Nothing quite illustrates how far we’ve hurtled down the slippery slope of rainbow intolerance in just a few years than how so many popular and uncontroversial TV shows from just a decade or so ago are suddenly “problematic”. By which, of course, they mean that they trigger flappy-armed Tumblr feminists and creepy Twitter trannies.
Comparing the modern stuff the Cancel Culture Vultures do approve of, though, it seems that what really offends them is good writing and well-crafted storytelling. Which is why they’re now coming for even recent shows like The Legend of Korra.
Korra is an animated teen-oriented series that ran from 2012-2014. It’s the sequel to the celebrated Avatar: The Last Airbender. Like its predecessor, it’s smartly written, with great characters and imaginative world-building.
So, of course, it’s now “problematic”.
The Legend of Korra presents Avatar Korra as a strong and capable female from the very start. Despite this, she almost always has to answer to a higher authority and needs their guidance on everything. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it does give mixed messages when Korra is supposed to be a strong example for girls. Female characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender were leaders themselves, so seeing Korra have to be handheld the entire way through her journey seems like backpedaling. Looking back, Korra doesn’t feel as capable on her own as the Avatar girls of the past.
Nothing says better than that paragraph just how little modern writers actually understand good writing – let alone the work they presume to critique.
In fact, Korra is shown from the very start as strong, but far from capable. In fact, she’s impulsive, willful to the point of arrogance and prone to making reckless mistakes because she doesn’t listen to the wisdom and experience of adults.
Which leads directly to:
For arguably one of the strongest Avatars to date, Korra sure does need a lot of rescuing. Despite her strength, skill and obvious power, she finds herself captured or in danger countless times throughout The Legend of Korra. She often can’t save herself either and needs to be rescued by her friends […] it’s a bad look for a character meant to be empowering for girls.
Only if you’re the sort of contemporary writer who thinks that a “strong female character” is the sort of Mary Sue who never puts a foot wrong, is all-conquering from the get go and exists only to put everyone in their place like the girlboss that she is.
This might be how the writers mistakenly see themselves, but it’s not how people are in the real world. A real person who carries on like that is insufferable and unlikeable – just like the tiresome female characters of modern film and television.
Korra makes mistakes and needs to be pulled out of her own screw-ups so often because she’s a typical teenager.
This is the key thing the critic is missing about both Korra and Avatar: the age groups they’re pitched at. While neither show treated their target audiences as fools and often deal sensitively with heavy themes – like all really good children’s film and literature; they’re readily enjoyable by adults – Avatar pitched well at its age group. Korra, even more so, because the writers knew their original audience had become adolescents.
So, the child-like crushes of Avatar have become the first awkward fumblings at serious relationships. The gang of kids on largely adult-free adventures have to navigate finding their freedom within the bounds of family and the adult world.
Adults who, teens are dimly realising, are far from what they seemed when they were kids.
Aang’s negligence as a father shocked fans everywhere and looking back, it still leaves a sour taste in their mouths today. No one could have predicted that the sweet and loving monk would become such a horrible father, nor did anyone think the family he and Katara created together would become so toxic.
This is as woeful an understanding as the first. Aang isn’t “negligent” at all – but he does let his duties often overwhelm his family life. You know, like a great many working fathers do. He’s no more “horrible” than any stressed, overworked dad and the family is no more “toxic” than any other. Like all families, they have their jealousies, resentments and unresolved tensions.
Which is the whole point: Korra is holding up a mirror to its teenaged audience. See? it says. Parents and families aren’t perfect. More importantly, it shows how Aang’s adult children work through their problems and come to understand one another.
But if modern writers don’t understand how to write for an audience that isn’t just their own little echo chamber, they understand less such concepts as well-rounded characters and engaging themes.
Which is why they think that:
The Legend of Korra has an odd fixation on authority figures, such as government heads and the police force. A lot of the storyline focuses on the politics of the land, something that Avatar: The Last Airbender hardly touched on.
Given that the entire plot of Avatar was the Fire Nation trying to take over everyone else, even committing outright genocide, one has to wonder if this twit ever actually watched it at all. There were entire subplots about apparently harmonious societies kept in line by fascistic secret police and tyrannical bureaucrats.
As for authority: the villains are invariably abusers of authority, whether it’s the tyrannical Earth Queen or the fascistic Kuvira. Even anarchist Zaheer contradicts his freedom-loving rhetoric by resorting to violence and oppression.
The final complaint inverts what was, in fact, one of the few poorly executed moments of the series – and the most in line with modern, ham-fisted “representation”.
When it first came out, the reveal of Korra and Asami’s relationship at The Legend of Korra’s end met with a lot of praise. It was shocking, groundbreaking and a huge first step when it came to LGBT representation in animated media. However, by today’s standards, it isn’t near enough.
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In other words, the characters weren’t constantly telling everyone that they were gay, or trans or whatever intersectional garbage the writers want to beat their audience over the head with.
In fact, what was really wrong with the relationship reveal was that it was so clearly shoehorned in as a last-minute afterthought. The build-up wasn’t “subtle” – it was entirely absent. The audience “never get to see anything inherently romantic between them on-screen”, because there was no romance.
It’s painfully obvious that the “representation” is entirely forced and alien to the story and the character development. It’s “representation” solely for the sake of intersectional brownie points.
The last scenes of Korra were the most contemporary of all – and, for that reason, the least satisfying of all.
