Flow Through The Pools: Avatar, Star Wars, and Narrative Weight

Let's talk about the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender's second season. Specifically, let's talk about how it's basically lifted completely from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I mean, point for point it's a strikingly similar set of characters and events mapping almost directly onto each other. The last two episodes of this season, as well as the last part of Empire, encompass:

• The end of the second major narrative arc--
• Concluding with the protagonist's attempt to reach a higher level of control over his superpowers--
• Which are tied to a cosmic "force," if you will--
• During his training, however, he sees a vision of his friends in danger, conveyed through that universal force--
• He rushes off, despite the warnings of his master, to rescue his friends--
• Leaving his training incomplete--
• And placing a hard limit on the power he needs to defeat the evil emperor's most powerful servant.
• While he succeeds in rescuing (some of) his friends--
• An entire previous safe haven is lost--
• The villains gain an advantage over the hero--
• For a time, the hero seems to have been killed in a literal fall from grace--
• And the second arc ends with a general downturn as the position of the hero and the villain are reversed substantially.
• And Azula turns out to be Aang's fath--oh wait that was just in my fanfiction, never mind.

Now, before you click away in disgust, let me say this clearly:

This is not a criticism of Avatar.

In fact, their use of this narrative structure is actually a masterstroke, because it perfectly resolves a number of themes woven deep into the fabric of the second season. And, in turn, it's this resolution and summation of theme that allows the narrative structure to come off not as hackneyed or a ripoff but as a strong, emotionally truthful conclusion.

This is important to understand, I think, because it helps us understand when the use of an iconic narrative (the Hero's Journey, for example) falls flat. Look at the backlash against Avatar: The Blue Furbender, for example. I've seen it being criticized as "just being" Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (Weirdly, I have never seen any of those three films criticized for being like one another, which perhaps suggests that the claims are weaker than they might at first appear... but I digress). Or, if you want to strike a bit closer to what The Last Airbender draws from, look at Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle Trilogy Tetralilogy Pentalology?. That series, starting with Eragon, has been repeatedly hammered for rehashing Star Wars in a Tolkien-derived setting.

Yet, Avatar gets away with it. In part this is because the series uses the form sparingly--only the last two episodes of the second season, despite how strongly they borrow from Empire, really make use of the narrative. It's not overwhelmingly present anywhere else that I can see (feel free to prove me wrong, though). But as I mentioned above, I think there's a deeper, more visceral reason why it works so well here, and seems so natural. That's because much of the season was dedicated to making it natural.

Like, look at the growing relationship between Aang and Katara. I've actually seen this criticized (although not, in my opinion, very credibly) as a relationship shoehorned in due to some perceived narrative need for a romantic interest. I would agree, actually, that the development of their friendship and relationship could have been more effectively paced throughout the first season, but then, so could many plot elements--the first season was kind of rough overall.

It's in The Guru, though, that the relationship clearly is revealed as integral to Aang's character. It's easy to note, first of all, that most of the chakras and Aang's limitations involve Katara in some way--his fear of hurting her, his fear of losing her, his love for her, and so on--all leading up to the final moment when Aang must let go of his attachment to Katara to realize his full, transcendent potential. One of the most powerful moments of the series is Aang's--and our--confrontation with the sheer staggering magnitude of his grief, represented as the entire slaughtered population of Air Nomads arrayed in a triangle out into the hazy distance. As the spirits ascend into the sky the clouds reveal Katara as the new manifestation, according to the Guru, of the love that remained after the deaths of Aang's people. This in turn builds upon earlier moments in the series, some of which are wisely revisited in this episode--the attempt to force Aang into the Avatar State that endangers Katara, for example. The series has slowly allowed us to understand the deep importance of Katara to Aang, and now we are presented with the psychological reasoning behind this attachment: Katara, for Aang, has come to fill the horrible, gaping hole left by the death of an entire people.

Which... upon reflection probably isn't really a healthy foundation for a relationship. "Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but my people were slaughtered, can you replace them for me maybe?" Oy. That's just bound to go bad places. But really, isn't that part of the reason why the release of Katara is so important?

It's actually really interesting to me, if you'll forgive the brief aside, how important Katara's standing as an equal partner to Aang is in all of this. If she wasn't such a skilled bender, if she wasn't forced to put herself in harm's way by her value as both a warrior and a healer, the urgency of Aang's fears would be far less palpable. The relationship between Katara and Aang works because it is a relationship of peers, not one of hero and emotional support, and the show often can't make up its mind whether it wants Aang or Katara to be the real Main Character. It's the very fact that Katara is not reduced to an object of Aang's affection that makes the affection so powerful. Just something worth considering for aspiring authors who can't seem to bring themselves to flesh out their female characters.

Hey! This article is ostensibly about why the blatant lifting of the plot of Star Wars works so well here! Let's get back to that, huh?

All of this building up of the Aang/Katara relationship is leading to that last, sudden, climactic choice to leave the Guru and return to Ba Sing Se. It's the moment in Empire when Luke senses Leia and Han in pain in the future on Bespin and decides to leave Yoda to rescue them. By now you should have a pretty good idea of why it works:

It's because to Aang, Katara truly does represent a replacement for all that he has lost, and the thought of losing her is absolutely unbearable.

Without this grounding in Aang's loss, his anxiety, his guilt, his pain... without, in short, an almost overly comprehensive grounding in character, this moment plays out like the weakest of cliches. Of course the hero goes off and saves the fair maiden. That's what heroes do! What an utter bore. The story just becomes a bunch of cardboard cutouts carrying out mindless orders. But because the series has spent so much time establishing exactly what Katara means to Aang, and then positioning Katara as a balm for Aang's grief directly before he has to suddenly, tangibly confront his fears of losing her, it comes off not as the hero doing what a hero does, but a boy struggling to balance what is right, what is necessary, and what he can permit without psychologically breaking. Much of this is, of course, on the surface: it is expository. But remember the line I used in my first article on Avatar: "as an author you have to use empathy as well as exposition." They're not just "telling"--giving us exposition--they're also "showing"--providing an emotional core for the exposition.

So, alright, it's clear that grounded character motivation can keep a pre-chewed plot point looking fresh. And I think that does, to some extent, help us explain where a movie like Avatar: The Blue Furbender falls a bit flat. Although I am not as critical of the film as some, plot elements like the rejection of Sully by the Na'vi feels contrived, and not driven by honest, consistent characterization. Such a moment should seem inevitable because the characters can make no other emotional choice, not because the plot calls for it.

But there's still something missing. So far we've talked about choices. But what about narrative events that don't involve choices? Why, for example, does the main character's mentor die in Eragon? It's not exactly what we would call wrong from a character perspective, but the move feels rote rather than earned. Why?

I think we can find the answer to this in an element not present in The Empire Strikes Back: the parallel development of Aang and Zuko.

Actually, I'm going to cheat a bit here and return to an idea I covered in Suffering Will Be Your Teacher. See, I've already talked about the two characters as connected through the lens of Zuko's failures before:

When the village Zuko has just saved rejects him, we come to understand that some scars (a fitting motif, really) cannot be forgotten or forgiven, especially scars received during a war that, let's not forget, has already lasted a century. ... It takes someone superhuman like Aang to push against such tides, and even Aang is brought low in this second season.

Now, in the last article my point was that Avatar was addressing topics of war, suffering, cruelty, and powerlessness in a way that was profound and conscious of its audience's--and its character's--needs. I want to return to that idea of the scars of the conflict in a different sense here: there are lasting marks on both Zuko and Aang that the two must navigate, grapple with, and finally move beyond to progress as people. That's what I was hinting at with the last sentence there: Aang seems, as the Avatar, positioned to transcend the scars of the past, but he cannot release himself from his own past burdens, and this ultimately prevents all the other wounds from being healed at this point in the series.

Consider the line of the Guru during the opening of the Water Chakra, the chakra of pleasure, blocked by guilt: "Accept the reality that these things happened, but do not let them cloud and poison your energy. If you are to be a positive influence on the world, you need to forgive yourself." Although this is applied directly to Aang, it serves just as well to explain literally the core of Zuko's conflict in the second season: he is caught between the guilt he feels over his banishment and Iroh's assertions that he can move on and find redemption not through his father but through his transformation into a new person. In fact, Aang's attempts to move beyond his past--whether his past lives (Avatar Day), his recent losses and failures (The Avatar State, The Desert and The Serpent's Pass), his more distant dodging of responsibilities (present in many episodes briefly and The Guru extensively) and his own mental limitations (Bitter Work)--is often paralleled by a similar sort of stumbling progress by Zuko (most notably in episodes like Bitter Work where the two characters are directly juxtaposed).

Interestingly, Aang often is shown to move forward while Zuko remains chained to his fear, his shame, his grief, and so on.

And yet, in this episode we see Zuko move ahead without Aang. Zuko, having chosen to help the Avatar, has already gone through a transformative experience and seems to have moved on. He has let go of the past and accepted the possibility of a new life. And, for a while, it seems like Aang will follow.

And then the dominoes start to fall.

We actually see the beginning of the season's catastrophic conclusion not in Aang's vision but in the tragically accidental discovery of Zuko and Iroh by Katara. This is the first moment when the chains of the past reassert themselves, but there is still a chance of redemption here. In fact, it is strongly suggested in The Crossroads of Destiny that the backslide for Zuko is actually, paradoxically, another way forward. After all, his imprisonment with Katara affords him the opportunity to reconcile with his enemy and cooperate in order to escape, defeat his disturbed sister, and literally be free of the scar of the past by way of Katara's healing.

All of that and much more is destroyed when Aang decides to leave the Guru and save Katara.

Observe:

In that moment, Aang is tempted with his earthly attachments again, and chooses to be controlled by his fear, his guilt, and his grief once more. He begins a kind of cascading slide back down the chakras, closing them up once more. Again, it's the beginning of a domino effect.

The next one to fall is Sokka's domino. The episode sets up Sokka's experience as a movement beyond his own fears, self doubts, and need to be accepted by his father, giving him the chance to finally prove himself worthy. Despite what his father says, it is clear that Sokka still wants to participate in the battle--he still needs to prove himself for himself, if that makes sense. Aang's arrival makes that an impossibility.

Then, his arrival once more in Ba Sing Se interrupts the reconciliation between Zuko and Katara, and, with the help of Azula's prodding (sidenote: I spent this entire scene thinking desperately to my self, "No, Zuko, Azula always lies, AZULA ALWAYS LIES!") fails his own chakra test: he sees a chance to mollify his guilt and shame the easy way and grabs it. Another pool darkens, another domino falls, another plot chakra is closed.

In turn, this forces Aang to finally attempt to unlock the last chakra. This seems to contradict what the Guru tells him about being unable to stop the process, but remember that messages from old, bald men are not always to be taken literally. Aang has already made his choice, and by attempting to open the seventh Chakra while in the middle of a battle with the Darth Vader of the Avatar universe he opens himself to the outcome repeatedly hinted at in the series: he is struck by Azula's lightening and is killed in the Avatar State. The Guru is right--just taking that step backward was all Aang needed to do to destroy all forward progress, Azula's lightening is merely the tangible manifestation of that mistake, a cosmic afterthought.

This is not the final domino, though--this is not the final pool to be closed. No, the last pool to darken is Zuko's once more, when Katara is forced to use the powerful blessed water from the North Pole to heal Aang rather than to heal Zuko's scar. The possibility of redemption is sealed off, and the messiness of life prevents the flow of the plot forward. In fact, at this point all the progress made in the second season is stalled and, in some cases, outright reversed, just as the Guru warned would happen. The Avatar State, the representation of a balance between the four elements and a transcendence above the scars of the war, is locked, not to return until Aang uses a type of bending that transcends the four elements entirely at the end of the series.

So, let's pull back again and look at what this means for our overall examination. What this suggests is that it's not enough to just have character meaning, you also have to have a thematic reason for things to happen. Everything in The Guru and The Crossroads of Destiny occurs in a way that resolves the major thematic question of the entire second season, which is: can we find a way to reconcile with the past in order to move forward, and what are the consequences of failure? The conclusion, simply put, is that if we DON'T find a way to move past our hangups our growth is stunted, our progress toward happiness is stalled, and perhaps we even stall the growth of our loved ones.

Wow.

It's exactly this kind of thematic weight that moments like Brom's death or Sully's expulsion from the Na'vi lack. They are archetypal elements (a phrase you can see peppered all over in Paolini's discussion of his work) that don't actually add up to a thematic argument. But Avatar manages to take a familiar narrative and transform it into an integral part of both its mythology and its thematic progress.

In fact, since you're all probably drooling and nearly unconscious after all this blather, let me go out on a limb here with a statement bound to piss at least a few people off:

Avatar uses this element better than The Empire Strikes Back does. It's an improvement on the original.

Why? Well, because the results of the hero's failure are so much more tangible. Yoda and Ben SAY that Luke's attempt at heroism will result in disaster, which is true in that it leads to the stunning revelation about Luke's relationship with Darth Vader, but Avatar ratchets up the stakes by showing how Katara, Zuko, and even Sokka and arguably Iroh all suffer and are stunted in some way by Aang's choice. What's more, Avatar has the advantage of an entire season of episodes to highlight the theme of struggling with past failures, which adds further weight to Aang's decision. I find, in revisiting The Empire Strikes Back, that Luke's decision does not have the same agony to it. We cannot already foresee, from a thematic standpoint, where such a decision will inevitably lead given the logic of the text.

So, if there's anything we can take away from this it's that no choice--least of all the choice to draw overtly upon another text's narrative beats--can afford to be neutral. You can't do something just because it fits the archetype, it has to have a meaning unique to the story you are telling.

Avatar manages not only to do this but also to address, through its narrative, questions that I think we all struggle with as we mature. The question of how we reconcile our past with our need to move forward is one I still struggle with personally, and one that I think many people my age grapple with as they move from college to work, further education, new relationships, and so on. Another good counterargument to those who mock the lovers of media ostensibly for children, no? Once more we see Avatar moving beyond the narrow confines of the Target Audience to say something profound. And, what's more, it takes the constraints of a narrative formula and moves beyond that, too, finding a way to adapt and accept the formula while still moving forward.

On every level, then, Avatar finds a way to move us up and out through the pools.

And the animation continues to be fantastic, too!

Speaking of moving beyond the messyness of life to progress forward, it's been over a month since I last posted! Hey, yeah, uh, sorry about that everyone. What was a part time job unexpectedly became a very labor intensive, exhausting full time job, and on top of that I've been working on a number of scholarship applications for graduate level study. Things have been a bit crazy around here. I'm actually planning on doing an article on just what kept me so busy, but before that I want to do another Avatar article (and probably a fourth one at some point) and an article on the crazy successful Homestuck Kickstarter.

I'm hoping that we won't have too many more delays for a while, but at this point I think we can all accept that the Two Posts A Week thing--a challenge that was always more about forcing myself to become a stronger writer, anyway--is basically done. When I first started I was posting three articles a week, which was great, wowie zowie, I had so much content! Except that this article you just read is more than three times as long as those articles were. Basically, I just can't shut up. What's more, I'm spending a lot of time rewriting these articles before they go out to make sure they're up to my own standard of quality. So, I'm doing WAY more work now than when I first started, on top of a full time job, looking for other work for when this job ends, looking for grad school programs, working on my own art, sleep, and...

Look, what I'm getting at is that I still love you dearly but we're going to have to see less of each other, darling. I know, I know, you've grown so accustomed to your chair, and Abraxas the Hideous Armrest Rat, and your terrible beer, but I shall have to [sigh] vacate my seat. No, no, don't get up right now, I'm not leaving for a few more minutes, it's ok. But as of now I'll be posting articles when they are done, not based on some sort of stupid webcomic-style update schedule.

Want to keep abreast of article developments? As always, You can follow me on Google+ at gplus.to/SamKeeper or on Twitter @SamFateKeeper. I really recommend following me, as that way you can always keep up to date without having to constantly reload this damn page. And of course, you can e-mail me at KeeperofManyNames@gmail.com.

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Suffering Will Be Your Teacher: Avatar and Non-Exploitive Grimness

I never actually finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender back when it first appeared on television. I honestly can't even remember why--I certainly enjoyed the show, so I can only assume that work got the best of me and I simply lost track of things.

There's a bright side to that, though, in that I have a far greater understanding of how the show works now. I liked Avatar back in 2005. I really did. But I didn't have a methodology that allowed me to dig below the surface and address whether or not the show fits together right. There's a greater insight that comes with both age and a greater understanding of media.

And what is my great insight?

This show is freaking brilliant.

Yeah, yeah, any other fan could have told you that, but like I said, it wasn't until recently that I could delve into just why I liked the show so much. Turns out the show not only has fun characters, cool action, and an interesting ongoing plotline, it also has carefully constructed and balanced motifs and themes that are supported by storytelling that invites empathy and emotional investment in the show's conflicts.

Let's focus on just theme for a moment, for example. Now, I've only just completed the second season, and I'm listing these off the top of my head, but so far some of the themes and motifs addressed include:

• The desperate hope for redemption and second chances
• The possibility that some people are simply too damaged or too sociopathic to be saved
• Severe animal cruelty
• The toll that an extended war takes upon civilians
• Fear of the loss--or the forced removal--of one's identity and memory
• The possibility that the enemies of an evil power may become a mirror of what they fight
• The danger of false utopias and Orwellian (or, arguably, Huxleyesque) totalitarianism
• Obsession and the personal inability to escape the past
• The inability to save the life of a loved one--whether a parent, a lover, a teacher, or, perhaps most devastatingly, a child.
• The lasting psychological consequences of that kind of loss
• The experience of being relentlessly and exhaustingly pursued with no chance of rest or respite
• The double edged sword of technological advancement
• Whether humans can be trusted with knowledge and power
• The pull between duty and the desire to determine one's own path in life

I could go on, I'm sure, but this list should be enough to at least start digging into how exceptional this material is. See, the show manages to address these ideas while still remaining fundamentally a children's show. That is, of course, no small feat--after all, some of these ideas are among the most classic of literary ideas. The struggle between duty and freedom? You might recognize that concept presented in Zuko's struggles... or in Hamlet's. False utopia and the horror of brainwashing? Jet might be accepting invitations from the Earth King to go to Lake Laogai, but he could just as easily be realizing that he loves Big Brother. Oh, and those dueling concepts of redemption and true evil? Well, between Zuko and his crazy sister, I guess A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

Which is all, you know, totally clever and all that I can pick all this out, really impressive, yadda yadda, but I'm not just showing off here. The point I'm making is that some of these themes are among the most central, most lauded, most profound themes in a great number of adult literary masterpieces.

But what's really interesting to me is that some of these themes also crop up in plenty of blockbuster movies, many of which are aimed at adults, and few of which manage to address the themes and motifs above nearly as successfully as these literary classics... or Avatar, for that matter.

This is even stranger when you consider the greater freedom afforded to media aimed at adults. After all, adult media can pretty freely address concepts like the brutality of war in a direct and visceral way--hence the success of works such as Apocalypse Now. Yet, Avatar manages to address these ideas in a way that is just as emotionally affecting in a context that is limited simply by the maturity of its audience.

And, what's more, it manages to do so in a way that addresses suffering without exploiting it.

Let me leave that last idea hanging for a moment, though. I promise I'll return to it later.

First, I want to look at two different episodes--the two episodes (along with the third episode that comes between them) that first signaled to me that the show was changing from just (hah! "Just," the man says!) a solid piece of storytelling into something much, much more profound. They are Zuko Alone and Bitter Work (with The Chase, an episode I want to discuss in a separate article, coming in between). They come halfway through the second season, one brutal episode after another, and, in fact, there's not really a relief from the darkness of this story arc until the episode The Serpent's Pass (which is fitting, as that episode very consciously deals with the theme of moving on from grief, pain, and failure--but that's an analysis for another day). I would argue that not only are they a turning point for the tone of the series, they also signal the maturation of the show's method of storytelling.

Let's take a look, shall we?

In particular, let's look at Zuko and Azula, and their characterization in Zuko Alone.

The characterization in this episode is really quite artful, actually. We slowly watch as the show divides the two characters from one another in personality and empathy. From the start, of course, we see that Azula is a cruel child, but we first discover that obliquely when Zuko throws a hunk of bread at an adorable baby turtle duck. What's interesting about this scene is that first of all, we are introduced to Zuko's relationship with his mother, who, unlike everyone else in the fire nation, is surprisingly NOT a complete jerk. This is important for Zuko's character because it establishes him as someone who can be innocently cruel but who is being taught a better way to live by his caring mother.

What fascinates me about this scene is that it also serves as an introduction to Azula, through Zuko's statement that the hurl-a-hunk-of-bread method is "how Azula feeds turtle ducks" (presumably Peeta also hung around Azula as a child). So, we already know that she has a destructive streak in her that Zuko innocently imitates.

This is reinforced when Azula tricks Zuko into propelling himself and Mai into the fountain, but I actually think it is more profoundly reinforced in a subtle moment earlier:

My sister refers to her as "Azula the Raging Dick"

Azula, jealous of Ty Lee's acrobatic ability, responds to her cartwheel by kicking the other girl over.

This is a really interesting moment because it shows not just a cruelty but an inability to accept the achievements of others. Azula is shown, in that moment, to be not just sadistic but jealous of power as well. This subtle moment is the first hint at her darker nature, a nature that goes beyond cruelty and into actual sociopathy.

What's more, these first few scenes set the stage for the contemplation of cruelty within the main story of the episode. See, this episode isn't just about conflict or villainy, it's about a particular kind of villainy. This becomes apparent when Zuko has a second run in with a bunch of Earth Kingdom provisional soldiers while staying in an Earth Kingdom home. In this encounter, the soldiers gloat about the fact that son of the farmer Zuko is staying with has been captured by the Fire Nation.

And then, something very interesting happens.

The show decides to get very, very dark with this exchange between the leader of the brigand soldiers and one of his band:

"You boys hear what the fire nation did with their last group of Earth Kingdom prisoners?"

"Dressed them up in fire nation uniforms and put them on the front line unarmed, the way I heard it. [pause] Then they just watched."

Holy hell.

That hit me like a ton of bricks when I first rewatched this episode. I mean, consider the sheer horror of that statement, the horror of being mercilessly mowed down by people on your own side because of the sheer cruelty of your enemies. Remember how I said this episode was a contemplation of cruelty? Well, this is what I was talking about.

But there's an important point to remember here:

It's not the Fire Nation that reveals the fate of the farmer's son. No, it's provisional Earth Kingdom soldiers. And the show has no qualms about the fact that this statement is just as cruel, just as malicious and spiteful and sociopathic, as the act of the Fire Nation itself. And, what's more, it's immediately followed by what I consider one of the most disturbing moments in the show: Azula smugly denouncing Iroh, a character that over the course of the series we have grown to love, respect, and empathize with, for being shattered by the death of the son that he commanded into battle.

Remember how I said that Azula was sociopathic? Well, I honestly think this, and the later scene where she gloatingly claims that Zuko's father is going to murder him, is all the evidence we need to support that claim. Azula is just a fundamentally warped individual, and the Fire Nation has not just accepted her mental disorder but encouraged it, and happily given her the most powerful weapons in the world to play with.

Evil grin at your grandfather's funeral? Classy, Azula. Real classy. I love how this image sums up the children's relationship, too--poor Zuko looks downright terrified.

It sends chills up my spine, it really does. But what's so stunningly brilliant about this episode is that Azula's actions are constantly paralleled not just with the Fire Nation's actions as a whole, but with the actions of the Earth Kingdom ruffians that torment the small village that Zuko passes through.

What we come to understand through that parallel is that while one might try to push against the monstrosity of war as Zuko does, some people are, by training or inclination, monstrous, simply put. And, what's more, they can't simply be explained with a childish explanation that they are just... evil, like, evil, you know? They're just a bit more disturbingly human than that, and their humanity makes the problem they present far more difficult to tangle with.

None of this would be nearly so meaningful, however, if Avatar didn't know exactly how to play each moment and how to give their characters weight. It would not be so significant to us that Azula mocks Iroh's weakness if we hadn't already grown to empathize with him and his loss. And, what's more, it invites us to become further alienated from Azula when, in the later episode Bitter Work, we see the brief sequence of juxtaposed memories--Iroh playing with his son, and Iroh mourning at his son's memorial. Iroh never directly states "I am haunted by the death of my son," but we feel that loss tangibly, we feel how broken he is.

And we understand that when Iroh contradicts Zuko's expectations that he will encourage reconciliation and sibling understanding, when he simply says, "No, she's crazy, and she needs to go down"...

Well, in that moment, we are primed to understand that he's right, he's absolutely right, Azula is totally out of her gourd and she's a danger to literally everyone she comes into contact with because she has no compassion.

Oh, and then the show does one last brilliant thing.

A lesser show would play Iroh's line for laughs, and I honestly almost laughed myself when I saw it from sheer surprise.

But then it shows us Zuko's reaction:

Ouch. That, right there, is deeply tangible pain. Iroh has just told Zuko that he has to defeat, and possibly kill, his sister, because of what a monster she has become, and he reacts the way any sane person would to such a grim proposal: he reacts with deeply pained resolve.

What I find so compelling about this moment, from the perspective of my broader argument, is that the show is establishing Azula not as the disturbing entity of evil that she is through gratuitous violence but through focusing on the pain that her sociopathy causes those around her. And, what's more, while it relies on overt statements declaring her to be a villain, it also grounds those statements in our empathy towards those affected characters.

It's that old saw about "showing, not telling" that everyone has heard far to many times doing it's thing, here. And listen, I can't stand that phrase. It's a cliche, trotted out so often that it's lost all meaning, and is now tossed out to bored students by teachers unwilling to expand on what it stands for metaphorically.

But the sentiment behind that dreadfully trite phrase is an important one, even if it is poorly articulated in the phrase itself. Let's try a different one: as an author you have to use empathy as well as exposition. What is considered "telling" is really just exposition--direct pieces of evidence provided by the medium to the audience, simple facts. So, Iroh telling Zuko that his sister is crazy is exposition--it is a direct statement of analysis that we don't have to dig into the show to find. We don't feel exposition, we simply know exposition.

But where this really gets tricky, and where I think a lot of stories get that damn cliche disasterously wrong, is that showing is equated to action--you have to have your characters do things so that the audience feels the information that exposition allows us to know.

Except what Avatar shows is that it isn't just action alone, it is not just characters doing thing, that fills in that feeling. It is, more precisely, empathy or antipathy toward actions. We either understand and appreciate the action, or we dislike the action and either feel pain on behalf of the actor who makes a bad decision, or anger at an actor who we have antipathy towards.

That's where so many films fall flat on their face. It's not enough to show an evil action, we have to really feel the impact. I apologize for harping on about this again, but there's a reason why Rachel Dawson's death in The Dark Knight is so much more meaningful than the destruction of a whole football field in The Dark Knight Rises--we have empathy for the individuals affected in the Joker's simple, cruel game than we do for that eyeroll-inducing nine year old warbling his way through the National Anthem. It is exposition and action without empathy, and it falls flat, just like any art without empathy will.

So, all that is well and good, but where's that exploitation thing I talked about earlier?

I actually think it's pretty simple. There's a difference between pain that is sensationalized--pain that is induced through this sort of action without empathy, call it pain for pain's sake, pain that serves as exposition but does not actually build character--and pain that is inflicted upon the consumer of media via bonds of compassion. The former is, in my estimation, exploitative, alienating, and, in some ways, just as disturbing to me as Azula's sociopathy. It shows that the creator has no interest in conveying the experiences of the characters--no interest in treating the characters as analogous to real humans, in other words--to the consumer.

That's just... ugh. That's just gross. And you know, it's probably not conscious, it's probably not intentional, but man it sure is sloppy. And it's particularly frustrating to me, in this Era of the Dark and Gritty Reboot, to see artists mistaking actions of cruelty for profound artistic statements.

If you want a tangible example of this behavior, consider the new backstory of Laura Croft as of the most recent game. Where previously Laura Croft was a badass because, well, she was a determined individual with an adventurous spirit and deep curiosity, paired with (as of The Last Revelation) some near brushes with death and interactions with people who she learned not to emulate.

And what's her new backstory?

Uh, being tortured and sexually assaulted.

Yes, in an effort to make Laura Croft darker, and gritter, and more "realistic" presumably, the creators relied on making the story's content as dark and edgy and Rated M For Mature as possible. They confused action and exposition for empathy, and the most socially conscious gaming critics rightfully raked them over the coals for it.

So, what I hope we can do with Avatar is see it as an example of how you can make profound statements about serious, adult themes without being cruel, without exploiting pain for sensation.

I mean, if nothing else, you have to at least consider the fact that Avatar is wildly successful with a strong, loyal fanbase. That's what you get when you decide to treat your characters--and your audience--as beings worthy of emotional consideration.

Oh, and there's one more thing. I know, I know, I've rambled long enough, but there's one last element to these two episodes that's worth considering. See, I talked earlier about the themes in the show and their profundity. One of the things that I always loved about the show was that it did not talk down to its audience. These two episodes, for example, have a deeper thematic focus than just the struggles of the individual characters.

Remember how I said Zuko Alone repeatedly places the jerk "soldiers" in parallel juxtaposition with Azula, how it compares their cruelty? Well, that ties in with a few other interesting elements from these episodes. There's the fact that Zuko, despite his attempts to do good is repeatedly rejected and unable to achieve his full potential. The guy can't even manage to get hit by lightening, for goodness sake. And then there's the odd way that neither the fate of the farmer's son nor Zuko's mother are resolved in the episode itself--both are left ultimately blank. And, of course, there is the overall blurring of sides in the conflict, with Earth Kingdom "soldiers" behaving in cruel and vile ways, and the former prince of the Fire Nation turning against his country and his sister.

All of this adds up, to my mind at least, to a commentary on powerlessness and helplessness in the face of both war and evil. When the village Zuko has just saved rejects him, we come to understand that some scars (a fitting motif, really) cannot be forgotten or forgiven, especially scars received during a war that, let's not forget, has already lasted a century. I doubt a French village would be too pleased to be rescued by English knights toward the end of the Hundred Years War, if you want a real, historical example. And Zuko, in the face of that, in the face of his driven, consciousless sister's power, in the face of a conflict that has slowly warped all the combatants to the point where reconciliation seems impossible... in the face of that Zuko is pathetic, for all his strength and fighting prowess. It takes someone superhuman like Aang to push against such tides, and even Aang is brought low in this second season.

That's a heavy message for a kid's show, to be sure, but it's an important one to at least be made aware of, and the show does, through Iroh and other such characters, provide a potential way of finding meaning even within that powerlessness and a path towards a kind of enlightenment.

There's a profundity to these episodes that most media in general, let alone media aimed at children, never approach, and seldom is it approached in such a nuanced and respectful way as it is here. That's a gift, it truly is.

I have quite a bit more to say about this show, so I think I'm going to cut this particular article here and make this the first of a series. Sound good? Stay tuned over the next few weeks as I dig into some of the ways that Avatar works structurally, and what it can tell us about art, media, and the Liberal Arts in general. Oh, and as always, feel free to tell me what a nutjob I am in the comments. Cheers!

You can follow me on Google+ at gplus.to/SamKeeper or on Twitter @SamFateKeeper. As always, you can e-mail me at KeeperofManyNames@gmail.com. If you liked this piece please share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Reddit, Equestria Daily, Xanga, MySpace, or whathaveyou, and leave some thoughts in the comments below.