This rant was actually inspired by a graphic made by Tumblr user agentsokka. I wanted to publish my commentary with the reblog, but I noticed that this got way too long, so I will publish this separately. Sorry for the lack of a hyperlink; I don’t know how to navigate on Tumblr since its disastrous update.
AtLA was anti-war and this quote definitely represents what the series was trying to project. It showed that there were always varying sides to every war, even when one side was always trying to discredit the other. It was the Fire Nation against the world and vice versa. Aang, the only surviving airbender in a world dominated by the Fire Nation, could have easily been sucked into the cycle of hate and frustration that comes with every war.
However, Aang does the very opposite and forgives his supposed enemies by showing them mercy and bringing forth a new era that is characterized by balance and peace. The show also lends a hand in conveying the humanity of all those involved in the war; even the Fire Nation, the colonists who started this war and was guilty of several war crimes, was given a chance to prove to the audience that not all of their people were power-hungry and merciless.
And that is what made AtLA good. It wasn’t just about conquering the enemy; it was a story about love and understanding overcoming the atrocities of war and that is what truly made it something to behold.
LoK seemed to have lacked this. Certainly, it showed different sides of a story (perhaps too many for only 12 episodes) and characters previously seen as “homicidal maniacs” were given the chance to tell their tale and shed light on the influences of their paths…but it didn’t do it quite as well as AtLA.
The struggle in LoK was between benders and non-benders. That is the bare bones of it, whether you believe that the Equalists actually “qualified” as non-benders or not. Instead of the Fire Nation claiming colonies and burning villages to the ground, it was benders monopolizing jobs and recreational activities in Republic City. Not as horrendous, but oppressive all the same. The Equalists, implicitly born from the narcissistic pursuit for control by Amon and cultivated by the frustrations of what appears to be working class non-benders, arose in an attempt to resist the structural powers that pinned them to corporal subservience.
But that is not how the Equalists are portrayed. They are seen as vicious, faceless enemies with a vague past full of bitterness and hardships unknown.
The only established antagonists who were given a face and a voice were Tarrlok and Amon—both of whom were benders and neither of whom were non-bender friendly. Tarrlok headed raids against non-benders in an old-fashioned, explicit display of oppression against the weak while Amon swayed a non-bender audience with lies and deceit borne from nothing but a complex issue of dominance concerning his father. Many of those who actually were non-benders and supported the Equalist cause were rendered mysterious and terrifying. They were without a face and without a past; those who were given a voice were ungracefully cast aside by the end of the final episode.
I will talk about Hiroshi Sato for just a moment as he is perhaps the only non-bending Equalist who was given a chance to reveal his past; however, his past is shady. All the audience knows about him is that he grew up poor and made it rich with a wife and children only for a branch of the Agni Kais to slay his wife in cold blood in the comfort of his home, leaving him scarred and devastated.
To add insult to injury is that his story is depicted in a way that only grants sympathy to his child, not him. A man who has lost his wife and perhaps his emotional stability is depicted as a man starved for the blood of his enemies as he allows his hate for benders to cloud his judgment so much that he lashes out at his daughter whom the audience was convinced he loved more than anything else. And perhaps he did; he just hated benders more than he loved her.
This is a problem for two reasons: 1) Hiroshi Sato, said to be a loving father, ends up going mad with revenge and is turned into a complete monster that virtually no one can relate to or even recognise and 2) he is the model of revolutionary non-benders. As the only non-bender with a backstory and an affiliation with the Equalists, he is the representation of all Equalists; he is the personification of their cause as he is violent, madly patriotic, and wild with hate.
Hiroshi Sato is not sympathetic. The lieutenant who “dedicated [his] life to [Amon]” is not sympathetic. The Equalist protestor in the park who “always wanted to be the center of attention” is not sympathetic. The hundreds of faces in the crowd at Equalist gatherings are not sympathetic. They are machines, programmed by their purpose and fuelled by their malignance. They are the “homicidal maniacs” who have forced the hands of benders to defend themselves. The fault lies with the Equalist who cannot “harmoniously co-exist” with their bending counterparts, not the benders who have subtly established their control in the job market.
To clear things up, I would like to point out that this is not an Equalist apologist essay. I am more than aware that the Equalists have done horrible, traumatic things to innocent benders. I don’t support violent paramilitaries nor do I side with Mao concerning the Cultural Revolution (yes, an argument hinting at this has been made before). However, I have noticed that non-benders are getting the short end of the stick in terms of getting jobs and being represented in politics. I have noticed that sports only cater to benders and that working class non-benders are constantly being exploited by Bender Triads who very well may be in a similar socioeconomic status. Chi-blocking, the only fair technique non-benders can possess in a fight against benders, is taboo and, apparently, warrants political interference. Moreover, there is not one non-bending advocacy group that denounces violence yet resists against the oppressive forces; none that are shown in the show, anyway.
In LoK, it appears they have lost their way in terms of telling the story from the perspectives of both sides of a conflict. AtLA debunked the myth of “good vs. evil” and broke down the dichotomy of “Self” and “Other”. Now, it has become a tale of retaining a status quo defined by social inequalities and misconstrued as “peace and balance”.
