I caught up on Avatar: The Legend of Korra, the sequel to the critically acclaimed and totally awesome Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon, about a world where certain people can manipulate the elements, yesterday. Overall, The Legend of Korra is a fantastic second series, and does an excellent job of moving the concepts that the original series laid out so well—that there are benders who can manipulate one element and an Avatar who can control them all—from a feudal setting into an industrialized future, and in giving the original characters descendants who share some of their characteristics while standing fully on their own as characters. One real standout for me was Lin Beifong, the chief of Republic City’s police force. And her arc at the end of the season embodied what I’ve seen as a small trend in female action stars: sacrifice, and a recognition that not everyone can get out alive.

That arc is as follows: Lin, having started the season skeptical of Avatar Korra, who’s been a somewhat disruptive presence in Republic City, has become Korra’s strong ally. After the forces controlled by Amon, a radical who wants to forcibly eliminate the powers of all benders, take over the city, Lin flees with Master Tenzin’s family, determined to protect the last surviving airbenders. And when it becomes apparent that Amon’s forces will overtake them, Lin sacrifices herself. She takes down one of Amon’s ships in a colossal act of metalbending, and when she’s captured, she refuses to compromise. In one of the quietest sequences in the show, Amon takes Lin’s bending from her, the lull in the soundtrack a powerful representation of the sudden absence that has made Lin much of who she is.

The sequence actually reminded me of what I thought was one of the most misunderstood elements of Zack Snyder’s fantasy action movie Sucker-Punch. That film, about girls confined to a 1960s mental institution where some of them are forced to undergo transorbital lobotomies, contains two major sacrifices. In one, Rocket (Jenna Malone) suffers a double death, protecting her sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) from the blast of a bomb in the movie’s fantasy world, and stepping in front of a cook’s knife to save her in the world in which the girls are actually living. And in the movie’s conclusion, Baby Doll (Emily Browning), submits to the lobotomy she’s loathed and feared so that Sweet Pea can escape the asylum. It struck me at the time that there was something uniquely female about recognizing how tightly the jaws of the system were clamped around these girls, the tremendous effort it would take to free just one of them, and the decision by the main characters to prioritize the love between sisters and friends rather than themselves. The uniqueness of that perspective seems to have gotten lost in other critiques of Sucker-Punch, but it’s stayed with me, a specific rebuke by Snyder to the rather manly idea that competence and bravery will see all the main characters through to the end of most action movies, no matter the odds.

Lin has a happier fate in Korra: after communing with her past lives, the Avatar is able to restore her lost powers, and to a certain extent her lost self. But there was no such guarantee when she lept from her safe perch to go up against a system more powerful than she was, and in defense of something other than herself.

By Zack Beauchamp

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, given the fraught political debate, that the most interesting televised take on inequality is snuck in through metaphor. More surprising, though, is that the vehicle is a kids show airing on Nickelodeon. Yet it’s true: The Legend of Korra (the more-than-worthy sequel to the beloved Avatar: The Last Airbender) has been directly channeling the some of most philosophically sophisticated arguments on the morality and politics of redistributing wealth. It’s both a valuable public service and a joy to watch.

Korra is set in a world where some people, referred to as benders, have the ability to manipulate the four elements (water, earth, fire, and air). Benders have huge natural advantages over non-benders: being able to shoot fire out of your hands or freeze people in blocks of ice clearly gives you a decent leg up in a fight. But the show digs a layer deeper than that obvious use, creating a 1920s-esque industrial millieu wherein the social order constructed and maintained on bending abilities. Electricity is generated by firebenders who can manipulate lightning, the main professional sport is a sort of bending boxing, and so on.

The main thematic arc of Korra comes from a clear implication of that premise: benders and non-benders are not each others’ social equals. Because so many important roles are open only to benders, non-benders are systematically disadvantaged, denied access to important sectors of government and the economy. The police force, for example, is made up of specialized earthbenders who can manipulate metal. This state of affairs raises a basic moral question: is it acceptable to structure a society where the luck of being born a bender plays such a huge role in shaping your life chances?
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“Bending is the coolest thing in the world!” Avatar Korra, a rebellious teenager who’s just arrived in Republic City, the metropolis founded by her predecessor Avatar Aang, declares towards the middle of the premiere episode of The Legend of Korra. Fans of the first show in this series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, about a little boy who can manipulate earth, air, water, and fire in a process called “bending,” might be inclined to agree with her. The concept around which the series was based—that there are people who can manipulate each element, but one person in each generation who can manipulate all four, and gets special responsibilities along with his special powers—set the stage for stories that combined spectacular animated action sequences with intelligent meditations on the proper use of power and our relationship with the natural world. In Avatar: The Legend of Korra, which skips forward two generations to follow Korra, a young Avatar who is training with Aang’s airbending son Tenzin, flips our assumptions upside down, and gives us something very exciting in its place.

When I saw the trailer for this new incarnation of the show, I wondered whether the decision to include steam-punky technology, including airships, crime-fighting equipment, and cars, would pull the series away from its core. Instead, it’s turned out to be a brilliant decision. Aang’s model city, a place he intended “to be the center of peace and balance in this world,” may have advanced technology. But it also has many deeply poor people, something that comes to a shock to Korra who tells a vagrant she shares a meal with that “I thought everyone in the city was living it up.” Triad gangs made up of benders extort protection money from shopkeepers.

And a political movement believes that bending, the very device that made Avatar: The Last Airbender so cool, is responsible for the city’s problems. “Are you tired of living under the tyranny of Benders? Then join the Equalists,” a political speaker tells a crowd, setting off Korra’s initial outburst. “For too long, the bending elite of this city have forced the non-benders of this city to live as lower-class citizens…Together, we will tear down the bending establishment.” Korra’s not wrong that bending’s a cool concept. But the speaker appears to be right about individual benders: he embarrasses Korra by revealing that her first instinct is to shut him down, rather than to work with him. Similarly, Republic City law enforcement may be coming down on Korra pretty hard, but she did act like a vigilante in trying to round up the Triad gang, and caused an enormous amount of damage. Without regulation, bending isn’t exactly producing peace and prosperity in Republic City.

Hopefully, we’ll see more of those themes, particularly bending’s relationship to economic inequality, in future. We’ve heard “with great power comes great responsibility” a million times, but almost always in the context of an individual struggle for self-control. Tackling the role of special powers and special advantages in society on a larger scale is something entirely different, and very interesting.

The bridge is yours.

-President Obama: not quite ready to conquer Hollywood.

-Really glad to see The Invisible War, one of my favorite movies at Sundance, get picked up.

-More Avatar: Legend of Korra footage.

-The Streep domination passes to a second generation.

-The origins of Keep Calm and Carry On:

This trailer for the still release-date-less The Legend of Korra looks pretty excellent:

The one real question I have is how the rise of technology’s going to change the Avtar universe. One of the things that I liked best about Avatar: The Last Airbender was how the creative uses of bending effectively took the place of technology—you don’t need schmancy technology to run a huge metropolis like Ba Sing Se when you have earthbending. I’d be sorry if setting this story in what looks like pre-war Shanghai made the world seem more familiar and less independently fascinating.

The bridge is yours.

-Who needs product integration when you can set the show at the company?

-New Frank Ocean!

-Thinking about democracy and the internet beyond SOPA.

-Get your Avatar: The Legend of Korra fix with this clip.

-Apple is super-upset about the Times’ series on working conditions in their supply chain.

The bridge is yours.

-How to keep Community alive — or at least give it a good shot.

-I’d dig a more diverse Starship Troopers, but it’s sort of hard to imagine a reboot of the franchise without Neil Patrick Harris as the one person who gets the joke.

-Ah, the roles actors take before they lock up ridiculously huge franchises.

-The rights fight over La Dolce Vita.

-MOAR AVATAR PLZ:

A good post from Nikki, in response to some of my writing, saying that it’s not enough to want more women writing and directing television episodes. She writes:

If we suggest that increasing the number of women ON television might increase the number of women BEHIND television, thereby effecting a change in how sexist or feminist television shows might be, we excuse men from the process entirely, except as Upholders of the Status Quo. Set aside the question about women behind the scenes and focus on the men behind the scenes, who are definitely still in power in the media and it’s that power structure that should be held accountable for the current portrayal of women on TV.

Amen. I’m a pretty firm believer in the carrot-and-stick thing, though, because it’s relatively easy for male creators to clap their hands over their ears when they’re being criticized for not giving us wonderful, developed female characters and just not listen. And it’s much easier to get people to listen when you’re praising, and for other people to see that praise and think “I want that!” So without further ado and in no particular order, 10 fantastic female characters on television who were created by men.

1. Trixie, Deadwood, David Milch: I know this list isn’t in order, but if it was, I’d still put it at the top. Milch’s prostitute-turned-accountant, pimp’s-trick-turned-Jewish-businessman’s-girlfriend would still be at the top. We meet Trixie at the beginning of the show when she’s been accused of murder, and watch her help another woman beat a drug addiction even when it means defying her employer’s orders; seek out an education no one ever gave her so she can have more options in life; stand up for her friends when they get married and grieve for them when they bury their children; and develop a new relationship. She’s always making choices. And when she takes steps backwards, we understand why, at the gut level. She’s empowered, but the show doesn’t fall prey to the trap that strong female characters created by men often do — that women’s liberation is purely a matter of will, not circumstance.

2. Alice Morgan, Luther, Neil Cross: Alice, who enters the scene when she murders her parents, melts down the gun, and feeds the remaining parts to her dog, is a certified crazy person, but she’s not a victim. Her attraction to John Luther doesn’t make her a nymphomaniac. And her decision to work cases comes out of a clearly defined alternate morality and worldview. Rather than setting her up to be judged by the audience, she’s a compelling — and sometimes very scary — way to see the universe.
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I missed this piece by Carina Chocano from a couple months back about how much she hates the short-hand “strong female character,” but I wanted to come back to it because I think it dovetails with some conversations we’ve had about plausible female action heroines and how to make female characters seem “strong”:

It started, innocuously enough, with lunch in the kitsch-yet-sinister town of Celebration, where we hoped to be lucky enough to experience a postprandial, regularly scheduled fake snowfall. It took a darker turn after we piled back into the S.U.V., headed to their house to pick up the guns and drove to the indoor gun range. As Rush Limbaugh fulminated at top volume, I slumped in the back seat like a sullen 13-year-old, a gun case resting heavily on my lap, and wondered how I had arrived at this place. What did it mean that I was here? Could I be here and still be me? Who was I? Within about 15 seconds of stepping inside the shooting range, before the guy behind the counter could take my gun order, I burst into tears, ran outside and spent the next couple of hours alone in the car reading Jane Austen.

So here is the question I’m posing: If this story were a scene in a movie, and the movie were being told from the point of view of a young woman, would you describe that protagonist as a “strong female character”? Or would you consider her to be weak?

If weak, would you find it possible to relate to her on the basis of something other than her sex characteristics? Or would identifying with this “feminine” behavior threaten your sense of self, whether you were a man or a woman? Would you consider the scene funny, or not, and if not, why not? And what would a “strong female character” in a movie have done in this situation, anyway? Toss off an epigram and then shoot the radio? Reveal a latent talent for martial arts, jump the rifle-range counter and start pummeling the guy at the desk? Confidently march out the door to the strains of a Motown anthem and never look back? And what would she be wearing? Would boots or stilettos need to be involved? Or would flip-flops or ballet flats be O.K.?

I guess I agree that it might be more useful to have a broader definition of Well-Developed Female Characters, of which Plausible Female Action Heroines is a subset. A movie that’s stuck with me for years is In Her Shoes, the adaptation of Jennifer Weiner’s novel of the same name, in which Toni Collette plays a successful professional woman who’s had her self-confidence repeatedly sabotaged by her spoiled, manipulative, but also illiterate younger sister, played by Cameron Diaz in one of her best performances. Neither character is a particularly good person, but the movie holds them responsible for their actions and helps them both to grow. Collette’s character needlessly sabotages a relationship with a man who genuinely loves her, and works to find and address the reasons she’s pushing him away. Diaz’s character, after burning her bridges, goes to live with her grandmother in a retirement community, learns to read, figures out what she wants to do with her life, and makes genuine amends to her sister. Both could easily be stereotypes, but they’re shaded with a specificity that makes them pop off the page. That they don’t start out strong and confident doesn’t matter, because their arcs are interesting and realistic. Ditto for Bridesmaids, which is a story of someone who’s been dealt two knockout blows in short succession finding her way back to herself and to being a decent person again. Annie doesn’t need to be perfect to be compelling.

And it’s worth considering that Plausible Action Heroines don’t all have to present the same way. One of the things I liked a great deal about Avatar: The Last Airbender was the way Katara’s healing powers, a more traditionally feminine water tribe skill, were presented as equal and complementary to combat skills. Similarly, the Kyoshi Warriors have a fighting style that turns feminine accessories like fans into key weapons in their arsenal. When Sokka meets them, he has to be more feminine, rather than less, to become a more skilled fighter. If we had more portrayals of traditionally feminine skills and attributes as sources of strength and power, I think showing women as strong when they take on traditionally male attributes or roles wouldn’t feel like lazy shorthand and instead could be part of a Balanced Action Diet. We need Michelle Yeohs, Sigourney Weavers, and Hit-Girls along with our Angelinas.

I’ve been enjoying all of Avatar: The Last Airbender‘s allusions to science fiction, particularly Star Wars, whether it’s the Tatooine-like stint in the desert or the unnerving ghosts the characters encounter in a Degobah-like swamp. But the show isn’t necessarily directly political — until we get to Ba Sing Se.

When I went to China, I was there on a tourist’s visa, not a journalist’s one, so I didn’t have a minder assigned to me to both facilitate my trip and make sure I didn’t wander anywhere my hosts would prefer I didn’t. But from what I did see of our less formal guides on trips to places like the Great Wall, Ba Sing Se is a pretty hilarious parody of the minder system. Whether it’s the utterly fake names guides and minders adopt — Joo Dee in Avatar or Connie, which seemed to be the Westernized name of choice for women at the time — or the relentless cheerfulness that’s meant to deter you from seeing things your guides would rather not see or doing things they’d rather you not do, be it noticing a major conspiracy to dupe the government or order the spicy pork on the menu, Avatar has it dead to rights.

China obviously has a higher level of expressed discontent than the Earth Kingdom does, and many, many more people to administer. But this is a nice little poke at the idea that you can keep people oblivious whether they’re your own citizens or visitors. What matters is both what people see — and what they decide it means.