Avatar: The Legend of Korra (A TV Reflection)

Avatar: Legend of Korra is best known for not being Avatar: The Last Airbender. It received a certain amount of hate when it came out, and has long been viewed as greatly overshadowed by its predecessor. That view is both accurate and somewhat unfair. Legend of Korra is a very different show than The Last Airbender, with different conflicts and a dramatically different view of trauma, especially emotional trauma, than its predecessor.

The Last Airbender spends little time focusing on the personal cost of trauma. Aang loses his entire people, but aside from his immediate reaction upon finding Monk Gyatso, his reaction is relatively muted. The Last Airbender shows how it drives his actions - for example, some of his determination to not kill Fire Lord Ozai is due to his dedication to upholding the values of his people - but spends little time examining the emotional toll his trauma takes on him. It is much more focused on Aang’s external conflicts than his internal ones.

Korra is a very different Avatar than Aang. When we meet her In the White Lotus camp we see a young woman, powerfully muscled where Aang was slight, brazen where Aang was cautious, and gifted in all the elements except Aang’s own. And unlike Aang, who was hesitant to accept his responsibilities as the Avatar, Korra defines herself by them. Her very first words in the show, then little more than a toddler, are “I’m the Avatar, you gotta deal with it!” - a stark contrast to Aang’s flight from the Air Temple after he learns he’s the Avatar. When Korra arrives in Republic City, practically the first thing Korra does is find some thugs to beat up. She is cocksure and self-righteous and - in fairness - brave and kind-hearted. Korra sees herself first and foremost as the Avatar - physically powerful and a gifted bender, and dedicated to using those gifts to help people.

That self image is a large part of why her conflict with Amon in season one affected her so powerfully. Amon’s ability to take away bending preyed on Korra’s fear of weakness and insufficiency. After Amon demonstrates his ability in “The Revelation,” Korra has a nightmare about Amon taking away her bending. It ends with Amon saying “After I take your bending away, you’ll be nothing.” Her nightmare demonstrates her fear of being unable to help people as the Avatar. More generally, Amon’s equalist movement is also a threat to Korra’s self image. Amon’s argument, repeated by his lieutenants, is that the era of benders is over. In Amon’s new world, the Avatar is nothing more than the relic of a bygone era. Korra tries to confront her fears head-on by challenging Amon to a duel in “The Voice in the Night,” but it winds up backfiring. In a scene that plays out much like her nightmare, Korra is ambushed by Amon and his chi-blockers and quickly defeated. Worse than her physical defeat, Amon dismisses her, telling her that while he could take away her bending easily, his plans are bigger than she is.

Although Korra defeats Amon in “Endgame,” in the process he takes away her ability to bend everything except Air. It’s a scene that again plays out much like her nightmare. Amon uses bloodbending to overpower her and takes her bending with barely a struggle. Korra finally finds the ability to airbend and saves Mako, but the confrontation leaves her physically and emotionally defeated. When Katara is unable to restore her bending, Korra believes that she’s hit a dead end - a stark contrast to her bright-eyed optimism when she first arrives in Republic City. She rejects Tenzin’s attempts to encourage her and Mako’s declaration of love. Losing her ability to bend strips her of her identity and she becomes depressed. Season one rushes onward to its conclusion as Korra connects with her past lives and regains her bending, spending little time on Korra without her bending. But it does introduce Legend of Korra’s focus on the emotional side of the trauma that Korra faces.

Whereas the show largely glossed over the long-term effects of Korra’s struggle with Amon at the end of season one, it spends much of season four focused on the aftermath of her fight with Zaheer. Physically, the effects of her struggle with Zaheer are a magnified version of her loss of bending following her fight with Amon. She is left disabled, unable to walk or stand on her own, and as a consequence has lost the greater part of her ability to bend. Not only did Zaheer defeat her personally, he also destroyed her work to keep peace and balance. He destabilized the Earth Kingdom, kidnapped Tenzin and his airbenders - Korra’s second family - and nearly destroyed the Avatar spirit entirely.

Defeat, even defeat at such a scale, isn’t why Legend of Korra is distinct from The Last Avatar. Aang was killed (though he came back later) at the end of season two of The Last Avatar. Legend of Korra is distinct because of Korra’s reaction to her defeat. While healing in the South Pole, Korra is listless and unenthusiastic. She eats little and speaks little, even to her parents. Her sleep is wracked by nightmares of her confrontation with Zaheer. While awake, she has flashbacks to the fight and sees visions of herself from the fight. Her mental illness makes it hard for her to interact with people, as when the people in the small Earth Kingdom town she visits see her firebend against apparently empty air. The immediate consequences of her trauma are compounded because even as she is healing in the Southern Water Tribe, her friends are still interacting in the world. Bolin in particular is helping re-unite the Earth Kingdom with Kuvira - a job that, as Korra points out, would typically fall on the Avatar. Korra is stripped of everything that she used to define herself as a person, which hurts her very deeply.

Korra ultimately needs to be healed three times over the course of season four. The time is with Katara, in the Southern Water Tribe, and only addresses the physical symptoms of Korra’s trauma. It actually looks a lot like physical therapy in the real world. It also introduces some of the major themes of Korra’s gradual healing. Katara can’t do very much to help Korra - Korra needs to actively participate in her own healing, and put a lot of work into it. As much as Korra wants to, and as much as her gradual progress frustrates her, Korra can’t get better by just resenting where she is. When she leaves Katara and the Southern Water Tribe, Korra has regained her mobility, but is still physically weaker and still emotionally traumatized by her fight with Zaheer - a fact which is very clearly symbolized by Korra’s vision of herself from that fight.

In her second healing with Toph, Korra needs to more directly engage with the physical effects of her trauma. Korra needs to remove the remaining metal poison from her body before she can return to her strength. More importantly, Korra herself needs to do it. Within the show itself, Korra is holding onto her trauma too tightly for Toph to heal her, so Korra needs to take responsibility for her own healing. Metaphorically, it’s a repetition of Katara’s words during Korra’s physical therapy - other people will be able to help her heal, but Korra will need to put in a lot of the work on her own.

When Korra needs to rescue Jinora from the Spirit Realm, she needs to confront her trauma a third time, by facing Zaheer in person. Though she still doesn’t trust Zaheer, she allows him to guide her back to the Spirit Realm and to reconnect with her spiritual self. It’s a scene that parallels Korra’s healing with Katara and Toph. Zaheer can help her, but Korra needs to work with Zaheer, and to actively put work in herself. The parallelism of Korra’s healing with Zaheer is the clearest demonstration of Legend of Korra ’s unusual handling of trauma. The first two healings specifically dealt with physical trauma.It’d be unusual but in no way unheard of for a show to demonstrate the long-lasting effects of physical trauma. The third healing with Zaheer deals specifically with her non-physical trauma, and elevates that to the same level as the more often shown physical trauma. To be clear, in that regard the healing is allegorical; speaking with her abuser doesn’t magically cure Korra of her depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. But what the show does depict, in more or less allegorical ways, resembles exposure therapy, which is a real tool to help victims of PTSD. Korra deliberately confronts her trauma - Zaheer the person, and her memory of the poisoning in the cavern and her fight against Zaheer - in a safe environment, as a way for her to begin to grow past her trauma.

I do want to make one more, unrelated comment. Now, in 2020, the relationship between Korra and Asami is understated - the only confirmation in the show that they wind up as a couple is that the final shot with the two of them is composed the same as the marriage of Varrick and Zhu Li earlier. It was so vague that showrunners Konietzko and DiMartino needed to confirm outside of the episode that Korra and Asami were a canon couple. But in 2014, the portrayal of their relationship - two well-developed, central bi women ending up together - in an animated show for children was genuinely novel. To the best of my knowledge it was the first example of anything like that, certainly in mainstream pop culture.

There are many possible criticisms for how the show handled their relationship - that it was underdeveloped, that Konietzko and DiMartino yielded too readily to pressure from the network, that its influence was small because Legend of Korra had been pulled from television by season 4 and was broadcast exclusively online. Many of them are true. But that’s not the point.

My coping mechanism thus far in quarantine has been watching more recent animated television shows principally geared to children - She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, The Owl House, Steven Universe. I don’t really have the words to talk about how much it matters to have shows that depict LGBT content so positively. It matters that Catra and Adora kissed. It matters that Willow has two dads. It matters that Stevonnie uses they/them pronouns. And it matters that Benson got to say “I’m gay” on television. It matters because kids who watch the show get to have heroes that feel the way they do. It matters that they get to have a language to describe themselves. They get to believe that they have a right to exist and that they are valid.

Getting shows, especially shows geared at kids, that have such a positive take on LGBT issues has been one positive thing to come out of this year. Unfortunately the real world is infinitely more complicated. The Owl House, which airs on the Disney Channel, has received no little hate for suggesting a queer romance. Even relatively brief scenes - like a picture of Willow’s dads - have been censored abroad. Even in the United States, there are relatively few protections for members of the LGBTQ community, especially for trans women. That manifests in a lot of ways, from things that are specifically discrimination to social pressures, like those that result in a tragically high suicide rate among trans youth.

The same thing is true for every kind of inclusivity. It matters that Kipo, Wolf, and Benson are all Black, and that Kipo in particular is Afro-Korean; it matters that Luz is bilingual and Afro-Latina. It matters a lot. Both The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra have entirely non-Western characters, and Korra in particular is Native-coded. It matters because kids get to see heroes that look like them. It matters that white kids see heroes who don’t look like them - ones who, instead, look like kids they’ll be friends with.

But as with LGBTQ representation, racial inclusivity in the real world is much more complicated. People of color, especially Black people, face injustices which are built into the structure of life in America. It’s been brought to the fore in 2020 by the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Jacob Blake. But it’s not limited to Black death, and especially not limited to a very small number of well-publicized Black deaths.

I particularly want to call out one example calling back to the world of animation. Roughly a month ago now, the crew of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power made a racially-charged joke during a live-stream. It’s upsetting because the joke was upsetting. It’s upsetting because She-Ra, which was written around queer inclusivity, had nowhere near the intersectionality that might have been hoped for. It’s upsetting because it means, at best, that the writers’ room had too few BIPOC in it.

I don’t mean this as a special criticism of the crew of She-Ra. I’m more than willing to believe that they all had the best of intentions in making the show. But it’s a disheartening reminder that, even with the best of intentions, all white people - specifically including myself - carry internalized racism with us, and dealing with it requires specific and deliberate effort. Inclusive television on its own is wildly insufficient for the progress that we need to make. But it is a hopeful step, and an encouraging one.