The Last Airbender (Nickelodeon’s Avatar)
January 9, 2010
by Optixmom
|Back in 2005 I remember my son (then age 7) was riveted by a new show on Nickelodeon called Avatar: The Last Airbender. He had previously been into Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh when he was younger and I had watched some of these 
anime programs and was less than impressed. These animated cartoons showed girls as ditzy damsels who couldn’t get out of their own way unless there was some male there to take care of them. There were very few anime shows on Cartoon Network that didn’t fall into the same category as Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh (i.e. Dragon Ball Z, etc.).
So when he became enthralled in Nickelodeon’s Avatar, I just thought it was another anime same-old. It would have some guy hero that is surrounded by bimbos who wear very little clothing, giggle while they tilt their empty heads, and await for him to save them from some simple life-threatening situation.
By the end of the first season of Avatar my son had convinced me to watch the episode called, “The Water Bending Master.” I humored him and prepared to be appalled or bored or both; but I was so wrong in my biased assessment. The theme of this episode was sexism. There were two teens who needed to learn “water bending” (a style of martial art in the saga) from a Master; one of the teens was male (Aang) and the other was female (Katara). The Master refused to train the female because their culture dictated that the women were not worthy of this martial art. I remember my son saying to me, “Mom, that guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. Katara can kick his butt.”
By the end of the episode Katara had proven to the Master that women were indeed worthy of training and that she was one of the best students that he ever had. Also by the end of that episode I was now hooked to the show.
The story of Avatar is that there are four nations; Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. Each nation has martial arts “benders” who can use their element in their martial art forms. For a hundred years the Fire Nation had believed that their nation was superior and thus they started to invade other nations; they were led by a zealous ruler who was ruthless and had no empathy for life other than his own. The Avatar is a martial arts master who can use the four elements and bend them in a way to direct them and use them as part of the martial form. The Avatar is also a spiritual leader and their job was to help maintain a balance between the four nations and the spirit world. When an Avatar died, they were reincarnated into a child born to another nation in the cycle, thus there had been thousands of Avatars over the millennium both male and female.
When the first Avatar episode aired we learned that the Avatar had disappeared one hundred years ago and was discovered frozen in ice by two teenagers from the Southern Water Tribe; Katara and her brother Sokka. The main character is a bald, male, twelve-year-old, airbender named Aang. Aang is the Avatar, but he is untrained and unaware of what the word has become in his absence. Katara and Sokka team up with Aang and help him find his way through learning how to bend water, earth, and fire as well as support him in his quest to restore balance to their world by defeating the Fire Nation’s leader, Fire Lord Ozai.
What I love about this anime is that the female characters have substance. Aang may be the ultimate hero, but he cannot do any of what needs to be done without the protection and mentoring from the young women in his life. Also, there are several female villains that would make Darth Vader or Lex Luthor run for the hills. The two co-creators of Avatar are white males Brian Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino. My hats go off to Konietzko and DiMartino for building their characters to be strong despite their gender. Their animators and artists did a fabulous job of not over-sexing the female characters. They didn’t detract from their strengths with heaving cleavage or ultra-short skirts. The evil characters, regardless if they are male or female, are equal in their distaste for human life. They are psychopaths and their genders are irrelevant.
This summer M. Night Shyamalan will direct a trilogy of The Last Airbender story. Shyamalan was also introduced to this anime through his 7-year-old. Only his child was his daughter. She intrigued him by wanting to be Katara for Halloween in 2005. Shyamalan and his wife watched the first two seasons on DVD with their daughter and he knew he wanted to direct the story as a movie. My hopes for the movie will be that Shyamalan will keep to the theme of the anime and maintain the strength of the women. Here’s to hoping that the Hollywood sexist beast will stay away from his filming and that this movie will stay true to the strengths of Nickelodeon’s show.
When my daughter was three, I asked her why she didn’t like Sesame Street. She told me that all of the muppets were boys. When I thought about it – Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Oscar, Snuffleupagus, and later Elmo are all portrayed as being male. Any “girl muppets” were marginal characters. So I turned it off.
I love this show. Its more like the video game versions of Japanese anaimation which do have strong females as major characters. She actually started watching it on Cartoon network.
I find myself always telling my kids to turn off some program because it is racist, sexist, or both. They can ask questions but they must change the channel first. It worked and it keeps your boys from thinking that sexism is alright and it keeps your daughter’s self esteem up.
Azumi (the movie) is a martial art feminist masterpiece I highly recommend viewing. A little bloody but damn good, and everyone knows that the truth is, women are simply better at a majority of things; I would say everything but pure brute. 5 years ago I did a statistical study on women’s athletic achievements, and I proposed that women make evolutionary “leaps” while men’s genes remain steady. When allowed to perform, we could possible overtake men even in athletics and size. Martial arts, however, as a form, is not strength and size reliant, but relies on speed and overall skill.
To clarify that’s Azumi 1 not Azumi 2, which is a misogynist rendition made by an entirely different writer, as if he was thought he was being Feminist, and quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
I think you will be very disappointed in Shyamalan’s casting choices.
http://www.racebending.com/v3/
Votermom,
I had seen the discussions regarding the casting decisions and the fact that many of Shyamalan’s choices were Caucasian. It is a shame that he didn’t keep to what is represented in the animated story in regard to race. This may be a sign that the representation of the characters and the strength of the women will also be in jeopardy seeing as to how his interpretation of the characters’ races has already been affected by the Hollywood machine.
It’s very disappointing to us as an Asian-American family. We love the series but we are not watching the movie.
I loved watching this series with my daughter also. In fact she watched the whole series again on her computer while she was home from college for Christmas break. I am really looking forward to the movie. I hope the female roles are done well. I am interested in female issues first. So having strong female characters for me overrides the race of the actors who play them. Remember old feminists (NOW) need for perfection in everything? Well I am not into that, I just require some intriguing female characters.
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