Hey so uh. I wanted to turn my rant on white people and writing from perspectives that they don’t have any personal experience with into its own post so here it is. I might add onto this later, but for now I just wanted to have this here and separate from the original post.
Ok cool it’s 1am and I’ve had three glasses of sake so I’m ready to talk to the white people who seem to have zoomed in on me saying “This is a show made by white men I promise you it’s not as progressive as you think” and completely disregarded the rest of the post where I talk about how white fans attack people from the cultures being “represented” for any criticisms of the show because you think I microaggressed you by mentioning white people in a less than positive light.
Before I get into it, here’s my TLDR: Atla being made by white men is one of the many reasons the show isn’t actually as progressive as people like to say it is. It’s not the only reason, but it is a major one.
So yeah the first thing is, yes. I do think that atla being made by white people makes the show less progressive than people say it is.
And it is also tied to the whiteness of fandom spaces but idk how much I’ll talk about that because it’s 1am, I’m buzzed and it’s not like I’m getting graded on this, so I don’t really care about structure rn. Best case scenario is a few people agree with me worst case is that white people continue to white people in my notes so like the stakes are low here.
I’ve talked about this in the past (but I don’t think I have on this blog) about the confidence white people have in telling stories from the perspective of different demographics that they don’t represent.
Here’s the thing: I trust a person of color to write a story about a white character more than I trust a white person to write a story about a character of color. Why?
Well for starters, people of color get white narratives pushed down our throats all our lives, especially in western countries. I cannot speak as much for people of color living in non-western countries, but globalization has made this increasingly prevalent across the board.
This part is kinda copy pasted from a discussion I had about identity in my ethics class, but I think it’s relevant and much more coherent than I am rn:
“I think that being a person of color gives you a bit more perspective, because you grow up seeing stories and narratives of these fully fleshed out and nuanced people and characters whose experiences were nothing like your own. Essentially, growing up not being represented in the narratives being told and shared forces you to learn to relate to people very different from you from a very early age.
This is not to say we don’t still hold prejudices. I still have blind spots and prejudices to unlearn of course, and I don’t think our work is ever really finished there. But I think having that perspective early on meant that doing that work is a bit easier for people of color than for white people, who did see their experiences represented, and saw them represented consistently.
I remember taking a class where we were discussing literary theory and my professor mentioned that one of the common reasons that people resist learning literary theory is because “it ruins the pleasure of watching”, and that people have a hard time turning off that analytical part of their brain, and all of a sudden, they realize that their favorite show perpetuates really harmful racial stereotypes. I was really surprised when I heard that, because as a person of color I didn’t realize white people could just “opt out” of thinking critically of the media they consume.”
Growing up as a person of color in America specifically is growing up in a structure that you are simultaneously a part of and apart from. There’s this ideology of whiteness and the white experience as universal that permeates most facets of our existence that is only reinforced by white narratives and the establishment of things like “the literary canon”.
Existing as a person of color in a structure so fundamentally reliant and built upon whiteness means you internalize the ins and outs of that structure even if you’re not aware of it. We are not who the structure is built for, but we exist within it, so we learn to navigate it. But you are aware the entire time of who and what the structure upholds.
I don’t trust the white showrunners to have that same deep understanding of cultures and societies outside of that white bubble, because that ideology of whiteness so insulates white people from any other culture. And the show runners prove that right in the way they cherry pick different parts of Indigenous American, East Asian and South Asian cultures without understanding the internal logic of those cultures. It did the same for Buddhism and Hinduism.
We also see how high of a regard they hold those cultures and their people in in things like the trivialization of Tibetan genocide and Lao Gai, the heavy reliance on South Asian cultures while making their two South Asian characters in the original series (the issues with LoK are outside of my scope bc I never got around to watching it but it’s got issues too) an Indian caricature and a hitman who is brutally killed. Or the blatant disrespect for the concept of the Third Eye and the show turning “third eye tattoos” into a symbol of senseless destruction rather than giving it the reverence and cultural context. There’s more and I know it, it’s just not coming to mind right now.
There’s the entirety of the Northern Air Temple episode, where the idea of “progress” is placed over preserving a culture and its artifacts. Yes, we are saddened by what has happened to the temple, but at the end, it’s Aang who “learns a lesson”, not the Mechanist.
You also see it in who is given depth and sympathy, and who is not. The show emphasizes nuance, but is quick to write off certain characters or concepts as “evil”. It is telling who is given sympathy and redemption, and who is not. Fire nation soldiers and citizens were given more sympathy and were shown to be good people, while Hama’s placed into a “sadistic old woman” role.
Actually fuck it, let’s talk about Hama. Hama to me, is one of the greatest examples of the way whiteness colors (or erases color from tbh) the narrative of Atla. Hama was an Indigenous elder who had been imprisoned by colonizers and managed to escape, then lived in enemy territory for decades to try and avoid capture again. She invented a new form of bending survive.
The show, which makes a huge point about emphasizing how “no bending is inherently evil” does a 180 and portrays bloodbending as if it is the most horrifying thing imaginable. Now do I think using people as meat puppets is great? No. But like any form of bending, the issue isn’t with the bending itself, but with what it’s being used for. (Sidenote, bloodbending would be so useful for healing.) If you use metalbending to make a big ole sword and skewer people, the issue is in the use, not the form.
Hama represents a colonizer’s boogeyman: like alien movies, where the horror and stakes are in the fear of aliens doing to colonizers what colonizers did to Indigenous peoples, Hama represents the fear of a victim of colonialism and imperialism who plays by similar rules to the colonizer, and has a score to settle.
And isn’t there such a tragedy in what happens at the end? Hama spent decades living in fear of being taken back to a Fire Nation prison and shutting herself off from her culture to stay safe, and when she finally is able to have a moment to reconnect with her culture and tries to teach Katara to survive the same way she has, she’s thrown back in prison.
Compare Iroh to Hama: Iroh objectively, has done way worse things than Hama. The dude is a war criminal, and a warlord. We see him revel in the concept of taking Ba Sing Se in a flashback. The show originally was going to have a scene that revealed that Iroh was the one who burned down Jet’s village.
But the show gives him nuance, and he’s a sympathetic character. He’s had a redemption arc before the show even begins (Which tbh I’m not a fan of Iroh’s implied redemption arc to begin with because the show…really puts him in a weird place timeline wise—when did he meet the dragons? They’re supposedly the ones who taught him to breathe fire but he “earned” that nickname while still serving as a general, so he met them while still actively aiding in imperialism. Are we supposed to assume that the dragons awarded a warmonger?—and never addresses that), and we root for him, despite the terrible things he’s done.
Hama isn’t given that. Yes, we sympathize with her backstory, but the show maintains she’s a bad person, and does not give her the opportunity to heal. Same with Jet: we see him begin to make amends, but his desire for redemption is cut short when he’s murdered.
Whiteness permeates the entire narrative. Yes, Asian people were brought in for things like the calligraphy and the martial arts to base the bending styles off of, but the show was created and written by white people. I don’t think any Inuit or Indigenous South Americans were even consulted.
So yeah anyways I’m tired so rant over but also choosing to ignore that a post is about racism in the atla fandom and focus instead on the brief criticism of white people is. wild.
