women.
At which point you said:
That is not sexism.
Do you not see what is wrong here?
[Having an all-white cast falls under this category because it enforces the view that people of other races can be ignored and ultimately don’t matter.
Having all-asian or all-black cast doesn’t fall under this category unless it also exploits racial stereotypes in which case the scenario turns into “a funny film about those wacky blacks/asians/etc.”.]
I don’t see how having an all-asian or all-black cast doesn’t enforce the (less common) view that people of other races can be ignored, because you’re doing the exact same thing you’d be doing with an all-white cast. You aren’t falling the mainstream belief, yes, but you’re still limiting your cast to only one race, which should be by definition racist. It’s not, though, because white oppressors so evil?
[…We are talking about a show where a bunch of kids could defeat an empire, right? Or do something similarly impressive if I’m mistaken about the empire. Children tend to be weaker than adults of either gender.]
Yes, a bunch of children, one of whom had the benefit of being able to harness and release the life spirit of the universe at will, and even then, he gets consistently pummeled when facing adults when not using this power (Ozai, Combustion Man, Zhao). Most of the conflict in AtLA is between children/adolescents; by the time they get to the empire-crushing, the strategy becomes: throw Aang at firelord until Avatar State activates; pilot giant airships into killing other airships. I haven’t watched the show in a while, but I honestly can’t think of a time that a non-Avatar State child faced an adult in a legit bending match and won, and I certainly recall more losses than wins.
[OK then. I would question why sexism was even a thing in that tribe, but if it was the first one to drop it, it would be actually clever.]
Sexism was a thing because plot. It was a good plot, but the water tribe, to my knowledge, was actually the last one to drop the men-fight women-heal.
Do I think that it would’ve been awesome if the writers had considered the repercussions that bending would have on a burgeoning society and allow bending to change how gender roles developed? Do I wish it had happened? Do I think the show would’ve been much more complex and awesome had they done so? Yes, yes, and yes. But I don’t expect this from a show that is, to my knowledge, targeted for pre-teens/young adults. (On that note, do I wish that networks would stop coddling young adults and write for them like they would a more mature demographic, yes) I do, however, see the airbending system as a valid outcome.
[I’m not very familiar with nomadic cultures, but is there a reason why women can’t hunt before getting pregnant or after they children are old enough?]
Not coming from a nomadic culture, no, I’m not very familiar either, although I assume some of it would have to do with, “the most sophisticated weapon that we’ve invented right now is a club, so we’ve got to bludgeon this mammoth to death and avoid getting gored or trampled.” I know that women had children far more frequently then than they do now (primarily due to aforementioned infant mortality rates), meaning more pregnancies and more stressful pregnancies, which would also be a factor.
[The fact is, they existed, and there is no reason why the ratio can’t be better in a fantasy world. You can design the setting in any way you want, what’s the point in designing it in a way that enforces sexism? At least if you don’t want to actually explore it.]
Explained mostly two above, but I’m going to go ahead and repeat that I think the show would be improved if the writers had attempted this (and executed well), but I don’t expect them to do that and don’t see anything blatantly wrong (or at least, not as blatantly wrong as some of the other unfixed problems in LoK).
[Eh, I’m not the best guy to talk about sexism, racism and other prejudices. I just really dislike the “historical accuracy” excuse because fantasy setting always contains only as much bias as its creators wanted it to contain, intentionally or not.]
I don’t think I’ve been articulating myself very clearly, and for that I apologize.
Historical accuracy for these two episodes alone. Literally. I’m well aware that the show takes place around the early nineteen hundreds (rough estimate; they have nice cars and have just got around to inventing airplanes)(although there was a gigantic drill in AtLA so technology is always kind of a big question mark), which means that, if we extended the historical accuracy argument, women should just be getting around to voting and there won’t be any semblance of gender equality for a while. If the writers had pulled the historical accuracy card on that, I would not approve. I’m only in favor of this particular crowd in this particular episode because of the whole “this was ten thousand years ago and we established earlier that sexism was a problem in traditional cultures.” That’s it.
“You aren’t falling the mainstream belief, yes, but you’re still limiting your cast to only one race, which should be by definition racist. It’s not, though, because white oppressors so evil?”
Having a whole cast to be of the single race is not racism by itself, especially in movies where it honestly can be a coincidence. Same with all-male cast and sexism.
What makes it racism is an existing trend to have all-white cast even when there is no practical reason to do so. If the trend didn’t exist, if most casts across the media were balanced, it wouldn’t be a problem.
It really seems like you have a list of “this is sexist” and “this is racist” things written somewhere. It’s wrong. Context matters. The same thing can be sexist or not depending on the current state of culture and trends in media.
“I haven’t watched the show in a while, but I honestly can’t think of a time that a non-Avatar State child faced an adult in a legit bending match and won, and I certainly recall more losses than wins.”
If that’s truly the case, and if the show truly goes with “you need to be strong to effectively bend, and men are generally better at this”, I would then question why writers constructed their world in such a way if they didn’t want to deal with consequences fully.
“the most sophisticated weapon that we’ve invented right now is a club, so we’ve got to bludgeon this mammoth to death and avoid getting gored or trampled.”
Endurance has more to do with hunting, actually. The general strategy is to wound animal enough that it will bleed to death and then follow it at a distance. Human body is really suited for this task.
Either way, it appears that the tribe in question has a gatherer culture, and women historically did that just fine, so there.
“Historical accuracy for these two episodes alone. Literally. I’m well aware that the show takes place around the early nineteen hundreds (rough estimate; they have nice cars and have just got around to inventing airplanes)(although there was a gigantic drill in AtLA so technology is always kind of a big question mark), which means that, if we extended the historical accuracy argument, women should just be getting around to voting and there won’t be any semblance of gender equality for a while.”
Again I say: there is no historical accuracy in fantasy because there is no history but the one the writers created. If they didn’t want to include sexism, they could’ve just have women doing stuff and participating in the plot. Yes, it would contradict the realities of a real world culture airbender tribe is based on. So? They are not Tibet monks, they are entirely fiction people living in an entirely fiction world. Their culture is defined entirely by the writers. Therefore, writers wanted them to be sexist or didn’t realize that they portray a sexist society.
If there is a sub-plot dealing with how social progress is awesome, and things are getting better with each century, then good, all is excused. If not, then sexism was included because.
[But basically everyone in the past of human society (and by past, I
mean, like, anything more than four hundred years ago) who was allowed
to do anything of importance was also a guy.]
I’m sorry, WHAT? This has nothing to do with sexism, you just clearly, clearly have an incredibly tenuous grasp of human history. Please, invest in a world civ class. The counterexamples to this are so obvious I don’t even want to justify the statement by going into them.
If you’re suggesting that you can name more women in pre-1600’s history that have been allowed to do things/are currently remembered than I can name men, please, I can do this all day. I won’t even have to use the so-called Enlightened Era. Or let me take the world civ class that somehow taught you that history was fair to women.
I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying it exists.
But basically everyone in the past of human society (and by past, I mean, like, anything more than four hundred years ago) who was allowed to do anything of importance was also a guy.
When your argument boils down to “It’s not sexist, it’s just one gender never accomplished anything ever throughout history!” your argument is a bad one.
Sorry, and when the opening of your argument boils down to “oh wow, this guy is a man, I HATE YOU SHOW,” there’s probably something wrong as well.
And since apparently I didn’t make this abundantly clear the first time, I’ll say it again: I found nothing wrong with this singular crowd of airbenders being men because I thought it accurately portrayed a historical representation of gender roles in the universe of the Legend of Korra itself. Ten thousand years ago, we had widely stratified society that boiled down to “men do all the work; women stay in kitchen and raise children.” Name the lone counterexamples if you will, but that’s a fact. I don’t say that it’s fair or that we should do it today or that clearly we should stick with the status quo because let’s just put words in my mouth. I’m saying that it made sense to me for the universe of LoK to portray a massively gender skewed society ten thousand years before the current day. It’s not very much less-okay in the present. Perhaps they should’ve drawn more attention to it, but I thought that the whole “wow, our world is so out of balance” was hint enough.
“they weren’t trying to be overtly anti-feminist”
I don’t care much if they were *trying* to write a story that was anti-feminist. I care if they *did*.
You seem to think that there’s this bright clear line between sexist people who do sexist things and not-sexist people who don’t and that’s just not the case. Look at the work of Ikuhara Kunihiko. He directed both Revolutionary Girl Utena, which is a feminist *masterpiece*, and Mawaru Penguin Drum, which is horrendously bad in the way it treats its female characters. I love Utena because it’s awesome and hate Penguin Drum because it’s horrible and have no strong judgements either way on Ikuhara as a person because I *don’t really know* what he is.
Like, I am pretty sure I am not a particularly racist person, but I *am* a white chick inundated in racist white culture, and I do catch myself thinking some pretty racist things on occasion. It takes effort to notice and correct those thoughts. If instead I just blurted or typed them out the moment they came to mind, I would end up saying and creating some incredibly shitty things sometimes. Some creators are willing to put in that effort some days and other days just say “fuck it” and so you end up with portfolios of work with wide discrepancies in how well they handle women and minority characters.
I mean, if I ignored author intent, I’d believe that Jonathon Swift advocated eating babies. Not saying that LoK is a satire on sexism (seriously, this debate is getting far too intense for the gender makeup of a single crowd of airbenders), but things need context.
Literature should be able to stand on its own, but it can’t, because no matter what, there’s still a human with very biased human beliefs behind the curtain. The same applies to television, and I think intent is important in judging a work (how else would I be able to denounce Conrad as a flaming racist). And, I mean, if we’re going to follow the vein of thought that author intent means zero, let’s just go ahead and trash most books written before the twentieth century, because they’re all written by men about men for men so clearly they have no literary value in the current world.
…okay that’s great, but I wasn’t actually making a death of the author argument there, and if you’d paid attention to what I was saying instead of just assuming you already knew and pulling out your stock answer you’d know that, so I think I’m done here.
Also I think you’re arguing against your own point of view at the end there because “they’re all written by men about men for men so clearly they have no literary value in the current world” is the opposite of the conclusion that flows from “author intent means zero”.
Missed the “see more” button and saw almost a word-for-word death of the author argument here, sorry. If it helps, I’ve never gotten into a debate about death of an author before, so it’s not a stock response.
Everyone’s prejudiced on the inside. That’s how people work. I simply don’t see the need to denounce a work because of the gender makeup of two crowds. That’s all.
I was trying to say that if we judged all books by our modern standards acceptable gender roles, most of the classics would be out the window. Les Miserables, for instance–excellent book, and the most female-empowered thing I remember is Eponine dressing up as a man to fight on the barricades and stopping a bullet with her hand. In the name of saving the guy she loves.
Nobody wants to throw out all works that represent women poorly, but it’s still a thing that can and should be criticized. And it’s not judging by modern standards of “acceptable gender roles”, it’s judging by modern standards of women actually being people who can be distinct characters with depth and dimension and don’t universally suck in comparison to the male characters. Representing women as people who are distinct characters with depth and dimension in their own right does not require the injection of modern feminism into the setting; it just requires having a reasonable number of women, and making them be independent, developed characters as opposed to plot devices or background props or satellite characters for the guys.
I have to reply to this. Putting aside the issue of how it’s not necessary for a fantasy setting to treat historical sexism, and ONLY that, as one of the few elements worthy of incorporating with a high degree of accuracy…
Women did, in fact, “do things” even before they got the vote, before they got legal rights, et cetera. History is full of women who accomplished things despite the oppressive sexism of their environment, sometimes even using it to their advantage. Not all of them simply put up with it and sat around waiting for feminism to happen.
In short, even IF we accept “historical accuracy” for the setting being sexist, it’s not a reason for the *narrative* to be so exclusionary of women. And there’s no reason Wan couldn’t have been a woman (does the lion turtle care about what gender it dishes out powers to?). Especially with a powerful female spirit in play.
Honestly, you’re kind of ignoring that Wan DID grow. He was selfish early on, but his later actions are trying to make up for what he did. He even shows more knowledge of spirituality while also displaying elements of goodness.
Wan’s first action is to steal food for his starving friends at great risk to himself. His second action is to try to lead a peasant uprising against the abusive leaders to try to make things better for his society.
His second to last action is to cause mass violence and death, and his last action is to fail to stop that probably because his idea of making peace is to try to violence and death both armies at the same time.
Holy shit, the annoying nitpicking over everything. Goshdamn was this an annoying read.