Part way through season three I made a few observations about Legend of Korra and its approach to thefantasy genre, and now it has come to an end I think there are a few
things that can be added to my earlier post.
WARNING: Lots of spoilers in here, so don't read this if you get upset by that sort of thing.
Firstly, my ambivalence regarding the
superficiality of its facade of Asianness remains. The conclusion of
Legend of Korra, where it wraps up and clarifies its ideological
universe shows that the framework of values in which it operates is a
fundamentally American one. That aside, the way it unfolds over the
course of the four seasons and how they all fit together is
nonetheless an interesting one and really quite good.
Accepting that the unspoken assumption
of the show is that pursuing any kind of belief to its extremes is
dangerous (probably true, but not very exciting), the way it plays
out that drama through its often selfish, self-obsessed, occasionally
oafishly unaware, but nonetheless fiery and courageous heroine comes
together very satisfyingly. Korra's supposed teacher Tenzin is
himself flawed, myopic, conservative, and often preoccupied with his
own problems and interests, and in fact it is her opponents who take
the form of a series of dark mentors.
While the original The Last Airbender
series themed each season around one of the elements, Korra takes
more abstract themes. The theme running through season one is the
conflict between equality and privilege; a political reading of
season two could interpret it as dealing in an abstract way with
secularism and religious extremism, and/or on a more spiritual level
as the disconnection between the physical and spiritual worlds;
season three explicitly deals with anarchism versus an entrenched and
corrupt monarchy; while season four places a rise of nationalistic
fascism in the power vacuum. Korra's education is carried out through
a series of traumatic apprenticeships to these teachers, with Amon
and Hiroshi representing an extreme extension of equality, Unalaq
spirituality, Zaheer freedom, and Kuvira order.
This doesn't completely overcome the
limitations of the show's adherence to a fairly conventional liberal
American worldview. However, where the show is interesting is that in
a way all of these villains are right, and through learning from them
and adopting the changes they represent, Korra proves herself a good
student even where the teachers are “bad”. Another strength of
the show is how, with the exception of the two-dimensional Unalaq,
the villains all retain some of our sympathies (Henry Rollins' Zaheer
especially – who wouldn't love that guy?)
While in the world itself it is the
problems Legend of Korra raises rather than its solutions that are
the most interesting, really it's within the character of Korra
herself that the show makes all this work in the end, and how the
scars of each of these encounters visibly carry over from one season
to another. Korra doesn't allow us to celebrate the defeats of these
villains; she doesn't allow us to feel that “our” side somehow
won; she internalises every struggle and by the end of the series she
looks exhausted.
Much of this also has to do with the
bitterly personal nature of her final struggle with Kuvira. While
fans may have gone giddy with delight at all the Evangelion and Akira
references that accompanied the end of the series, it was the way the
personal stories were resolved that was Legend of Korra's greatest
triumph. Kuvira, Korra's final opponent, is constantly depicted,
sometimes more explicitly than others, as a mirror for herself:
another young woman struggling against the chaos of a world that
never seems to straighten up and fly right.
The show handles romance with a
refreshingly unsentimental disinterest. Bataar's love for Kuvira
crashes against the rocks quite movingly. Given a choice between her
lover and her ambitions, the momentary and seemingly genuine pain
that crosses Kuvira's face makes the ruthlessness and lack of
hesitation in her choice all the more chilling – she is not an
unfeeling two-dimensional monster: she is a fully realised human who
can both experience and overcome pain. Leavening this is the way Zhu
Li's rather touching devotion gradually wears down Varrick, which
while played mostly for laughs, nevertheless depicts love as a
struggle that often seems barely worth the meagre reward.
The strongest bonds the show depicts
tend not to be romantic though. Utterly crushed and broken by
Kuvira's choice, Bataar finds himself in the dubious comfort of his
dysfunctional family with a long, hard road of fence-mending ahead of
him but at least with an unconditional love at its core. The most
open and unambiguous declaration of love is expressed between
brothers Bolin and Mako as the latter prepares to do something
suitably suicidal and heroic.
The love triangle set up in season one
between Korra, Mako and Asami resolves itself far more ambiguously.
The fumbling teenage angst between these three had gradually
dissipated as the series went on and escalating catastrophes of
global significance made their petty jealousies seem pretty
inconsequential. In a sequence partly mirroring the end of Return of
the Jedi, Korra drifts away from the victory celebrations and is
approached by Mako who declares he will always “have her back”,
implicitly confirming them as friends and comrades rather than
lovers. Korra then encounters Asami, and a seemingly more minor
interaction between them from earlier in the series takes on greater
significance when Korra apologises for the pain she caused Asami by
her disappearance. This bursting to the surface of a largely
suppressed source of pain between the two reveals a depth of feeling
between them that hadn't been overt before and they end the series by
going off together.
I haven't been following other online
discussions of the series, and I've read nothing about the series
ending, but I can imagine that it raised eyebrows and caused some
debate. I think it's important and again to the show's credit that it
doesn't outright say anything about Korra and Asami's relationship
here, letting the viewers draw their own conclusions. Based on the
way other relationships are treated, it seems clear to me that the
writers of Legend of Korra believe the depth and devotion of one's
love is more important than its nature, romantic or otherwise, and
it's easy to read Korra and Asami as a reflection of that: friends
and family are the strongest bonds, and those are the bonds that are
most poignantly reinforced by the final episode.
However, the visual depiction of this
final moment is nonetheless unambiguously romantic, with the pair's
physical proximity and body language shimmering with sexual tension
as they walk off into the light of the spirit world. This is the
cinematic language of two people who are going to fuck each other
senseless the moment the scene fades. The show is obviously nodding
to the possibility of a romance, while at the same time holding back
from saying so outright, I think not so much out of coyness (there's
really no ambiguity about the visual language employed) as out of the
show's refusal to hold up romantic relationships of any kind as the
most important thing – the depth and strength of Korra and Asami's
bond is what it wants to emphasise first and foremost, rather than
the nature of their sexuality.
This again comes back to the question
of values and the conversation that Legend of Korra is having with
itself. It's a broadly American debate, touching on many of the big
political struggles the country has found itself embroiled in over
the past hundred years or so, and which still inform the national
debate. Even the show's attitude towards love is an American
conversation, as the country gradually awakens from Disney's spell –
in fact there are clear parallels between Legend of Korra and Disney's own Frozen
in the way they de-sentimentalise romance and place it back
into a broader context of what love means – and begins to come to
terms with same-sex relationships.
That's not to say that these aren't a
valuable conversation to be having, and Legend of Korra, despite its
“yellow-wash” over what are essentially American concerns,
explores the issues raised within its moral universe with depth,
sensitivity, and a generally open mind. Perhaps as time goes by,
these contemporary concerns will age the show in ways that aren't
flattering, but I'm still pretty much convinced that it will be
remembered as one of the greatest children's TV shows ever made, and
mostly deservedly so. As a vision of another world, it is only a very
qualified success, but as an exploration of an important corner of
the one we're actually in, it's an unqualified triumph.
