Avatar the Last Airbender Season 1 Critical Review
T here is a scene in Avatar: The Final Airbender that summons the ethereal enchantment and ache of a Studio Ghibli movie every fourth dimension you watch it. Iroh, the erstwhile crown prince of the imperial Fire nation (voiced by the late Japanese American actor Mako), now a macerated, greying old man, sits past the graveside of his son. Drowning in regret and a gold sunset, his gruff vocalism slides mournfully as he sings: "Leaves from the vine, falling so slow, similar fragile, tiny shells drifting in the foam."
While I was watching it recently, my eyes cut to my younger brother sitting beside me, a 27-year-old man continuing nigh 6ft alpine. We spied glistening tears in each other's eyes for the split-second they met as we felt Iroh's loss.
That scene has absorbed millions around the earth since the animated series was released xv years ago past Nickelodeon – and it has had a revival since May, when it arrived on Netflix. Not to be dislocated with James Cameron's motion picture Avatar, the series debuted at No one on the streaming service when it was released in May and remained in the Pinnacle x for a record-breaking 61 days.
Avatar is set in a earth of four nations – Water, Globe, Burn down and Air – each of which is abode to individuals able to "curve", or control an element through martial arts. Only one person, the Avatar – whose spirit is reincarnated upon their expiry and born to parents in the next nation in the "Avatar bicycle" – can master all four elements to maintain remainder between the nations.
The evidence was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and follows the adventures of the effervescent and indefatigable Aang, the 12-year-erstwhile Avatar and last air-bender. Resurrected after 100 years frozen in ice, he finds that his people have been the victim of genocide by the Fire nation.
With the Black Lives Matter motion casting a spotlight on the ripples still felt past slavery and colonialism, the political timbre of Avatar speaks powerfully to the reckoning with institutional racism provoked by the death of George Floyd.
Ali A Olomi, an banana professor of Heart East, Islamic and global s history at Penn State University in Pennsylvania, uses the series to demonstrate to students the touch on of genocide, colonialism, imperialism, intergenerational trauma, radicalisation, surveillance and parental abuse.
"Ane of the things we see with the Fire nation is the ideological justification for what they're doing," says Olomi. "Nosotros are a glorious civilisation. We take affluence, we take wealth, nosotros take technological advancement; we need to share it with the rest of the earth. That's almost word for discussion European colonisation."
The fantasy genre has been criticised as being racially homogeneous, but "Avatar is a non-western, non-white fantasy", says Olomi. "The influence of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones is very Eurocentric. Now we have a serial that phenomenally shows you can move the map, get elsewhere and tell rich, beautiful, various stories without falling into Eurocentric tropes." Indeed, the Water, World, Fire and Air nations mirror traits of Inuit, Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan cultures respectively.
This was lost in the dreadful live-action adaptation directed by M Night Shyamalan in 2010, with near of the titular characters – including Aang – cast as white. Another endeavor at a alive-action version, this time from Netflix, has fans worried: the creators announced last calendar month that they were no longer involved in the projection.
It is not just the racial politics of the series that take been applauded; it has also been celebrated for its nuanced female person characters. Toph Beifong, the obstinate and witty globe-bending prodigy who was initially intended to exist a muscled man, teaches Aang how to principal earth-angle. Suffocated by her overprotective family unit because she is blind, Toph lives the life of a sheltered noble, unleashing her irrepressible love for fighting in the band by moonlighting secretly every bit a bending wrestler called the Blind Bandit. When the show's creators U-turned on Toph'due south gender, they bandage Michaela Jill Murphy in the role. She was only 11.
"People see me and they think I'g weak. They want to take care of me. Merely I can take care of myself,' says Spud in grapheme, reciting Toph's well-known line. "Toph has this demand to be like: 'I'm smashing! I'one thousand fine! Don't come most me! I can do everything!' when in reality she can have both sides. She can be independent and vulnerable."
Through Toph'southward blindness, the writers of Avatar take been praised for their portrayal of disabilities not every bit something to be pitied, simply rather a wellspring of strength. "Fans have reached out, maxim: 'I've never had a character who was bullheaded, whom I could chronicle to, who makes jokes constantly, who is at peace with who they are,'" says Murphy. "Besides many times you lot see people with disabilities being coddled. Toph does the opposite of that. She teaches us that what nosotros see as weakness is what you let it be, unless you lot let other people define it for you."
Aspects such as this have helped Avatar spawn a vast online world of Reddit and Twitter threads, where fans talk over which musical instruments were used in particular episodes, hypothetical romantic pairings, cosplayers dressing up as characters from the series and fan art that imagines Aang as a skateboarder.
Although Aang is the protagonist, the journey of the raging adversary, Zuko (voiced by Dante Basco, who shot to fame as Rufio in Steven Spielberg'south Hook), is also at the heart of the series. Banished by his begetter, he must regain his accolade by killing the Avatar. But Zuko undergoes a stunning metamorphosis, rupturing the intergenerational trauma and imperial legacy he inherited with the guidance of his uncle Iroh – another character revered by the series' fans.
When Mako died of oesophageal cancer in 2006 equally the second series was being aired, the thespian Greg Baldwin stepped in. He had formidable expectations to meet. "I knew from the get-go I am not Mako," says Baldwin, speaking from New Mexico. "Mako was nominated for an Oscar, a Tony; he opened up the first American Asian theatre in the US."
So how did a cocky-proclaimed "former white guy from Texas" end upwardly carrying the mantle of Iroh, despite never having met his predecessor? Infatuated with a fortuitous birthday gift from 1977 – the soundtrack for the musical Pacific Overture, featuring Mako in his Tony-nominated role every bit the Reciter – Baldwin had learned the songs and voices of the character verbatim. "I was ane of the few people who had been doing an impression of Mako for 30 years," he says with a chuckle.
It was non until Baldwin attended the Comic-Con convention that he comprehended the emotive impact Iroh had on fans. "He was literally the father effigy for an entire generation," Baldwin says. "Sometimes I would do Iroh's vocalisation and I would see grown men cry. I got a text in one case saying: 'I'm sorry to bother y'all, Mr Baldwin, but my mother died terminal nighttime and I was wondering what Uncle Iroh would say to me.' It's a role of the job I never expected."
But even Iroh is not a simple adept guy. The grapheme's complicity in the Burn nation'due south colonial endeavours elicited acrimony from fans who said he was a war criminal with a penchant for green tea.
Perhaps this is why Avatar is as important and relevant every bit ever. The show'south interrogation of what meaningful accountability and redemption should look similar, on an private level and a societal level, offers a valuable lesson in moving forward in the real globe.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/sep/01/ive-seen-grown-men-cry-why-avatar-the-last-airbender-still-touches-millions
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