::WARNING::
THIS BLOG POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM
THE LEGEND OF KORRA
I can tell you now that this post is going to be about 20% rant, 80% talking about feminism, as well as post-modern ideals in this show. The Legend of Korra was as show created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino and is the sequel series to Avatar: the Last Airbender. It ran for 4 seasons (or "books") and had quite a bit of success. The series was known for its great animation, soundtrack, and storyarcs, as well as subliminally implying post-modern ethics.
(let's get into that now)
The first thing to point out is that the show's main protagonist is female. For this reason, it was debated over whether it would be successful or not in the early stages of the show's development, but it got off to a great start. In fact, as the show progressed, more and more strong female characters showed up and almost outnumber the amount of male characters. On top of that, as these female characters became more developed, the male characters seemed to get less and less development.
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| Mako had basically no character progression by the end of the series |
I have no problem with strong, female characters, in fact most of them are among my all time favorite characters, but if minimizing your male characters is the only way to make your female characters look stronger, then I think there's a huge problem with that.
One of Korra's main attributes that people mention is how strong and independent she is. She is in a sense, a "modern woman." Only she's not. In fact, she relies on people all the time. She goes to her friends, mentors, and occasionally her enemies for assistance all the time. And there's no shame in that. I don't understand why the notion of needing help from others became a bad thing. Just because you're "independent" doesn't mean you don't rely on people.
The thing that EVERYBODY in the fandom talks about now is the finale of the series, or to be more precise, the final shot of the series, where Korra and her "friend," Asami, gaze into each other's eyes before walking into the spirit portal.
This was meant to be reminiscent of the last shot of the first series where Aang and Katara finally embrace each other, and show the romance that they slowly and carefully developed over the entire series!
But that's not how it happened in Korra. It was dropped in at the last scene of the last episode out of nowhere.
("but Jacob, there was clearly scenes where "Korrasami" romance were hinted at throughout the series. You're just a homophobe who doesn't want to admit how perfect this series' ending is, and how it's a huge victory for the LGBT community!")
Well, I suppose you could say that, but did the series finale really accomplish what it set out to do?
All these "hints" throughout the series that fans point to were scenes of character development between the relationship in Korra and Asami.
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| “I've never had a girlfriend to hang out with and talk to before, except for Naga. This is nice.” |
But the thing is, these weren't things that were out of the ordinary for girls to say, regardless of their sexual identity. I'm not saying that the creators didn't put these scenes in to be used to develop their relationship romantically, in fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly their intention. But I really don't think they set the stage in one way or another. It's grey. Depending on how you interpret parts like these, you can have drastically different outlooks and opinions about these characters, neither of which could be considered the right or wrong answer.
Personally, I never saw them as anything more than friends, because I never got any vibes from the show that I should look at it any differently, which is why the finale caught me so off guard.
There were also tons of other things that were left open ended; it didn't wrap up the series at all.
I love the Avatar series, but I don't think that adding this rather underdeveloped relationship did any justice to the show or to supporters of the LGBT community.
There was a post that was published not long after the finale. That I found extremely interesting. It talks about this same subject, but from the perspective of someone who sees it as a good thing.
For me, it took an actual confirmation from the producers to actually find out that Korra and Asami were lovers. Call me culturally insensitive if you like, but I agree that they did NOT set up well for that relationship at all, at least not in a romantic sense. I think it's mainly because the creators honestly didn't know if the show would keep going after each season ended, so mini-resolutions had to be constructed just in case. I love the Avatar universe, but I miss this great, thematic theme on the emphasis of friendship and harmony.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually not as sudden of a decision as one might think. many accuse the creators of just doing fan-service, but you have to keep in mind, it takes about a year to a year and a half to develop one korra episode. at their peak they were working on 30 episodes at once. So this ending was well though out in advance.
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