Legend of Korra Books 1-2
I watched Avatar the Last Airbender and loved it. I really don’t have much to say on it because it hits emotional points well and everyone else can speak on what I love about it. I knew coming into this that no on considers it to be as good as the Last Airbender, but it was surprising for me how easy it was to spot what was different about it and why it doesn’t land as well.
Avatar the Last Airbender was strongly feminist. It was powerful and moving and showed a great dynamic of women and their strength in the main narrative that followed through in every aspect of the plot. Legend of Korra fails to carry this once you look past Korra and Asami.
Cheif Beifong on the surface is a very strong and powerful female character, but as soon as she becomes a character who was slighted by Teinzen, it is used to rob her of her strength and femininity. She becomes the bitter old woman who can’t get over the past and thus her strength and influence mean nothing to the plot anymore. In fact, most problems can point to the way relationships are used to define female characters as the problem. The fact that only the female members of the family seemed interested in Korra’s interest in romance (and how that defined them as characters for the first season). The fact that Asami was basically a romantic plot point to get money and influence on team Avatar. The fact that the team they easily defeat as pro-benders was all-female and the team they couldn’t beat was all male (when bending does a lot to equal the playing field). When all the characters making major decisions in the plot were male and Korra has to rebel to make her own decisions. When the two bad guys end up being brothers torn apart by their relationship with their father. Terribly anti-feminist.
I loved pro-bending and how it showed perfectly that sometimes you need to use pupil’s interests to help them learn a topic. I’ll be honest that I did enjoy the Amon conflict and the worry that the counsel was controlled by Amon. I found Amon to be a powerful and scary villain. I honestly feel like his backstory robbed him of his power. The real let-down in season one was the fact that it wasn’t as feminist as Avatar the Last Airbender.
I think the easiest way to fix that would’ve been to have Teinzen actually be a woman. The only thing that would need to change would be where Teinzen avoids capture by being in labor. I also think that then the Beifong-Teinzen dynamic would be more powerful because Teinzen broke up with her because she needed to continue the airbending line. It would also be a fun tie in to the future Korra and Asami relationship that I’m looking forward to. I also think this means that Beifong should have a secret girlfriend that we can meet later on. Anyway, this fix wouldn’t solve all the problems and plot holes, it would’ve simply felt a lot more feminist with a female-Teinzen being in on all the decisions and control that is not given as freely to female characters.
Season Two: Once again, the conflict was about troubled brothers fighting each other. The twin children of Unalaq were absolutely terrible (including the relationship problems that was very abusive and a female character was doing it to a male character which meant that it was funny and not a SERIOUS problem). I also think that the Verrick plot wasn’t thought out thoroughly enough because it is one thing to want to profit off a war and another thing to use violence to encourage a war that the President really should have supported the invaded nation...also the President’s reason for not supporting them because he needs to defend the city from the spirits seemed out of place when it wasn’t played up that anyone outside of Unalaq felt they were a real threat....which reminds me of the weird thing where once the audience knows something every character in the show seems to know it, removing all dramatic tension or just showing up as terrible writing (which goes along with Korra conveniently forgetting that Mako broke up that was played just for drama).
Season two suffers from the same pretend feminist problems but then adds the overused trope of light versus dark. I understand that they tried to take a different approach than our usual light versus dark and talk about how both need to exist for there to be balance....but the narrative negates all of that and pushes to the traditional western of light = good and dark = bad and must be defeated. As soon as there was a dark avatar and it was clear the call was to destroy him, all of that balance discussion is thrown out the window. They should have avoided making him get that far, have him be destroyed to show that wasn’t the real intent, or let him stick around and be the advocate for the spirit portals to remain open and be a player in advocating for spirit rights in the human world.
Honestly, the best fix would have been to avoid the light vs dark conflict completely. Have the north invade the south. Have either Verrick or the evil northern tribe leader be the one influencing spirits to come in the world and be evil (just don’t have brothers as the conflict again). Have the fight be for the spirit world’s safety as much as it is for the human world because the influence of the evil leader is corrupting the good spirits. Then you can even close the season with the connection of the spirit world to the human world (if that holds any plot relevance as it doesn’t seem to have in the few episodes I watched in season three) and have something in the spirit world affect her connection to the previous avatars (some tricky deal or touching the wrong tree or an effect of the misty valley of lost souls). It also was very slow...which is likely why I won’t be watching it again.
I think the reason Legend of Korra doesn’t resonate as well as Avatar the Last Airbender is because of the inconsistency between what the narrative is telling us is the theme and what the rest of the story is saying. Sure, a strong female avatar and a strong female friend are great characters, but the feminism doesn’t go beyond there. The backstory of the Avatar speaks of how light and dark both need to exist, but then you align the Avatar with the light and have the Avatar defeat the dark spirit both as a man and a woman. Themes only work if they carry through to every level of the story.
