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likeabxrdinflight · 3 years ago

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What's you're take on how sexism influences how A:TLA's narrative frames characters? Particularly Azula, but also characters like Hama, Suki, Mai, and Ty Lee? Toph seems to be the one (living) assertive and driven female character who is neither reduced to an appendix to a boyfriend nor framed as evil, so how did she end up getting written in a less sexist way?

So to be clear I do not think, in the show itself, that Katara ever gets reduced to being just a love interest. That happens in the comics, but the actual show gives Katara her own narrative, her own conflicts, and her own drives, that are entirely independent of Aang. She ends up with him at the end of the show, and I don't love the way Kataang did (or didn't) develop, but she is far from portrayed as "Aang's girlfriend." She does fall into the "madonna" character trope sometimes, but I think occasionally fandom overblows that. Katara is so much more than the group mom, she has so much more nuance and complexity to her character than being the caretaking, feminine one. Katara is allowed a lot more than that. She's allowed to be feminine, but she's also a fighter. She's the best damn waterbender on the show, she's a leader in battle and to the Gaang. She can be both the caretaker and the warrior. She can be emotionally mature and still lash out when she's in pain. She gets her moments to be petty, to snap at people, to be angry, to be traumatized, to make mistakes, to grow and learn and shout and scream and grieve and cry and laugh and change. She is without a doubt one of the best characters in the entire show. I don't love what they did with her in the comics or in LOK, but in ATLA proper Katara is amazing. Since ATLA is the only thing most people see, let's not dismiss how she's portrayed there. Katara is important to an awful lot of little girls who watch this show. That she's one of the darkest skinned characters is also really significant. Katara mattered. Katara still matters.

In many ways, Toph is the less developed character.

Anyways- Katara rant aside, your actual question.

ATLA was written and developed predominantly by men. Sexism and patriarchal norms are an insidious thing baked into our world- it is impossible to fully disentangle them from any creative work, especially a work developed by men. I don't think Bryke are ever intentionally being sexist, to be clear. I think it comes across that they cared about trying to make their female characters strong-willed and well developed. I mean hell, we get two episodes addressing sexism. It's a solid effort on their part.

Unfortunately, those episodes address sexism as men see it. And for that reason, I think their take on it comes across a bit...shallow. Katara's big "fight the system" episode is decent, I love her fight with Pakku, but it's a bit shallow and lacks nuance. It basically boils sexism down to the issue of whether or not girls can fight or should "stay in the kitchen." It's not inherently terrible, but it is a bit shallow, especially in today's world. This issue of "girls can do everything a boy can do!!" has sort of been done to death, and that was true even in 2005 when this episode aired. There's also a lack of significant exploration into Water Tribe culture...they went with a pretty simplistic message about sexism, and threw arranged marriages in there too and called it a day. It is a show for kids, and I don't want to pretend this episode didn't mean something to those kids who watched it. Plus, simple messages are sometimes the best for a young audience- but I do think they could have been a little more nuanced here, because they did it with Suki's episode.

Suki's episode has a little more nuance to it, and I think it's because of which character is at the center of the story. There's a lot of great stuff in this episode about Sokka questioning his masculinity and challenging his assumptions about what women can and can't do- and challenging his assumptions about what men can and can't do. Because this episode centers Sokka's emotional experience, I actually think it works better because there's an honesty to it. This is men writing a man's perspective of challenging sexist assumptions- that has a real honesty to it, because it's probably something a lot of men go through. I think that comes across in this part of the story. But Suki is not at the center of this story- she was actually only going to feature in this episode, the writers brought her back because she was so popular.

Suki is never at the center of the story. Because she was originally designed to be the character that challenges Sokka's sexist attitudes, I think there's a sense that the writers didn't quite know what to do with her when they brought her back into the story- she doesn't really get character development so much as she serves as a plot device. She's a part of Sokka's story. She doesn't get her own.

Moving to the Fire Nation girls, Mai and Ty Lee are similar in that they don't really get character arcs like the main cast do. They're essentially accessories to other characters' stories- mainly Zuko and Azula. Mai exists to be Azula's friend and later Zuko's love interest. Ty Lee gets even less than that.

Now, there will be characters like this in every story. You cannot realistically give every single character the same level of depth and development. Some characters have to serve the stories of your main cast- that's how it goes. But you should try to make characters like Suki and Mai a little more than someone's girlfriend. Especially Mai- Zuko is such a central character. Arguably his love interest, if he needs to have one, should have been someone more well developed. This is one of the many reasons ships like Zukka, Zukkang, and Zutara dominate over Maiko.

Briefly I'll touch on Hama- it boils down to "old ladies bad." Society hates elderly women. Always has. These assumptions have rarely been challenged- turn on the TV for five minutes, how many anti-aging products do you see?

Azula, meanwhile, certainly has a lot of good development, better than Mai, Ty Lee, and Suki anyways. But she falls into the problem of being a villain. It's very hard to write a female villain without leaning into some sexist tropes. Azula hits a lot of issues about women with mental illness, the racist "dragon lady" trope, and coming across as a the show's alpha bitch. And this isn't a problem unique to Azula- like I said, I don't think I've seen a single female villain that doesn't hit on at least one problematic trope. It's very hard not to when constructing a villain requires making them, as a person, wrong. The narrative has to center a villain as being "bad" or "misguided" in some way. So it's not necessarily about always avoiding every single trope when creating a female villain. It's not about just never having female villains, never creating women who fuck up and get messy and are loud and angry and make really shit choices.

It is about being mindful of the tropes your character might embody, and working to portray them in as nuanced and loving a way as you construct your heroes. You need to care about your villains when you create them, because they need to be just as well-developed, nuanced, and understood by the audience as your heroes. A good villain doesn't just function as some big scary monster to fight at the end of the day. A villain needs to challenge the hero in some central way. To do that effectively, they need to be people, too.

I don't always think the ATLA writers did that with Azula- I think there was a lack of awareness of what exactly they were doing with her, because the focus was so much on setting her up as Zuko's foil. She ends up lacking her own narrative, because her main function is to be "the thing Zuko could become." But they didn't focus enough on giving her a point of view.

As a storytelling device, Azula is very effective. She's a good foil. Azula parallels Zuko, as she rises, he falls, and as he rises, she falls. She's a warning to the audience, a depiction of the way this kind of abusive, imperialist, toxic environment can take someone and ruin them. It works for the story.

But she ultimately lacks agency, because Zuko's real enemy is his father. So Azula's an extension of her father's goals. She's the perfect son (yes I said that intentionally) to Zuko's imperfect. She doesn't get to be her own character in the way Toph or Katara do. She doesn't have her own voice. And because she's a female character...it hits different. If she'd been a male character, all else being equal, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But she's not. So we are.

#long post for ts

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araeph · 6 years ago

Conversation

Conversation with prune-balled-blog

{NOTE: This is unedited, so please excuse spelling and grammar errors. With one exception--colons, which automatically bold anything in chat, have been replaced with [colon] where necessary to preserve the original formatting. Also, this is NOT an invitation to harass prune-balled-blog. Please do not @ him about this.}

prune-balled-blog: Sorry for the confusion. Should asked this. Do you know WHO talked with Aaron Ehasz?

Should have*

araeph: There are various tumblr and message board users who claimed to have talked to him. Some on the Kataang side[colon] http[colon]//araeph.tumblr.com/post/152660740000/web-archive

Some on the Zutara side[colon] http[colon]//araeph.tumblr.com/post/159119946362/kataraandzuko-terminaschosenone

But I don't know any of them by name.

prune-balled-blog: Thanks for the reply.

araeph: You're welcome. [smiley]

prune-balled-blog: It's all fake by the way. Aaron confirmed it on an Reddit AMA. The whole "Season 4/I had a different vision" thing was debunked.

Also, this for good measure.

[two screenshots inserted of reddit AMA]

araeph: Yes, I saw that post. However, what he said was the studio asked him to think up ideas for Season 4 and that he discussed them with Mike. So he did come up with ideas for it, even if they never went into production.

I also would call The Legend of Korra daring and beautiful. I just don't think it was any _good_.

prune-balled-blog: But those ideas were never outspoken.

It's all smoke and mirrors.

araeph: You mean, he never spoke to anyone else about Book 4? We don't know anything about who he did or didn't talk do between the period when Nick asked him to think up suggestions and the time when Bryke shut it down.

Of course, neither do we know that he said any of the things he allegedly said in those tumblr posts. [smiley]

prune-balled-blog: It's very easy to infer that he said absolutely nothing to anyone about anything.

He certainly would have gotten into more detail, but he didn't.

araeph: It's certainly possible. But nothing is certain.

prune-balled-blog: I mean, i would say the chances of Unicorns existing are pretty low.

araeph: How do you know he would "certainly" have gone into more detail?

prune-balled-blog: Because he seems to know of "Fake interviews", and i'm sure he would been able to go into further detail explaining that he didn't discuss any details of a possible Season 4 with some random. My point, is that had those claims been true, he would feel the need to address them further to clear further confusion. But his post implies the entire shebang was a ruse.

prune-balled-blog: There's no need to speculate any further. It was all a big hoax made by Zutara shippers putting Aaron on a pedestal to expand on their agenda. And people who didn't like Korra.

araeph: I think the opposite is true. If he'd said, "I never discussed it with anyone but Mike, and all the interviews from fans are fake," that would have been easy. He said there were some fake interviews out there, and that he did discuss it with Mike, and that's all we know.

Since it was suggested at the studio level, no it was not a hoax, and no one ever put Ehasz on a pedestal.

prune-balled-blog: I'm going to have to disagree with you there.

prune-balled-blog: And oh, yes they certainly do.

araeph: That's fine if you disagree.

prune-balled-blog: Look everywhere. People praise Ehasz as the sole reason why Avatar was good only because he was head writer.

prune-balled-blog: This whole thing reeked of angry fans methodically building a boogeyman because they were unhappy with how things went for their favorite show.

araeph: Actually, it's more of a process of elimination.

Before I saw Legend of Korra, I too thought Bryke were the be-all-end-all of Avatar.

Then LOK's writing let me down, and I started realizing there were people with power to influencing the writing of ATLA.

prune-balled-blog: You don't have to go through the motions. I know exactly your point of view.

araeph: Maybe it was Tim Hedrick or Joshua Hamilton? But they went on to make Voltron, and while that show was good for a while, it's headed off the rails now.

prune-balled-blog: Yeah but were we REALLY shocked when things didn't turn out perfect? Any show would have a stark difference in quality had an army of writers left a project.

araeph: Yes, it would.

prune-balled-blog: Assuming Korra would be just as good as Avatar, due to some naive 'understanding' that Bryke is the "end-all-be-all" is just silly.

araeph: Since almost everyone outside the fandom knows Bryke as /the/ creators of the show, and since they were the executive producers, it actually makes sense.

It just happened to be wrong.

prune-balled-blog: All you had to do was look at who was in charge, and marginalize your expectations accordingly.

prune-balled-blog: Actually, not entirely. It's dumb to assume two guys from Rhode Island (?) who had no prior experience running a show or writing a script, that they would churn out gold a second time without the 15 or so extra writers on board.

Not to mention a missing Head Writer.

What this fandom did to Bryke was shameful.

They kicked them in the dirt and spat on them for making something they wanted.

Aaron was a talented guy, and likely a massive contributor to what made Avatar a great piece.

prune-balled-blog: But what people did to demonize these poor guys was a complete and utter disgrace.

araeph: If you think fans (most of whom have no experience in television) should have known better than the studio heads who banked on EXACTLY the churning out gold a second time premise that we did, I don't know what to tell you.

araeph: Bryke aren't poor, and they're not victims.

prune-balled-blog: Would you forgive a thief for committing a crime because he didn't know stealing was wrong? This should be pretty obvious, no?

They certainly aren't villains.

araeph: Hahaha, so people who are ignorant of the details of television production are comparable to thieves?

prune-balled-blog: And if you think so, you're delusional.

araeph: Let me make this simple. Bryke accepted the credit for being the overall creators of the show.

prune-balled-blog: It was a hyperbolic example. Should have been obvious.

araeph: They got the accolades, so they get all the criticism for not living up to expectations.

araeph: Thievery is not an exaggeration of not delving into production details from a medium you're not an expert in.

prune-balled-blog: That's bizarrely unfair.

araeph: It's called "with great power comes great responsibility".

prune-balled-blog: I know. I saw Spider-Man.

And honestly, the people who spread this bull online should have listened to Uncle Ben.

araeph: How much power do a bunch of online fans really have, compared to successful showrunners who can snap their fingers and get a press release into the news?

prune-balled-blog: A lot, actually. For example, when Microsoft announced the Xbox One, they had a slew of controversial shit under their belt. After 2 days of nonstop harassment from fans, they reneged on that deal. And boom. Huuuuge change.

The internet is a powerful tool.

prune-balled-blog: Granted, that was a good change. Considering Microsoft went out of their way to enslave gamers wallets and playful freedom.

araeph: True. But for every example like that, Microsoft as a thousand other unpopular practices that they continue with no matter how many people complain.

araeph: I don't know of Bryke ever admitting to changing something about the way they took care of business, just because people complained.

prune-balled-blog: I would happen to agree with that. But the bottom line is that the internet is a tool.

prune-balled-blog: My main point is this. Pleading ignorance to how a show is made is not a serviceable answer for what fans have said/lied about with Bryke. That's all.

araeph: I disagree. When a show is marketed by creators like Bryke as a true successor to their previous work, and they make NO attempt to tamp down expectations themselves, they can't blame people who are not industry professionals for believing the hype that THEY and the studio they worked with spread far and wide.

araeph: And if your argument is, "Well you should have known better than to believe what they said," then you can't also make the argument of "poor Bryke" if the latter were intentionally misleading and exaggerating.

prune-balled-blog: What they said? No, i said you should have been able to infer you miiiight just be getting something a taaad bit different if you only saw they were returning, and no one else.

araeph: But this is exactly the problem. You're blaming fans for not reading between the lines, and not Bryke, who put out those very lines, despite the latter having vastly more power and experience at their disposal.

araeph: They, as showrunners, had a greater responsibility to inform fans of what LOK would really be like than the fans had to research and acquaint themselves with the intricacies of making television.

prune-balled-blog: Let me ask you something. Is it probably a fair/good idea to create a fake hoax that basically claimed Ehasz had been at odds with Bryke the entire production, claimed a Season 4 was supposed to be made, and that he had different plans for Korra had be been involved?

Bryke said Korra was going to be a sequel in the future, with a new Avatar. They were also the only confirmed writers. You can infer A LOT from that.

araeph: If any (or all of those interviews) are hoaxes, they should be condemned and the people who made them up should be criticized for it. I personally still believe there was some tension, but stating my opinion, even if it's based on speculation, isn't dishonest unless I pass it off as fact.

prune-balled-blog: That's fair enough.

araeph: As for what they said about Korra ...

http[colon]//comicsalliance.com/the-legend-of-korra-michael-dante-dimartino-bryan-konietzko-interview/

:I really love when Korra arrives in Republic City and sees Aang's statue for the first time. There's a moment where she's almost in a trance. She's in awe of Aang and also wants to become as great an Avatar as he was. The Legend of Korra is a little like that for us. We know we have a big legacy to live up to, but hopefully this series will be even better than the original."

#anti-bryke #lok criticism #debate #long post

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