hi ana!! i've been following your metas for a few years now and i really enjoy how you've taken apart the different elements of zutara, it's made me really love them more and also helped me improve my own writing.
i know you posted abt the movie, i just wondered how you felt about how katara was portrayed? i've heard there's attempts to retcon katara's legacy and also more general misogyny in how she's portrayed and i'm curious about your take.
my thoughts on katara in the aang movie:
considering that bryan and mike have spent a few years at least pretending to address all the criticisms of katara’s writing post-atla, the fact that they couldn’t make even a half-assed attempt to beat the sexist writing allegations in this one is honestly sort of astounding.
critique 1: katara’s legacy is largely forgotten in comparison to the rest of the gaang’s, embodied in the fact that she doesn’t get a statue in her honour.
if there was ever a time to introduce a secret statue that we for some reason just don’t see in tlok, or at least imply that one is going to be made, it would’ve been in this film but no. not one single fuck or statue given.
critique 2: katara and aang’s relationship is one-sided and often forces katara to perform undue emotional labour without receiving the same support in return.
good to know that status quo continues to be upheld in kat.aang land. katara comforts and coddles aang start to end, and is not even (very rightfully) pissed off that his bad decisions end up getting her and her friends killed. even the aftermath of this group murder focuses on how bad aang feels about his fuckup rather than the effects of said fuckup on his partner who — once again because it really cannot be overstated — died thanks to his terrible judgement.
i see we’ve backslid even further from atla katara, who could at least stand her ground when it really counted (admittedly only at the extremes of hunting down her mother’s killer and the fate of the whole world, but still). yikes. very yikes.
i will throw this movie one bone and it is that katara was at least spared the thankless task of pulling aang out of the avatar state yet again. i was genuinely worried that’s where the scene was going, but thank god someone in that writer’s room had good sense.
critique 3: katara often feels more like a trophy girlfriend than an equal partner with her own independent arc.
for those who blessedly chose not to inflict this film on yourselves, let me illustrate katara’s first scene to you.
now imagine you are a citizen of the world’s most unoriginally-named republic city. you’re standing in a huge crowd. the councilwoman? one of the founders? (what the hell was katara’s role here besides avatar’s girlfriend, genuine question) is making a speech, and it’s a pretty good one. then all of a sudden her boyfriend, who also happens to be the world’s most powerful person, shows up and your politician pauses mid-speech to a) run into his arms b) let him spin her around and c) make out with him. the speech is never finished.
in comparison, let’s see… zuko’s introductory scene shows him leading his council from his throne room, as fitting his legacy as fire lord. toph’s introductory scene has her fighting her students and winning, as fitting her legacy as an earthbending master and teacher. aang’s introductory scene is him exploring the air temples, as fitting his legacy as the last airbender and also setting up the movie’s conflict. sokka’s introductory scene… is also bad and admittedly reduces him to comic relief but at least highlights that he is an inventor and engineer.
do we see the problem here?
naturally, nothing gets better from there. katara’s fight with tagah ends in her death, and the final battle is pretty much the aang show, with no defining scenes for anybody else. katara’s big moment in the movie is her reviving everyone from the dead, which 1) is only accomplished with the help of some convenient spirit pools and 2) focuses on her healing abilities — which once again, she expressed no interest, faced no objection and took no effort to master — rather than her combat skills.
critique 4: katara and aang never seem to understand each other, often conflicting on important issues or key aspects of their identity.
everybody get ready for some reheated southern raiders nachos with sozin’s comet cheese on top because you get this one directly from the horse’s mouth:
Aang: This staff could bring my people back.
Katara: I know how much you want that but…
Aang: You don’t understand! None of you do!
there you have it, folks! katara doesn’t understand aang because i’m sure she knows nothing about what it’s like to be the last bender in her culture and have to carry that legacy all on her own. or be the target of an imperialist genocide. or survive said genocide only through luck and the sacrifice of a beloved parental figure.
when i first began writing meta, i would criticize the lack of mutual understanding between katara and aang as an accidental, unintentional writing flaw. but i’ve come to see now that this chasm between kat.aang is very much a deliberate choice in how bryan and mike want aang’s character to be depicted. katara doesn’t understand aang because she’s not allowed to, because letting them bond over shared suffering would diminish aang’s unique claim to pain. he alone must stand on the trauma olympics gold medal podium, because it’s more important for him to be the Most Special than it is for him to have a romantic relationship built on true understanding and intimacy.
final score: a whopping 0.
look, the truth of the matter is that regardless of whatever this movie did, the katara’s-writing-is-misogynistic ship has already sailed. there’s no bringing it back to harbour, not unless all of lok is erased from existence, because we know what happens to her life and her legacy. but the creators not even bothering to maintain the farce of caring what happens to her really highlights the difference in how katara and aang’s characters have been valued all along.
areudirty
stormborns
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
dailybridgerton
jimmyeatworldofficial
romaincrisis
