#and then dunno waterbenders both hero and villain learn and grow and rebuild the Tribe

[beyond-far-horizons]

Katara’s potential in LOK and importance of older female role-models in life and fiction

This was not meant to turn into a meta and yet has done! Just a disclaimer I’m still working my way through The Legend of Korra but have mostly been spoiled by reading some great analysis on here. So this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive take and also isn’t meant to disrespect the people who like Legend of Korra or this particular aspect of it. It’s just a subject very close to my heart and my work as a creative practitioner, student of psychology and media analyst, so I really wanted to discuss it. 

Contains some spoilers esp for Season 1.

So I’m biting the bullet and getting into LoK despite reservations. I overall really loved��Avatar the Last Airbender and Katara is one of my favourite characters. I admit one of my biggest issues with starting LoK was hearing how her character and agency were drastically reduced compared to the original series.

Now I know LoK gets a lot of flak for a variety of reasons and it was always going to be hard following such a beloved series as A:TLA and trying to do something different. However I’m actually enjoying certain aspects including Korra herself, despite the fact she can be bratty and immature at times (which squares with her age and upbringing). I also find the premise of the Equalists and especially their mysterious, terrifying leader Amon really interesting and I just wish the creators had done more with that plot line. (I forever seem to be going on about missed potential in the stories I consume!)

However the more I continue the more I’m annoyed because I realised we were robbed of Badass Grandma!Katara and also more matrilineal mentoring/bonding between her and Korra. 

Spoilers but I wanted to see Katara go toe to toe with the villains esp give her being intimately connected to their history. I wanted to see her deal with the shadows of the past, the history of trauma associated with bloodbending and the Fire Nation and also the very intriguing points Season 1 was trying to make about the role of bender vs non-bender and the Avatar themselves. All things Katara was deeply involved with as someone who experienced inequality firsthand, fought relentlessly to abolish it and was the previous Avatar’s finder, teacher and later his wife. 

Katara being Aang’s first mentor and implied to be Korra’s waterbendering tutor adds yet another dimension and potential to explore. That whole relationship must be strange for everyone involved but I’m always a sucker for female bonds, found family and intergenerational friendships.

I know LoK is about the new cast taking over - Tenzin fills the role of Korra’s mentor figure onscreen and is loved by many. There are lots of ways to tell a story and the creators focused on Korra’s issues with airbending to contrast her personality and development with Aang’s, as well as to flesh out Aang’s family and the rebuilding of the Air Nomads. 

Yet I miss the potential of seeing wise fierce mentor!Katara on screen. We fans love callbacks, so seeing Katara in action as she used to be would be a joy, and older more powerful characters need not overshadow younger ones. For example Uncle Iroh was beloved and integral in A:TLA despite the fact we saw very little of his backstory. He didn’t take over Zuko’s journey, he aided and complemented it. Plus Toph gets her chance to shine.

There was so much to play with, especially in Season 1 (and would have been a nice reference to Aang meeting Katara first and then Zuko and Toph later). So much contrast between Katara’s experience with Hama, her thoughts about her mother, Gran Gran and the reintroduction of South Water Style. The trauma of bad parental/mentor relationships vs the good examples one can use to alchemise negative patterns that A:TLA was known for (see Iroh, Zuko and Ozai for reference). I don’t want to get too far into spoiler territory but all of this links back to Katara, Hama and Water Tribe and I would have loved to see a further exploration of that and a contrast between her loving bond and fear for Korra vs the villains’ and their education. This would have created more depth between Korra and Amon and co (and wow do I wish that dynamic was explored further - does she even know what happens to him??), and between Katara and Korra and their respective journeys to shoulder their burdens and mature as people and women.

Just think about all those juicy, angsty callbacks we could have done to Hama’s haunting episode! How Katara could have decided to be a better mentor than Hama was to her. (Katara was always a good mentor but if there was any issues in her relationship with Korra re Aang etc this could have been a good place for dramatic tension and resolution.) Of course for all we know this did happen but we don’t see it because we don’t get to see Katara’s training with Korra or much of Katara at all in LoK apart from her failing to heal Korra.

Plus I adore badass ladies and badass grandmas, I have loads in my original fiction. I love people defying stereotypes and sadly there is still a lack of stories not only depicting a range of female role-models but female mentoring and matrilineal bonding.

Read the incredible bestseller Women Who Run with the Wolves by Jungian analyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés if you want to learn more about the power of storytelling, myth and female hero journeys and initiation. A key part of that book is how women have been historically and psychologically undervalued and harmed by the prevailing culture for centuries. Also how it has broken matrilineal lines of wisdom and support and distorted cultural values of how girls and women (not to mention boys and men) view the Feminine. This leaks down into our modern day stories via inherited psychological conditioning and unexamined tropes. 

For example - how many ‘wise old men’ figures can you think of in pop culture, myth, fairytale, religion? Quite a few I’d imagine. Now contrast that with the ‘wise old woman’ archetype...I guessing not as many. I’m sure you’ll find a few but I bet more often the words that come to mind are ‘witch’, ‘sorceress’, ‘crone’ etc. 

The Fairy Godmother (I gave you that one for free;) ) is an exception but she is a watered down version of the powerful, ambivalent figures of folklore such as Baba Yaga. Trust me if the Yaga was your mentor, as she was to Vasalisa in the fairytale Vasalisa the Wise/the Beautiful, you ain’t coming out of that encounter with a crystal slipper, you’re coming out it with a burning skull that incinerates your enemies and I’d like to see that tale popularised!

As mentioned Katara did feature in Korra’s life as a support, a vague mentor figure and a healer - in fact she is the one that initiates Korra’s heroine journey by supporting her decision to leave the stifling confines of her compound, go to Republic City alone and learn airbending. She also offers emotional and medical support during Korra’s traumatic recovery later on in the series. But mostly Katara’s involvement is at the peripheries of The Legend of Korra except when she was failing to heal her.

This isn’t to say that comfort and softness in female relationships are lesser than battle prowess or mental fortitude. Or that failure always bad, it is human and can be a powerful narrative tool for character development. I’m not interested in the infallible ‘Strong Female Character’ stereotype and neither is Estés. Her book illustrates that the Feminine encapsulates all of these qualities and many more and looking at the original Katara she was a perfect example of that. She was empathetic, intelligent, powerful, fierce, devoted, flawed, playful, angry.

I guess what I’m saying is that I miss that Katara and I miss the opportunity of  seeing Korra interact with and learn from that Katara, especially as they have so much in common in terms of shared history, powers, culture and even looks. I’m also missing the opportunity of seeing that Katara battle Amon and all the drama and backstory that could have ensued from those encounters! After all Katara took on her mother’s killer, Hama and the Fire Nation (including one angsty honour-obsessed Fire Prince and his powerful sister), you’re telling me she would have just let Korra, her family and friends be in grave danger in the name of ‘leaving it to the kids’ ESPECIALLY since her own history turned out to be so deeply connected to all of this? Nah...

It’s important for girls* to see a range of wholesome female characters and dynamics play out in their media from an early age, especially to rework and combat the historic negative tropes that our culture is still steeped in. It’s also important to address the devaluing of the elderly, in particular elderly women. The Legend of Korra does in fact build on this from Avatar the Last Airbender by having an even greater range of capable women and girls across ages and morality spectrum. Korra herself (who I’m liking a lot more than I thought I would), is a real stereotype breaker. Toph I’ve heard fulfils the ‘wise old (crotchy) woman’ archetype later in the series. I just wish, given how much I adore A:TLA’s Katara, that we could have seen her shine in an elder role too. 

(*I use terms like ‘girls’, ‘woman/women’ and ‘feminine’. I mean these to also include a broad interpretation of the Feminine than just the hetero/cis-normative one, but sometimes it helps when critiquing something to narrow things down esp something so already psychologically complex in a simple meta.)