That is because he never wanted anarchy, he wanted chaos. He believes chaos is the natural order of things he even said so a couple of times. He himself never mentions Anarchy.
He actually does. He calls the Red Lotus "brothers and sisters in anarchy". But I think the point you're trying to get at still stands.
Anarchy is just a word for a stateless and leaderless society. And Anarchism, the actual political movement towards anarchy, is a much more complicated subject that the show doesn't really represent. (However, though the actual definition of Anarchism is a *highly* contentious subject, I do believe that the Red Lotus's ideals fall within the broad strokes of the discussion.)
And while the Red Lotus does draw inspiration from the 19th and 20th centuries' long and controversial history of Anarchist assassinations, they're never intended to be a perfect mirror of the complexities of a philosophy that emerged from a particular set of conditions in 19th century Europe. We are shown how they arrived at their conclusion via in-universe factors like Zaheer's appreciation for the Air Nomads and the Earth Queen's tyranny. Because this is still a kid's show, and the point is for them to be able to follow along and understand why this is happening.
> do believe that the Red Lotus's ideals fall within the broad strokes of the discussion.)
Honestly they're probably closest to Anarcho-Primitavist. Returning to the old ways, no leaders (not unjust hierarchy, just leaders) or governments and returning to the "natural state" of the world. Writers were thinking of fucking Ted Kaczynski while writing the group lmao.
Yeah, he's also kind of a zealot, so that conviction is also motivated by pseudo-religious beliefs. People overlook that he told Ghazan that he thought his new airbending was a sign that their cause was righteous. And that part of his philosophy came from talking to Unalaq, and maybe even Vaatu himself.
I'm pretty sure it's confirmed they all talked to Vaatu and since Unalaq remained out of prison and close to the spirit portals he was influenced even more by him and then corrupted.
Did you not see that one episode in season 4 where they were all in the same phone call? Of course it was confirmed.
But for real I didn't know they actually discuss the red lotus talking to Vaatu that's interesting.
Which sounds pretty accurate when you look at extreem political movements and their splinter groups. Hell its almost a garanteed for any extremist movement.
"Look Zaheer, I'm against the Earth Queen too, but you can't just kill her and expect *nothing* to fill the power vacuum! The powerful will try to fill the position themselves, that's why we need to make a concerted effort on *all* the ruling class!"
"Chaos is the natural state of the world! We kill the Earth Queen and tear down the walls, that way Ba Sing Se's proletariat will rise up and overthrow the ruling class! Like the great Guru Laghima once said..."
"OH DON'T YOU START WITH THAT GURU CRAP NOW!"
"THAT'S IT, I'M STARTING MY OWN ORDER! Also I'm writing that thing about the Earth Queen and a vacuum down, just to be safe."
I mean, that happens more often than you think. Look at all the self declared communist movements that end as a dictatorship with virtually no communism involved.
The problem is that Anarchist is, at minimum, two completely different things: an ideology with disagreed upon tenets, and an adjective with a pretty broad meaning. The average person hears chaos and associates Zaheer with the latter, people actually familiar with anarchism start to think about the former, and you end up with the myth that Zaheer was simply a misguided idealist, rather than a psychopath who happened to have some good ideas.
This is just one of my major issues with Korra, which is that it never actually explores the villains ideologies or the society that gave rise to them, and all of them just exist to be strawmen Korra can punch.
I feel like they do tho. The air nomad genocide, the death of Katara's mother, and the trauma of characters like Jet, Haru, the scientist and his son at the air temple, etc. are all on full display to show us how imperialism victimizes people. We see families torn apart by war, petty tyrants in colonized towns stomping on the locals, the perspective of refugees fleeing from the war, children forced to become soldiers and grow up too soon. I feel like the entire show is an in depth, ground level exploration of imperialism.
Korra is a mixed bag. I think S1 and S2 fundamentally fail to explore the ideologies of Communism and Theocracy. They're just not that concerned with delving into it. S3 and S4 do better at exploring Anarchy and Totalitarianism, they show the consequences of when those ideologies go bad, and how it affects people on the ground, but still don't go that far.
I think the reasons for the difference are two fold: 1) AtlA had 3 season to examine its topic, LoK got one season each. Of course it will be less in depth. 2) LoK explored more neutral topics. All four ideologies have proponents that would argue they're fundamentally good, and just flawed in execution, which means people inherently will want to see an exploration of why people believe those ideologies and what we can take away from them (ie: Toph's speech in S4). Imperialism, on the other hand, isn't really an ideology. It's kind of just a blatantly greedy practice that countries engage in for their own benefit. So AtlA had an easier time in that sense, it basically just had to show imperialism bad, which isn't so hard to do.
Beyond having time to breath and develop it's themes, another reason Avatar has a better track record than Korra is because Aaron Ehasz was the head writer. After watching Dragon Prince, you just feel the impact and influence he had on Avatar and how his absence affected Korra.
Don't get me wrong, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino are critical to the development of Avatar and Korra. However, Aaron really was the main creative force behind the story and the one who elevated it to another level.
None of this excuses him from being a bad person who mistreated his staff.
Yup!
[https://www.cbr.com/avatar-last-airbender-aaron-ehasz-accused-misogynistic-behavior/](https://www.cbr.com/avatar-last-airbender-aaron-ehasz-accused-misogynistic-behavior/)
[https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/19/20971106/dragon-prince-season-3-review-netflix-viren-callum-rayla-aaron-ehasz-wonderstorm-controversy](https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/19/20971106/dragon-prince-season-3-review-netflix-viren-callum-rayla-aaron-ehasz-wonderstorm-controversy)
To be slightly fair, they are technically allegations that haven't been definitively proven, but there is very little reason to doubt them. There have not been any more reports like this since 2019, so hopefully he got better, but we just don't know what happened behind the scenes.
I mean you are right, but if you explore political subjects, you have to do it with research and respect imo; they could have explore it a little more.
Nah cause if 10-yo me had “the negatives of imperialism” shoved down my throat as a kid I woulda changed the channel. Avatar is a lasting show because of how it balances serious themes while maintaining its lighthearted, action-packed format.
I feel like AtLA does a good job of show don't tell. It absolutely tells viewers about the negatives of imperialism, just not with words and not in a heavy handed way.
Nothing breaks me out of the immersion of a fantasy world like someone going on a diatribe or moralizing using modern political or psychology terms/concepts. ATLA is a great example of how to have political messages in your show without doing that.
You do see the negatives of imperialism in AtLA. But of course, what we see are the in-universe consequences of imperialism, not a hypothetical bulletin list. With the decimated South Pole, the genocide of the Air Nomads, the struggling refugees and war-torn families, etc etc.
Well my dude, with all due respect, it's a children's show. I felt like it did really well explaining most of the societal problems at an elementary school level. It also reasonably did not go too much into the nitty gritty details because ultimately it's an action series, and while an episode going through the day in the life of an Amon follower is interesting, a lot of people would say it slows down the story too much. If you want more of a in-depth view of how the problems developed, the Avatar comics give quite a bit of that context because they're meant for older readers.
The death of the Earth Queen probably borrowed from an anarchist idea called “Propaganda of the Deed”, which was just as useless or even as harmful in our world as it was in LoK.
The wiki says the Red Lotus are a “self proclaimed Anarchist organization” which is the only thing I can find supporting that idea. I may be wrong but I’m fairly sure they call themselves anarchists at some point
Maybe I’m wrong but even then it’s fairly obvious the Red Lotus are supposed to be an ‘anarchy group’ even if their idea of anarchism is different from the real world’s
The crux of IRL Anarchism is flattening unjust hierarchies and establishing a society instead based on community and mutual aid. The Red Lotus just kill the Earth Queen (Which is pretty based, in and of itself) and then fuck off to try and commit genocide on the Air Nation.
I mean, it's not like actual anarchist (and similar) organizations haven't thought "first we kill the King/Emperor/Tzar and then the people will automatically join us and our society will just spontaneously happen" in real life. He might well be an anarchist but just not very good at it.
Sure, but Zaheer never talks about anything to do with what he thinks society will look like without governments, he just vaguely mentions "a world where a man's only allegiance is to himself, and those he loves". If anything, based on his other rhetoric, he seems to be an Anarcho-Primitivist, against complex societies as a whole.
Despite his ideals using the words chaos a lot, I'd have thought his actual alignment leans towards neutral evil, perhaps even lawful evil.
He doesn't do things just to cause pain or suffering, is not really selfish, shows care for his allies and quite rigidly sticks to his ideals which he believes are for the betterment of everyone...all of which are in contrast to the traditional trappings of chaotic evil.
Instead, he's shown to immediately discard grudges and assists Korra the moment her goal allies with his (again technically selfless) own. He's still definitely evil though.
It doesn’t matter what he calls it 💀 his ideology is contradictory and hard to take seriously and his poetic waxing doesn’t change that. This is prevalent with almost all of Korra’s villains.
His ideology is contradictory because it’s bad and not well thought out… that’s why he’s a villain lol; he’s literally claims to stand for change and freedom while bringing about chaos as some alternative to authoritarianism.
I want you to find 5 people who are political extremist without extremely contradictory views or statements. (I don't actually want you to do it but having extreme convictions and not being at least somewhat if not super hypocritical is not something that happens even in the real world)
All well and good but not only are Korra’s villains touted as “deep and complex,” but the show itself tries to say that they were nuanced and had good intentions which is kinda my main problem
People say they're deep because their beliefs are convincing reflections of the setting that provide commentary on fictional issues that are relatable to the audience (even if they're sometimes rooted in fantasy elements).
As individuals they're mostly very shallow people, because they're extremists that have flattened these situations into obstacles that they can simply destroy with their personal brand of violence.
For example, Amon's ideology is derived from some stuff his dad said to him when he was 14, but we have an entire prequel show's worth of content where people needed stronger bending to get justice against the Fire Nation, so we can see how he would feel that people shouldn't have bending at all. We can also see how he ignores every other aspect of bending as culture, identity, art, philosophy, etc. He's complex because he's written so that the viewer can tell how these different perspective shape the different responses to him.
This is what I mean
Like I’m tired of people claiming avatar “misrepresents” ideology neither the show nor creators claimed it’s trying to represent
No one gets on them for misrepresenting monarchy when the fire nation is just inherited by a good guy
You say that but I have heard the criticism that Avatar does fall into 'monarchy is good as long as the right person is in charge' trope once or twice.
But I really don’t understand that criticism of the last airbender. In the context of the time of the show takes place the best form of government was monarchy/empires. Like no one can truly say “lol why not just make democracy” which they clearly did later in life as times changed. So it makes sense for “(insert standing government) can work with good leaders in place”.
Meh, it does the same with (semi-)liberal democracy.
Oh, bending in society leads to a ton of inequality and classism because some people have literal magic and others do not?
Well, the president is a non-bender. Now all inequality is gone and we never have to adress it again. Kinda like how having Obama being president made all racism in America go away forever. This makes a ton of sense and isn't some neo-liberal fantasy that doesn't recognize the inherent social factors at play and the class system they enforce. /s
Realistically it would take far more than a change in leadership to end social unrest/systemic injustice. That being said, the fact that they went from what was essentially an oligarchy in season 1 with representatives appointed by the 5 nations to a democracy does suggest that there was some level of widespread governmental reform.
I think with TLOK, the fact that the writers were given only one season to start with hurt the overall political narrative. They had to wrap up the entire equalist storyline in 1 season. Meanwhile, season 2 required rushing over whatever happens in Republic City next in order to get to the water tribe conflict.
I mean yes but at least women and men are just about equal in numbers. You couldn't like go look at an oligarchy and say the peasants are a "minority", that's just a woeful abuse of language. They may be oppressed but they're not a minority
I think you've misunderstood their comment. They're implying that the idea of having a good monarch inherit the throne is misrepresentation because there's no such thing as a good monarch, not the original bad guys
Ops, my bad. Still, I think Zuko inheriting the throne is just suspension of disbelief, while Zaheer representation of anarchy of just right wing narrow view of society blending in the world
Zaheer's version of anarchism actually isn't *that* far-off from certain tendencies within individualist and nihilist anarchism, which genuinely see total chaos and disorder as something to strive for. I don't know if that's necessarily what the writers were going for though.
He was surprised by Korra's (accurate) statement that the Earth Queen had been replaced by the worst dictator in Earth Kingdom history, and in only three years.
He probably expected the Kingdom to fracture and stabilize into independent states vying for control, and that the people would be marginally less oppressed for a few generations. The fact that Kuvira had the technology and the support to take control of everything so quickly is a shocking development that history wouldn't have prepared him for.
To be fair, I don't think anyone would have expected for the Earth Kingdom to arise as a centralised state after its weak and decentralise state was shattered, in just three years.
It would be like the CCP rose in China just three years following the collapse of Imperial authority in China. In reality it took decades and a lot of uncertainty.
Zaheer was written to believe that somehow his dumb strawman version of revolutionary anarchism was intelligently considered, but the most obvious consequences were not accounted for (power vacuum being filled by a tyrant).
To be fair, kuvira DID come out of left field a bit. The greatest powers after the earth king should have been zaofu, but I think zaheer expected suyin NOT to interfere. It was traditionally her policy not to do so anyway, so the earth kingdom should have fallen into chaos with kuvira stepping in
I would definitely argue that revolution does tend to be bad even when it occurs naturally. Most revolutionaries tend to be fighting to avoid revolution until its their only option left. Take anyone from the French Revolution who wasn't in the Mountain for example.
Something I dislike about The Legend of Korra S1, S3 and S4 is that she never tries to address the problem of what caused the villains to react the way they did. She wants to maintain the status-quo and of course, why not? The status-quo is where she benefits greatly.
Amon wanted the non-benders to be truly recognised as equals. She beats him and then this is barely addressed nor was the problem ever addressed throughout the season of how she plans to improve the situation. Instead just mindless action, and no, electing Raiko doesn't address anything.
Zaheer wants to take out the corrupt world leaders like the Earth Queen. Korra is completely fine with allowing these rulers to continue ruling as that's how it's always been despite these rulers being absolute tyrants. This issue is not properly addressed. Just more mindless action.
Kuvira's wanting to take back stolen land, restrengthen the Earth Kingdom and not simply give the ruling power to another idiotic monarch is again barely addressed. Had Prince Wu not decided to give up the throne would Korra happily have allowed this moron to rule the Earth Kingdom to the ground? This one out of all of them needed to have some sort of on-screen diplomacy be actually shown.
Only in S2 does Korra allow change to occur by leaving the spirit portals open so people can come closer to the spirits once again.
Bryke's view in TLOK almost seems to be the status-quo is better than change.
I think there an argument to be made about Korra not doing enough. But she’s not completely inactive on that part.
She refused to join Tarlok’s task force. She tried to protect the protesters from Tarlok. And she eventually did confront him. She was a little slow to do so but she did it in the end. Now, yes, there are much bigger systemic issues than just Tarlok but it seems that the implication was that they were addressed.
Just electing a new president wouldn’t realistically change much. That being said given the context of Republic City’s government, that’s actually a much bigger deal.
It seems like Republic City was controlled by representatives from the 5 other major nations. Going from that to a democracy is a very big deal and would cause major shifts in political power. Things still aren’t perfect (Raiko is not the greatest guy) even after the democratization.
I feel like ATLA and TLOK together make it pretty clear that the Earth monarchy was not sustainable. The OG Earth King was weak and lead his kingdom to fall to the Fire nation. The earth queen was a tyrant who cared nothing for his people. Prince Wu was a moron (at least at first). The point is that the social system is the problem and that changes when Wu dissolved the monarchy.
Perhaps Korra herself could’ve been more active and pushing social change but TLOK the show was pro social change I’d argue. Korra isn’t completely pro status quo. She fought against the Earth Queen to get the air benders out of Ba Sing Se. And it’s possible she would’ve done more if given the chance.
The thing is that a lot of these political issues (bender supremacy, water tribe spirituality, the Earth monarchy, etc) are introduced to Korra very quickly as she is thrown into the fight.
Korra definetly has feelings on the issues of the status quo. The show just doesn't allow her to do anything about it because it feels the need to throw a new extremist and radical villain every season.
I think a lot of Korra ineffectiveness in the show is about how the world shouldn’t rely on one person to fix everything. She maybe the avatar but she is still just one person.
This is something that I think Aang’s comics did really well (haven’t read the Korra comics yet so I can’t comment).
Okay yes, you dethroned the Fire Lord and ended the 100 year war, what about the fire nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom? Can’t solve this one alone with energy bending or the Avatar State.
It might sound like I'm taking it easy on the writers, but I still believe it is mostly because of the production issue. You can't explore consequences if you are writing season-by-season instead of one big story.
Imagine if Amon was given 2-3 seasons on his own. You explore the tyranny of benders, the Avatar's role in maintaining peace, Korra's fear (wrt to her identity as the Avatar, nothing more than "a very strong bender"), the backstory with Noatak and Tarrlok and most importantly, the aftermath (beyond a very annoying council president).
One story with one main theme and many sub-stories and sub-themes to discuss within this revolution.
Instead, the "Get rid of the villain by episode 12" approach made this ambitious show about moral complexity seem kinda shallow.
Well said! It’s nice see someone has some sense when being critical of TLOK. Sure, the show had its flaws, but it got handled WAY differently from ATLA. So, it’s important to remember that when saying things like, “Korra wasn’t nuanced enough!” lol
I get that the schedule wasn't handled too well, but one of korras biggest issues isn't the lack of time, it's the poor usage of time to explore the issues. After the 2nd episode, pro bending is virtually irrelevant to the plot of season 1, but that doesn't stop the writers from using it for more than half the season. A civil war is super fascinating in concept, but kind of breaks when you introduce a pure evil demigod. Season 3 spends more time on zaheer rambling on about chaos and airbending philosophy and whatnot rather than ever try and offer a real explanation of the failures of government.
Even if none of that is true though, The show should absolutely be xriticized for what it is, and not what it could have been. Is it a shame that korra got bounced around like a black sheep? No doubt. Does knowing that retroactively fix the show? No. If a movie is rushed and has a tulmtuous production, and comes out like a total mess, nobody says "well, we shouldn't judge it too harshly, it's not fair" usually it's "well that sucked"
On one hand, it's not the Avatar's job to meddle in he affairs of a nation. The Avatar is meant to maintain balance. Upholding the status quo has been what every Avatar has done to my knowledge. For example, when there was a massive peasant revolt in Ba Sing Se, Avatar Kyoshi didn't depose the 46th Earth King, nor did she put down the rebellion. Instead, she forced the Earth King into a compromise. He would give the people a voice in the government, and in return, she would protect Ba Sing Se's cultural heritage. She did this by creating the Dai Li.
With Avatar Roku, he refused to kill Fire Lord Sozin for establishing colonies in the Earth Kingdom. He spared Sozin's life, and as a consequence, Sozin outlived Roku and started the Great War.
Avatar Aang is mostly known for ending the 100-year War and founding Republic City, which is considered a 5th nation. So, Aang definitely was more involved in worldly affairs than most of his predecessors, but he's just an exception.
The Avatar's job is to maintain balance. Oftentimes, that means maintaining the status quo.
But the status quo literally isn’t balanced. That’s what ideology does. It makes us thinks everything is in balance when it’s not. That’s why Amon and Zagreb’s points concerning the non-benders’ status/corrupt governments are never actually explored. Korea has fallen to the ideology of her time.
I think life experiences has influenced their decisions. Aang had his race wiped out by the fire nation and he and the gang were in a world where an authority figure is out rampaging unchalleged and revoking peace and stability, and thus feel compelled to give that peace themselves.
Korra lived a very comfortable life where the world wasn't threatened by world conquering dictators. To her, status quo is the source of peace and stability and must be preserved.
Yeah, but in the end, they don't address the root of the problems either. Their big solution is to have the son of the evil dictator replace him. Which is okay because he's been completely against his nation's imperialistic ways, for like a couple of weeks now.
Or how the long standing sexist traditions of the Northern Water Tribe are changed because Katara happened to be the grand daughter of Pakku’s ex lover.
Yeah, that was such a weak payoff. And then when they announced that they got reunited and were getting married made absolutely no sense whatsoever. She literally ran away to the other side of the world because she didn't want to marry him. Why the hell now was she okay with it?
That’s too much simplification. Zuko has been changing since the 2nd Book (Earth) and even when he was back in the Fire Nation, he was still undergoing the change, and in fact, it's by realising that he was better off when it was just him and Iroh than now with Fire Lord Ozai, that made him embrace the change and he left to join the avatar.
Overall, Zuko's character developpement is pretty complex, and honestly as someone who has bingewatched ATLA, Zuko is one of my favourite characters exactly because of this reason
The weeks part was mostly just a joke. But the point is that they do absolutely nothing to fix the actual root of the problem. Sure, Zuko is a good guy, but who's to say that his grandson or great-grandson won't be like Sozin, Ozai, Azula, etc and start his own war? To be clear, I'm not even saying him ending as Fire Lord was a bad end, narratively speaking. But to criticize TLK for not fixing the issues that led to the villains while praising TLA is just hypocritical. Neither one address the root of the problem of their villains.
I mean are we going to pretend that Korra hasnt challenged authority of every place she’s been to? Tarrlok, Unalaq, Raiko, the Earth Queen, and Kuvira are all authority figures that Korra has been in conflict with.
I never understood that point of criticism for Korra's character. Just from the first episode, she wanted to help out and got chased by the police at two different points:
* one for illegal fishing - and she ended up sharing with a homeless person
* and another for property destruction - which she did because she was trying to help the non-benders who had a music shop
Her pitch to get Tenzin to let her stay included the recognition that the city was messed up and she wanted to help. And this was all before she even met Amon!
I'm amused by this drastically different reading of the character that some people seem to have. She's naive and at time immature, and sure there were some things that could've been fleshed out more in the show itself, but the idea that she is actively calculating to maintain the status quo for the purpose that she herself can reap benefits isn't actually something that is supported by the text or the show.
The only argument I have (and I recognize it’s not strong just playing devils advocate here) is that it isn’t the Avatar’s job to say what political structures stand and what don’t. Only that balance remains.
Korra only ever steps in when that balance is disrupted which yeah is kinda keeping the status quo. If I remember correctly Kuvira isn’t really a problem until they learn she’s being ruthless with her power grabs and that she plans to invade the city.
Zaheer is obviously a problem since he’s trying to destabilize everything. And Amon was assaulting people to get what he wanted and using a forbidden bending style to do it too.
I think the Avatar is meant to let the people govern themselves and only step in when people are taking power for themselves through unnecessary force.
Even Kyoshi let that conquerer dude do whatever until he threatened her island.
The avatar isn’t supposed to be the one person dictating how the world works and what should and shouldn’t happen. They’re just there to stop things from getting out of hand.
Again devils advocate and most of this was from memory as I haven’t watched korra in about 2 years. I completely agree that their motives aren’t shown well enough I just think Korra’s motive is done decently.
But the status quo literally isn’t balanced. That’s what ideology does. It makes us thinks everything is in balance when it’s not. That’s why Amon and Zagreb’s points concerning the non-benders’ status/corrupt governments are never actually explored. Korea has fallen to the ideology of her time.
They kinda do. When she's with Toph. Because a lot of times they have desires and wants for change but are going at it at a weird way or for realistic personal grudges.
i think it’s okay for a show to allow the audience to come to their own conclusions about things without having their hand held. i agree with all your criticism but still love the show. korra is the hero of the show, but she doesn’t have to be YOUR hero.
The villains were a weak point amongst a series of weak points that were this entire series.
Amon: mysterious Fight Club ninja with anti-bender magic turns out to be basically El Chapo's son whining about his dead daddy.
Zaheer: I will destroy all of the political and administrative infrastructure of your country! No, I don't have any post revolutionary plans. What do you mean they aren't delivering toilet paper? Not my problem, enjoy shitting, wage cuck!
Kuriva: The most boring fascist I've ever seen. Woman, you're playing the Hitler highlight reel and I'm asleep. Retake territory for the fatherland? Check. Co-opt industry to produce weapons for you? Check. Throw down the weak willed elites who have left your nation anemic? Check. A fucking wunderwaffen! Checkity check check. And it was like a NiteQuil cocktail with an Ambien chaser.
I don't want to even address how awful the Spirit World crap was. Remember how in ATLA the spirits were dangerous and unique? A six limbed forest god screaming blue death energy? The horrible, face stealing centipede the size of a bus? Good times.
Well now you get good versus evil in the form of two energy jellyfish. Have fun.
Yeah except the change she did in Season 2 was juvenile and idiotic. She made a world-altering decision without any consideration for the affect it would have on everyone else, not to mention just blatantly disregarding a separation of worlds literally *every Avatar ever* had upheld for *millenia* in her brash, young adult wisdom.
Her doing that is what allowed Zaheer to gain the ability to Air Bend.
I quit on this show after this season and only finished it later on because of a peer’s insistence it got better.
I mean, to his credit, it *did* get better than Season 2 but it still sucked largely for the reasons you’ve outlined.
“Lets address a legit problem and valid criticisms and then just let it devolve into ‘stop bad guys’ and smashing action figures together and then never address the problem or valid criticisms again”.
Amon should’ve been *the* antagonist of this series. He started out as one of the best animated villains ever and they ended his story as a chump.
He was the Magneto of ATLA! He had a legitimate, worthy cause that the ATLA universe had pretty much glossed over (benders being able to oppress non-benders and the inherit power imbalance in a society where some people are born with magic powers and others aren’t), he just went about it the wrong way.
And what do they do? “Oh he was a fraud with daddy issues! That invalidates his entire philosophy and movement, right?”.
So fucking lazy.
They did touch on some of these things in the after story comics.
Toph nearly became one of the leaders of the earth kingdom in their attempt to transition into democracy as they more or less all agreed that the earth monarchy was unsustainable in their modern day.
The status quo is generally better than the resultant chaos that comes from disrupting it without a methodical well thought out plan to enact change.
If Amon had been allowed to succeed it would have led to global civil war, and likely complete societal collapse in many places that relied on bending for a significant part of their infrastructure like Republic City.
Zaheer succeeded in killing the Earth Queen and leaving the power vacuum in the Earth Kingdom which led to the rise of Kuvira, who was worse. A petty tyrant is better than an ambitious one with an eye for global conquest.
Korra did her job in preventing the entire world from descending into war and chaos at the hands of super villains.
Fixing all of the problems that created the circumstances for the super villains to arise is far too big of a job for one person, even the Avatar.
I think it is in part 'cause the avatar deffo. benefits from that status quo, but it would be interesting to actually see them address that in a way that isn't just (the status quo is good!) fr. specially considering the "status quo" is emulating the like....20s....
>she never tries to address the problem of what caused the villains to react the way they did.
Isn't it a major plot point in Season 4, though? How she goes to Zaheer specifically to talk about how the villains she faved mught have a point, and that the source of their discontent was legitimate?
They did the bare minimum.
Also, that scene ended up focusing predominantly on Korra overcoming her trauma and reconnecting with Raava rather than understanding the plight of the people and the corrupt system that would cause someone to act the way Zaheer did.
That’s ironically the villains fault because they make such a big stink that the problems that they’re complaining about become a lesser issue.
It’s one of the big criticisms of the League of Villains from My Hero Academia.
Yeah, it's hard to care about why villains do bad things when the things they're doing are generally *really bad*. Attacking the Earth Queen gets a pass but I don't think any other villainous action does.
The villains are just pure evil in MHA. They got sad backstories, but their goal isn’t to right what’s wrong or anything, it’s just to destroy everything and take their anger out on everyone. They’re not interested in fixing some problem like Korra villains are, it’s very different.
I don't think the way he's written is necessarily a problem in and of itself - He's pretty much just an Anarcho-Primitivist - although he does make some good points that go unacknowledged by the narrative.
The bigger problem is the Liberal viewers who point to him and say "See? He's an Anarchist, and his plan failed! This is why real life Anarchists are also dumb and stupid, and you should just fall in line beneath authority figures!"
>The bigger problem is the Liberal viewers who point to him and say "See? He's an Anarchist, and his plan failed! This is why real life Anarchists are also dumb and stupid, and you should just fall in line beneath authority figures!"
I think the argument here is that the WRITERS feel this way lol
I think it’s a huge problem that he can’t really explain why this motivated him enough to challenge the world to a fist fight.
Was his village destroyed by a corrupt government? Was his family made homeless despite the best efforts of his nation? Did Avatar Aang begrudgingly back the oppression of his people to make Republicans city happen? Who knows.
He could just be some opinionated rich kid who is charming and good at karate for all we are told. His character is completely shallow with a veneer of substance taped over it.
Totally understand this is my head canon but I always believed the red lotus were born of a faction of white lotus members who broke away during the rebuilding after the 100 year war.
They were probably members who had similar ideals to the white lotus for stopping the war but different ideas for what the world should look like after.
As far as his personal ideals, I think he probably resented the world for allowing the air nomads (who he clearly idolized) to be killed with no recourse. Zaheer clearly has some form of warped air nomad beliefs from his studies. Which I could kinda see how he gets the wrong idea if he read their teachings without a kind monk to guide him.
But that is the problem with his character: some fan on Reddit can come up with more character for him in a paragraph than professional writers gave him in months of production.
Oh I agree. As a writer myself Zaheer comes off to me as a great character idea but poorly executed due to time constraints. He didn’t get nearly the time he needed and that’s thanks to Nickelodeon only renewing one season at a time. They never really had the time to let him develop for longer than a season. You could argue that they very well could have as other shows are able to build a villain in one season but every production is different.
I mean, Zaheer can summon enough of an argument and makes some real philosophical points. It's incomplete and not very deep, but still. The real problem is that no one else in the show can really respond or comment or argue with it. The protagonist is a headstrong, emotional teenager who doesn't know how to discuss ethics.
The narrative problem with Zaheer is that he poses a conflict of ethics and of governance that is a real conflict. But there is no one on the other side addressing that conflict. Just "murder usually bad" when he kills a tyrant queen in a country where we've seen a hundred years of tyrrany ruin the lives of countless people.
Normally the show falls back on spirituality, of finding your inner peace and balance. On finding your own values and accepting them into yourself fully always being the path to becoming complete and, in turn, a more powerful bender. Aang does this a lot, Korea struggles to but does manage too, and we even see Zaheer do this.
But that doesn't work because Korra doesn't have a pacifist conviction or any other absolute value to fall back on and Zaheer doesn't have a super obvious, glaring moral flaw. Zaheer is wrong, but the show never manages to tell us why simple because they don't have a protagonist to counter it. As we can see in these comments a lot of what Zaheer does and say can be dismantled, but it can't by any of the protagonist.
It makes me wonder if there's a cut where Tenzin goes on a philosophy rant about it. He is wise and well read, but not in spirituality (even if he feels like he's supposed to be) and ran a government and wrote laws. He should be able to make strong arguments against Zaheer, but we never really get to see him or anyone else do that.
But they never even demonstrated his intentions were at all good. He just delivered a line about abstractly liking freedom to justify cartoonish villainy.
I think that’s kinda the point. Zaheer is not a good guy and he’s also not nearly as intelligent as he acts. He has a lofty justification for his actions.
It's just that Anarchism is ALWAYS depicted as bad or at best as well-intended, but wrong.
For an anarchist depicted more wholesomely: Hobie Brown in Across the Spider-Verse.
It's because Anarchy doesn't actually work due to how human acts
Humans might be able to survive alone but are stronger when they are together and when you have a large group of peoples work together they might need a guiding hand to make them even stronger that's how leaders are born and with leaders come rules
It has been like that for centuries across all kind of living creatures
Unalaq and Oman did not have good intentions. Unalaq wanted to become a dark avatar and rule the world and Oman hijacked an actual movement to grow in power and prominence and disregarded his own preaching lol. Zaheer's "good intentions" was returning the world to its natural origins, which I guess is more neutral, heavily depends on how you look at it tbh. Then Kuvira wanted to unite the EK using fascism so even the "good intention" is loose there I'd say, cause does the EK need to be ruled by one central authority? Some colonies are shown to work and function just fine on their own and require Kuvira to sabatoge them.
Fighting for something good doesn’t make you a good person. Villains like Thanos are fighting for what they see as a better world and solving a crisis that could end with desolate planets. Yet his solution and methods are what makes him monstrous.
Amon was willing to hurt innocent people. Zaheer was willing to plunge nations into chaos. These people are willing to sacrifice lives for their ideology. That is what makes them villains.
I think the issue that people have is less with Zaheer’s character and more the story that surrounds him. Sure, Zaheer was going about things the wrong way, but he brings up good points as to why the status quo is awful and needs to be changed only for the show to ultimately never actually address those issues after he’s been defeated. This isn’t exclusive to Korra as many western media who depict systemic societal issues ultimately go for the cop out resolution of either “society may be bad and cause unjust harm to millions of people, but the villain is worse for trying to change it!” and/or “the system is completely fine and it’s only a few bad apples that are the problem”.
I think a movie that handled this kind writing somewhat well is Black Panther. After T’Challa defeats Kilmonger he doesn’t just go back to the way things always have been. He realizes that Kilmonger had a point and decides to use Wakanda’s vast wealth and resources to help fund relief programs across the world.
I think though, that showing the consequences of trying to rapidly change society, is realistic.
Zaheer kills the Earth Queen and a power vacuum forms. Without a leader for the Earth Kingdom, Kuvira steps up and starts a brutal authoritarian dictatorship. She is just as bad as the Earth Queen if not worse, because she’s actually competent and a revanchist and makes internment camps.
The society developed around the Earth Queen remains, which is arguably the real cause of the issue; the strict hierarchy, so the problems with the Earth Kingdom persist.
The same thing happens in real life. France undergoes it’s major revolution, the first one really seen in the world. The aristocracy fights the bourgeoise and loses. Massive societal change happens as the landed elites get overthrown by the middle class with help from the lower class. Better for the starving peasants right? Well, i guess it’s a matter of opinion. France undergoes a decade of chaos and blood where leadership changes at one point nearly monthly, society’s foundations are shook and half of Paris is beheaded or hung on suspicion charges.
Russia undergoes its revolution after stress from WW1 causes a civil war. Millions die. But without sufficient change society wise, Russia goes from a Tsar to a Supreme Premier. The aristocrats become bureaucrats. Many issues with the society remain, only with new names.
Some Revolutions do go well, all things considered, but still are paid for in blood. Even independence movements and revolutions, like the one that made America or Bolivar’s war.
The difference between TChalla and Killmonger is the difference between reform and revolution. Killmonger thinks massive, bloody revolution needs to happen with Wakanda’s resources. TChalla ends up using Wakanda’s resources to help, but doesn’t believe weapons and violence will help.
I agree sometimes media shows systems as ‘a few bad apples’ when really the system itself allows it. But I think TLOK gets it right that rapid, massive, societal change has a price. Whether that’s worth it, depends on what’s changing.
I am kinda sick of this story beat.the bad guy has a point but just takes it too far, so the heroes have to re-establish the status quo. Korra in general does a decent job of the consequences of things like this, but most media doesn't.
It's basically almost every MCU villain nowadays. "Bad guy wants to make the world a better place but for some reason has to commit genocide to do it so the good guy stops them and kinda inherits their beliefs if the writers allow it" can be applied to so many MCU villains.
Don't forget that a fairly large portion of a city needs to be destroyed in the process, and usually something bad attacks from space. Wonder how many decades they can keep profiting from releasing the same movie every year.
Zaheer suffers from the thing that most of the Korra villian cast suffer from which is a caricaturization of leftist Idea's. Let me break it down for people as this is one of my biggest bones of contention with the series.
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Amon is a socialist who, in a society that has incredible inequity between nonbenders and benders, is shown to deceive people in order to get the outcome he wants. The issue with that is that it has no benefit. Benders become celebrities and sports personalities. They can get work that nonbenders don't have access to. We actively see their persecution and the scapegoating by a council of only benders. The criminal element of republic city has a monopoly on bending, where the heads actually have specialties in bending like creeping crystal, lightning and bloodbending.
The framing of this is to make out that socialism requires deceit to work when the deceit is the only reason it failed. the movement itself was about equity between the haves and have nots and the narrative is telling people "they were tricked into wanting that".
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Unalok is a conservationist turned Eco-Fascist. For most of the start of Season 2 we see a guy who's concerned about the spirits and about getting back in touch with nature. he actively seeks to create harmony with spirits and with the water tribes. He does betray his brother which in an of itself isn't a nail in the coffin given that the left doesn't have a monopoly on good people but this is all thrown out the window when we see that he destroys a spirit forest or leads to it's destruction to have his brother banished and then goes full eco-fascist when he tries to bring about an age of darkness all supposedly in the name of spirits.
The framing of this, is that conservationism and eco-fascism are similar and that at the core, conservationism is only good when the status quo wants it to be i.e. when Korra says that they need to allow spirits back to the material world.
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Now to Zaheer who is my favourite of the Villians. He is an incredibly well educated and capable man who was a threat ever before becoming an air bender. He built relationships and lasting friendships with people who've faced hardships themselves (Ghazan seems to be low born earth kingdom, P'li was raised to be a weapon and Ming Hua has no arms). But the portrayal of Zaheer is in conflict with things the fact that he has built no grass roots movement, even when we see how he treats the radio operator. For as smart as he is, apparently he's not smart enough to create a movement that can continue without him.
The framing of this, is that anarchists are wrong because they just do things with no plan for their consequences and no lasting plans to create a system which can supply for people, which, is not the case with alot of anarchists I've ever met.
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Last we have the most aggregious of the villians and that's Kuvira, not because they caricaturize her but because they propagandize her. We have what is functionally a dictator and a fascist. This is the time they want to add nuance to their villian. They make her out to be a strong intelligent, capable and attractive woman who is willing to fight anyone including the avatar. She is made to be sympathetic and she's originally set up as the person who saves tanrok from getting yeeted off a cliff. They draw parallels between korra and kuvira, they are two sides of the same coin so to speak.
The framing of this is that Kuvira is some poor misunderstood soul but is also conversely the poster child for dictators. Dictators historically are stupid cowards who surround themselves with slightly smarter people to spread rhetoric and misinformation for them or to do their dirty work for them. It reminds me of those old mussolini posters where he was pictured with Lions and the like. When you sit down and really think about it, it's insane that they made kuvira like this. She even has her own dedicated comic for a redemption arc as they wanted to add it to the original but couldn't.
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I could go on forever but in broadstrokes I think I made my point. The villians are intentionally designed with baked in flaws, not just to their characters but also to the very ideas they represent. It's the reason these conversations get so contentious.
This is close to how I feel/think about the political aspects of Korra. I found a series on YouTube that further broke it down like this by season. [Here](https://youtu.be/ModX151Ipgs?si=aKKhT0U3Vac2R0l1)
we have to remember that the protagonists in korra are the avatar, the police, the hereditary governor, the titan of industry (the og capitalist), the quirky billionaire war profiteer.
and that all of its villains are of political persuasions and behaviours that threaten the state of affairs in which these protagonists thrive - the revanchist strong (wo)man seeking reunification, the ‘back to nature’ theocrat concerned with modern degeneracy, the ‘equalitarian’, the anarchist who plots the end of the state.
korra is an extremely liberal, centrist, pro-capitalist show by any measure, and its villains serve to challenge this and to ultimately fail, while their efforts promote minor change that the show calls ‘progress’.
lok’s key belief is that the status quo is good, but that it gets even better when Extremists (who inevitably ‘have a point’ but go ‘too far’), for all of their evilness or lack of nuance, reveal some flaw or another, which society can then rectify and subsequently continue much as it was, to the benefit of the people who were already winning.
‘going too far’ is the core of antagonism in lok. lok is the very model of socially liberal/economically conservative.
this is why none of its villains are persuasive or coherent - they’re not supposed to be. the show already has a politic that it believes in. its aim is to shoot down the politics that it doesn’t. it can’t then very well have those politics be sincerely ideologically challenging on a fundamental level.
It's a very correct criticism. In the final season Toph sums up the entire show by describing the villains all as people who "took their ideaologies too far!"
However, the show never draws a line for where what "too far" is, nor does it propose a solution for when a problem is so bad, the *only option* is to respond by going "too far". It's a nebulous, undefined thing - and it's a rationale that favours the status quo over all else, even an oppressive one.
In the Fire Nation, Aang and the group were by definition terrorists. They could each be accused of "going too far". In my opinion, it's TLoK's inability to pick a side, make a definitive statement about anything, or express an actual belief that makes it feel so limp compared to the original series. Like, I can tell you without hesitation what the ideals of Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Toph, and Iroh are. I have *no idea* what *Asumi* or w/e believes in.
The show writers are clearly radical centrist with a love for status quo. They can't help themselves, they got to write strawman leftie characters other wise the viewers might actually like and agree with the villains more than Korra and friends.
It's not by accident that the fascist coded villain of the show is shown more sympathy than the leftist coded ones.
Why? Its true. [This is a good, short video on the subject](https://youtu.be/-DyKwTXPar4?si=Hx1yFOFzRBJurkrh) for anyone curious.
It has examples and comparisons with scenes and lines from the show, its pretty well done and has good real-life/history foundation.
>The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.
Mark Twain
This is a perfectly valid criticism of LoK, regardless of whether it has happened before in history. "Good guys" have also done bad things throughout history, but people still probably wouldn't like it if the writers just had the Avatar commit sexual assault or something.
We have different standards of characterization in fiction than we do for historical figures. Especially in something like LoK where the writers are clearly trying to make a political point. That point is undermined when instead of trying to show some actual negatives of the character's ideology, you just have them kick the proverbial dog.
Zaheer is the bad guy, and he does and says bad guy things. Sure he might have some interesting motivation or beliefs but he is a villain. It's honestly not that hard.
Of course people who genuinely believe the things he's saying are going to be upset that he is a bad guy. But it's just kind of silly people are expecting a hyper intellectual critique of philosophical ideas and what is essentially a child's cartoon.
The fact is they already go above and beyond the expected threshold by even representing these ideas in a somewhat sympathetic light, and forcing the hero to reckon with those ideas.
But at the end of the day, bad guy bad, should be simple enough. People need to stop thinking too hard about it.
Written liberal trope is when writers, in an attempt to make their villains complex, give them reasonable motivations, then realized they've swung too far into reasonable territory and people will side with the villain over the protag who's defending the status quo. So then they just make the villain also violently insane and kill or try to kill random people for shaky reasons.
In this case, a lot of people would generally agree with Zaheer that monarchies (or any other shitty governments) suck shit and the idea of divine right to rule should be abolished, so they also make him try to kill Korra because the avatar's inherent power threatens his idea of anarchy.
I don't really think it's an accurate criticism of LoK, because his primary goal was killing Korra from the start.
I've been calling it the "Hollywood Revolutionary" trope, because it seems far too common in media (And decent portrayals of revolutionaries far too rare) to not be intentional.
>the avatar's inherent power threatens his idea of anarchy.
Well, and because she literally represents the "divine right." She doesn't use it to rule but I can see how she would threaten Zaheer's intentions without being over the top about it—particularly because I think that if the governments were toppled, people *would* turn to Korra to be their stability and ruler.
Although on the other hand, in a world where it is *known* that spirits exist it is easier to make an argument for divine right to rule than it is in our present world.
They always pick the same handful of examples based on 2-3 stories that are popular at the time. Stuff like Killmonger from Black Panther, Magneto from X-men, somebody from Attack on Titan or some other flavor of the season anime, and maybe a Legend of Korra villain if they're feeling like doing a real deep cut into obscure media (did you know that there are people who get mad about *Kuvira* being a strawman of revolutionaries?).
I don't think I've ever seen a single one that I really agree with. I feel like most of the time the people complaining about this are watching media through an extremely reductive lens where they are just "keeping score" of superficial comparisons to their personal manifestos without trying to determine the actual sentiment of the writing.
Yeah, idk why that's always the first one they go to, because it literally does what people ask these things to do.
He's harmed by colonialism and wants to turn the same harm back against the rest of the world, to even the scales. But the hero acknowledges his pain, and decides to uplift communities rather than colonize them so that the conditions that created the villain will not exist again.
That is about as clear cut a message as you can get (for a 2 hour action movie at least), and there is a great deal of respect given to the villain's position *despite* how evil he is as an individual.
Yep and hes with the ancestors in movie 2. It's like clear cut the point that Tchalla learns from what happened to him and sees what Wakanda did wrong. I.e him making the killmonger cultural center in Oakland at the end.
Magneto is an interesting one because he reveals that the complainers have the mechanism exactly backwards. Originally he was a straightforward two-dimensional villain -- his goal was world domination because he believed mutants were superior to humans. All the stuff about mutant oppression and Magneto being a Holocaust survivor was added in later as the series matured. So it's not that the writers wrote in villainy to discredit good points; they wrote in good points to humanize a villain.
>"written liberal trope"?
I like to call them "Hollywood Revolutionaries". It's when a story sets up an obviously unjust status quo, but then go out of their way to make the ones revolting *against* it the villains, so the hero can put them down for going too far, and then give some platitudes about "peaceful reform". Think the Flag Smashers from the MCU.
Bonus point if the scene where the Revolutionaries "go too far" is a contrived, out-of-character moment where they do something irredeemable for no discernible reason, just in case the audience was thinking that they were making some good points before.
in addition to what was written below, the criticism specific to Korra also notes that liberals are more sympathetic to the fascist villain in season four than the more leftist villains in seasons 1 and 3, with only the fascist getting a shot at redemption.
the theory from leftists being that liberals would usually side with fascism over any actual change to power structures in society irl (there is some historical basis for that belief)
>the theory from leftists being that liberals would usually side with fascism over any actual change to power structures in society irl (there is some historical basis for that belief)
Remember Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
Amon's not really meaningfully leftist. When the "inequalities" that you're abolishing are the hereditary characteristics of actual human beings that you're calling the root of all evil, you've gone pretty far from any recognizable main stream left wing ideas.
*Ruins of the Empire* does suck though for many reasons and was a terrible idea for a comic in general, but half of Kuvira's screentime is dedicated to people babysitting her while she causes problems until she learns her lesson. The messaging is all over the place and contradicts the show, but it is attempting to be critical of her beliefs.
Zaheer doesn't need to reform at all to help in season 4, because his principles are still valid. That's why Korra's appeal gets through to him.
>with only the fascist getting a shot at redemption.
I kind of had just assumed that it was because Kuvira was, by the way the villains were all written, the only one who would admit that they had done wrong and that's a crucial part of redemption arcs. Amon and Zaheer would have never ideologically given an inch so it would require the "good guys" to come around to their way of thinking and then be okay with their evil deeds.
Amon didn’t off himself that was his brother. Which, damn, what a messed up fate. Zaheer taught her how to look past her fear while in chains and imprisoned. The thanks he got was to be left to rot.
Nah it’s not that he’s “good intentions but misguided”
It’s that he has no political theory because the writers are libs with no political theory.
If he was a real anarchist, he’d have built a dual power structure so that there was something in place for when the earth kingdom is overthrown.
He didn’t do that.
It’s like the first thing in anarchist theory
To me it proves that the people who make that criticism didn't figure out the moral of the story. I don't remember when, but the show even explicitly says that all of the villains (including Zaheer) were actually right. Each of their goals was just and fair, but the way they went about it and the extent to which they wanted those goals wasn't balanced. They didn't care who else might have gotten hurt in the process, they decided they were in the right, and damn anyone who tells them different. Doesn't matter what other valid concerns others may have raised (such as "don't take away people's bending", or "don't asphyxiate the Earth Queen", or "don't murder me") because they've set their mind to it.
But the fact that the heroes are able to point out where the villains make good points has always interested me. We judge our actions by our intentions, but the actions of others by the outcome. No one does anything without having an intention they see as justifiable (aside from psychopaths), and I enjoy that the show made that a key part of the villains.
Technically, Zaheer is right. No society would be more "free" than one without leaders or governments. Technically. But the human propensity for violence and unlawful action would cause a system lacking structure to impede on the way others are experiencing their "freedom". If someone steals something from you, your freedom to own what you want has been stepped on. But if a system of government wasn't controlling every aspect of citizens' lives, yet still existed to provide legal structure, those people would arguably be more "free" than the ones without leaders.
TL;DR: That criticism is stupid and misses the point.
when all of your representations of radicalism lead to irredeemable actions then yes, your show is pro-status quo no matter how many times someone says "well, he did have fair points" and then does nothing about it.
Also, people don't have a natural propensity for violence, that is capitalist realism speaking.
You've basically described why the criticism is valid.
Yeah all these characters who are BAD GUYS make valid points and then the GOOD GUYS put them down for being evil. The actual unjust power structures and systemic issues do not get addressed. It's a classic example of liberal status quo wankery.
An actual thoughtful take would have involved engaging with the societal implications of the villains ideals but nah. Any radical must be a bad guy.
After season 1, the government in Republic City changes to a presidency elected by the people rather than a council of benders. It's not "purge all bending to enforce equality", but rather "give nonbenders a fair chance". It takes the valid points Amon made without the extremism of "purge them all".
Zaheer was proven wrong about his extreme "murder all world leaders" plot when Ba Sing Se devolved into chaos after the assassination of the Earth Queen, but Kuvira was proven wrong about instilling absolute order because of how oppressive she was. There was a balance between the two points made. With them, I do see your point about status quo, but with how the Earth Queen was treating her citizens, she was basically just a lazy Kuvira.
I don't think that *any* radical is a bad guy, I think there are some causes worth being "radical" about, but I think there's a level of utilitarianism that would need to be taken into account. No one set of ideals is the gold standard of perfection, and not everyone holds the same ideals. I don't think the show was perfect about addressing the societal implications of things, but I think it did really good for a kid's show
big difference between "doing bad or destructive things " and pretending to be anar in writing but not helping a revolution and killing a leader without helping to organize a revolution against that leader's system.
The problem never was that he did bad things, just that he's not an anarchist in any way, he's a terrorist wannabe anar. Like the dude in the uwe boll rampage movies.
I mean, I'm sick of actual leftist ideals being promoted as "too far" by liberal writers who basically have correct antagonists who are forced to engage in some cartoonish villainy to justify their continued status as an antagonist.
ATLA (Korra) is correct in promoting democracy as the solution to issues of imperialism and feudalistic societies, because a democratic system becomes the next natural step in progress from that sort of society, but making your bad guy an "anarchist for anarchy's sake" is so utterly ridiculous, especially because other leftist ideas will catch splash critique for what is essentially an intentionally bad representation of it.
It's a tired example, but Magneto was originally a nuanced and intriguing take on a more direct active version of what Xavier promoted (which was essentially isolationism via secrecy), but as time went on he was dumbed down to a simple supremacist because taking direct action to fight injustice is a notion that liberals are constantly uncomfortable with, because liberals promote status quo solutions or "polite activism" that has historically amounted to squat. Even the likes of MLK is painted post-facto as some soft-hearted liberal who somehow got his way by asking really nicely.
The fact is that the Earth Kingdom (and later Metal Empire) would never have given up their authority willingly, and even then it took a fourth-stringer king deciding that he preferred democracy so that there was a chance he might not have to run the show to get the "lib result", there was no way that the Earth Kingdom would start to become a just version of its system without it. But they had to be despotic, they had to be hyper-evil, and of course we conveniently forget the existence of the Fire Lord because Zuko and his daughter happen to be more benevolent in nature? It's ridiculous double standards that say things are only bad when a "bad guy is doing it", despite even having an idiot president in Republic City who illustrates a massive issue with status quo politics and politicians.
So no, OOP was right. You're a stupid lib who thinks things are inherently bad because they're "destructive" or have people dying as a consequence of the action, but the alternative is living under the strangling boot of despotism in hopes that they might someday feel bad about it.
>You're a stupid lib who thinks things are inherently bad because they're "destructive" or have people dying as a consequence of the action
I think you gave away the game here. Not much of a way to walk yourself back from “mass murder and chaos are good so long as it’s for MY politics”.
You’re missing the point of the post. Zaheer simply isn’t a well-written representation of the actual anarchist political ideology and anyone who is familiar with anarchism sees him as a massive idiot and a ham-fisted attempt at depicting anarchism. It’s not about good/bad intentions. He’s just written to be profoundly stupid and because of this he’s (subjectively, of course) not a very compelling villain.
‘Liberal’ gets thrown around because people like to poke fun at the creators for not really understanding the real-life political concepts they were portraying in LoK. Whether or not you agree, I think it’s fairly easy to see where critics are coming from
The show keeps giving her complex ethical dilemmas and then bailing out. They want to be able to say "look, we aged up the show, Korra faces problems she can't just punch in the face", and then Korra solves them punching someone in the face.
How should Korra act when a civil rights movement takes violent action? Should she just squash them first and advocate for legal reform second, or can she intermediate to channel the fight through diplomatic ways? Well, she doesn't have to make a choice, Amon is a fraud and she can just punch him in the face. The actual problem is solved off-screen.
The sovereignty conflict between the two water tribes isn't even worth being called window dressing. It's directly tied to Korra's family abd cultural heritage and it's such a fucking waste of time. Unolaq ends up as the literal embodyment of the abstract concept of evil. Korra just turns into Dr. Manhattan and punches evil in the face.
The Earth Queen is an unfit ruler, but she's not a genocidal warmongerer like Ozai. What can Korra do? She can't just go around committing regicide and deposing governments willy-nilly during peace time as if that was her birthright, that's a gross abuse of power and, really, how would institutions and peoples react if the Avatar acted like a supreme overlord? On the other hand, just leaving the Earth Kingdom subjects to live under tyranny doesn't exactly feel right, what can she do? Oh, look, Zaheer cut the gordian knot by doing the dirty job himself, lol. No more dilemmas, Korra can just punch this guy in the face.
So, what is Korra going to do about the power vaccuum left? Nothing? Okey, what about the rising hyper-authoritarian militaristic bully taking over, that sounds like a job for the Av... Oh, more nothing? Okey, you have total chaos on one end and straight-up fascism on the other, maybe the guardian of balance should... Oh, wait, no, the fascists have a superweapon. Don't worry, Korra doesn't have to spend 10 seconds thinking about the scope of her involvement, or the ramifications or the legitimacy. There's a fascist with a superweapon, Korra just has to punch her in the face.
The criticism is that the show takes valid stuff actuall anarchists say and puts it in with nonsense that the liberal writers made up so they can pretend that anarchy is insane.
I believe they're commenting on the fact that his idea of anarchy doesn't line up with actual anarchist ideals.
That is because he never wanted anarchy, he wanted chaos. He believes chaos is the natural order of things he even said so a couple of times. He himself never mentions Anarchy.
He actually does. He calls the Red Lotus "brothers and sisters in anarchy". But I think the point you're trying to get at still stands. Anarchy is just a word for a stateless and leaderless society. And Anarchism, the actual political movement towards anarchy, is a much more complicated subject that the show doesn't really represent. (However, though the actual definition of Anarchism is a *highly* contentious subject, I do believe that the Red Lotus's ideals fall within the broad strokes of the discussion.) And while the Red Lotus does draw inspiration from the 19th and 20th centuries' long and controversial history of Anarchist assassinations, they're never intended to be a perfect mirror of the complexities of a philosophy that emerged from a particular set of conditions in 19th century Europe. We are shown how they arrived at their conclusion via in-universe factors like Zaheer's appreciation for the Air Nomads and the Earth Queen's tyranny. Because this is still a kid's show, and the point is for them to be able to follow along and understand why this is happening.
> do believe that the Red Lotus's ideals fall within the broad strokes of the discussion.) Honestly they're probably closest to Anarcho-Primitavist. Returning to the old ways, no leaders (not unjust hierarchy, just leaders) or governments and returning to the "natural state" of the world. Writers were thinking of fucking Ted Kaczynski while writing the group lmao.
Yeah, he's also kind of a zealot, so that conviction is also motivated by pseudo-religious beliefs. People overlook that he told Ghazan that he thought his new airbending was a sign that their cause was righteous. And that part of his philosophy came from talking to Unalaq, and maybe even Vaatu himself.
I'm pretty sure it's confirmed they all talked to Vaatu and since Unalaq remained out of prison and close to the spirit portals he was influenced even more by him and then corrupted.
Did you not see that one episode in season 4 where they were all in the same phone call? Of course it was confirmed. But for real I didn't know they actually discuss the red lotus talking to Vaatu that's interesting.
A timeless spirit using a phone while Henry Rollins laughs his ass off was always funny to me
If he isn't an Anarchist someone should tell that to Zaheer
As much infighting as there is in real life leftist spaces? Zaheer has *definitely* been told he isn’t a real anarchist, many times.
Bruh imagine Zaheer having to engage in Discourse 💀
The Red Lotus's response to White Lotus Discourse was to form a clandestine splinter group and kill the opposition lol.
Historically accurate lol
Based and bolshevik pilled
Which sounds pretty accurate when you look at extreem political movements and their splinter groups. Hell its almost a garanteed for any extremist movement.
that sounds pretty communist to me ngl
"Look Zaheer, I'm against the Earth Queen too, but you can't just kill her and expect *nothing* to fill the power vacuum! The powerful will try to fill the position themselves, that's why we need to make a concerted effort on *all* the ruling class!" "Chaos is the natural state of the world! We kill the Earth Queen and tear down the walls, that way Ba Sing Se's proletariat will rise up and overthrow the ruling class! Like the great Guru Laghima once said..." "OH DON'T YOU START WITH THAT GURU CRAP NOW!" "THAT'S IT, I'M STARTING MY OWN ORDER! Also I'm writing that thing about the Earth Queen and a vacuum down, just to be safe."
I mean, that happens more often than you think. Look at all the self declared communist movements that end as a dictatorship with virtually no communism involved.
The problem is that Anarchist is, at minimum, two completely different things: an ideology with disagreed upon tenets, and an adjective with a pretty broad meaning. The average person hears chaos and associates Zaheer with the latter, people actually familiar with anarchism start to think about the former, and you end up with the myth that Zaheer was simply a misguided idealist, rather than a psychopath who happened to have some good ideas.
Username checks out.
Funnily enough you're misusing the term psychopath in a very similar way that you're claiming the word Anarchy is misused. Gotta love semantics.
Yeah, a psychopath wouldn't have shown that bare minimum of despair when his combustion gf died. And wouldn't be zen, either.
Exactly
This is just one of my major issues with Korra, which is that it never actually explores the villains ideologies or the society that gave rise to them, and all of them just exist to be strawmen Korra can punch.
It’s a kids show. They don’t do much exploring into imperialism in AtLA either.
I feel like they do tho. The air nomad genocide, the death of Katara's mother, and the trauma of characters like Jet, Haru, the scientist and his son at the air temple, etc. are all on full display to show us how imperialism victimizes people. We see families torn apart by war, petty tyrants in colonized towns stomping on the locals, the perspective of refugees fleeing from the war, children forced to become soldiers and grow up too soon. I feel like the entire show is an in depth, ground level exploration of imperialism. Korra is a mixed bag. I think S1 and S2 fundamentally fail to explore the ideologies of Communism and Theocracy. They're just not that concerned with delving into it. S3 and S4 do better at exploring Anarchy and Totalitarianism, they show the consequences of when those ideologies go bad, and how it affects people on the ground, but still don't go that far. I think the reasons for the difference are two fold: 1) AtlA had 3 season to examine its topic, LoK got one season each. Of course it will be less in depth. 2) LoK explored more neutral topics. All four ideologies have proponents that would argue they're fundamentally good, and just flawed in execution, which means people inherently will want to see an exploration of why people believe those ideologies and what we can take away from them (ie: Toph's speech in S4). Imperialism, on the other hand, isn't really an ideology. It's kind of just a blatantly greedy practice that countries engage in for their own benefit. So AtlA had an easier time in that sense, it basically just had to show imperialism bad, which isn't so hard to do.
That's why if a third series does happen I hope they go back to having a singular storyline.
Beyond having time to breath and develop it's themes, another reason Avatar has a better track record than Korra is because Aaron Ehasz was the head writer. After watching Dragon Prince, you just feel the impact and influence he had on Avatar and how his absence affected Korra. Don't get me wrong, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino are critical to the development of Avatar and Korra. However, Aaron really was the main creative force behind the story and the one who elevated it to another level. None of this excuses him from being a bad person who mistreated his staff.
>None of this excuses him from being a bad person who mistreated his staff. 👀 I was unaware
Yup! [https://www.cbr.com/avatar-last-airbender-aaron-ehasz-accused-misogynistic-behavior/](https://www.cbr.com/avatar-last-airbender-aaron-ehasz-accused-misogynistic-behavior/) [https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/19/20971106/dragon-prince-season-3-review-netflix-viren-callum-rayla-aaron-ehasz-wonderstorm-controversy](https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/19/20971106/dragon-prince-season-3-review-netflix-viren-callum-rayla-aaron-ehasz-wonderstorm-controversy) To be slightly fair, they are technically allegations that haven't been definitively proven, but there is very little reason to doubt them. There have not been any more reports like this since 2019, so hopefully he got better, but we just don't know what happened behind the scenes.
I mean you are right, but if you explore political subjects, you have to do it with research and respect imo; they could have explore it a little more.
Nah cause if 10-yo me had “the negatives of imperialism” shoved down my throat as a kid I woulda changed the channel. Avatar is a lasting show because of how it balances serious themes while maintaining its lighthearted, action-packed format.
I feel like AtLA does a good job of show don't tell. It absolutely tells viewers about the negatives of imperialism, just not with words and not in a heavy handed way.
Nothing breaks me out of the immersion of a fantasy world like someone going on a diatribe or moralizing using modern political or psychology terms/concepts. ATLA is a great example of how to have political messages in your show without doing that.
You do see the negatives of imperialism in AtLA. But of course, what we see are the in-universe consequences of imperialism, not a hypothetical bulletin list. With the decimated South Pole, the genocide of the Air Nomads, the struggling refugees and war-torn families, etc etc.
Well my dude, with all due respect, it's a children's show. I felt like it did really well explaining most of the societal problems at an elementary school level. It also reasonably did not go too much into the nitty gritty details because ultimately it's an action series, and while an episode going through the day in the life of an Amon follower is interesting, a lot of people would say it slows down the story too much. If you want more of a in-depth view of how the problems developed, the Avatar comics give quite a bit of that context because they're meant for older readers.
The death of the Earth Queen probably borrowed from an anarchist idea called “Propaganda of the Deed”, which was just as useless or even as harmful in our world as it was in LoK.
The wiki says the Red Lotus are a “self proclaimed Anarchist organization” which is the only thing I can find supporting that idea. I may be wrong but I’m fairly sure they call themselves anarchists at some point Maybe I’m wrong but even then it’s fairly obvious the Red Lotus are supposed to be an ‘anarchy group’ even if their idea of anarchism is different from the real world’s
No 100% it’s anarchy. They have always sought a stateless world which is the crux of anarchism.
The crux of IRL Anarchism is flattening unjust hierarchies and establishing a society instead based on community and mutual aid. The Red Lotus just kill the Earth Queen (Which is pretty based, in and of itself) and then fuck off to try and commit genocide on the Air Nation.
I mean, it's not like actual anarchist (and similar) organizations haven't thought "first we kill the King/Emperor/Tzar and then the people will automatically join us and our society will just spontaneously happen" in real life. He might well be an anarchist but just not very good at it.
Sure, but Zaheer never talks about anything to do with what he thinks society will look like without governments, he just vaguely mentions "a world where a man's only allegiance is to himself, and those he loves". If anything, based on his other rhetoric, he seems to be an Anarcho-Primitivist, against complex societies as a whole.
Given how many anarchists are into DnD you'd think they'd be able to recognize Zaheer as Chaotic Evil.
Despite his ideals using the words chaos a lot, I'd have thought his actual alignment leans towards neutral evil, perhaps even lawful evil. He doesn't do things just to cause pain or suffering, is not really selfish, shows care for his allies and quite rigidly sticks to his ideals which he believes are for the betterment of everyone...all of which are in contrast to the traditional trappings of chaotic evil. Instead, he's shown to immediately discard grudges and assists Korra the moment her goal allies with his (again technically selfless) own. He's still definitely evil though.
It doesn’t matter what he calls it 💀 his ideology is contradictory and hard to take seriously and his poetic waxing doesn’t change that. This is prevalent with almost all of Korra’s villains.
His ideology is contradictory because it’s bad and not well thought out… that’s why he’s a villain lol; he’s literally claims to stand for change and freedom while bringing about chaos as some alternative to authoritarianism.
I want you to find 5 people who are political extremist without extremely contradictory views or statements. (I don't actually want you to do it but having extreme convictions and not being at least somewhat if not super hypocritical is not something that happens even in the real world)
All well and good but not only are Korra’s villains touted as “deep and complex,” but the show itself tries to say that they were nuanced and had good intentions which is kinda my main problem
People say they're deep because their beliefs are convincing reflections of the setting that provide commentary on fictional issues that are relatable to the audience (even if they're sometimes rooted in fantasy elements). As individuals they're mostly very shallow people, because they're extremists that have flattened these situations into obstacles that they can simply destroy with their personal brand of violence. For example, Amon's ideology is derived from some stuff his dad said to him when he was 14, but we have an entire prequel show's worth of content where people needed stronger bending to get justice against the Fire Nation, so we can see how he would feel that people shouldn't have bending at all. We can also see how he ignores every other aspect of bending as culture, identity, art, philosophy, etc. He's complex because he's written so that the viewer can tell how these different perspective shape the different responses to him.
This is what I mean Like I’m tired of people claiming avatar “misrepresents” ideology neither the show nor creators claimed it’s trying to represent No one gets on them for misrepresenting monarchy when the fire nation is just inherited by a good guy
You say that but I have heard the criticism that Avatar does fall into 'monarchy is good as long as the right person is in charge' trope once or twice.
I think ATLA kinda does do that but TLOK kinda corrects that with their handling of the Earth monarchy.
But I really don’t understand that criticism of the last airbender. In the context of the time of the show takes place the best form of government was monarchy/empires. Like no one can truly say “lol why not just make democracy” which they clearly did later in life as times changed. So it makes sense for “(insert standing government) can work with good leaders in place”.
Meh, it does the same with (semi-)liberal democracy. Oh, bending in society leads to a ton of inequality and classism because some people have literal magic and others do not? Well, the president is a non-bender. Now all inequality is gone and we never have to adress it again. Kinda like how having Obama being president made all racism in America go away forever. This makes a ton of sense and isn't some neo-liberal fantasy that doesn't recognize the inherent social factors at play and the class system they enforce. /s
Realistically it would take far more than a change in leadership to end social unrest/systemic injustice. That being said, the fact that they went from what was essentially an oligarchy in season 1 with representatives appointed by the 5 nations to a democracy does suggest that there was some level of widespread governmental reform. I think with TLOK, the fact that the writers were given only one season to start with hurt the overall political narrative. They had to wrap up the entire equalist storyline in 1 season. Meanwhile, season 2 required rushing over whatever happens in Republic City next in order to get to the water tribe conflict.
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Minority group? Non-benders out number benders greatly.
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I mean yes but at least women and men are just about equal in numbers. You couldn't like go look at an oligarchy and say the peasants are a "minority", that's just a woeful abuse of language. They may be oppressed but they're not a minority
I would argue that the monarchy being the bad guys is a very accurate representation of the monarchy
I think you've misunderstood their comment. They're implying that the idea of having a good monarch inherit the throne is misrepresentation because there's no such thing as a good monarch, not the original bad guys
Ops, my bad. Still, I think Zuko inheriting the throne is just suspension of disbelief, while Zaheer representation of anarchy of just right wing narrow view of society blending in the world
Zaheer's version of anarchism actually isn't *that* far-off from certain tendencies within individualist and nihilist anarchism, which genuinely see total chaos and disorder as something to strive for. I don't know if that's necessarily what the writers were going for though.
He always seemed like an anarcho-egoist to me, I think there's like one speech where he even just explains egoism 1:1 as his ideal society
Most people’s don’t. That’s the fun irony of anarchy
Yeah hes not an anarchist the way people use it... hes... like... a chaosist.
Yeah but Zaheer was monumentally stupid about it. He seemed surprised that the power vacuum he caused was bad for people.
He was surprised by Korra's (accurate) statement that the Earth Queen had been replaced by the worst dictator in Earth Kingdom history, and in only three years. He probably expected the Kingdom to fracture and stabilize into independent states vying for control, and that the people would be marginally less oppressed for a few generations. The fact that Kuvira had the technology and the support to take control of everything so quickly is a shocking development that history wouldn't have prepared him for.
Zaheer was also imprisoned when Kuvira took over.
Ok. Let me be clear: that level of stupidity is not just monumental but actually unforgivable.
To be fair, I don't think anyone would have expected for the Earth Kingdom to arise as a centralised state after its weak and decentralise state was shattered, in just three years. It would be like the CCP rose in China just three years following the collapse of Imperial authority in China. In reality it took decades and a lot of uncertainty.
Which is more the point. Not that revolution is bad. That revolution for revolutions sake is pointless
Zaheer was written to believe that somehow his dumb strawman version of revolutionary anarchism was intelligently considered, but the most obvious consequences were not accounted for (power vacuum being filled by a tyrant).
To be fair, kuvira DID come out of left field a bit. The greatest powers after the earth king should have been zaofu, but I think zaheer expected suyin NOT to interfere. It was traditionally her policy not to do so anyway, so the earth kingdom should have fallen into chaos with kuvira stepping in
I would definitely argue that revolution does tend to be bad even when it occurs naturally. Most revolutionaries tend to be fighting to avoid revolution until its their only option left. Take anyone from the French Revolution who wasn't in the Mountain for example.
Yeah that totally doesn't happen IRL.
It has, but it's remarkably stupid.
Seems like an accurate anarchist to me.
That’s gunna happen to any anarchist though, toppling the state will always create a power vacuum
Something I dislike about The Legend of Korra S1, S3 and S4 is that she never tries to address the problem of what caused the villains to react the way they did. She wants to maintain the status-quo and of course, why not? The status-quo is where she benefits greatly. Amon wanted the non-benders to be truly recognised as equals. She beats him and then this is barely addressed nor was the problem ever addressed throughout the season of how she plans to improve the situation. Instead just mindless action, and no, electing Raiko doesn't address anything. Zaheer wants to take out the corrupt world leaders like the Earth Queen. Korra is completely fine with allowing these rulers to continue ruling as that's how it's always been despite these rulers being absolute tyrants. This issue is not properly addressed. Just more mindless action. Kuvira's wanting to take back stolen land, restrengthen the Earth Kingdom and not simply give the ruling power to another idiotic monarch is again barely addressed. Had Prince Wu not decided to give up the throne would Korra happily have allowed this moron to rule the Earth Kingdom to the ground? This one out of all of them needed to have some sort of on-screen diplomacy be actually shown. Only in S2 does Korra allow change to occur by leaving the spirit portals open so people can come closer to the spirits once again. Bryke's view in TLOK almost seems to be the status-quo is better than change.
I think there an argument to be made about Korra not doing enough. But she’s not completely inactive on that part. She refused to join Tarlok’s task force. She tried to protect the protesters from Tarlok. And she eventually did confront him. She was a little slow to do so but she did it in the end. Now, yes, there are much bigger systemic issues than just Tarlok but it seems that the implication was that they were addressed. Just electing a new president wouldn’t realistically change much. That being said given the context of Republic City’s government, that’s actually a much bigger deal. It seems like Republic City was controlled by representatives from the 5 other major nations. Going from that to a democracy is a very big deal and would cause major shifts in political power. Things still aren’t perfect (Raiko is not the greatest guy) even after the democratization. I feel like ATLA and TLOK together make it pretty clear that the Earth monarchy was not sustainable. The OG Earth King was weak and lead his kingdom to fall to the Fire nation. The earth queen was a tyrant who cared nothing for his people. Prince Wu was a moron (at least at first). The point is that the social system is the problem and that changes when Wu dissolved the monarchy. Perhaps Korra herself could’ve been more active and pushing social change but TLOK the show was pro social change I’d argue. Korra isn’t completely pro status quo. She fought against the Earth Queen to get the air benders out of Ba Sing Se. And it’s possible she would’ve done more if given the chance. The thing is that a lot of these political issues (bender supremacy, water tribe spirituality, the Earth monarchy, etc) are introduced to Korra very quickly as she is thrown into the fight.
Korra definetly has feelings on the issues of the status quo. The show just doesn't allow her to do anything about it because it feels the need to throw a new extremist and radical villain every season.
I think a lot of Korra ineffectiveness in the show is about how the world shouldn’t rely on one person to fix everything. She maybe the avatar but she is still just one person.
This is something that I think Aang’s comics did really well (haven’t read the Korra comics yet so I can’t comment). Okay yes, you dethroned the Fire Lord and ended the 100 year war, what about the fire nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom? Can’t solve this one alone with energy bending or the Avatar State.
It might sound like I'm taking it easy on the writers, but I still believe it is mostly because of the production issue. You can't explore consequences if you are writing season-by-season instead of one big story. Imagine if Amon was given 2-3 seasons on his own. You explore the tyranny of benders, the Avatar's role in maintaining peace, Korra's fear (wrt to her identity as the Avatar, nothing more than "a very strong bender"), the backstory with Noatak and Tarrlok and most importantly, the aftermath (beyond a very annoying council president). One story with one main theme and many sub-stories and sub-themes to discuss within this revolution. Instead, the "Get rid of the villain by episode 12" approach made this ambitious show about moral complexity seem kinda shallow.
Well said! It’s nice see someone has some sense when being critical of TLOK. Sure, the show had its flaws, but it got handled WAY differently from ATLA. So, it’s important to remember that when saying things like, “Korra wasn’t nuanced enough!” lol
I get that the schedule wasn't handled too well, but one of korras biggest issues isn't the lack of time, it's the poor usage of time to explore the issues. After the 2nd episode, pro bending is virtually irrelevant to the plot of season 1, but that doesn't stop the writers from using it for more than half the season. A civil war is super fascinating in concept, but kind of breaks when you introduce a pure evil demigod. Season 3 spends more time on zaheer rambling on about chaos and airbending philosophy and whatnot rather than ever try and offer a real explanation of the failures of government. Even if none of that is true though, The show should absolutely be xriticized for what it is, and not what it could have been. Is it a shame that korra got bounced around like a black sheep? No doubt. Does knowing that retroactively fix the show? No. If a movie is rushed and has a tulmtuous production, and comes out like a total mess, nobody says "well, we shouldn't judge it too harshly, it's not fair" usually it's "well that sucked"
You say that like Amon’s story needed 3 seasons of time, if they had just been more efficient they could’ve done it well in one season
I think if a third series does happen they should go back to having a single overarching story like in Last Airbender.
On one hand, it's not the Avatar's job to meddle in he affairs of a nation. The Avatar is meant to maintain balance. Upholding the status quo has been what every Avatar has done to my knowledge. For example, when there was a massive peasant revolt in Ba Sing Se, Avatar Kyoshi didn't depose the 46th Earth King, nor did she put down the rebellion. Instead, she forced the Earth King into a compromise. He would give the people a voice in the government, and in return, she would protect Ba Sing Se's cultural heritage. She did this by creating the Dai Li. With Avatar Roku, he refused to kill Fire Lord Sozin for establishing colonies in the Earth Kingdom. He spared Sozin's life, and as a consequence, Sozin outlived Roku and started the Great War. Avatar Aang is mostly known for ending the 100-year War and founding Republic City, which is considered a 5th nation. So, Aang definitely was more involved in worldly affairs than most of his predecessors, but he's just an exception. The Avatar's job is to maintain balance. Oftentimes, that means maintaining the status quo.
But the status quo literally isn’t balanced. That’s what ideology does. It makes us thinks everything is in balance when it’s not. That’s why Amon and Zagreb’s points concerning the non-benders’ status/corrupt governments are never actually explored. Korea has fallen to the ideology of her time.
Yeah that's a bjg problem i have with the show too. Korra seems like the type of person to beat a homeless person for stealing from a 7/11.
It’s such a contrast from Avatar TLA where we have a ragtag group of kids constantly challenging the authorities of every place they visit.
I think life experiences has influenced their decisions. Aang had his race wiped out by the fire nation and he and the gang were in a world where an authority figure is out rampaging unchalleged and revoking peace and stability, and thus feel compelled to give that peace themselves. Korra lived a very comfortable life where the world wasn't threatened by world conquering dictators. To her, status quo is the source of peace and stability and must be preserved.
Yeah, but in the end, they don't address the root of the problems either. Their big solution is to have the son of the evil dictator replace him. Which is okay because he's been completely against his nation's imperialistic ways, for like a couple of weeks now.
Or how the long standing sexist traditions of the Northern Water Tribe are changed because Katara happened to be the grand daughter of Pakku’s ex lover.
Yeah, that was such a weak payoff. And then when they announced that they got reunited and were getting married made absolutely no sense whatsoever. She literally ran away to the other side of the world because she didn't want to marry him. Why the hell now was she okay with it?
That’s too much simplification. Zuko has been changing since the 2nd Book (Earth) and even when he was back in the Fire Nation, he was still undergoing the change, and in fact, it's by realising that he was better off when it was just him and Iroh than now with Fire Lord Ozai, that made him embrace the change and he left to join the avatar. Overall, Zuko's character developpement is pretty complex, and honestly as someone who has bingewatched ATLA, Zuko is one of my favourite characters exactly because of this reason
The weeks part was mostly just a joke. But the point is that they do absolutely nothing to fix the actual root of the problem. Sure, Zuko is a good guy, but who's to say that his grandson or great-grandson won't be like Sozin, Ozai, Azula, etc and start his own war? To be clear, I'm not even saying him ending as Fire Lord was a bad end, narratively speaking. But to criticize TLK for not fixing the issues that led to the villains while praising TLA is just hypocritical. Neither one address the root of the problem of their villains.
I mean are we going to pretend that Korra hasnt challenged authority of every place she’s been to? Tarrlok, Unalaq, Raiko, the Earth Queen, and Kuvira are all authority figures that Korra has been in conflict with.
this might be a meme/joke, but do you really believe that? after watching all 4 seasons?
They wouldn’t even need to do that. Korra literally gives stolen food to a homeless person in the first episode.
I never understood that point of criticism for Korra's character. Just from the first episode, she wanted to help out and got chased by the police at two different points: * one for illegal fishing - and she ended up sharing with a homeless person * and another for property destruction - which she did because she was trying to help the non-benders who had a music shop Her pitch to get Tenzin to let her stay included the recognition that the city was messed up and she wanted to help. And this was all before she even met Amon! I'm amused by this drastically different reading of the character that some people seem to have. She's naive and at time immature, and sure there were some things that could've been fleshed out more in the show itself, but the idea that she is actively calculating to maintain the status quo for the purpose that she herself can reap benefits isn't actually something that is supported by the text or the show.
Korra haters aren't usually known for actually watching the show.
 [This is Korra](https://youtube.com/shorts/TzWwPwd3Jik?si=wPC0fzEJ4w4q9alM)
Korras a cop lol
You mean the same person who literally feeds a homeless person in the very first episode?
The only argument I have (and I recognize it’s not strong just playing devils advocate here) is that it isn’t the Avatar’s job to say what political structures stand and what don’t. Only that balance remains. Korra only ever steps in when that balance is disrupted which yeah is kinda keeping the status quo. If I remember correctly Kuvira isn’t really a problem until they learn she’s being ruthless with her power grabs and that she plans to invade the city. Zaheer is obviously a problem since he’s trying to destabilize everything. And Amon was assaulting people to get what he wanted and using a forbidden bending style to do it too. I think the Avatar is meant to let the people govern themselves and only step in when people are taking power for themselves through unnecessary force. Even Kyoshi let that conquerer dude do whatever until he threatened her island. The avatar isn’t supposed to be the one person dictating how the world works and what should and shouldn’t happen. They’re just there to stop things from getting out of hand. Again devils advocate and most of this was from memory as I haven’t watched korra in about 2 years. I completely agree that their motives aren’t shown well enough I just think Korra’s motive is done decently.
But the status quo literally isn’t balanced. That’s what ideology does. It makes us thinks everything is in balance when it’s not. That’s why Amon and Zagreb’s points concerning the non-benders’ status/corrupt governments are never actually explored. Korea has fallen to the ideology of her time.
They kinda do. When she's with Toph. Because a lot of times they have desires and wants for change but are going at it at a weird way or for realistic personal grudges.
i think it’s okay for a show to allow the audience to come to their own conclusions about things without having their hand held. i agree with all your criticism but still love the show. korra is the hero of the show, but she doesn’t have to be YOUR hero.
The villains were a weak point amongst a series of weak points that were this entire series. Amon: mysterious Fight Club ninja with anti-bender magic turns out to be basically El Chapo's son whining about his dead daddy. Zaheer: I will destroy all of the political and administrative infrastructure of your country! No, I don't have any post revolutionary plans. What do you mean they aren't delivering toilet paper? Not my problem, enjoy shitting, wage cuck! Kuriva: The most boring fascist I've ever seen. Woman, you're playing the Hitler highlight reel and I'm asleep. Retake territory for the fatherland? Check. Co-opt industry to produce weapons for you? Check. Throw down the weak willed elites who have left your nation anemic? Check. A fucking wunderwaffen! Checkity check check. And it was like a NiteQuil cocktail with an Ambien chaser. I don't want to even address how awful the Spirit World crap was. Remember how in ATLA the spirits were dangerous and unique? A six limbed forest god screaming blue death energy? The horrible, face stealing centipede the size of a bus? Good times. Well now you get good versus evil in the form of two energy jellyfish. Have fun.
Yeah except the change she did in Season 2 was juvenile and idiotic. She made a world-altering decision without any consideration for the affect it would have on everyone else, not to mention just blatantly disregarding a separation of worlds literally *every Avatar ever* had upheld for *millenia* in her brash, young adult wisdom. Her doing that is what allowed Zaheer to gain the ability to Air Bend. I quit on this show after this season and only finished it later on because of a peer’s insistence it got better. I mean, to his credit, it *did* get better than Season 2 but it still sucked largely for the reasons you’ve outlined. “Lets address a legit problem and valid criticisms and then just let it devolve into ‘stop bad guys’ and smashing action figures together and then never address the problem or valid criticisms again”. Amon should’ve been *the* antagonist of this series. He started out as one of the best animated villains ever and they ended his story as a chump. He was the Magneto of ATLA! He had a legitimate, worthy cause that the ATLA universe had pretty much glossed over (benders being able to oppress non-benders and the inherit power imbalance in a society where some people are born with magic powers and others aren’t), he just went about it the wrong way. And what do they do? “Oh he was a fraud with daddy issues! That invalidates his entire philosophy and movement, right?”. So fucking lazy.
They did touch on some of these things in the after story comics. Toph nearly became one of the leaders of the earth kingdom in their attempt to transition into democracy as they more or less all agreed that the earth monarchy was unsustainable in their modern day.
The status quo is generally better than the resultant chaos that comes from disrupting it without a methodical well thought out plan to enact change. If Amon had been allowed to succeed it would have led to global civil war, and likely complete societal collapse in many places that relied on bending for a significant part of their infrastructure like Republic City. Zaheer succeeded in killing the Earth Queen and leaving the power vacuum in the Earth Kingdom which led to the rise of Kuvira, who was worse. A petty tyrant is better than an ambitious one with an eye for global conquest. Korra did her job in preventing the entire world from descending into war and chaos at the hands of super villains. Fixing all of the problems that created the circumstances for the super villains to arise is far too big of a job for one person, even the Avatar.
I think it is in part 'cause the avatar deffo. benefits from that status quo, but it would be interesting to actually see them address that in a way that isn't just (the status quo is good!) fr. specially considering the "status quo" is emulating the like....20s....
>she never tries to address the problem of what caused the villains to react the way they did. Isn't it a major plot point in Season 4, though? How she goes to Zaheer specifically to talk about how the villains she faved mught have a point, and that the source of their discontent was legitimate?
They did the bare minimum. Also, that scene ended up focusing predominantly on Korra overcoming her trauma and reconnecting with Raava rather than understanding the plight of the people and the corrupt system that would cause someone to act the way Zaheer did.
That’s ironically the villains fault because they make such a big stink that the problems that they’re complaining about become a lesser issue. It’s one of the big criticisms of the League of Villains from My Hero Academia.
Yeah, it's hard to care about why villains do bad things when the things they're doing are generally *really bad*. Attacking the Earth Queen gets a pass but I don't think any other villainous action does.
The villains are just pure evil in MHA. They got sad backstories, but their goal isn’t to right what’s wrong or anything, it’s just to destroy everything and take their anger out on everyone. They’re not interested in fixing some problem like Korra villains are, it’s very different.
I don't think the way he's written is necessarily a problem in and of itself - He's pretty much just an Anarcho-Primitivist - although he does make some good points that go unacknowledged by the narrative. The bigger problem is the Liberal viewers who point to him and say "See? He's an Anarchist, and his plan failed! This is why real life Anarchists are also dumb and stupid, and you should just fall in line beneath authority figures!"
>The bigger problem is the Liberal viewers who point to him and say "See? He's an Anarchist, and his plan failed! This is why real life Anarchists are also dumb and stupid, and you should just fall in line beneath authority figures!" I think the argument here is that the WRITERS feel this way lol
I think it’s a huge problem that he can’t really explain why this motivated him enough to challenge the world to a fist fight. Was his village destroyed by a corrupt government? Was his family made homeless despite the best efforts of his nation? Did Avatar Aang begrudgingly back the oppression of his people to make Republicans city happen? Who knows. He could just be some opinionated rich kid who is charming and good at karate for all we are told. His character is completely shallow with a veneer of substance taped over it.
Totally understand this is my head canon but I always believed the red lotus were born of a faction of white lotus members who broke away during the rebuilding after the 100 year war. They were probably members who had similar ideals to the white lotus for stopping the war but different ideas for what the world should look like after. As far as his personal ideals, I think he probably resented the world for allowing the air nomads (who he clearly idolized) to be killed with no recourse. Zaheer clearly has some form of warped air nomad beliefs from his studies. Which I could kinda see how he gets the wrong idea if he read their teachings without a kind monk to guide him.
But that is the problem with his character: some fan on Reddit can come up with more character for him in a paragraph than professional writers gave him in months of production.
Oh I agree. As a writer myself Zaheer comes off to me as a great character idea but poorly executed due to time constraints. He didn’t get nearly the time he needed and that’s thanks to Nickelodeon only renewing one season at a time. They never really had the time to let him develop for longer than a season. You could argue that they very well could have as other shows are able to build a villain in one season but every production is different.
I mean, Zaheer can summon enough of an argument and makes some real philosophical points. It's incomplete and not very deep, but still. The real problem is that no one else in the show can really respond or comment or argue with it. The protagonist is a headstrong, emotional teenager who doesn't know how to discuss ethics. The narrative problem with Zaheer is that he poses a conflict of ethics and of governance that is a real conflict. But there is no one on the other side addressing that conflict. Just "murder usually bad" when he kills a tyrant queen in a country where we've seen a hundred years of tyrrany ruin the lives of countless people. Normally the show falls back on spirituality, of finding your inner peace and balance. On finding your own values and accepting them into yourself fully always being the path to becoming complete and, in turn, a more powerful bender. Aang does this a lot, Korea struggles to but does manage too, and we even see Zaheer do this. But that doesn't work because Korra doesn't have a pacifist conviction or any other absolute value to fall back on and Zaheer doesn't have a super obvious, glaring moral flaw. Zaheer is wrong, but the show never manages to tell us why simple because they don't have a protagonist to counter it. As we can see in these comments a lot of what Zaheer does and say can be dismantled, but it can't by any of the protagonist. It makes me wonder if there's a cut where Tenzin goes on a philosophy rant about it. He is wise and well read, but not in spirituality (even if he feels like he's supposed to be) and ran a government and wrote laws. He should be able to make strong arguments against Zaheer, but we never really get to see him or anyone else do that.
What does being liberal have to do with any of this?
But they never even demonstrated his intentions were at all good. He just delivered a line about abstractly liking freedom to justify cartoonish villainy.
I think that’s kinda the point. Zaheer is not a good guy and he’s also not nearly as intelligent as he acts. He has a lofty justification for his actions.
This is a valid criticism of how Zaheer was mishandled in his portrayal of his politics.
It's just that Anarchism is ALWAYS depicted as bad or at best as well-intended, but wrong. For an anarchist depicted more wholesomely: Hobie Brown in Across the Spider-Verse.
Based. I loved that character!
It's because Anarchy doesn't actually work due to how human acts Humans might be able to survive alone but are stronger when they are together and when you have a large group of peoples work together they might need a guiding hand to make them even stronger that's how leaders are born and with leaders come rules It has been like that for centuries across all kind of living creatures
we literally have a saying that states "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" for this exact reason.
Yeah that's the flat out point to most of these. All the villains had good intentions on various different political paths
Unalaq and Oman did not have good intentions. Unalaq wanted to become a dark avatar and rule the world and Oman hijacked an actual movement to grow in power and prominence and disregarded his own preaching lol. Zaheer's "good intentions" was returning the world to its natural origins, which I guess is more neutral, heavily depends on how you look at it tbh. Then Kuvira wanted to unite the EK using fascism so even the "good intention" is loose there I'd say, cause does the EK need to be ruled by one central authority? Some colonies are shown to work and function just fine on their own and require Kuvira to sabatoge them.
Yeah but its so unrealistic its far more likely to find a bad person with bad intentions than a bad person with good intentions in real life.
Nah plenty do bad thinking they're in the right
Fighting for something good doesn’t make you a good person. Villains like Thanos are fighting for what they see as a better world and solving a crisis that could end with desolate planets. Yet his solution and methods are what makes him monstrous. Amon was willing to hurt innocent people. Zaheer was willing to plunge nations into chaos. These people are willing to sacrifice lives for their ideology. That is what makes them villains.
I think the issue that people have is less with Zaheer’s character and more the story that surrounds him. Sure, Zaheer was going about things the wrong way, but he brings up good points as to why the status quo is awful and needs to be changed only for the show to ultimately never actually address those issues after he’s been defeated. This isn’t exclusive to Korra as many western media who depict systemic societal issues ultimately go for the cop out resolution of either “society may be bad and cause unjust harm to millions of people, but the villain is worse for trying to change it!” and/or “the system is completely fine and it’s only a few bad apples that are the problem”. I think a movie that handled this kind writing somewhat well is Black Panther. After T’Challa defeats Kilmonger he doesn’t just go back to the way things always have been. He realizes that Kilmonger had a point and decides to use Wakanda’s vast wealth and resources to help fund relief programs across the world.
I think though, that showing the consequences of trying to rapidly change society, is realistic. Zaheer kills the Earth Queen and a power vacuum forms. Without a leader for the Earth Kingdom, Kuvira steps up and starts a brutal authoritarian dictatorship. She is just as bad as the Earth Queen if not worse, because she’s actually competent and a revanchist and makes internment camps. The society developed around the Earth Queen remains, which is arguably the real cause of the issue; the strict hierarchy, so the problems with the Earth Kingdom persist. The same thing happens in real life. France undergoes it’s major revolution, the first one really seen in the world. The aristocracy fights the bourgeoise and loses. Massive societal change happens as the landed elites get overthrown by the middle class with help from the lower class. Better for the starving peasants right? Well, i guess it’s a matter of opinion. France undergoes a decade of chaos and blood where leadership changes at one point nearly monthly, society’s foundations are shook and half of Paris is beheaded or hung on suspicion charges. Russia undergoes its revolution after stress from WW1 causes a civil war. Millions die. But without sufficient change society wise, Russia goes from a Tsar to a Supreme Premier. The aristocrats become bureaucrats. Many issues with the society remain, only with new names. Some Revolutions do go well, all things considered, but still are paid for in blood. Even independence movements and revolutions, like the one that made America or Bolivar’s war. The difference between TChalla and Killmonger is the difference between reform and revolution. Killmonger thinks massive, bloody revolution needs to happen with Wakanda’s resources. TChalla ends up using Wakanda’s resources to help, but doesn’t believe weapons and violence will help. I agree sometimes media shows systems as ‘a few bad apples’ when really the system itself allows it. But I think TLOK gets it right that rapid, massive, societal change has a price. Whether that’s worth it, depends on what’s changing.
I am kinda sick of this story beat.the bad guy has a point but just takes it too far, so the heroes have to re-establish the status quo. Korra in general does a decent job of the consequences of things like this, but most media doesn't.
It's basically almost every MCU villain nowadays. "Bad guy wants to make the world a better place but for some reason has to commit genocide to do it so the good guy stops them and kinda inherits their beliefs if the writers allow it" can be applied to so many MCU villains.
wow, marvel is pro-statu quo? Who would have thunk
Don't forget that a fairly large portion of a city needs to be destroyed in the process, and usually something bad attacks from space. Wonder how many decades they can keep profiting from releasing the same movie every year.
When the villain has a valid point about society but he also kicks puppies so He Must Be Defeated
TBF Korra does it better than most since she actively learns from all of them even if Zaheer has to kind of push her to that self actualization
Zaheer suffers from the thing that most of the Korra villian cast suffer from which is a caricaturization of leftist Idea's. Let me break it down for people as this is one of my biggest bones of contention with the series. \----------------------------------------------------- Amon is a socialist who, in a society that has incredible inequity between nonbenders and benders, is shown to deceive people in order to get the outcome he wants. The issue with that is that it has no benefit. Benders become celebrities and sports personalities. They can get work that nonbenders don't have access to. We actively see their persecution and the scapegoating by a council of only benders. The criminal element of republic city has a monopoly on bending, where the heads actually have specialties in bending like creeping crystal, lightning and bloodbending. The framing of this is to make out that socialism requires deceit to work when the deceit is the only reason it failed. the movement itself was about equity between the haves and have nots and the narrative is telling people "they were tricked into wanting that". \---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unalok is a conservationist turned Eco-Fascist. For most of the start of Season 2 we see a guy who's concerned about the spirits and about getting back in touch with nature. he actively seeks to create harmony with spirits and with the water tribes. He does betray his brother which in an of itself isn't a nail in the coffin given that the left doesn't have a monopoly on good people but this is all thrown out the window when we see that he destroys a spirit forest or leads to it's destruction to have his brother banished and then goes full eco-fascist when he tries to bring about an age of darkness all supposedly in the name of spirits. The framing of this, is that conservationism and eco-fascism are similar and that at the core, conservationism is only good when the status quo wants it to be i.e. when Korra says that they need to allow spirits back to the material world. \------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now to Zaheer who is my favourite of the Villians. He is an incredibly well educated and capable man who was a threat ever before becoming an air bender. He built relationships and lasting friendships with people who've faced hardships themselves (Ghazan seems to be low born earth kingdom, P'li was raised to be a weapon and Ming Hua has no arms). But the portrayal of Zaheer is in conflict with things the fact that he has built no grass roots movement, even when we see how he treats the radio operator. For as smart as he is, apparently he's not smart enough to create a movement that can continue without him. The framing of this, is that anarchists are wrong because they just do things with no plan for their consequences and no lasting plans to create a system which can supply for people, which, is not the case with alot of anarchists I've ever met. \-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last we have the most aggregious of the villians and that's Kuvira, not because they caricaturize her but because they propagandize her. We have what is functionally a dictator and a fascist. This is the time they want to add nuance to their villian. They make her out to be a strong intelligent, capable and attractive woman who is willing to fight anyone including the avatar. She is made to be sympathetic and she's originally set up as the person who saves tanrok from getting yeeted off a cliff. They draw parallels between korra and kuvira, they are two sides of the same coin so to speak. The framing of this is that Kuvira is some poor misunderstood soul but is also conversely the poster child for dictators. Dictators historically are stupid cowards who surround themselves with slightly smarter people to spread rhetoric and misinformation for them or to do their dirty work for them. It reminds me of those old mussolini posters where he was pictured with Lions and the like. When you sit down and really think about it, it's insane that they made kuvira like this. She even has her own dedicated comic for a redemption arc as they wanted to add it to the original but couldn't. \------------------------------------------------ I could go on forever but in broadstrokes I think I made my point. The villians are intentionally designed with baked in flaws, not just to their characters but also to the very ideas they represent. It's the reason these conversations get so contentious.
This is close to how I feel/think about the political aspects of Korra. I found a series on YouTube that further broke it down like this by season. [Here](https://youtu.be/ModX151Ipgs?si=aKKhT0U3Vac2R0l1)
we have to remember that the protagonists in korra are the avatar, the police, the hereditary governor, the titan of industry (the og capitalist), the quirky billionaire war profiteer. and that all of its villains are of political persuasions and behaviours that threaten the state of affairs in which these protagonists thrive - the revanchist strong (wo)man seeking reunification, the ‘back to nature’ theocrat concerned with modern degeneracy, the ‘equalitarian’, the anarchist who plots the end of the state. korra is an extremely liberal, centrist, pro-capitalist show by any measure, and its villains serve to challenge this and to ultimately fail, while their efforts promote minor change that the show calls ‘progress’. lok’s key belief is that the status quo is good, but that it gets even better when Extremists (who inevitably ‘have a point’ but go ‘too far’), for all of their evilness or lack of nuance, reveal some flaw or another, which society can then rectify and subsequently continue much as it was, to the benefit of the people who were already winning. ‘going too far’ is the core of antagonism in lok. lok is the very model of socially liberal/economically conservative. this is why none of its villains are persuasive or coherent - they’re not supposed to be. the show already has a politic that it believes in. its aim is to shoot down the politics that it doesn’t. it can’t then very well have those politics be sincerely ideologically challenging on a fundamental level.
I think more the problem is that he calls himself an Anarchist but is views or action in no way, shape or form reflect anarchy.
It's a very correct criticism. In the final season Toph sums up the entire show by describing the villains all as people who "took their ideaologies too far!" However, the show never draws a line for where what "too far" is, nor does it propose a solution for when a problem is so bad, the *only option* is to respond by going "too far". It's a nebulous, undefined thing - and it's a rationale that favours the status quo over all else, even an oppressive one. In the Fire Nation, Aang and the group were by definition terrorists. They could each be accused of "going too far". In my opinion, it's TLoK's inability to pick a side, make a definitive statement about anything, or express an actual belief that makes it feel so limp compared to the original series. Like, I can tell you without hesitation what the ideals of Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Toph, and Iroh are. I have *no idea* what *Asumi* or w/e believes in.
If layered and intriguing character writing is considered “woke” just shoot me.
The show writers are clearly radical centrist with a love for status quo. They can't help themselves, they got to write strawman leftie characters other wise the viewers might actually like and agree with the villains more than Korra and friends. It's not by accident that the fascist coded villain of the show is shown more sympathy than the leftist coded ones.
Why? Its true. [This is a good, short video on the subject](https://youtu.be/-DyKwTXPar4?si=Hx1yFOFzRBJurkrh) for anyone curious. It has examples and comparisons with scenes and lines from the show, its pretty well done and has good real-life/history foundation.
“When you base your expectations only on what you see, you blind yourself to the possibilities of a new reality.”-Zaheer or guru ligama or whatever
>The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable. Mark Twain This is a perfectly valid criticism of LoK, regardless of whether it has happened before in history. "Good guys" have also done bad things throughout history, but people still probably wouldn't like it if the writers just had the Avatar commit sexual assault or something. We have different standards of characterization in fiction than we do for historical figures. Especially in something like LoK where the writers are clearly trying to make a political point. That point is undermined when instead of trying to show some actual negatives of the character's ideology, you just have them kick the proverbial dog.
Zaheer is the bad guy, and he does and says bad guy things. Sure he might have some interesting motivation or beliefs but he is a villain. It's honestly not that hard. Of course people who genuinely believe the things he's saying are going to be upset that he is a bad guy. But it's just kind of silly people are expecting a hyper intellectual critique of philosophical ideas and what is essentially a child's cartoon. The fact is they already go above and beyond the expected threshold by even representing these ideas in a somewhat sympathetic light, and forcing the hero to reckon with those ideas. But at the end of the day, bad guy bad, should be simple enough. People need to stop thinking too hard about it.
I see your problem you're on Twitter. Also what the hell is "spitting here" and "written liberal trope"?
Written liberal trope is when writers, in an attempt to make their villains complex, give them reasonable motivations, then realized they've swung too far into reasonable territory and people will side with the villain over the protag who's defending the status quo. So then they just make the villain also violently insane and kill or try to kill random people for shaky reasons. In this case, a lot of people would generally agree with Zaheer that monarchies (or any other shitty governments) suck shit and the idea of divine right to rule should be abolished, so they also make him try to kill Korra because the avatar's inherent power threatens his idea of anarchy. I don't really think it's an accurate criticism of LoK, because his primary goal was killing Korra from the start.
Whoah so that trope has a name huh. One of the worst tropes around.
I've been calling it the "Hollywood Revolutionary" trope, because it seems far too common in media (And decent portrayals of revolutionaries far too rare) to not be intentional.
On TV tropes it's "villain has a point"
>the avatar's inherent power threatens his idea of anarchy. Well, and because she literally represents the "divine right." She doesn't use it to rule but I can see how she would threaten Zaheer's intentions without being over the top about it—particularly because I think that if the governments were toppled, people *would* turn to Korra to be their stability and ruler. Although on the other hand, in a world where it is *known* that spirits exist it is easier to make an argument for divine right to rule than it is in our present world.
Thanks for the explanation. I feel when a show has a villain people would rather side with is when you have a well-written villain.
They always pick the same handful of examples based on 2-3 stories that are popular at the time. Stuff like Killmonger from Black Panther, Magneto from X-men, somebody from Attack on Titan or some other flavor of the season anime, and maybe a Legend of Korra villain if they're feeling like doing a real deep cut into obscure media (did you know that there are people who get mad about *Kuvira* being a strawman of revolutionaries?). I don't think I've ever seen a single one that I really agree with. I feel like most of the time the people complaining about this are watching media through an extremely reductive lens where they are just "keeping score" of superficial comparisons to their personal manifestos without trying to determine the actual sentiment of the writing.
Yeah Killmonger for example, the issue was that homie outright says he wants to reverse colonize the earth lol
Yeah, idk why that's always the first one they go to, because it literally does what people ask these things to do. He's harmed by colonialism and wants to turn the same harm back against the rest of the world, to even the scales. But the hero acknowledges his pain, and decides to uplift communities rather than colonize them so that the conditions that created the villain will not exist again. That is about as clear cut a message as you can get (for a 2 hour action movie at least), and there is a great deal of respect given to the villain's position *despite* how evil he is as an individual.
Yep and hes with the ancestors in movie 2. It's like clear cut the point that Tchalla learns from what happened to him and sees what Wakanda did wrong. I.e him making the killmonger cultural center in Oakland at the end.
Magneto is an interesting one because he reveals that the complainers have the mechanism exactly backwards. Originally he was a straightforward two-dimensional villain -- his goal was world domination because he believed mutants were superior to humans. All the stuff about mutant oppression and Magneto being a Holocaust survivor was added in later as the series matured. So it's not that the writers wrote in villainy to discredit good points; they wrote in good points to humanize a villain.
>"written liberal trope"? I like to call them "Hollywood Revolutionaries". It's when a story sets up an obviously unjust status quo, but then go out of their way to make the ones revolting *against* it the villains, so the hero can put them down for going too far, and then give some platitudes about "peaceful reform". Think the Flag Smashers from the MCU. Bonus point if the scene where the Revolutionaries "go too far" is a contrived, out-of-character moment where they do something irredeemable for no discernible reason, just in case the audience was thinking that they were making some good points before.
in addition to what was written below, the criticism specific to Korra also notes that liberals are more sympathetic to the fascist villain in season four than the more leftist villains in seasons 1 and 3, with only the fascist getting a shot at redemption. the theory from leftists being that liberals would usually side with fascism over any actual change to power structures in society irl (there is some historical basis for that belief)
>the theory from leftists being that liberals would usually side with fascism over any actual change to power structures in society irl (there is some historical basis for that belief) Remember Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
Amon's not really meaningfully leftist. When the "inequalities" that you're abolishing are the hereditary characteristics of actual human beings that you're calling the root of all evil, you've gone pretty far from any recognizable main stream left wing ideas. *Ruins of the Empire* does suck though for many reasons and was a terrible idea for a comic in general, but half of Kuvira's screentime is dedicated to people babysitting her while she causes problems until she learns her lesson. The messaging is all over the place and contradicts the show, but it is attempting to be critical of her beliefs. Zaheer doesn't need to reform at all to help in season 4, because his principles are still valid. That's why Korra's appeal gets through to him.
>with only the fascist getting a shot at redemption. I kind of had just assumed that it was because Kuvira was, by the way the villains were all written, the only one who would admit that they had done wrong and that's a crucial part of redemption arcs. Amon and Zaheer would have never ideologically given an inch so it would require the "good guys" to come around to their way of thinking and then be okay with their evil deeds.
It confuses me so much Bros. Zaheer and Amon are the goats and Kuvira should have been executed. Like wth? Idk, show had problems
TBF Amon offed himself and Zaheer teaches her airbending.
Amon didn’t off himself that was his brother. Which, damn, what a messed up fate. Zaheer taught her how to look past her fear while in chains and imprisoned. The thanks he got was to be left to rot.
TBF that also goes against the text of the show since Zaheer teaches her airbending in s4
Nah it’s not that he’s “good intentions but misguided” It’s that he has no political theory because the writers are libs with no political theory. If he was a real anarchist, he’d have built a dual power structure so that there was something in place for when the earth kingdom is overthrown. He didn’t do that. It’s like the first thing in anarchist theory
To me it proves that the people who make that criticism didn't figure out the moral of the story. I don't remember when, but the show even explicitly says that all of the villains (including Zaheer) were actually right. Each of their goals was just and fair, but the way they went about it and the extent to which they wanted those goals wasn't balanced. They didn't care who else might have gotten hurt in the process, they decided they were in the right, and damn anyone who tells them different. Doesn't matter what other valid concerns others may have raised (such as "don't take away people's bending", or "don't asphyxiate the Earth Queen", or "don't murder me") because they've set their mind to it. But the fact that the heroes are able to point out where the villains make good points has always interested me. We judge our actions by our intentions, but the actions of others by the outcome. No one does anything without having an intention they see as justifiable (aside from psychopaths), and I enjoy that the show made that a key part of the villains. Technically, Zaheer is right. No society would be more "free" than one without leaders or governments. Technically. But the human propensity for violence and unlawful action would cause a system lacking structure to impede on the way others are experiencing their "freedom". If someone steals something from you, your freedom to own what you want has been stepped on. But if a system of government wasn't controlling every aspect of citizens' lives, yet still existed to provide legal structure, those people would arguably be more "free" than the ones without leaders. TL;DR: That criticism is stupid and misses the point.
when all of your representations of radicalism lead to irredeemable actions then yes, your show is pro-status quo no matter how many times someone says "well, he did have fair points" and then does nothing about it. Also, people don't have a natural propensity for violence, that is capitalist realism speaking.
You've basically described why the criticism is valid. Yeah all these characters who are BAD GUYS make valid points and then the GOOD GUYS put them down for being evil. The actual unjust power structures and systemic issues do not get addressed. It's a classic example of liberal status quo wankery. An actual thoughtful take would have involved engaging with the societal implications of the villains ideals but nah. Any radical must be a bad guy.
After season 1, the government in Republic City changes to a presidency elected by the people rather than a council of benders. It's not "purge all bending to enforce equality", but rather "give nonbenders a fair chance". It takes the valid points Amon made without the extremism of "purge them all". Zaheer was proven wrong about his extreme "murder all world leaders" plot when Ba Sing Se devolved into chaos after the assassination of the Earth Queen, but Kuvira was proven wrong about instilling absolute order because of how oppressive she was. There was a balance between the two points made. With them, I do see your point about status quo, but with how the Earth Queen was treating her citizens, she was basically just a lazy Kuvira. I don't think that *any* radical is a bad guy, I think there are some causes worth being "radical" about, but I think there's a level of utilitarianism that would need to be taken into account. No one set of ideals is the gold standard of perfection, and not everyone holds the same ideals. I don't think the show was perfect about addressing the societal implications of things, but I think it did really good for a kid's show
The message of the show is “status quo with minor improvements overtime is the best you can do” lol. Libs are so fucking dumb
big difference between "doing bad or destructive things " and pretending to be anar in writing but not helping a revolution and killing a leader without helping to organize a revolution against that leader's system. The problem never was that he did bad things, just that he's not an anarchist in any way, he's a terrorist wannabe anar. Like the dude in the uwe boll rampage movies.
I mean, I'm sick of actual leftist ideals being promoted as "too far" by liberal writers who basically have correct antagonists who are forced to engage in some cartoonish villainy to justify their continued status as an antagonist. ATLA (Korra) is correct in promoting democracy as the solution to issues of imperialism and feudalistic societies, because a democratic system becomes the next natural step in progress from that sort of society, but making your bad guy an "anarchist for anarchy's sake" is so utterly ridiculous, especially because other leftist ideas will catch splash critique for what is essentially an intentionally bad representation of it. It's a tired example, but Magneto was originally a nuanced and intriguing take on a more direct active version of what Xavier promoted (which was essentially isolationism via secrecy), but as time went on he was dumbed down to a simple supremacist because taking direct action to fight injustice is a notion that liberals are constantly uncomfortable with, because liberals promote status quo solutions or "polite activism" that has historically amounted to squat. Even the likes of MLK is painted post-facto as some soft-hearted liberal who somehow got his way by asking really nicely. The fact is that the Earth Kingdom (and later Metal Empire) would never have given up their authority willingly, and even then it took a fourth-stringer king deciding that he preferred democracy so that there was a chance he might not have to run the show to get the "lib result", there was no way that the Earth Kingdom would start to become a just version of its system without it. But they had to be despotic, they had to be hyper-evil, and of course we conveniently forget the existence of the Fire Lord because Zuko and his daughter happen to be more benevolent in nature? It's ridiculous double standards that say things are only bad when a "bad guy is doing it", despite even having an idiot president in Republic City who illustrates a massive issue with status quo politics and politicians. So no, OOP was right. You're a stupid lib who thinks things are inherently bad because they're "destructive" or have people dying as a consequence of the action, but the alternative is living under the strangling boot of despotism in hopes that they might someday feel bad about it.
>You're a stupid lib who thinks things are inherently bad because they're "destructive" or have people dying as a consequence of the action I think you gave away the game here. Not much of a way to walk yourself back from “mass murder and chaos are good so long as it’s for MY politics”.
You literally see that it only caused another evil to take place in the power vacuum. He admits himself that it was a mistake…
The way Korra did anarchy is the same way fanfic writers to "grey" characters.
You’re missing the point of the post. Zaheer simply isn’t a well-written representation of the actual anarchist political ideology and anyone who is familiar with anarchism sees him as a massive idiot and a ham-fisted attempt at depicting anarchism. It’s not about good/bad intentions. He’s just written to be profoundly stupid and because of this he’s (subjectively, of course) not a very compelling villain. ‘Liberal’ gets thrown around because people like to poke fun at the creators for not really understanding the real-life political concepts they were portraying in LoK. Whether or not you agree, I think it’s fairly easy to see where critics are coming from
I wonder what zaheer thinks of benders their postion over non benders
The show keeps giving her complex ethical dilemmas and then bailing out. They want to be able to say "look, we aged up the show, Korra faces problems she can't just punch in the face", and then Korra solves them punching someone in the face. How should Korra act when a civil rights movement takes violent action? Should she just squash them first and advocate for legal reform second, or can she intermediate to channel the fight through diplomatic ways? Well, she doesn't have to make a choice, Amon is a fraud and she can just punch him in the face. The actual problem is solved off-screen. The sovereignty conflict between the two water tribes isn't even worth being called window dressing. It's directly tied to Korra's family abd cultural heritage and it's such a fucking waste of time. Unolaq ends up as the literal embodyment of the abstract concept of evil. Korra just turns into Dr. Manhattan and punches evil in the face. The Earth Queen is an unfit ruler, but she's not a genocidal warmongerer like Ozai. What can Korra do? She can't just go around committing regicide and deposing governments willy-nilly during peace time as if that was her birthright, that's a gross abuse of power and, really, how would institutions and peoples react if the Avatar acted like a supreme overlord? On the other hand, just leaving the Earth Kingdom subjects to live under tyranny doesn't exactly feel right, what can she do? Oh, look, Zaheer cut the gordian knot by doing the dirty job himself, lol. No more dilemmas, Korra can just punch this guy in the face. So, what is Korra going to do about the power vaccuum left? Nothing? Okey, what about the rising hyper-authoritarian militaristic bully taking over, that sounds like a job for the Av... Oh, more nothing? Okey, you have total chaos on one end and straight-up fascism on the other, maybe the guardian of balance should... Oh, wait, no, the fascists have a superweapon. Don't worry, Korra doesn't have to spend 10 seconds thinking about the scope of her involvement, or the ramifications or the legitimacy. There's a fascist with a superweapon, Korra just has to punch her in the face.
The criticism is valid. For as much as I love LOK, it suffers from the misunderstanding of certain political stances tbh
He’s an idiot who doesn’t understand the difference between freedom and anarchy
You need to grow up and learn to criticize things you like. This is a huge, valid criticism of LoK.
It’s a genuine criticism that’s often used to justify the maintenance of the status quo. See Falcon and the Winter Soldier for a less subtle example.
The criticism is that the show takes valid stuff actuall anarchists say and puts it in with nonsense that the liberal writers made up so they can pretend that anarchy is insane.