Just When I Thought I Was Out... (2/25)

 I wrote about Book 1 of Korra. May I find the peace in the next life that evaded me so often in this one.

        Lord forgive me, it’s time to go back to the old me.

My name is Sean Cheney. I am twenty seven years old, and I like Legend of Korra more than Avatar: The Last Airbender.

It is not a better show. I do not think it is a better show. I will never argue with you that it is. But it is a show that, warts and flaws and all, I love with my whole heart and soul.

I first watched Legend of Korra in eighth grade, when the first season premiered. It was the only season I watched (As later seasons releases became very difficult to keep up with because Nickelodeon hated Korra and by extension, me personally). I thought it was the coolest thing ever made, and I was correct then and am correct now. From the first moment Korra arrived in Republic City, bounding through streets and thoroughfares while a jazz score wailed in the background, I was hooked. I loved how modern everything was. And despite what others will tell you, that makes perfect sense. If roughly twenty percent of the population had magical powers that could make easy work out of the largest technological concerns of the industrial revolution, the industrial revolution would happen quicker.

The Fire Nation had tanks, ironclad warships, and airships the size of football stadiums. After eighty years of peace, collaboration, and stewardship by Aang, is it unreasonable to expect that maybe technology would advance quickly? There is a gap of sixty-six years between the Wright Brothers taking off at Kitty Hawk and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Lunar surface. Seems like if people had magic, technology would move pretty quickly if people had magic that made construction and power generation arbitrary, but that’s just me!

Book 1: Air

The first season is centered on Korra fighting Amon, the baddest dude in the universe. He’s a hardline fundamentalist who talks the talk and walks the walk. He’s got a great voice, awesome mask, and has a legion of cool dudes with awesome uniforms. His thesis is simple, and correct, that the world’s greatest conflicts are caused by benders who exert undue force over non-benders. The ruling Council of Republic City is entirely made up of Benders! The man has been charged by the spirits themselves to rid the world of bending, a power that he sees as repulsive and unfair.

And he’s got people on his side for it. Hundreds of people who feel disenfranchised by a political system that has, evidentially, not empowered them, join the Equalist cause. And guess what? This man engages in praxis. He uses his powers to take bending away from the people he labels as the oppressor. He is scary, cunning, and quick. He’s a step ahead and is absolutely lethal. To quote the man, he is the solution.

Amon is the subject of much debate for multiple reasons. For one thing, people get mad at him because he’s a villain that has a good idea but goes too far, and is thus anti-left propaganda (Keep that in mind, it will come up often!). He’s a person looking for equality and does it through violent and brutal revolution, forcibly stripping innocents of key components of their personhood and identity. He’s a monstrous person whose solution to the problem is incorrect. That’s what makes him a villain! That’s why he’s the antagonist. Because he does bad things. If he did good things, he would be the main character.

If he were an idealist who attempted to resolve structural issues through the democratic process and lively debate in the marketplace of ideas, you would watch the most boring show you’ve ever seen. This is a cartoon for kids about people using magical martial arts to fight. Sorry they wrote the villain to have compelling and flawed plans! He’s one of the most interesting villains in the ATLA franchise (Behind only two of the other LoK villains, my apologies to Unalaq), who challenges the status quo and puts our protagonist, and the viewer, off kilter and forces them to confront the underlying assumptions about the world.

Avatar is all about balance. Preserving balance. Creating balance. What does that look like though? In ATLA it was simple, stop the genocidal maniac attempting to burn the world to a crisp. That’s balance. That’s peace. But what do we seek afterwards? What does balance look like for everyone? Does “balance” equate to justice? These are the questions that Korra is faced with every. Single. Season. The upending of assumed understandings of the world, and the confrontation of the violent solutions people seek to right those. It does not does that perfectly, lord knows it doesn’t do it well sometimes, but it’s these fundamental questions that draw me back to Korra in a way that I’m not with ATLA. It is a show I can chew on.

Let’s go back to Amon. Let’s discuss the other thing people assert is a flaw in Amon is that (SPOILERS) he is a bender! A twist! A great twist! Love this twist. Chi blocking from the inside???? Are you joking???? Have you ever heard anything so rad? I loved this twist. I love the reveal. The villain is still non-benders, it’s still the Eqaulists, a political and philosophical movement that is entirely new from anything we’ve seen in ATLA. But we now have a waterbending main villain! And a waterbending main villain who is totally committed to The Cause. Every revolution should be so lucky to have an ally like Amon, someone who uses his structural and institutional power to aid the oppressed underclass achieve liberation. At no point is anything other than total commitment to the Equalist philosophy presented.

He understands that his position as a bender is a hypocritical one, one that must be concealed in order to keep the Equalist movement alive. He engages in praxis, he puts in the work.

And for some reason, despite absolutely no textual evidence to support this, every time Amon is mentioned I need to hear someone say “Ummm Amon isn’t a good villain. He only wanted to get rid of benders so he would be the only one left! It’s propaganda to show that revolutions are bad!”

First point; what the hell are you talking about. Show me the evidence. Show me the receips. Absolutely not the case.

Second point; Is the show “propaganda” or are you projecting your own propagandization onto the show? Is your leap (which I must repeat, comes without any support in the show) that a member of the privileged class can never join, support, or engage in revolutionary action perhaps based on your own flawed understanding of leftist and revolutionary movements? Is it the show’s fault your imagination of a better world is so limited you can’t grok that the bender is using his bending to help non-benders? You’ve bought into the same propaganda that people have levied against socialist and communist movements for a century. The call is coming from inside the house!

I’ve seen a lot of social media posts asking why Sokka wasn’t in LoK. Why he didn’t stand and deliver the most reddit speech about how Amon is wrong and non-benders aren’t oppressed, and then everyone claps. Oppa Sokka Style. I think that’s very dumb, and is another of the frequent attempts of people to “improve” Korra by giving all the stuff to do to the characters in the previous franchise. We in the industry (My rotten brainpan) call that “Star Wars Sequel syndrome”.

All this is to say, Amon is exposed as a bender, and he kills his most loyal lieutenant to keep this secret. This is again, not because of some megalomaniacal scheme for power, but practical understanding that the revolution does not work if there’s a bender at its head. The moment The Lieutenant learns the truth, he tries to take Amon out. Amon is eventually exposed to everyone as a waterbender, though his defeat still has some merit; he’s taken away Korra’s bending leaving her with nothing but air (A great denouement for the season! She spends all season struggling to learn it and then she does!)

Exposed and with the revolution all but over, Amon escapes with his brother Tarlok. Tarlok was one of the Republic City Councilors, a water bender who Amon had stripped of abilities. The two had been caught in an abusive relationship with their father, who attempted to hone the boys into weapons. They were not humans, they were a power to be used to seek revenge on the Avatar. Amon’s philosophy of what bending was, a weapon, was informed entirely by his father’s abuse. And he ran from it, never learning otherwise. He was a traumatized kid trying to right a perceived wrong, unable to disentangle himself from what his father had taught him about bending’s purpose.

So he grabs Tarlok, his brother, his only friend and confidant during his abusive childhood, and leaves. Tarlok has been stripped of his bending, and he cannot get it back. His life, all that he had built, taken by his brother’s crusade. And he sits in the back of the boat, wind in his hair and hot sea spray dashing against the speedboat, as his brother talks about the future. A future where they could be together, like old times, forever. Amon is called his birth name, Noatak, for the first time in decades. They never needed to be apart again. And Tarlok, hearing all this, seeing the future he has, unscrews the fuel cap on the boat, sliding an electrical glove on his hand. “It will be just like the old days,” he sighs. A single tear wells in Amon’s eyes. He knows what’s coming. He knows his crusade has one terminus.

A flash.

A cloud of smoke and flames on the water.

I watched that scene in stunned silence. It floored me. I had never, ever, seen a murder/suicide play out in a cartoon. I decreed that it was my favorite animated show in that moment. I’ve been right ever since.