Reflections on war as portrayed by Avatar: The Last Airbender
The Nickelodeon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, or ATLA for short, is one of most beloved, if not the most beloved TV children’s animated television series of all time. At its core is a well-executed children’s story about friendship, overcoming challenges, individuality, forgiveness, and growth. Layered on top of that is a critique of war and the global geopolitical climate. Though the original animated series is certainly unparalleled by any of its later live-action adaptations, the Netflix live-action adaptation has brought it to my attention again, and I am giving it due consideration.
The series is set in a fictional world embroiled in a hundred-year war. Within this world, select humans amongst its populace can psychically manipulate air, water, earth, and fire, each representing a nation. The protagonist is a young boy who is the key to stopping said war, because he is the current incarnation of the Avatar, the only person who can manipulate all four elements. He is also a young boy. Through circumstance, his only companions are other children, and they need to figure out how to stop the Fire Nation, the aggressor in this war.
Unlike most children, I didn’t watch this growing up, one episode at a time on cable television. No, I binged this recently, sometime in the first half of 2020 after the pandemic struck. It was phenomenally entertaining and well-written, each episode and season were self-contained. Despite how recently I consumed it, I never reflected on its politics. In retrospect, I find this surprising, as I consider myself a well-informed and politically aware person, but completely ignored the conspicuous politics.
ATLA is a thinly veiled analogy for the global geopolitical landscape.
Depending on the politics of the viewer, the Fire Nation could represent any number of supposed bad actors. One obvious interpretation is that the Fire Nation represents China: their garments are East Asian inspired and red, they have global military ambition, and have subjugated the Indigenous-seeming Water Nation, as well as exterminated the Air Nation, a group of monks with Tibetan-sounding names. This is the obvious interpretation because it is an American television show, part of the media-military complex to indoctrinate children. Of course, only because it is an American television show that we can also ascribe authorial intent to a less explicit, but just as prominent interpretation: that the Fire Nation is analogous to the United States. The Fire Nation has red garments, global military ambition, subjugated the Indigenous-seeming Water Nation and technological advantages over the other nations, almost like a hawkish conservative portrait of America. Oh, also they aim to achieve world peace by controlling all other countries.
Political affiliation aside, ATLA is at the very least anti-war. It shows the impact of war with nuance and care; it is after all, a children’s show. Though it is animated, ATLA depicts families destroyed, people living in a constant state of fear, war refugees, and children becoming radicalized and turning into terrorists. It even shows people in the Fire Nation as victims of this war: they’re ordinary people who’ve lost family and friends, and as the show progresses, most members of the Fire Nation are portrayed with nuance. Only the leader of the Fire Nation and a handful of his lieutenants are shown to be power-hungry and evil. ATLA also addresses many other political issues, such as environmentalism, sexism, and pacifism in brief spurts that make narrative sense.
And narrative fit is so important because through it, ATLA remains an excellent children’s show, not political satire. I was discussing casting in the ATLA live-action with a friend, and they thought the racial diversity had a political agenda. When I sarcastically said “God forbid they politicize ATLA,” he complained that it’s what they did with the sequel, with an obviously queer lead. I haven’t seen The Legend of Korra, but that complaint struck me as ironic with how political the original is. Perhaps it’s because identity politics are currently topical that this was more conspicuous, but I think the strength of the story is what delivers the politics in ATLA softly.
Although the original ATLA showed the effects of war on people, environments, and societies, the cartoon medium through which it was told removed the audience from much of the horrors of war. The live action tries its best to do the same, showing little blood or death, cinematography clean and computer generated as opposed to the grime that traditional war movies have. However, seeing child actors onscreen engaged in war drove the politics home for me. One of the supporting protagonists is a young teenage Water Nation boy who is charged with protecting his home, as all the adult men have left the village, and he is the only remaining man who has gone through their initiation into adulthood. The village has a snowfort on an ice floe as a defensive position, and manning the turrets with spears are even younger children. In the first episode, a Fire Nation warship lands at their doorstep and they are forced to chose between survival or helping the Avatar. The other protagonists are all younger than him: the Avatar who is supposed to save the world has only recently been reincarnated and is the youngest of the bunch. In the cartoon, sometimes the protagonists act immature and seem distracted from their heavy responsibilities. In the live action, sometimes the protagonists seem too mature for their age; though their words and actions are similar to those in the cartoon, seeing them come from children is striking. The primary antagonist of the series whose tragic backstory sets the stage for what is possibly the best redemption arc in television history is comical in the live action because he’s a teenager! He’s just a sulking emotional teenager!
Then again, perhaps it’s not only the live action that renders me more sensitive to the plight of children during war. The images from the recent news reports in Palestine are a horror to behold, and although nothing is explicitly shown in ATLA, it’s only too easy to imagine what children must be going through. There is a group of orphans-turned-terrorists who call themselves “freedom fighters”. There are villages filled with only children and elderly because everyone else went to fight in the war. It’s all just so much more real now, hearing that over half the population of Palestine is under eighteen, and a large part of Hamas is comprised of orphans whose parents were killed during earlier conflicts with Israel.
ATLA is in the end a wonderful television series with nuanced characters, original plot, and complex political undertones. Though this might not be obvious to a child, or even a young adult binge-watching it during a global pandemic, they are certainly present and evident when the show is watched critically. But it doesn’t have to be. It can be enjoyed for the plot alone, and the basic understanding that war, is bad.
