Episode 90 - Avatar the Last Airbender

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There are some topics that I know I really need to talk about on this show. And not just because of search engine optimization. Let’s face it, I’m really not good at that sort of thing. I understand SEO enough to be able to put it on a resume and make it through a job interview, but putting it to practice isn’t something I’m great about. Hence a delay of sorts.

But if you’re super generous and kind to me, you’ll be quick to say that Avatar the Last Airbender did not hit Netflix that long ago, so I’m not that late. However, the announcement was a while ago. It was an announcement of something that was obviously going to be a super popular release, and considering I loved that show as a kid, it should have been easy to draft out a script about the resonance and appeal of a show that is so prolific in the life of its fans. Particularly because the movie adaptation was just so bizarrely bad but hit enough of the superficial points that it’s essentially a science experiment’s control group. 

(Pause) Okay, that was not a great analogy. There are parts of the story that didn’t translate from the animated series to the live action adaptation. And considering how painful the live action movie can be to watch, well, we know those are fairly important pieces. 

But despite how obvious that conclusion should be. It did not make this episode any easier to draft. I mean, I couldn’t cover everything in one episode logistically speaking, and making this a multi-part mini series would be tiresome for all involved when you consider how much these various talking points actually overlap. In other words, there was a lot to like about the show: with its strong writing, cohesive plot and subplots, good characters with personal and profound character arcs, an art style that spoke to people who liked anime, well-incorporated martial arts, and a lot of heart. 

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And all of that might be fascinating to talk about and would be great for the SEO of this podcast, but there’s one thing that really sticks out right now as being particularly relevant. Namely, that the show never pulled any punches. Nothing about the show talks down or condescends to its audience, and while it doesn’t get so heavy handed as to make one-to-one comparisons with the world of 2005 to 2008, it focused more on the general lessons that we will all need in general terms but especially in difficult times. It brought these lessons to viewers in a way that they were inclined to connect to and later use, even if the scale wasn’t something anyone could have imagined a dozen years ago.

Because, sure, we aren’t all Avatars, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t called to meet various challenges and evils in our own right.

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Hi. It’s M. Welcome to Episode 90.

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But I should not assume that you know what I’m talking about. I mean, yes, it’s a super popular show in the shared cultural consciousness and there were a respectable amount of memes and whatever the emotional and sentimental equivalent would be of scenes and lines that just twisted our heart strings. 

But anyway, Avatar the Last Airbender is an animated television series that initially ran onNickelodeon from 2005 to 2008. And unlike some stories, I don’t think you can ground an accurate description of Avatar the Last Airbender into a simple summary of plots or characters. The premise is far more encompassing. You see, the world of Avatar the Last Airbender is divided into four nations designated by their ties to one of four titular elements: the Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation and and the Air Nomads. This allegiance, as it could be known, is fairly important to a segment of each population. You see, there are people called Benders who have the ability to direct and control their nation’s element. But only their nation’s element. And this is an important point as only the Avatar is the only person who can be a master of all four elements. The cosmic or spiritual idea was to rest all of this unimaginable power in one person and then that person would keep balance between the four nations.

And while it might not be the best system, it worked pretty well for a while.  But then--cue the meme--The Fire Nation attacked. But Aang, the newly discovered Avatar and only person who could stop this disappeared. Because, you know, he was still pretty much a child, just a child thrusted into a situation that scared him. So he did what many children might do and ran off. In the course of that, he got himself frozen in an iceberg for one hundred years until two young members of the Southern Water Tribe, Katara and Sokka, unfreezed him and got pulled along on the adventure that maybe Aang should have had a number of years ago: actually finding himself as the Avatar and stopping the Fire Nation from taking over the world. 

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Easier said than done, you know? I’m sure fans of the show would be quick to add or agree that there’s so much more to the show than Aang and his adventures. So even if it is on the forefront in a more technical sense, you can’t boil down the power of the show to it being something along the lines of ‘it was empowering watching Aang become the Avatar he was meant to be.’ At the very least, it needs to be noted that this was a child’s show that dealt with issues like war, genocide, discrimination, margalization and oppression. They were all issues that Aang as the destined Avatar, had to deal with or address whether mentally or otherwise.

And so for this discussion--a discussion on the profoundness of the presentation of the themes and arguments within this story--Aang’s transformation as a young, fearful air nomad who ran away from his problems into becoming the Avatar serves as a pretty great and somewhat clear example. In that, I don’t need to debate too much what his transformation means or what the intention was. Aang needed to become an Avatar to save the world from the Fire Nation and restore balance. And while there may be some other factors at play or interpretations to have, this is a fairly strong narrative backbone. But I reserve the right to talk about other characters. Later. 

Oh and spoilers, I guess. You know it’s surprisingly difficult to have a fully spoiler free podcast about various stories in popular culture, but I’m doing the best I can.

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We meet Aang when Sokka and Katara do. Upon finding out that he was the avatar, Aang ran away from home, got himself caught in the storm, and got himself sealed in ice as a way to save his life. He waited one hundred years to be discovered by these two teens of the decimated Southern Water Tribe. And he’s happy go-lucky, to be sure. For a while anyway. Because, you know, you don’t intrinsically know that you’ve spent 100 years in suspended animation in an iceberg. That realization takes a while to set in. 

Now, this isn’t the beginning of Aang’s journey. There’s a reason he got locked in the ice in the first place, as I said. I mean, suspended animation does not just happen. But at first, we don’t really know at first why he was in the ice. We have to learn that later. In many ways, Katara is something vaguely akin to the point of view character in the beginning, so our understanding of the story is tied to her. But luckily, she’s an intelligent and observant young woman who seems to realize that there’s a problem in that Aang has been missing for one hundred years, is still a teenager, doesn’t know about the war, and doesn’t know that the Fire Nation’s first major move of aggression was to attack the air nomads hoping if they just killed all of them, they’d also kill the avatar and things would go more smoothly for their evil plans. Pretty much.

And she’s right. That was always going to be a brutal realization for Aang. However, she has no way of knowing the full extent of it. Because it did take a while for Aang to get her and Sokka to the Air Temple where he had to find out the whole truth the hard way.

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Now, there is no good way to find out that everyone he grew up with and cared about was gone. But the context of Aang’s story really escalated things.

Upon finding out he was the avatar, when his long time mentor and father figure if you read into broke the news to him with a little ‘by the way things are probably going to go really badly soon so yeah let’s get everything together, shall we,’ Aang ran away from home. But not so much as the petulant, “You can’t tell me what to do” but because he was genuinely scared and concerned. 

You see, at this point, we’ve in the third episode of the show, and while we haven’t spent that much time with Aang, one of the first things we see is that his nature can be childish but not using that word in a judgmental sense. Contrast that with Katara and Sokka who had to grow up very quickly what with the war, frequent Fire Nation raids on their tribe, the death of their mother, and their father leaving to join the war effort. They’ve been parentified or adultified by the world around them, and shortly after meeting Aang, he reminds them what it means to be young and have fun. But that is definitely his default state.

Obviously, personality-wise, he’s not a great match for the responsibility thrusted upon him or at least, it’s not a great time. He could stand to grow up in a few years. But the events of the world are playing out independently of his ability to handle it. His responsibilities and duties have to respond to the outside world, not his ability to meet the challenge head on. So despite necessity, he was still a child who panicked. He saw a figurative giant monster (or a literal giant monster, I guess it depends on how pedantic you want to get about the cohesiveness of a monster’s body) and ran. Like a lot children would.

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Now, I know how some people can be about children. Like, for example, there were some hot takes floating around about Lilo and Stitch that could only be offered under the premise that children not only have to react to things like fully polished and developed adults but also with a strong robotic undertone. For one, not possible. Two, that’s part of the appeal of Lilo and Stitch. I wanted some distance from those hot takes before I worked on those scripts. 

But anyway, I know there are some people who think it’s completely reasonable to expect a child in Aang’s position to face such a cosmic and existential moment with grace and dignity. But of course, he fricking couldn’t. Everyone has their limits, especially the young. And yeah, being the one being on the planet who can prevent wars and maintain balance while still being an actual child is a pretty big ask even with the reincarnation and past lives aspect to help him out.

Also because that was a part he doesn’t fully understand. Even if we as an audience know that he in the avatar state could have probably protected the temple and everyone he loved and would not have been killed that day, well, it’s hard to know for sure, and all that speculation might just be a reflection of your own hopes and fears. 

Really, there was a lot of Aang’s potential Avatar journey 100 years before the show that could not be known either by him in the moment or by the rest of us in hindsight. So add that onto the list of reasons why he might have thought running off was the best option. Even if it was just a break, to be away from everyone for a little while. 

Disengagement, I think is the technical term for it. Or that’s the term my therapist uses when we discuss me and my problems. 

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And once again, nothing I haven’t said before. I’ve talked about my dad slowly dying my entire childhood, but on another note, being the child of an immigrant, I often had to fill in the gap when her English failed her or when someone was deliberately trying to take advantage of a situation with her English or other weaker areas in her knowledge. That wasn’t theoretically fair, mind you, but practically speaking, ideal conceptions of the world won’t get you too far. Especially when you're young and scared and lack the experience and knowledge that you think you need in order to be the person everyone wants or needs you to be. Especially when times are difficult, regardless of the scale. 

But while it is a natural reaction, it’s not a productive one. Or it’s not a practical one. Because the rest of the world, all its problems, and all its many events don’t really care what you need or what your strategy is when you get overwhelmed. 

For all of us, the world is still the world, many faults and are. For me, my dad stayed gone. And various business professionals tried to insert themselves into my mother’s checkbook under false pretenses. But for Aang, the war continued. Now did he mean to be gone for so long? Who knows? Even what he thought in the moment when he first got caught in the storm is not so relevant. Because yes, sometimes you need to disengage, and that can be the most productive way of bringing fears and anxieties down to a level where you can cope. But Aang does care about other people. And on that front, he has a version of the impulse to come back. And he does come back. It just takes 100 years.

But he comes back, and he resumes his journey as the avatar, never giving up the heart that made him run off in the first place. Rather, he adapts. And he spends the series trying to truly become the avatar that only he could be. But for those of us on the other side of the screen, Aang’s reaction reflects a part of ourselves that we are somewhat pressured to ignore but still need to reconcile with. And this personal touch sets up the viewer for a ride they might not realize they needed to take.

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Because at the end of the day, we’re all called to a similar journey. We all have to rise to occasions imposed on us. Things that frighten us. Rightfully so or not. And we might be tempted to run either figuratively or literally to whatever corners make us feel safe or just away from it full stop. But even if our return is delayed by forces beyond our control, we still have to go back eventually. We’ll still have to face these challenges. We have to reconcile who we are and what our ideals are with the facts around us. It’s most obvious when it comes to the act of growing into the person we were meant to be as when Aang trains to master the elements enough to stand against the Fire Nation, but throughout his journey, Aang had to grow up and learn serious lessons about not prioritizing his ego, real loss in the face of violence, acceptability relating to that loss, self-control, and what power can really mean depending on how it is handled.

In time, those are all things the show’s young audience would have to reconcile with. Whether it be on a personal level or in the face of the societal challenges that the shows themes somewhat allude to or that parallel our own. All of us are called to face the real issues happening around us, and even if we are not the sole keeper of the power that maintains balance, it can feel like it because of our perspective limitation or because every person matters though not directly.

We saw Aang come into his own. We saw him grow into the sort of figure we could aspire to be, and in his journey, we saw other things that we expected to be true and were half-afraid of facing. But Aang faces them. He walks through his journey, retaining his nature and character up until the very spoilerable ending battle. We saw Aang’s journey. And deep down, we know that though the details may change, it will mirror our own. Along the way there will be things that initially frighten us and will require us to be uncomfortable. We know this. Perhaps intrinsically we have always known this. And in many ways, we find comfort and camaraderie in Aang’s tale. 

That’s partially what drew us in. We found a place where our fears were validated but not left to be so overwhelming as to be unconquerable. Or that’s one aspect of it, anyway. There’s a lot that could be said about this show and why the love the fans have for it has endured for so long. But those other things may have to come up some other time.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. Thanks for listening! Find more information about our shows at miscellanymedia.online or follow us on Twitter @miscellanymedia for updates on current and future projects.

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