Korra 1.03 - "The Revelation"

[lizbee]

AMAZING. Predictable, in that fandom guessed that spiritbending would be Amon's secret power a few weeks back, but AMAZING. I loved seeing Mako and Bolin's life, and the daily lives of benders in a society where they're not automatically soldiers in a war.

I really, really love the parallels between the Equalists and Communism. I keep seeing people saying it's disturbing that the villains are called Equalists, but hey, it's also disturbing that there's a totalitarian state that calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. So you have the park protestor, who is of the same ilk as the socialists who cluster in the mall on Friday nights, chanting slogans and harassing people into signing petitions that are never sent, and then you have Amon, your Mao figure -- down to the oppressed rural origins -- who is genuinely dangerous, and who is, in the manner common to Communist leaders, likely to end up exploiting his followers in the name of liberating them. And the injustices they point to are real and should be addressed, while their methods of doing so are abhorrent.

And I love that nothing here is black and white -- benders have inherent power, which some use to oppress others, and there seem to be jobs, like Chief Beifong's elite cops, open only to benders. But at the same time, there are benders who live (or lived) on the streets, who work menial jobs to get by. And then there's Tenzin and his family, who have material privilege while also being the sole remnants of a culture destroyed by genocide. (And even though they're rebuilding, Tenzin has a nuclear family unit and eschews a nomadic lifestyle, so something has been lost forever.)

I FIND IT ALL QUITE INTERESTING. While also side-eying the people declaring themselves TEAM AMON, on account of how I know HISTORY. (It's one of my less practical superpowers.)

Other things:

- Jinora and Ikki are both lovely, and I really want a whole episode just about them
- Mako IS Batman. Or at least Bruce Wayne. Only without the wealth and loving butler and bat fetish.
- Did we all spot the parallels between Amon and Mako?
- It seems like firebenders are still aggressors? Or perceived as such? Or is it just easier to threaten people if you can set them on fire with your brain?
- Lightningbending seems a lot more common than it used to be. Much like metalbending, actually. Both have been industrialised. Will it turn out that bloodbending has been applied in a medical context?
- I love that Korra's still being confronted by her own sheltered background, and learning to work in a team.
- HER HAT. I WANT IT.

Comments

[recessional]

I really, really love the parallels between the Equalists and Communism. I keep seeing people saying it's disturbing that the villains are called Equalists, but hey, it's also disturbing that there's a totalitarian state that calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Having for various reasons spent the last week up to my neck in various accounts and timelines of the atrocities of the various Communist states, word to the wordy word word. Word to all of this, in fact. (Wow, it's like the world is COMPLICATED and the interactions of power and non-power and the different realms in which one can have power is COMPLICATED and life isn't SIMPLE! MADNESS I SAY, MADNESS.)

[lizbee]

(Wow, it's like the world is COMPLICATED and the interactions of power and non-power and the different realms in which one can have power is COMPLICATED and life isn't SIMPLE! MADNESS I SAY, MADNESS.)

Cynically, I predict people will fail to grasp this, and stupid arguments will be appearing within 12 hours. If they aren't out there already. "Korra is a white saviour"-level stupid. WATCH.

[recessional]

WATCH.

No. I am hiding over here, and not clicking anything you link. *solemn* (Seriously, I am following next to nothing about this. With the exception of people I know well enough, I do not want to interact with fandom nor be actively fannish about this show. The last season of Dr Who taught me this: I can be emotionally invested in something, OR I can participate in fandom. Trying to do both results in ruining both the show and the fandom and making me want to kick people in the face while feeling like I'm inherently evil.)

(ETA: Like, I can LIKE things and be fannish about them. But I can't SERIOUSLY INVEST EMOTIONS in them.)

[lizbee]

I stepped back from DW fandom for much the same reason -- I got tired of making squee posts and getting comments back explaining how everything I liked was wrong and bad.

[recessional]

Yeah, and for me the squee was like tied into complicated personal important relationships and formative experiences and people I love more than I can articulate so even I could see the valid reasons for other people to be upset by specific thing it still emotionally FELT like "and you are an irredeemably evil person and hate puppies".

I don't know if Korra's gonna be like that for me? But I also don't want to preemptively force it not to be by salting the ground, as it were.

[lizbee]

No, that makes sense. Why seek out trouble? (I don't! I just let trouble come to me, in the form of stuff that gets reblogged on Tumblr!)

[unjapanologist]

It was amazing.

About firebenders and aggression - pretty sure Amon isn't being completely truthful about his origins. It seems a bit much to have two different characters burst into "an evil firebender killed my parents" stories in the space of five minutes. Perhaps firebenders do have a reputation for being aggressive, probably with some basis in reality, and Amon is taking advantage of that bad rep to garner sympathy. Everybody's going to believe a story about an evil firebender if you hear a lot of that sort of thing anyway.

[lizbee]

It's true!

nonelvis suggested Amon might even be a bender -- it would parallel with the tendency of Mao (and every other Communist leader ever) to edit his personal history as needed.

[rj_anderson]

This was my 6-year-old's theory as well! (He also figured out well before Mako said it that the pattern on the back of the flyers was a map. I AM SO PROUD.)

[musesfool]

Mako is Batman, and I think Amon is the Joker - his origin story will change as it suits his purposes. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's a bender himself. (This makes Lin Bei Fong Jim Gordon, which is right and good, because Jim Gordon is THE BEST.)

I've seen the Koh theory around Tumblr and I think it's a possibility, but I'm trying not to get invested in any one theory yet - I'm just enjoying the show so much.

[lizbee]

I'm trying not to get invested in any theories OR ships yet. Though at this point I think I prefer Korra with Mako over Bolin? But obviously what she really wants is to seduce Lin Beifong.

[archangelbeth]

*sneaks in*

Dang! I thought I was imaginative to have come up with Koh!

(I totally feel like Amon has hijacked a real issue, about benders and non-benders, and is twisting it to his own nefarious purposes. But. *flails and squees and agrees that Korra's hat was awesome.)

[musesfool]

I totally feel like Amon has hijacked a real issue, about benders and non-benders, and is twisting it to his own nefarious purposes.

Yes. This. He has a point in some ways, but I feel like in addition to going about proving it poorly, he's doing it for reasons that are good for Amon and probably not anyone else.

[selvage]

My comment was summed up on twitter: KORRA FEELS. SO MANY FEELS.

I also am staying away from pretty much all commentary except yours. There are Team Amon people? WHAT.

Anyway, nuance! Grey areas! Ethical and moral issues! The voice actor of Amon is really good! YEAH.

[lizbee]

I've already seen "vigilante justice is okay when Amon does it!" I mean, not in so many words, but that's the gist.

The voice actor for Amon was Spike in Cowboy Bebop!

[selvage]

...

I am actually shaking my head right now. Really, fandom? REALLY?

I looked up Steve Blum's profile - looks like he does a lot of anime dubs. I've never been a purist per se - some dubs are really good, particularly the Miyazaki ones - but I've only ever watched Bebop subbed. I bet he'd be good for Spike though. :D

This has made me want to spend my whole Sunday watching my favourite Cowboy Bebop episodes.

[lizbee]

I, OTOH, only saw Bebop dubbed (pretty sure that was all our Blockbuster had), and even years later, I still remember and admire his work.

[melengro]

Cowboy Bebop dubbed is still leagues better than most anime subbed even if you can understand Japanese. It's not even appreciably worse than Bebop subbed and several voices are actually better. Spike's is one of those voices IMO.

[sabra_n]

Oh, so he was Mugen in Samurai Champloo, too! Haha, talk about your total contrast with Amon.

[melengro]

I found the 'cause of every war in every era' line especially interesting, since it reminds one of the sort of rhetoric deployed in discussions of both material/political class privilege and religious structures, while Amon himself is using religious rhetoric (though it's probably the case that discussion of the spirits and the Spirit World isn't perceived as prima facie religious in nature; since this world is not a Western fantasy world it's arguable that 'religion' as such isn't necessarily a concept that applies at all). I also caught the Mao parallels and parallels to East Asian agrarian Communist movements more generally pretty quickly. It was especially interesting that here is a leader with that sort of background who is talking to the sort of inner-city industrial-labour audience that in popular portrayals of Communism is usually associated more with the way Marxist ideas took hold in North America and Western Europe; obviously this is simplistic (rural Italy for instance had a lot of bastions of Eurocommunism up into the eighties while Japanese leftism was initially almost exclusively urban before becoming more common to the depressed rural areas in Tohoku and Hokkaido later on) but it's something I've noticed a lot in portrayals of the history of Communism and the (former) 'Communist world'.

I too loved how it's indisputable that there is a huge strain of bending-based inequality running through the history of the Avatar world and how Korra is discovering the immense privilege that she enjoys but how as you said there's also a history of genocide against at least one bending tradition and cultural erasure or marginalization of several sub-traditions (Sun Warriors, Sandbenders, etc.) and bending is a huge huge huge part of this world's culture and traditions and history and IT'S ALMOST LIKE PUBLIC MORALITY ISN'T EASY AND SOCIAL PHENOMENA HAVE COMPLICATED CAUSES AND LEGACIES!!

I missed this universe.

[lizbee]

I missed this universe.

Me too. I mean, I missed new material from this universe.

And based on your comment, I've realised that so far my Korra OT3 is me/worldbuilding/fictional politics.

...it's something I've noticed a lot in portrayals of the history of Communism and the (former) 'Communist world'.

*nodnodnod*

I'm interested that on the one hand we have the urban university graduate (according to the Republic City game) who's in a position where he can spend his days protesting in the park rather than working, versus the bender who needs to work a menial job and whose skills as an athlete leave him vulnerable to rackets.

I ENJOY FICTIONAL INTERSECTIONALITY.

[melengro]

I'm interested that on the one hand we have the urban university graduate (according to the Republic City game) who's in a position where he can spend his days protesting in the park rather than working, versus the bender who needs to work a menial job and whose skills as an athlete leave him vulnerable to rackets.

It reminds me a little of how in my country's South, which as you probably know is infamous in a lot of world for its frequently intransigent and/or reactionary pull at the politics of the United States as a whole, there are genuine feelings of historical grievance--not entirely illegitimate since much of the South is very underdeveloped by American standards to the point that Mississippi in particular actually has a Human Development Index somewhere around Russia's and Mexico's--that make the area susceptible to the type of right-wing religious nationalism that unlike the economic leftism that the South was associated with for a while there (northern Louisiana was one of the most set-the-woods-on-fire borderline-Communist parts of the United States in the early part of the last century) is these days willing to pay lip service to what the South perceives as those of its cultural values that are being repressed by elites in the North and West. And this used to be the worldview of a lot of people in the West as well, before the deprived inland primary-industries parts of that area got crowded out by the affluent, somewhat slacktivist parts of the Pacific coastline and left-leaning immigrant communities along the Mexican border. But of course the way things are done in the South is often pretty internally repressive and was formerly extremely so...

None of which is immediately relevant to Korra, but it's the same sort of thing going on with multiple layers of domination and dependency, where it's hard to know exactly what level the oppression is taking place on, precisely because it's taking place across levels and sectors of society. The dynamics of class and material versus immaterial privilege going on in this show are really fascinating already, aren't they?

[sabra_n]

Oh, I'm glad I didn't read up on fan speculation (not even going to go into TEAM AMON), because all the revelationing going on at the Equalist rally had my brain doing backflips of shocked glee. Amon talked to the spirits - or at least claims it - and Korra can't contradict him until she starts getting spiritual herself and it's so perfect.

And I loved that Korra is so privileged she's never even had to carry money, let alone have her livelihood weighing on her every day - she's not rich, but it's just one more way her caretakers placed her outside the world she's supposed to be protecting now. Welcome to Republic City, indeed.