The Politics of Avatar, Part II

My previous post dealt with the politics within the world of the Avatar series, examining the development of the Avatar Empire. Or, more correctly, I provided an alternative interpretation to that implicitly offered by the show itself. To the writers’ credit, the series is amenable to multiple interpretations, not all of which concur with its self-presentation.

Today I want to explore a few instances from the series, one from TLA and two from LOK, to demonstrate in detail how both the intended, favorable interpretation and a much more critical one both match the source material. The first case is Aang’s decision not to kill Fire Lord Ozai at the conclusion of TLA, and the other two are Korra’s triumph over Unalaq and Vaatu and her decision to keep open the two spirit portals, both in the finale of season 2 of LOK.

First, Aang. As Aang’s ultimate confrontation with Fire Lord Ozai grew closer, Aang became more and more distressed over the prospect of having to kill the Fire Lord. The monks of the Air Nation had taught Aang that all life is sacred, and as a corollary that one should never kill, a precept Aang had taken to heart. But so long as the Fire Lord lived, he posed a threat to the world, and as the Avatar, Aang had a responsibility to eliminate that threat. Aang struggled desperately to reconcile these two duties. Consulting his past lives, Avatar Roku advised Aang to act decisively to end the Fire Lord’s reign, Avatar Kyoshi to administer justice, Avatar Kuruk to actively shape the world, and Avatar Yangchen to be prepared to do whatever might be necessary to protect the world. None of the previous Avatars told Aang point blank that he had to kill, and so when he found another way to preserve balance, by taking away the Fire Lord’s firebending, he managed to combine both his own convictions and the wisdom of his forebears.

At least, so the show would have us believe. Another way of looking at this incident is that Aang’s refusal to kill was an act of moral cowardice. Aang was not opposed to killing on principle but rather was constitutionally incapable to taking a life. Like the child that he was, he ran away from his responsibility as Avatar and, even worse, covered up his failure by dressing it in the guise of morality.

First, let’s look at Aang’s predecessor Avatar Roku. Roku likewise found himself in conflict with a Fire Lord, his old friend Sozin, and also like Aang, Roku did not kill Sozin. But unlike Aang, Roku was completely prepared to kill Sozin and chose not to as an act of mercy. Roku later advised Aang to be prepared to kill his grandson Zuko, if that was what it took to preserve balance. Roku did not run around killing people willy-nilly–on the contrary, he was remarkably restrained and showed leniency even to those who deserved death. But when Roku did not kill it was by choice. Mercy requires the willingness to inflict punishment first and then the decision to forego it; Roku was capable of mercy.

But what about the Air Nomads? Aang’s conviction of pacifism stemmed from his upbringing among the monks of the Air Temples and their teachings on the sacredness of life. However, the Air Nomads were not as absolutely opposed to killing as Aang imagined. When we first see the body of Aang’s mentor, Monk Gyatso, we see it surrounded by corpses of Fire Nation soldiers. When faced with the annihilation of his people, the old monk was perfectly capable of taking dozens of enemies with him. Aang’s understanding of Air Nomad philosophy was that of a young boy who ran away and consequently never learned the exceptions to the rules he had been taught as a child.

Aang was not simply disinclined to kill Ozai, he was incapable of doing so. The very thought horrified him, and he even proclaimed that he would watch the whole world burn rather than take Ozai’s life. Just as he had done a hundred years earlier, Aang was running away from his responsibility. Aang could not show Ozai mercy because he could not bear to inflict punishment in the first place, but he lazily allowed himself to believe otherwise. Aang believed that mercy was simply not killing, and so elevated his moral cowardice to the level of virtue merely to satisfy his own conscience.

Now on to Korra. The first incident is not a decision Korra makes but rather concerns the symbolism of her victory of Unalaq and Vaatu. The show wants us to believe that this is simply a matter of order defeating and driving out chaos, but as soon as we consider the genders of all the parties, we see the event also as the victory of the feminine over the masculine: Korra (female) along with Jinora (female) defeats Unalaq (male) and Vaatu (male). The symbolism is pretty obvious; the question is what exactly it means and whether or not it bodes well for the future of the world.

Let us go back to before Korra all the way to the time of Wan, the first Avatar. Wan intervened in the struggle between Raava, feminine spirit of light and order, and Vaatu, masculine spirit of darkness and chaos, initially being tricked into aiding Vaatu but quickly recognizing his error and supporting Raava. By uniting his spirit with Raava, thereby becoming the first Avatar, Wan was able to defeat and imprison Vaatu for ten thousand years. The era of the Avatar was thus born out of the combining of masculine and feminine natures and the subjugation, not of masculinity itself, but of its destructive side.

What the show suggests is that Avatar Wan’s victory was incomplete. The masculine principle survived and reared its ugly head again, this time destroying Raava and threatening to plunge the world into chaos. Only the pure feminine spirits of Korra and Jinora could defeat this force once and for all.

On the other hand, Avatar Wan’s solution to the problem of Vaatu was completely adequate. Had Korra not released him, he would have remained imprisoned conceivably until the end of time. In the end, Vaatu was vanquished not in an overwhelming triumph but in a last-ditch offensive; Korra won only by the skin of her teeth. And she did not even end the threat permanently. Neither Raava nor Vaatu can truly be destroyed, and so Vaatu will reemerge perhaps in as little as a generation. For ten thousand years Avatar Wan had assured the ascendancy of order; Korra allowed the conflict to continue all over again.  The purely femininity is thus proved to be inferior to a proper melding of the masculine and feminine with the masculine being active and decisive and the feminine providing support as needed.

Finally, the second Korra’s decision to leave the spirit portals open. As the show would have it, Korra saw the wisdom of Unalaq’s desire to bring spirits and humans together. The precise benefits of this decision are not very well-described, but it is heavily implied that it was somehow related to the reemergence of airbending.

Though the show portray’s Korra’s actions in a positive light, it is not hard to take an alternative point of view. Avatar Wan knew what he was doing when he separated humans and spirits. He had personally seen his friends slaughtered by angry spirits and witnessed many other dangers spirits posed to humans, as well as how easily conflict between the two could escalate into violence. He knew that having spirits and humans in close proximity was a recipe for conflict and disaster for the humans. Avatar Wan’s decision to keep the spirits in the spirit world and humans in the human world allowed humans to flourish for ten thousand years.

However, Avatar Wan had something that Korra absolutely did not: a close personal connection with the spirits. When Wan announced that he would serve as the bridge between the two worlds, his claim was credible to both sides. Korra, on the other hand, was nearly hopeless in this regard. Though she had learned something of the spirits from Unalaq, that was mostly theory: as far as actually mediating between spirits and humans, Korra possessed no experience and little inclination to learn more. Korra always preferred fighting to talking or deep thinking. As a consequence, when offered the chance to abdicate her responsibility as Avatar, like Aang before her, she took it.

The mature course would have been for Korra to restore the barriers Avatar Wan had created and call upon her friends like Jinora or Bumi who had closer connections with the spirits to assist her in her duties. That, however, would have been far too responsible a decision for an 18 year old girl.

These incidents in the shows are some of the clearest examples of the writers intending one meaning but also giving room for a diametrically opposed interpretation. The Avatar series is supposed to be an allegory for the rise of Leftism, but the creators were apparently honest enough to also show the flaws and failures of this movement. LOK bears this out especially: the show relied entirely on gimmicks–new villains, new forms of bending, new technology–to maintain interest because the protagonists and the story as a whole were so unbearably dull, just like real-world Leftism.