Korra’s struggle with trauma was a thousand times more interesting and it really makes me wish there was a season that was just dedicated to exploring the emotional and psychological baggage of being the Avatar.
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 I think that maybe it was because she didn't have to struggle to get it back, it didn't have a lasting consequence to her, seeing as she restored her bending soon after by establishing connection to the avatars
@@giovannapires7273 It's just weird this is when they decided to take on PTSD when she's already been in worse situations. Also Amon traumatized her when he took her captive and had her on the ground. And then Zaheer says she should be grateful for what he did.
@JohnnyTheWolf To be fair, Mai and Ty Lee were just kids who were basically intimidated by Azula into joining her. I think the fact that they eventually betrayed her means their redemption is more earned than anything in Korra. Also, Ozai was never redeemed, they just couldn't kill him because it was a kid's show. iirc no one got killed in the original Avatar.
@JohnnyTheWolf Yeah maybe Tai Lee. Also Ozai should've been crushed under one of the giant rock pillars in their final battle. Aang spares him, he shoots at him but Aang dodges and he hits a pillar that crushes him. Though I also like his bending being stolen away because it's a date worse than death and it's a perfect symbolic defeat for him.
I think it’s heavily implied that kuvira gave the resources for the aerial bandit attack to force the submission of that earth state. This is a very common practice to expand fascist’s control seen in history multiple times, to create the enemy you plan to fight against.
Yeah it seems implied but never really addressed which feels pretty irresponsible considering how key the bandit gangs are to setting off the events of the season. I mention how we can only really infer things about them because they're not really given any character which is... telling.
The thing about real life is you can believe your the good guys and lie and con to get your way. In different ways (like the concentration camps, she is shown to lie and hide about things, just not shown to be 'a lyer' about motivations. but Unilock was shown to have real concerns and also powerhungry; so just apply that again.
The breaking point in this whole series, to me, was at the beginning of Book 4, during the first part of the first episode. During the series recap we see how the "Spirit-infested zone" in Republic City had become integrated in the city as a whole, now serving as a tourist attraction of some sort. (another problem that, for some reason, solved itself in some way) In this, we see the homeless character (forgot his name, tbh) smiling and living happily with a bunch of semi-transparent fluffy spirit-animals that are now his friends. The narrator calls him something along the line of "this merry scamp" and he gives thumbs up and a big smile to the camera. Then, a few scenes later, we see another kind of "poor people", which are the citizens of the Earth Kingdom now living in impoverished conditions caused by the killing of the previous Queen. These people are seen as suffering and struggling against a bandit's raid and are then "saved" by the intervention of Kuvira. I think this shows how liberals perceive poor people as basically divided in two categories: the "natural-born poor", who only need some form of symbolic gesture in order to be happy, since they have never experienced anything different than abject poverty in their lives (and are oh so inspirational because they can teach us how to appreciate the "small things in life") and the "artificial poor", who are middle-class and small business owners impoverished by the mistakes of those evil idealists who had the audacity to try and improve everyone's lives. And of course, only this second category deserves to be helped out of their condition, since it was brought upon them not by the flaws inherent in the system but by the actions of a few "bad guys". Absolutely disgusting.
In other words, poverty under liberal capitalism is natural because people are free and "anyone can make it", while poverty is artificial under any other system because people aren't free and it's imposed on them
I think if you have to make two categories, it could also be the poor in your countries. Too bad, they're poor, that's really a tragedy. And the poor in others' countries. They're the result of tyrants. Let's make a coup and change their leadership.
This season brings to mind what a wise man once told me: "It is easier to imagine the redemption of a genocidal nazi with a Giant Death Robot than an end to capitalism." ...I think he was talking about Wernher von Braun? Anyway, seemed appropriate.
I find it wild that they blame Zaheer primarily for the rise of Kuvira and not, you know, the political leaders who all supported her for three years until the last possible second when she refused to give the crown back. And for some reason, he agrees.
Because zaheer catalysted what is haven been growing since years ago. He was the one who destroyed finally the Earth Kingdom, not Kuruk with his focus on spiritual world, not Kyoshi with the creation of the Dai Lee and the assasination of Jianzhu, not the earth kingdom aristocracy who became corrupt to the point to let subyugate the whole kingdom by the Fire Nation. Not Roku by preventing sozin to start the 100 years war by killing sozin, not sozin by starting colonies in earth kingdom and bla bla. He was the last pressure point to destroy the pillar
I mean. In my case I wanted to rage against the machine but due to growing up in a Reagan loving household I got pushed that way. When I finally realized that stripping away the government to give back "freedom" means empowering those who would do me and mine harm to make a buck... I finally came the right way around.
I was waiting for a scene in Book 4 where we learned that the bandits were being paid by Kuvira to attack these towns and villages so she could convince them to bow down to her. I waited the entire season for that. And it never came.
21:48 actually in Brazil our "democracy" was never a result of the struggles of the people, but instead a result of a clash of interests between the Emperor and the Military who had recently acquired power and basically forced the Emperor to resign. Not exactly different from Korra, except for the cartoon being much "cleaner" about it.
It's the case in France as well, if you look past our Republic's propaganda. Yes, the people's participation was vital to the first revolution. No, they weren't the ones that directed the movement. And the circumstances of the instauration of the 3rd Republic were a cosmic joke.
@@Azerty72200 People idealize American democracy, but it was founded the same way. The American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, perpetrated by a newly developed colonial aristocratic class and was deeply unpopular (at the time). At least half the people were British loyalists, and the revolutionary bourgeois stamped out other revolutionary groups that had REAL democratic and egalitarian leanings, co-opting them. It's honestly terrifying how well propaganda works.
@@TheSuperRattyeh like i learn how america and civil war it bascically demorcartic propagand they do no give freedom to black because they southern state against so they us george accept but after year then civil war
I didnt realize it while it was happening but its crazy how big the scourge of "deep villains" were in media in the 2010s. Every villain had to be "sympathetic" or "have a point but going about it wrong". I know it wasn't a new thing, but it was freakin inescapable around that time. Some were good, but a lot were like this: handled so carelessly, that they excuse a lot of horrible things the bad guys do as long as they have a cry at the end.
Ironically, the other villains in this show didn't get the same sympathizing treatment. The season 1 and 2 villains are portrayed as insincere and power hungry, and Zaheer from season 3 was shown as incoherent.
I agree. Communists are repugnant, evil and vile and should always be depicted without any sympathetic pull to them at all. After all, 110 million dead and counting - most evil ideology ever created in the history of mankind.
i mean atla had this with azula. lmao but i think it's more the fandom's reaction to atla that is sad and alarming :( but bryke's (and aaronwhatshisface) understanding of imperial colonialism [racial] capitalism is uhhhh not deep
Hoo, boy. Never has it been more clear how true it is that "...Mike and Bryan don't understand political ideologies." Thanks for the great work, Kay and Skittles. This series has been fantastic.
JohnnyTheWolf Nah I don’t think so, I think it’s just ignorance. I don’t think they’re actually trying to push a neoliberal agenda, I think it’s just that they’re using the political system that they live in as a baseline for “good” or “just,” and that system just so happens to be based on a neoliberal agenda.
One aspect of season 4 I was surprised you didn't touch on is that they never show in detail what the concentration camps are actually like. It cheapens the supposed horror of them and makes them feel like an incidental part of Kuvira's regime, instead of a main focus. Everything we know about them just comes from exposition. Like you would think that a fictional fascist regime with Nazi aesthetics would be portrayed doing Nazi like stuff. Ffs just judging by what 'the boys' show us the Fire Nation in ATLA seems 10x more oppressive than the Earth Empire, in the more kid friendly series no less!
Yeah very true! Much like how the oppression of benders was mostly just implied in Book 1 most of the awful shit Kuvira does is offscreen in Book 4. But they'll gratuitously show the anarchists torture our protagonist in Book 3 lmao.
I believe marching on Zofu and than the republic are their 'kick the dog' moments on screen. but her threat to kill the bandit prisoners counts as showing the ruthless manner of her 'uniting'.
It felt like an afterthought that Bryke added in there when they realized they made Kuvira more sympathetic and interesting than they expect. They are doing the same in the post-season four graphic novel, where a conflict with nuance and complexity suddenly has "LOL MIND CONTROL" inserted to make sure you know the villain is a villain.
I wish they just patterned it after real-world Chinese warlord era (imagine Zaofu clique competing with other cliques). Much more compelling than "bandits".
@@sarahwinn2453 Now I'M wondering the same question! As a regular Oculon-tribute payer, I would've thought I'd seen the ThoughtSlime video that mentioned this series, but IF such a ThoughtSlime video exists, I must've skipped over it, possibly due to...spoilers, or something... Or perhaaaaaps I put off watching Kay's video (despite the subject matter being SO up my alley that Kay's figuratively IN my house, making sandwiches out of ingredients in the fridge) until after reading some of the comments on ThoughtSlime's video, but by the time I was done with said comments, I'd forgotten about what I'd glimpsed in the Eyeball Zone.........
Well, the issue is discussed in the comics "the promise", along with cultural appropriation and other things. Republic City emerged from one of the first Fire Nation colony in the Earth Kingdom at the start of the hundred years war. The city should have been given to the Earth Kingdom but locals refused to. It's... Not the smartest take on colonialism, but lore wise it makes sense and it was addressed in the Avatarvers. I think you'll enjoy the comics and the novel about Kyoshi a little bit more.
@@carterrogan1409 If I recall correctly the air apprentices (a group of dedicated Aang fan boys with a lot of appreciation for air nomads) tattooed themselves with the arrow that is supposed to be earned by becoming an airmaster. Aang clearly adresses this as cultural appropriation and gets seriously angry and sad about it. The author (Chinese in origin I belive) mentioned that he had read on the internet about cultural appropriation and wanted to address the topic.
It's a shame because I think I mentally dismissed how stupid Zaheer was because I am an Anarchist and he was at least portrayed as honest and also as capable (in a fight, which in Avatar terms means that he is worthy of attention). Despite this, I would say that Zaheer's backstory would have actually made a much more interesting story for a follow-up to TLA. The dude was a nonbender kid who was a child soldier for an Earth Kingdom warlord outside the grounds of the capital, and successfully led a revolution to liberate his fellow soldiers and prisoners and allow them to go on and live life on their own. Imagine a series about him (or a rewritten version of him, nothing about him requires him to be male) spending that as his book 1 and then moving on to face off against the United Republic to liberate the colonized Earth people. You could even had an amazing nuance where the Avatar is his antagonist and their debate is about how sometimes stability must be upset to establish balance. That stability and power and authority are not, in fact, balance, but are instead a force maintaining imbalance. God, now I want to write it.
Or at least a better attempt of the question how anarchism and the avatar as a person which has way too much power could come along. I'm sure this struggle could be solved without trying to kill the avatar.... felt less than anarchist methods and more like some authoritarian communist methods
I always imagined that Kuvira secretly funded the Bandits so that she could justify her continued intervention. I know the show doesn't support this in any way but this way i'm not asking myself constantly how these people have access to airplanes. Anyway, great series. Illustrates exactly what alwys bothered me about Legend of Korra.
Thank you. It always bothered me how the show ended up sanitizing Varrick despite being as much of a villain as Unalaq. Similarly, how Suyin is never taken up to task for housing said war criminal, coddling her son despite also being a fascist war criminal, all the shit she did to Lin, or her general apathy towards the state of the Earth Nation while she and her family bask in their wealth and privilege. Weirdly, she's also the most active against Kuvira's growing regime early on.
The sanitising literally had me going "wait, he was a villain? I thought he built things to help the heroes??" when watching this series, then when it was pointed out it was just a change of heart at the end after he'd already built the magic railgun, I was like ohhhh
@@kaitlyn__L I had completely forgotten all the shady stuff he gets up to in Book 2. My brain had lumped him in with the 'good guys' and I never questioned it.
Unalaq became a giant demon and tried to plunge the world into 10,000 years of darkness? Varrick is just a selfish dude who does whatever is convenient. He didn't do anywhere near as much harm
Ugh, just hearing the phrase "Anarchism creates a power vacuum that WILL be filled by fascism" is giving me PTSD flashbacks to Lily Orchard's "ANARCHISM IZ DUM" Legend of Korra video essay.
Yep just the dumbest baby take of someone who's never encountered anarchist theory or tactics. Labor unions, political parties, dual power. The point is to build a non-hierarchical social structure to take over once the revolution comes, to ensure that there isn't a period of chaos and that the working class is immediately able to democratically organize life.
@@sepulchuredynarus2293 But that just defeats the point of anarchy, since you put people in charge after everything is said and done. What you described sounds more like a communist revolution.
Having kuvira as a benevolent dictator as a villain would be a great choice if the writers fixed a few things to the story. 1. Try not to make her a nazi at the same time 2. Give democracy as a substantial alternative to kuvira's dictator views. 3. Show the extent of kuvira's actions. That way there would be a nuanced discussion over a benevolent dictator and democracy. The audience would have to side with democracy though due to the self defeating concept of the benevolent dictator because once that good dictator dies and is replaced with a horrible one it defeats the purpose of having a dictatorship.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is just one of the all-time world classic anime, and it did the "Is it better to live in a good empire or a bad democracy" thing better. In that it did that at all-
I'm late to this video, but I think they also would have benefited by giving Kuvira a Nazi ally who does the fascist shit they wanted to show is bad while allowing Kuvira to retain her, "heart in the right place," justification. Show how even a benevolent dictator can create a pathway to fascism. And then maybe let her veer off course at the end - either in the sense that she falls to being a fascist or in the sense that she abandons her movement because the Nazi in her corner has made everything worse and scarier. Like, imagine a scene with kind, triumphant, proud Kuvira ends up seeing children starving. In HER Earth Empire. Because of the Nazi in her corner in the war. That would be an interesting character moment.
"how capitalism went too far now" Ohh yeah, what a horendous thing to happen: that the people could be free ina freemarket society! Another stupid commie...
Akuma Bakemono You ever think about how it’s global capitalism that created the conditions for the largest slave market in the world? We have more slaves today than any time in history but you don’t learn that when you learn about “history” in school. We have surveillance technology that is literally unprecedented. There’s factories that farm blood from real humans who get kidnapped and enslaved because there is a market incentive to do so. Real people are living in poverty that causes real deaths. Democratic nations are overthrown to align their interests with that of neoliberal organizations like the world bank that offer loans on the condition of policy reforms that are in US interests. I don’t know how you can honestly look at the whole of the world, culture, humanity, increasing mental illness and instability, and see a world that’s been blessed by a free market that’s made an enslaved people. Sign your labor to capitalist class for a wage that necessarily doesn’t give you the full value of your output or die under the conditions set by a market that creates a pseudo nature where real needs are seen as secondary to the needs of making more profit. What a joke
@@carsoneastman5709Your statement is really umtrue. Even if you class extremely cheap labour in the modern world as slaves ahd just slavery in the past, the slavery seen in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire are FAAAR larger. An estimated 20% to 50% of the entire population of the SPQR were slaves. That level of slavery lasted for about 1000 years. The SPQR at it's height had around a population of 70 Million, meaning 14 Million to 35 Million were slaves just at ONE POINT in it's history
Free the International Labor Organization estimates that their are 46 million people 1 in every 150 in textbook definition slavery today. But if we use your looser definition of extremely cheap labor that number jumps up to 3.4 billion, (half the global population) and given that there weren’t even a billion people on earth until 1804 I’d say thats fairly unprecedented in history
Yeah, they’re more than happy to talk about all the time socialism has failed but not how many times capitalism has failed, or the human cost behind that. It’s always, the Soviet union killed such and such number of people, with no hint of irony
Can't believe The Boys™ never made a season around my flawless ideology of anarcho-monarchism, the cowards. Seriously, great work, this was a fun, if at times painful, series. TLoK had to be difficult to rewatch at points.
@@GreaterGrievobeast55 anarchy, but there is a king with almost absolute power whose only job is making sure that noone else gets power, preserving anarchy
Also we find out this season that the reason Verrick is rich is because he's a genius who thought up and created the things his company makes all by himself with only a little help from assistants. He knows how every single bit of technology his industry makes works which is exactly how real billionaires earn their money. Like that Elon Musk guy who came up with the brilliant idea of less efficient subways systems, and also other really dumb shit.... I hate when fiction tries to explain how their rich capitalist characters actually eArNeD his wealth.
yeah, also, they take Assami's father out of prison because "they need all geniuses they can get", but they never think of recruiting, you know, engineers or whatever
8:00 It also does a third thing. It assassinates Toph's character. Besides the whole establishing a police thing that was a massive red flag for her trajectory. The way she developed originally was deeply tied to her rebelliousness, the thing she overcame originally was apathy and being stand-offish towards the gang from AtLA due to neglect and possessiveness from her parents. Her as a crotchety old hag who is disenfranchised from her children is born from her wanting them to be independant from her... So why did a complete antiauthoritarian to the point of offering so much freedom to her daughters that it turned into emotional neglect lead a fucking police force? That never sat right with me.
@Fabian Kirchgessner togh literally says in the show that she regrets being a cop and that no matter how hard she'd try to stop crime it'd never end from her actions which is the main reason she's so isolated from the world.
It gets so much worse in Ruins of empire. Kuvira is mostly forgiven and is instead put under house arrest so she can live with her adoptive "family". The family she tried to nuke, including her ex-fiance who she was willing to sacrifice after he eloped with her.
She's forgiven since she did a lot of good hence her the nickname the great unifier. She only wanted to fix the power vacuum zaheer created. Korra could see that and didn't want to punish her dhe to her good intentions but absolute power corrupts
@@quietcontender6969 Sorry,but that ain't how it works. When you're a dictator, you ruin people. It's part of the job description. If you're forgiven for that, that's because your world's idea of politics is so shallow that they think that something like that excuses you. It's injustice. Simple as that.
@Sir Reginald Meowington To be fair, that point about Kuvira imprisoning ethnic minorities was just a throwaway line clearly added on a whim to make Kuvira less sympathetic to the audience. It is never brought up again, or even mentioned by any of the other characters. This is the main problem with Kuvira as a character - the writers clearly did not know what to do with her. They could have turned her into the morally gray Napoleon-like figure that she was implied to be in the first few episodes of season four, or they could have went with the Nazi angle from the beginning. Both would have been infinitely better than what we got in the end, which was an antagonist filling two conflicting narrative roles at the same time without being a good representation for either of them.
Let me start by saying: Great series. Really loved these four episodes. I haven't been as excited for a RUclips video as I have with this one At around 19:00 you begin to discuss the difference between the nationalism of oppressed people and the nationalism of oppressing people. I really don't think this lack of distinction was touched on enough. What I found interesting about this is that it's a distinction that fascism doesn't make. Pre-war Nazi Germany began it's expansion by "liberating" German peoples. The Rheinland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and even Poland (Specifically Danzig) started as the unifying of German people. He was, by his rationale, freeing occupied German territory. As you said at the beginning, fascism exists as the solution to a problem. Fascist rule was not forced onto Italy or Germany. It was largely supported by the people, "Give you a job and make the trains run on time." The entire existence of a fascist system hinges upon the notion that you are freeing your people, that you are taking back your stolen birthright. Mussolini and Hitler, on the face of it, wanted to create nation fitting of the superiority of their people, anything less was oppression. In this sense, The Boys making no distinction between the colonized and the colonizer is fitting. In the people's eyes, the fascist state they live under is only ever the colonized; it is only ever restoring the world to it's rightful place. The Boys justify Kuvira with actual fascist rhetoric. They are, by substitution, saying that the Nazi's assimilation of Czechoslovakia or Austria was a good thing; it was the oppressed unifying and taking back what was rightfully theirs.
Another way to view this in a more modern light is the real life examples of the earth kingdom and republic city aka China and Hong Kong. Just like in the show China is saying that Hong Kong is theirs and it was taken by colonizers (which is true) and should be returned basically they framing this as them fighting against the oppressive west. While they oppresse Hong Kong whom doesn't want to merge with China since they are a independent state with distinctly different culture but China like kurvira is using military force to force them to join.
black sleep differences is China wasn’t forcing Hong Kong to join the mainland. It the leadership of Hong Kong that decided to try to do that. Hong Kong is the one place that China allows capitalism to exist. The people weren’t just rebellious against their government they were rebelling against capitalism too.
It always rubbed me wrong when Verrick and Bolin said that Kuvira is crazy. Verrick, dude, you blew up a building and built a giant Alphonse Elric and she is crazy?
I love LoK but having become more politically aware hurts it for me. So for the sake of making it enjoyable I like to think that an older Korra and her gang realize the fundamental flaws of the system and work together to take it down.
I had hope and waited the entire show for this moment that she finally realize that this system isn't so great balanced and would start to question if her former enemies may have a point, or the normal people which clearly didn't had a good time in this system...
if you think of it, the antagonist were right and had good reasons for the things they did ON AVATAR´S WORLD, but, yeah, those ideologies are not even realistic for our world
Kuvira did nothing wrong, but the writers are so politically illiterate that they sincerely believe that a decadent and collapsing state is better than a revolutionary order initiated and led by a strong(wo)man. So they add to shoehorn the most retarded stuff possible to make her look bad and conveniently tie the plot together. I am embarrassed for them tbqh.
@@MrViki60 Well, Kuvira did set up camps were people could learn new trading skills”. She was also forcing people to accept her as their new ruler. But aside from all that, I think she did have the right idea of reunifying the earth kingdom and making it a safer and better place. Just get someone less tyrannical to run things and we’re pretty much set. The fire nation didn’t disband it’s monarchy just because the last ruler was evil.
The comics double down on Kuvira being a redeemable character. Like, they invent another, worse fascist who figures out brainwashing technology and she is appalled, because sHe onLY WantEd tO INspiRe PeopLe iNto oBediEnCe and the re-education camps were uuuuh... supposed to be not coercive?? Like, what the hell.
This, this is it. I've finally seen it. You've identified the national liberation element of colonization history behind the Earth Empire. I knew what Kuvira was supposed to represent, and it made me question my leftist values quite a bit when I agreed with her. Nobody else points out that Republic City is unceded land, and that the struggle of the colonized to right colonial wrongs is an independent topic in itself. The Earth peoples had been treated as a joke or as an enemy throughout all of both Avatars that I wanted to see some demonstration of strength for them, some representation that they can overcome everything if united behind a cause. It was foolish to think these writers could have turned it around, but I found myself agreeing so easily with Kuvira that I had to step back and try to figure out why she was so persuasive. How easy it is to fall.
If you read the ATLA comics "the promise" series it actually touches on the fire nation colonies in the earth kingdom and expands upon how life was like to the citizens. It however doesn't build on the idea that you're asking for; that the earth people are strong. it does, however, imply that the mixing of fire nation and earth kingdom people led to assimilation and a cultural mixture and that they have become united and it would be wrong to establish that land as earth nation or fire nation property, as both people have become united. so they decide to make the land independent, similar to the UR's position in LOK, you see it resemble the united states as a hotpot for different cultures mixing and coexisting. but in hindsight, I do understand Kuvira's intent in taking back the UR because like you said, it was un-ceded land taking by the then imperialist fire nation. but what taints her ideals is the fact that they tried to make Kuvira a benevolent dictator but still established nazi allegory in her regimen and tossed out into the sidelines by the end of the show in order to redeem her character ark.
But wait. Didn’t they do a whole bit about how you can’t just kick out people who have been born and mixed into a new place? Specifically with a family that had 2 sons, an earth and a fire bender and how you can’t take them away from the colonies because it’s their home now.
14:20 the headline of that article reminds me of a bit from a documentary about civilian life in Nazi Germany. One interview with a former Hitler Youth is something that has always terrified me. Because he doesn't deny concentration camps he just justifies them as we thought we were using them as slave labor not murdering them as if rounding up people for slave labor would have been okay.
I remember in one of three arrow's videos where it has a clip of a protestor during the 1990's where the Clean Wehrmacht myth was finally being challenged and the guy who was old enough to have his father be a Wehrmacht soldier was screaming that they just hanged civilians which in his mind made them less evil. It was wild.
What Kay forgets to mention is that Korra is so different from Last Airbender because Aaron Ehasz left the team to work on Dragon Prince. Aaron was the lead writer for Airbender.
What he also forgets is that the politics of The Dragon Prince are even more disgusting. Apparently, if you kill an animal, you deserve to have your entire race subject to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
@@alexarviso6836 I know. And the politics of The Dragon Prince are somehow even worse "committing genocide and using dark magic are totally the same thing guys!"
A non-negligible element of my political growth was watching this and realizing that after brutually killing off multiple characters in book 3 they decided to have the avatar forgive Hitler and distract from it with Korrasami. TLoK made me realize performative inclusivity was a thing.
this series of videos about korra and neoliberalism are a masterpiece, than you so much for making this, the end was just superb, concratulations you really did an incredible job and delivered a powerful message
"If you tried to do good you'll fail and make things worse" is almost word for word a thing Jordan Peterson got an applause for... I'm not sure where it's originally from. I heard it in a video that laid his voice over video of Kermit the Frog at a TED talk.
@@RoyalFusilier You're probably right, they just fear change so much. Though they couch their opposition to Imagine usually in a fear of atheism. (I'm Unitarian and a positive agnostic.) Let me know if I can help with anything, man, it's great to meet you. :)
The moment when I found out about the "re-education camps" was where the writers lost me. I was like hang on, you have fire and water benders which are powerful tools of industry, and instead of presenting them with opportunities to improve their standing and use their abilities as valuable technology you lock them up to do nothing? The same goes with those who are simply ethnically from other nations. Why squander those people? The counter argument is that they were probably labouring in those camps but at no point do we see anything created as a direct result of this. All technology we see is either created through Varrick+Metalbenders = Profit. The metalbenders are Earth Kingdom citizens and were not forced to work at all. The smarter thing to do would be once Zaofu was taken, invest extreme amounts of the Earth Empire's resources into industrial projects and entice benders to migrate. Bring in labouring jobs that would employ lower classes from both the former Earth Kingdom and the impoverished citizens of Republic City. Waterbenders and Earthbenders working together could create massive canals and sewage systems at rapid speeds. Firebenders would be the driving force behind steam and electrical power. Kuvira is shooting herself in the foot with racial tensions she has no reason to possess.
If Kuvira were a rational benevolent dictator, the mythical enlightened philosopher queen, sure that could be an interesting foil and a fun society to try and design. Planned economies are very effective, which people kind of ignore.
Re-education camp isn't the same as death camp. Modern China has re-education camps yet no one in this comment section would seriously make a comparison to the Nazis over that.
I don't think a nation being both oppressed and the oppressor at the same time is completely unrealistic. Isn't that essentially what happened in the Falklands War? Argentina was killing communists, preparing themselves to wage war against neighbor countries like Chile at the same time they were fighting an imperialistic nation (the UK) to regain control of the Falkland Islands AT THE SAME TIME they were part of Operation Condor Although I don't think Korra's writers were think about Argentina when writing this season, and it certainly doesn't work if applied to Nazi Germany.
It does work if applied to Nazi Germany tho, Germans were legit oppressed by the Czechoslovak government in Sudetenland. Which does not justify war crimes or the genocide, obviously, but it shows the complexity of actual history. We are never shown the details of Republic's politics actually. Did all the people there supported its independence? What about the decendants of its pre-colonial Earth Kingdom population? It would make total sence for them to see themselves as oppressed and be anti-Republic. Is there a pro-Earth Kingdom political party? If, for example, we assume that about half of the Republic's population is decendant of the Earth people, and that there is substantial reunification support among them, Kuvira's action become much less black-and-white. But I guess we can ignore all of this because she has a mecha.
As an Argentine, I'd also like to point out the war wasn't a necessity. There had been negotiations for years before the coup in 1976, there would probably had been an agreement if the dictatorship didn't happen and the islands would have been at least under a shared control between the two countries. The reason I say this is because many people on the internet seem to think the fact that an illegitimate government lost a war that makes us the "bad guys" and our claims invalid.
Doesn't work, Argentina was ruled by essentially a pseudo fascist dictatorship that launched an invasion of an irredentist claim (Falklands was never Argentine land, their claim at best was based on Spanish colonial claims) to distract dissidents.
@@LautaroArgentino your claims over the islands are false it belongs to the United Kingdom in fact there claims predate the existence of your nation and the people there voted to stay as British subjects stop whining
So glad The Almighty Algorithm™️ showed me this series. It articulated so many of the issues that I had with the political messaging of TLOK. Stray observation about Book 4: it's revealed that the Fire Nation is still a hereditary absolute monarchy. Zuko's daughter Izumi has this minor #girlboss moment in which she declines to launch a preemptive strike against Kuvira's forces because of her people's history with war. It's presented as a show of growth for the Fire Nation and a celebration of Zuko's legacy, but it achieves the opposite imo. The only reason why the Fire Nation isn't plunged into another war is because of the whim of an all-powerful ruler. The idea that Zuko would leave the political mechanism by which the Hundred Year War was possible in the first place intact (when he is shown time and time again being incredibly politically astute in ATLA) is an insult to his character and his arc in the previous series.
It could be argued that Zuko didn't actually have any models from which to engineer any kind of real political reforms. The only other models at the time were the Earth Kingdom, which was a monarchy, the Northern Water Tribe, also a monarchy, and the Southern Water Tribe, which was a tribal eldership that functions essentially like an elective monarchy. Maybe Kyoshi Island's mayoral system could have been used, but even then it's pretty much like an elective monarchy but with voting rights extended to the commoners too.
@@DasMudPie That's a good point. There really weren't any major examples of non-autocratic government when Zuko rose to power. Though he does help found the United Republic of Nations, which of course did not become democratic until towards the end of his life but did have a notion of representation and balance between the four nations via the council. I suppose I'm just confused as to what the conditions are for the discovery + establishment of democratic governance in this universe. The United Republic becomes a presidential democracy overnight after the Equalist revolution is quelled. Wu decides (on his own, almost on a whim) to abolish the monarchy and establish a democratic federalist system within the Earth Kingdom after Kuvira's downfall. I would imagine that "this polity led a genocidal colonialist war for a century" would also be a strong incentive to consider at least some form of proto-democratic system with checks and balances. Bryke's solution to the Fire Nation problem seems to be "it's fine now because the absolute monarch is a Good Guy™️ and he made the Avatar promise to kill him if he ever becomes Bad™️"
@@waverunner6 Yeah, the introduction of democratic systems does seem to appear out of nowhere in the series since their origin is never really explained. I guess the URN's absence of local nobility forced them to think of more creative ways to designate its leaders. I also think that Wu was simply "advised" to step down and reform My own theory for the development of democratic mechanisms in-universe is that the selection process for the president of the URN is based on that of Kyoshi Island's mayor, but on applied on a larger scale. However, it's not clear whether or not the council has any real power, if its members are still appointed or if it still even exists. Being a federation, the reorganization of the Earth continent would likely provide the next step towards representative democracy. Because of its federal nature, and based on the URN's example, it's plausible to imagine a governing body consisting of a council with elected members from each region of the continent. As for the "checks and balances" part... Whether or not the Earth Federation's council shares power with an executive committee or council president above them depends on whether or not the URN's council is still relevant, I guess. Although, since the URN president more closely resembles an elected absolute monarch than someone who has to answer to another politcal body, I somehow doubt it. "it's fine now because the absolute monarch is a Good Guy™️ and he made the Avatar promise to kill him if he ever becomes Bad™️" Makes you wonder if Avatars should be subject to checks and balances themselves... Zaheer might have had a point
@@DasMudPie • Interesting theory re: the inspiration for democracy. I don't know a whole lot about the Kyoshi Island system so I'll have to dig into that lore. In the comics, the predecessor to the URN and its council is a committee of local business owners that are the de facto governing body in the region. So that seems to be one of the first hints of a (major) non-monarchical system. • Bryke confirmed in an interview that the URN Council was dissolved in between Books 1-2 but they opted not to delve into that political transition in the season 2 premiere because they didn't want it to feel "Trade Federation-y" ie the heavily criticized way the Star Wars prequel trilogy deals with politics. It's an understandable decision imo but it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of addressing the issue of benders vs. non-benders and political representation. • Agreed that the (former) Earth Kingdom seems like the perfect candidate for a more sophisticated federalist democracy. It'd be cool to see that sociopolitical evolution......and how it could relate to real-world transformations in the mid-to-late 20th century.......maybe in a sequel series of some sort.....centered around an Earth Nation Avatar??? (hi Netflix/Nickelodeon!) • I mean, I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying that Zaheer made some excellent points about the role of the Avatar in the world's affairs and the failure of the White Lotus to provide a meaningful counterbalance to his/her unchecked power, but.....👀
@@waverunner6 Oh, I just extrapolated Kyoshi Island's system from the fact that we never saw a local nobility and the fact they had a mayor. Since I didn't read the comics, I don't actually know if they expanded on that! And that bit of info about the committee of business owners is interesting. Knowing this, the URN council makes more sense. Though it's a bit disappointing that TLOK didn't give us at least a glimpse of how the URN government works, given how the series didn't turn out to be as... politically savvy as it could've been, maybe that was for the best. I'd be very curious as to how this new Earth Federation is going to turn into! How is federal and local power divided? Does every part of the continent join the federation? Are some places going to be more autonomous than others? So many things to explore! ... yeah, Zaheer does underline quite an interesting problem, doesn't he? :p
I was so eager to check this out. You do a very, very good analysis of this series. Honestly, it was really hard for me to not feel like they just made Zahir bad at the end because until that point he was just being a more effective hero than.. our heroes.
I just finished Book Four today and I was surprised you didn't bring up the "Nazis were leftist actually" the show did when Kuvira explicitly states that she intends to seize Zaofu and redistribute its technology equally, a point that comes out of nowhere.
I had my mouth gaped open the entire time and could only think, "Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!' You really don't realize propaganda until it's pointed out to you. My God!! I feel like I should watch it over and see how much more I missed and why I hadn't caught on to everything you've talked about. Anyway, I really enjoyed this series, and you and Skittles (who is your editor? Or just your Lil buddy?) did such a good job.
I always assumed the bandits were funded by Kuvira as an invented threat. I kept hoping they would establish that as true, but instead it's just somewhat implied and then dropped
Even with the show itself ultimately giving Kuvira an actual "Barbarians at the gate" situation to take advantage of, The Boys should have doubled down on the bandits technically just being victims but spurred on by a fascist wanting to control the narrative and use them as pawns. I could have swore they were gonna do something with the scene where Kuvira demands the bandits swear loyalty to her, directy tying it to when the bandits steal the supplies of the Earth kingdom town that she grilled earlier, trying to get their mayor to submit. The Boys could have actually said something about how fascists create (or at least escalate pre-existing) problems then sell solutions if they made it so the scene where her followers are so "benevolent", feeding the townsfolk with their own damn food which Kuvira stole in the first place was explicitly perverting by the angle of "no, Kuvira and her followers are just snake oil salesmen, they aren't solving a single damn problem because they're actually the cause of said problems". Would have been a great cautionary tale for the show's target audience, but nope. They completely dropped that potential plot thread as far as I recall.
You gotta love it. In ATLA, every society is presented as flawed, but trying (not on equal levels but still)- Even the Fire Nation has whole redeemable towns full of people who also suffer under the heel of the Fire Lord. Even the philosophy of the Air Nomads proves to be a not-one-size-fits-all (Aang NEVER lets go of his Earthy attachments, and this didn't make him weaker or incapable of controlling the Avatar State). The conflict the Avatar is meant to be in the world to help with is that all these different people CAN coexist, with the right compromises. And should they refuse and try to impose their system by force, they may be bent (haha) into stopping. But that's the thing. ThE BoyEes envisioned Republic City as the solution to that conflict. A perfect melting pot of all cultures where all people are, in theory, equal under the law and free to pursue their best life. And should they work hard enough, find success. Sounds familiar? Basically even though all cultures in ATLA where distinctly non USA, apparently if civilization goes long enough you get to the USA anyways. Which is the perfectly balanced civilization. Not uncommon in USA media, btw. Even Game Of Thrones made a joke about that.
Aang did let go of his earthly attachments, dude. That's why he was able to master the Avatar state once his chi got realigned by that convenient rock. What westerners don't understand, is that "letting go" doesn't mean becoming an emotionless stone. He let go of his obsession around Katara, not his love for her. He focused on duty first, rather than fear of loss. Letting go of earthly attachment means not being ruled by them. It doesn't stipulate cutting them off entirely.
Watching this series of videos I saw how the north american (as we call in portuguese "estadunidense") productions deals with colonialism and 3rd world questions. As a perspective of someone's actually living in Brazil which is either a colonized country, and nowadays a almost fascist one, I really enjoy how sensitive you were to analyse who the ideologies are represented in Avatar.
I kinda feel like a dumbass for not seeing this coming while watching Korra. Even if I already considered myself a leftist, I only had the vague feeling that something was off, but it was probably because I was younger. I like to believe that the person I am now would likely see the bullshit for what it was. Thanks for the amazing serie, I was really looking forward to watch your take on the final season.
Wait, you mean to tell me Kuvira was meant to be a Nazi? Shit, I was thinking Napoleon the whole time. Emperor, "I am the revolution," himself. Off the top of my head - restoring stability back to a kingdom in revolutionary chaos. Spreading progressive ideals through violent conquest. Scary competent as both a political leader and military commander.
@@appa609 Huh. Obvious in hindsight. Never would have crossed my mind. Guess my grasp of history is pretty eurocentric. Although, to be cynically honest, unless the western writers of the show have an excellent grasp of Chinese history (they might) Kuvira probably is just a Nazi. It'll be the example they know best.
The "We all like a bad boy though , don't we?" "Not a fucking terrorist though ,Chris." scene from Gogglebox UK is Brike trying to redeem Varrick and make Kuvira sympathetic
Personally I always found Kuvira to be pretty weak as an antagonist. While the other Korra antagonists actually had some kind of ideology that you could sympathise with to some extent (as much of a half baked fraud it turned out to be) Kuvira always came across as nothing but wanting power for power's sake. Kind of a boring motivation. The scenes where they tried to redeem her always felt unearned to me. Korra's own personal struggle through Book 4 was always way more interesting. Also I hope you like the Korra game. I do like it a fair bit myself. I'm a huge fan of Platinum's work, and even though Korra is far from their best, some of their magic still shines through there. I find the game is much better on an NG+ run though, when you have all the bending styles unlocked already.
She's ideologically lacking (because the liberal framework of the show struggles to meaningfully critique fascism) but imo she personally has much more going for her than the likes of Zaheer who just kind of recites poetry for the whole season or Unalaq who... actually kind of also recites a lot of poetry and then isn't around for half the season. This show is really messy.
I enjoy the game because it doesn't try to tackle political ideologies badly for once and instead just gives us a simple, but utterly weird, adventure.
@Rjlin Kyles She wasn't trying to destroy the city. Kuvira actually managed to take city without damaging it. It got destroyed because Korra and crew ignored Raiko's surrender and initiated a fight with her to reclaim the city from Kuvira. Kuvira didn't commit a single war crime during the attempt to reclaim her people's ancestral lands while Korra and allies commited at least two which were the utilization of child soilders and taking hostages to use against the enemy.
Every time someone describes fascism, Im trying to apply it to US (both modern and of WW2 era) Im yet to find any description that isnt match up (atleast with WW2 era) "Fascists is the people who strive for political capital over everything else, like how capitalists usualy strive for economic capital" - check "Authoritarians who violently suppresses the opposition by means of active censorship, espionage and phisical violence" - check (Maccarthyism) "People who make up a threat or create it to then scare everyone into supporting them and only them" - SUPER check (islamists*, "tough on crimes" policy, redscare etc. just so many of them) Yet no one ever see US, specialy (of the 1st half of 20 century) as a fascist state, I wonder why. *actual threat, largely created by US negative influence on mid.east
"I wonder why" -- propaganda, mostly. we bought a lot of cred defeating the worst fascists around, so we wind up getting away with doing a fascism ourselves from time to time.
"Because they were attacked by the Fascists (Imperial Japan) and joined the fight against Fascism. So they can't be Fascist themselves." If Pearl Harbor hadn't been hit then who knows ... They may have stayed Isolationist or (with the Fascist sympathies) may have even joined on the side of the Axis if they were presented with (or found) a reason to do so. America wanted Revenge for the bloody nose Imperial Japan gave them. It's the only reason they joined the Allies.
@@a.wadderphiltyr1559 Aw. You're new. I bet you still equate Capitalism with voluntary exchange. Care to tell me a period of time when Capitalism, a word younger than the United States which has always meant the rewarding of profit to the investor, wasn't hand-in-hand with conquest and slavery?
@@a.wadderphiltyr1559 Modern era? Ok. NAFTA destroyed unions by employing slaves oversees. Europe's "post-industrial society" also depends on this. The US denies citizenship to a majority of immigrants, solely to weaken unions, by forcing them into black market labor. Our prison system is as close to Black slavery as the letter of the law will allow. Over-policing -> denial of programs that disincentivise crime -> pressuring the innocent into plea deals with bail -> forced labor that produces a surprising amount of products and also busts unions. For-profit eminent domain still tramples on US private landowners and Natives alike. The entirety of our military involvement in the Middle East, starting in the installation of the Shah in '53, was to protect private oil interests and the petrodollar. Amd then there's South America and the CIA. I don't know all the specifics. I went to college for engineering.
yeah if they were portrayed as people who she just hired to pretend to be bandits that actually would've been way better, and few real bandits were just extremly desperate people trying to survive in the only way they could
You could have talked about how the Earth kingdom and the United republic situation is how people in the west two sides the Colonization of Palestine by Israel. It’s almost a perfect parallel for some of the straw men people use.
Unfortunately there's many parallels. China/Hong Kong, North/South Korea, Israel/Palestine, the USA's own history when it was just a couple of colonies with New Amsterdam/York being the main shining beacon. Ireland/Northern Ireland. There's probably even more examples I'm missing.
Sorry,brother,but not exactly. The United Republic was created from the oldest colonies established about 30 years before the War. Before that,it was a multicultural area filled with Earth Kingdom farmers,Fire Nation traders,and Southern Water Tribe pirates who would later create the Fifth Nation, alongside other outlaws. The problem with the idea of colonisation here is two things: 1. There not so much colonised as they were pumped with more Fire Nation immigrants,the original population still existed and remained in their homes. In fact,Sozin is said to have attempted to get a bit more chummy with them. He succeeded. 2. The Nature of the Earth Kingdom, i.e,the fact that it is neither a Kingdom or even a truly unified state. Each and every part of it is essentially it's own Nation, with only the wars made by the Kings of Ba Sing Se bringing anything close to unity. If given a choice, they'd bow to neither the Impenetrable City or the Fire Nation. They'd be free. P. S,I'm with Palestine. This is just different.
When it comes to Korra's personal growth and dealing with trauma, the show is great. The animation (aside from most of season 2) is also amazing, the world design is gorgeous, and the fight scenes are freaking incredible! But outside of all that... I think it really missed the mark and fell flat. I really hope that "the boys" don't inject their flawed politics into the live action remake of ATLA. I mean, we'll always have the original series to go back to, but many kids will grow up with the remake, which could potentially have these troubling political messages. But of course, we shouldn't shelter kids from other views. On the flip side, I also hope that "The Boys" have gained a better grasp on these political ideologies after Korra, and will put that to good use in not only this remake, but hopefully also a remake of Korra with a more leftist perspective. But one can only dream.... At least we have The Dragon Prince, which so far seems to have a better understanding of the politics that it's conveying to kids. (I could be wrong about that, though)
It’s important to note that The Dragon Prince wasn’t created by ‘The Boys’ but by Aaron Ehasz (and Justin Richmond), who was the head writer of the ATLA series, and wasn’t involved in the making of LoK.
So you wouldn't shelter your children from fascism? You do understand that treating everything as acceptable, means granting truly malevolent ideas legitimacy, and free room to grow? It's a liberal conceit that ONLY the "good" ideas, will naturally win out in the "marketplace". This is demonstrably untrue. The best ideas don't win: the best silver-tongue, the one most skilled at rhetoric, wins.
Hey Kay, have you considered offering up your soul for eternal torment in the Eyeball Zone? I feel like Thought Slime would be happy to promote you, and your stuff is really underrated for how quality it is
I’m not saying that Elizabeth ehasz (and Aaron too probably) would’ve done a better job with the premise the boys wanted to execute, but I would have paid good money to see her try - zuko alone is such a masterpiece in storytelling in general and the way it portrays poverty and oppression of non-benders makes me hopeful that she’d made a brilliant job on at least season one
I really enjoyed the four videos about ATLK. Have you ever watched Mr. Robot? I think that it would make a great discussion over politics and ideology from the writer's and team perspective, which happens to be completely different of the boys imo. The series is actually full of criticism over neoliberalism and it digs better into the consequences of actually beating some of the core aspects on which the system relies.
I may not like Korra, specifically for the way politics are used poorly in the show, but this series was a huge eye opener and made me rethink a lot of things, even about politics in general. Thank you
What’s really sad is that in both republic city and the earth kingdom they transitioned to democracy which means the story could have been about a pro democracy revolution. Instead democracy came when the revolutions failed which doesn’t make sense
Watching these videos was extremely satisfying. Thank you for making them. I was looking for similar analysis, but all I could find online was "The Legend of Korra deals with complicated political issues". Yeah, it does... but HOW is important. And the answer, of course, is that it misrepresents political ideologies that are NOT the statu quo. It's amazing how the series consistently make the idea of a revolution the boogeyman of the world: Zaheer and Amon are revolutionaries, sure, but it also manages to make Unalaq babble about revolution at some point. And even Kuvira says "this is about EQUALITY". Dudes, we already understood that you don't like equality: don't make even the fascist dictator talk about it.
To be honest when one looks at her motives and the situation that produced her, this lady is basically earth kingdom Napoleon. A historical figure that falls far closer to a moral gray area, and actually took a progressive approach to science. Not to mention much closer to Suyin beliefs.
I think this is the big problem with Kuvira. I think she’s a morally grey character who they wanted to be a villain. So they vilify her with throwaway lines about concentration camps and forced labor without any thought as to the big implications of said lines.
EXCELLENT CRITIQUE!!! I did not notice any of this stuff in Korra back then. But of course back then I was just a naive fish who did not know what water was, aka a naive Liberal that didn't know he was immersed completely in Liberalism.
"Kuvira is right ... and later declaring a part of the land they took as an independant nation." Does this sentiment transfer to Hong Kong? Edit: since I forgot the full quote and context, 20:01
Olivia S I know right? I was always wondering like why did they turn a city in a fictional world based predominantly on Asian culture in fucking New York instead of Hong Kong?
Chanson maybe but not in a positive way. Like the comics show that republic city didn’t want to be re absorbed by the earth kingdom, just like Hong Kong where the residents didn’t want to be a brutish colony but they also didn’t want to be conquered by authoritarian China. Both earth kingdom and China believe they have some inherent right to some historic land but really it’s just more imperialism,
@@calebweldon8102 Hong Kong was illegally taken by Britain at the first place and later decolonised as it has been part of China for thousands of years. Pro colonialism much? Just because you hate China doesn't justify colonialism. This trope of "well our colonialism is good because if it wasn't us others would've done it(which is false in this because Hong Kong was LITERALLY part of China but the tone of your comment makes it appear otherwise)" is really overused and a disgusting justification of colonialism, westerners should stop using it to feel better about themselves and their history as well as present.
@@calebweldon8102 it's also funny that you specifically described China as "authoritarian" while not doing that for British imperialism. What should we think of this? That being a LITERAL colony by a country an ocean away and is literally colonising a quarter of the planet is not authoritarian?
i'm really glad you added that bit about it not really being about the boys, but about the social constructs we were all brought up in, because it addresses one of the biggest problems i had with this series: fixating too much on a few bad guys, ironically the same exact problem we have with the writing of fascism in tlok. you can see this reflected in your comments sections consistently fixating on the boys, and it's no surprise because one of the constructs we find ourselves in is a fixation on whether someone can be judged a good person, rather than whether their actions are making the world better. that's why the boys wrote redemption arcs for varrick and asami's dad, and whether you villainize or humanize kuvira or any other fascist analog, it's still falling into this same trap. if i had to write fascism, i would probably experiment with making their leader completely unknown to the main characters with only their propaganda visible. this would emphasize that it's not about who they are, it's about what their system is doing.
it also just occurred to me that this is basically how immortan joe is presented in mad max, which is ironic given that most people read/watch mad max and just think anarchy = post-apocalyptic wasteland
Just a footnote: it’s heavily implied that those airplane bandits are the same that attack kuvira at the beginning of the episode, and that Is kuvira who sends and equipped those bandits to attack the airbenders on their mission to smuggles supplies for the earth kingdom town.
How is it heavily implied Kuvira sent the bandits? Kuvira's forces didnt even make use of planes when she attempted to reclaim the United Republic. The area was ridden with banditry before Kuvira even arrived. The scene also demonstrated that Kuvira was the only entity capable of providing a stable food supply for the town that was had no protection or food supply. It was also show that the airbenders were stretched thin so they were unable to be as effective as Kuvira who was on paper the head of the EK at the time.
I want to see a spin-off show that depicts the Foggy Swamp Tribe as the true antifascists to Kuvira's Nazism for the 3 years before Korra came back into the picture. It would be perfect because Kuvira would not be able to be depicted as "good" when she is ethnically cleansing swampbenders that we all know have lived in the Swamp in the Earth Kingdom for generations, and it could be like a prequel to LOK Book 4. Maybe the swampbenders team up with the sandbenders of the Si Wong Desert, too.
Just watched all of these and I watched legend of Korra before avatar last airbender(I was in middle school and heard of korra first because cora was my name) and I'm surprised and didn't really realize/see all the political shit. Anyways very cool thanks.
I just got around to binging Legend of Korra on Netflix and absolutely loved this analysis series! You made the depressing fact that neoliberal ideas permeate every aspect of our society fun and informative 😅. Thank you for that. I'm equally disturbed by their influence and inspired by people like you, capable of pointing out its flaws.
Good video. The green filter, while understandable for copyrigth-claim reasons, gave me a headache though. I enjoyed the show mostly aesthetically (Korra and Asami's personal style are just really cool. Bolin and Mako... Kinda bland.) it's 'everyone took things to far' rang hollow for me. And continually letting Varrik (who admittedly is an entertaning character) of the hook just really bugged me. S1&S2 were annoying with their 'the antagonist is a fraud'-spiel. Unalaq was also kinda dull. I was still thinking with the rules set in the first show and was on board with a second counter-avatar. S3 Zaheer struck me more as a political nihilist despite identifying as an anarchist, in the sense of Sergey Nechayevs Catechism of the Revolutionary. Which is a lot closer to what people assume anarchism is: Destroy the hierarchy. What comes after? We'll figure that out later, if at all. S4: Kuvira despite having an awesome character design, cool voice and a more sympathetic portrayal never came of as more than a pretty cool villain. Probably since my personal biases and interests lean a lot more to the political left and anti-capitalism.
Yeah, I thought the bandits attacking Yi were like an Earth Nation protection racket or something. Kuvira: You've got a nice village here, Governor. It would be a shame if something... happened to it. Governor of Yi: We don't need your help ["desperate" bandits who somehow have jeeps and an airplane attack Yi a lot] Kuvira: What did I tell you, Governor?
@@AsymmetricalCrimes there has never historically been an example where liberals side with the left over the fascist that’s because they both follow the same economic system just one is open about hating every race gender and ethnicity expect straight males of the fascist and the other is like no we love our minorities any ways here is more cops beating you
"Can't you see Kuvira is literally Sozin?"
"Oh my God you can't just go around comparing people to Sozin!"
"Not everyone you disagree with is Sozin!!"
@@osedebame3522 sokka's law, the longer a conversation goes on the more likely it is someone will compare the situation to Sozin or the fire nation
Sozin! That guy was the worst!
mommy
@@carlsacel7222 what
Korra’s struggle with trauma was a thousand times more interesting and it really makes me wish there was a season that was just dedicated to exploring the emotional and psychological baggage of being the Avatar.
That stuff was the best part of the show for sure.
Why did Zaheer almost killing her traumatize her but not getting her bending stolen?
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 I think that maybe it was because she didn't have to struggle to get it back, it didn't have a lasting consequence to her, seeing as she restored her bending soon after by establishing connection to the avatars
@@giovannapires7273 It's just weird this is when they decided to take on PTSD when she's already been in worse situations. Also Amon traumatized her when he took her captive and had her on the ground. And then Zaheer says she should be grateful for what he did.
Yeah I was glad we finally got character development for Korra but I thought it was too little too late
To this day I am baffled as to why they wrote Kuvira to have concentration camps and ethnic cleansing in what were essentially throwaway lines.
@JohnnyTheWolf Scratch a liberal, you know the rest
@JohnnyTheWolf To be fair, Mai and Ty Lee were just kids who were basically intimidated by Azula into joining her. I think the fact that they eventually betrayed her means their redemption is more earned than anything in Korra. Also, Ozai was never redeemed, they just couldn't kill him because it was a kid's show. iirc no one got killed in the original Avatar.
@JohnnyTheWolf Yeah maybe Tai Lee. Also Ozai should've been crushed under one of the giant rock pillars in their final battle. Aang spares him, he shoots at him but Aang dodges and he hits a pillar that crushes him. Though I also like his bending being stolen away because it's a date worse than death and it's a perfect symbolic defeat for him.
JohnnyTheWolf
I don’t think anyone felt bad for Hou-Ting dying lmao.
I believe she called those re-education camps. and what happens to the people who fail their "re-education"? they get cleansed from her new country.
I think it’s heavily implied that kuvira gave the resources for the aerial bandit attack to force the submission of that earth state. This is a very common practice to expand fascist’s control seen in history multiple times, to create the enemy you plan to fight against.
Not saying the Earth Empire is a good representation of a fascist state, and I agree with most of your points, specially in this video
Yeah it seems implied but never really addressed which feels pretty irresponsible considering how key the bandit gangs are to setting off the events of the season. I mention how we can only really infer things about them because they're not really given any character which is... telling.
The thing about real life is you can believe your the good guys and lie and con to get your way. In different ways (like the concentration camps, she is shown to lie and hide about things, just not shown to be 'a lyer' about motivations. but Unilock was shown to have real concerns and also powerhungry; so just apply that again.
Kind of like when mountains of bricks appearing randomly in a city with civil unrest against police brutality.
You got a nice province here, Guv'na. Be a shame if something... happened to it.
The breaking point in this whole series, to me, was at the beginning of Book 4, during the first part of the first episode. During the series recap we see how the "Spirit-infested zone" in Republic City had become integrated in the city as a whole, now serving as a tourist attraction of some sort. (another problem that, for some reason, solved itself in some way)
In this, we see the homeless character (forgot his name, tbh) smiling and living happily with a bunch of semi-transparent fluffy spirit-animals that are now his friends. The narrator calls him something along the line of "this merry scamp" and he gives thumbs up and a big smile to the camera.
Then, a few scenes later, we see another kind of "poor people", which are the citizens of the Earth Kingdom now living in impoverished conditions caused by the killing of the previous Queen. These people are seen as suffering and struggling against a bandit's raid and are then "saved" by the intervention of Kuvira.
I think this shows how liberals perceive poor people as basically divided in two categories: the "natural-born poor", who only need some form of symbolic gesture in order to be happy, since they have never experienced anything different than abject poverty in their lives (and are oh so inspirational because they can teach us how to appreciate the "small things in life") and the "artificial poor", who are middle-class and small business owners impoverished by the mistakes of those evil idealists who had the audacity to try and improve everyone's lives. And of course, only this second category deserves to be helped out of their condition, since it was brought upon them not by the flaws inherent in the system but by the actions of a few "bad guys".
Absolutely disgusting.
In other words, poverty under liberal capitalism is natural because people are free and "anyone can make it", while poverty is artificial under any other system because people aren't free and it's imposed on them
I think if you have to make two categories, it could also be the poor in your countries. Too bad, they're poor, that's really a tragedy.
And the poor in others' countries. They're the result of tyrants. Let's make a coup and change their leadership.
@@DasMudPieyep.
@@DasMudPie exactly my guy
This season brings to mind what a wise man once told me: "It is easier to imagine the redemption of a genocidal nazi with a Giant Death Robot than an end to capitalism."
...I think he was talking about Wernher von Braun? Anyway, seemed appropriate.
Ok, who said that?
@@chaystudent7501 It's orginially a Mark Fisher quote from Capitalist Realism. I just reworked it to fit The Boys' point of view.
@@Runningfromtheredqueen thank you.
idk that guy doesn't seem too wise
@@Runningfromtheredqueen i thought Zizek said it
I find it wild that they blame Zaheer primarily for the rise of Kuvira and not, you know, the political leaders who all supported her for three years until the last possible second when she refused to give the crown back. And for some reason, he agrees.
Because zaheer catalysted what is haven been growing since years ago. He was the one who destroyed finally the Earth Kingdom, not Kuruk with his focus on spiritual world, not Kyoshi with the creation of the Dai Lee and the assasination of Jianzhu, not the earth kingdom aristocracy who became corrupt to the point to let subyugate the whole kingdom by the Fire Nation. Not Roku by preventing sozin to start the 100 years war by killing sozin, not sozin by starting colonies in earth kingdom and bla bla. He was the last pressure point to destroy the pillar
@@anakeenskywalker6007 Not even close to the point.
11:00 "I was once a libertarian but one time I tried shrooms and it made me realise other people have feelings"
I'm imagining Varrick going on Joe Rogan now, thanks for that mental image
Wait.. Is that all I have to do to my AnCaps?
Just drug them and hope it induces empathy?
I mean. In my case I wanted to rage against the machine but due to growing up in a Reagan loving household I got pushed that way. When I finally realized that stripping away the government to give back "freedom" means empowering those who would do me and mine harm to make a buck... I finally came the right way around.
That is exactly what happened to me lol.... I did psychadelics and realized what an ass I was as a teenager.
"And now instead, I'm a libertarian socialist" 👍
I was waiting for a scene in Book 4 where we learned that the bandits were being paid by Kuvira to attack these towns and villages so she could convince them to bow down to her.
I waited the entire season for that. And it never came.
@JohnnyTheWolf THAT is how real fascists operate.
She paid them. Offscreen.
@@tysondennis1016 Prove it.
@@alyseleem2692 It’s a fan theory that I have no real proof of.
@@tysondennis1016 It's okay. It's nice.
*why are the FASCISTS the most sympathetic, three dimensional, and humanized villains in the series holy shit*
*stares at the bois*
Don't even get me started on people who simp over Kuvira.
Steven Universe does like 10 maybe 100x worse stuff.
scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds
Kuvira isn't actually a fascist. You can't just call her a nazi and expect us to believe it.
21:48 actually in Brazil our "democracy" was never a result of the struggles of the people, but instead a result of a clash of interests between the Emperor and the Military who had recently acquired power and basically forced the Emperor to resign. Not exactly different from Korra, except for the cartoon being much "cleaner" about it.
It's the case in France as well, if you look past our Republic's propaganda.
Yes, the people's participation was vital to the first revolution. No, they weren't the ones that directed the movement.
And the circumstances of the instauration of the 3rd Republic were a cosmic joke.
@@Azerty72200 People idealize American democracy, but it was founded the same way. The American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, perpetrated by a newly developed colonial aristocratic class and was deeply unpopular (at the time). At least half the people were British loyalists, and the revolutionary bourgeois stamped out other revolutionary groups that had REAL democratic and egalitarian leanings, co-opting them. It's honestly terrifying how well propaganda works.
@@TheSuperRattyeh like i learn how america and civil war it bascically demorcartic propagand they do no give freedom to black because they southern state against so they us george accept but after year then civil war
I didnt realize it while it was happening but its crazy how big the scourge of "deep villains" were in media in the 2010s. Every villain had to be "sympathetic" or "have a point but going about it wrong". I know it wasn't a new thing, but it was freakin inescapable around that time. Some were good, but a lot were like this: handled so carelessly, that they excuse a lot of horrible things the bad guys do as long as they have a cry at the end.
Ironically, the other villains in this show didn't get the same sympathizing treatment. The season 1 and 2 villains are portrayed as insincere and power hungry, and Zaheer from season 3 was shown as incoherent.
I agree. Communists are repugnant, evil and vile and should always be depicted without any sympathetic pull to them at all. After all, 110 million dead and counting - most evil ideology ever created in the history of mankind.
Only the nazi ones...
i mean atla had this with azula. lmao but i think it's more the fandom's reaction to atla that is sad and alarming :( but bryke's (and aaronwhatshisface) understanding of imperial colonialism [racial] capitalism is uhhhh not deep
Internet historian voice: She did a genocide my dudes
Good.
Hoo, boy. Never has it been more clear how true it is that "...Mike and Bryan don't understand political ideologies."
Thanks for the great work, Kay and Skittles. This series has been fantastic.
@JohnnyTheWolf True, that's a definite possibility.
JohnnyTheWolf Nah I don’t think so, I think it’s just ignorance. I don’t think they’re actually trying to push a neoliberal agenda, I think it’s just that they’re using the political system that they live in as a baseline for “good” or “just,” and that system just so happens to be based on a neoliberal agenda.
One aspect of season 4 I was surprised you didn't touch on is that they never show in detail what the concentration camps are actually like. It cheapens the supposed horror of them and makes them feel like an incidental part of Kuvira's regime, instead of a main focus. Everything we know about them just comes from exposition. Like you would think that a fictional fascist regime with Nazi aesthetics would be portrayed doing Nazi like stuff. Ffs just judging by what 'the boys' show us the Fire Nation in ATLA seems 10x more oppressive than the Earth Empire, in the more kid friendly series no less!
Yeah very true! Much like how the oppression of benders was mostly just implied in Book 1 most of the awful shit Kuvira does is offscreen in Book 4. But they'll gratuitously show the anarchists torture our protagonist in Book 3 lmao.
I believe marching on Zofu and than the republic are their 'kick the dog' moments on screen. but her threat to kill the bandit prisoners counts as showing the ruthless manner of her 'uniting'.
@@LeftyPlaat That's just standard villain stuff.
It felt like an afterthought that Bryke added in there when they realized they made Kuvira more sympathetic and interesting than they expect. They are doing the same in the post-season four graphic novel, where a conflict with nuance and complexity suddenly has "LOL MIND CONTROL" inserted to make sure you know the villain is a villain.
I think they probably just didn't have to money for that. These guys aren't the type to skip over details like that. But then again I could be wrong.
I wish they just patterned it after real-world Chinese warlord era (imagine Zaofu clique competing with other cliques). Much more compelling than "bandits".
That would've been beautiful.
Would have been cool to see her struggle against the Omashu clique.
Real warlords is a terrifying thing. They couldn't make her too heroic
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE
EYES FOR THE EYEBALLS
COMMENTS FOR THE ALGORITHM
Has this video entered the Eyeball Zone?
FINALLY! A FELLOW HERETIC!
@@sarahwinn2453 Now I'M wondering the same question! As a regular Oculon-tribute payer, I would've thought I'd seen the ThoughtSlime video that mentioned this series, but IF such a ThoughtSlime video exists, I must've skipped over it, possibly due to...spoilers, or something...
Or perhaaaaaps I put off watching Kay's video (despite the subject matter being SO up my alley that Kay's figuratively IN my house, making sandwiches out of ingredients in the fridge) until after reading some of the comments on ThoughtSlime's video, but by the time I was done with said comments, I'd forgotten about what I'd glimpsed in the Eyeball Zone.........
Right comrade
The deep, deep irony of the boys completely sidestepping the obvious settler-colonial nature of the Republic in a show with an Indigenous protagonist
But that would again make her justifiable... Again
Well, the issue is discussed in the comics "the promise", along with cultural appropriation and other things. Republic City emerged from one of the first Fire Nation colony in the Earth Kingdom at the start of the hundred years war. The city should have been given to the Earth Kingdom but locals refused to. It's... Not the smartest take on colonialism, but lore wise it makes sense and it was addressed in the Avatarvers. I think you'll enjoy the comics and the novel about Kyoshi a little bit more.
@@soencoda754 i read these a while ago. What cultural appropriation was in the promise?
@@carterrogan1409 If I recall correctly the air apprentices (a group of dedicated Aang fan boys with a lot of appreciation for air nomads) tattooed themselves with the arrow that is supposed to be earned by becoming an airmaster. Aang clearly adresses this as cultural appropriation and gets seriously angry and sad about it. The author (Chinese in origin I belive) mentioned that he had read on the internet about cultural appropriation and wanted to address the topic.
@@soencoda754 I think they were going for a Hong Kong parallel.
It's a shame because I think I mentally dismissed how stupid Zaheer was because I am an Anarchist and he was at least portrayed as honest and also as capable (in a fight, which in Avatar terms means that he is worthy of attention). Despite this, I would say that Zaheer's backstory would have actually made a much more interesting story for a follow-up to TLA.
The dude was a nonbender kid who was a child soldier for an Earth Kingdom warlord outside the grounds of the capital, and successfully led a revolution to liberate his fellow soldiers and prisoners and allow them to go on and live life on their own. Imagine a series about him (or a rewritten version of him, nothing about him requires him to be male) spending that as his book 1 and then moving on to face off against the United Republic to liberate the colonized Earth people.
You could even had an amazing nuance where the Avatar is his antagonist and their debate is about how sometimes stability must be upset to establish balance. That stability and power and authority are not, in fact, balance, but are instead a force maintaining imbalance.
God, now I want to write it.
Whenever you finish it let me know and link it
Or at least a better attempt of the question how anarchism and the avatar as a person which has way too much power could come along. I'm sure this struggle could be solved without trying to kill the avatar.... felt less than anarchist methods and more like some authoritarian communist methods
And they didn't show any of that in the show.
WHY?!
@@techissus7449 yea me too
You're an Anarchist? How old are you 12 lol
I always imagined that Kuvira secretly funded the Bandits so that she could justify her continued intervention. I know the show doesn't support this in any way but this way i'm not asking myself constantly how these people have access to airplanes.
Anyway, great series. Illustrates exactly what alwys bothered me about Legend of Korra.
Thank you. It always bothered me how the show ended up sanitizing Varrick despite being as much of a villain as Unalaq. Similarly, how Suyin is never taken up to task for housing said war criminal, coddling her son despite also being a fascist war criminal, all the shit she did to Lin, or her general apathy towards the state of the Earth Nation while she and her family bask in their wealth and privilege. Weirdly, she's also the most active against Kuvira's growing regime early on.
The sanitising literally had me going "wait, he was a villain? I thought he built things to help the heroes??" when watching this series, then when it was pointed out it was just a change of heart at the end after he'd already built the magic railgun, I was like ohhhh
@@kaitlyn__L I had completely forgotten all the shady stuff he gets up to in Book 2. My brain had lumped him in with the 'good guys' and I never questioned it.
Unalaq became a giant demon and tried to plunge the world into 10,000 years of darkness?
Varrick is just a selfish dude who does whatever is convenient. He didn't do anywhere near as much harm
@@cass7448 he's basically an impostor
@@appa609 Varrick was an accomplice in Unalaq's plans. He was invaluable to making the civil war happen. He also perpetrated terrorist bombings...
Ugh, just hearing the phrase "Anarchism creates a power vacuum that WILL be filled by fascism" is giving me PTSD flashbacks to Lily Orchard's "ANARCHISM IZ DUM" Legend of Korra video essay.
But it is. All it does is create a Power vaccum...
@@wisdommanari6701 wat
Not specifically fascism, but the division/ fracturing of power does all for more organized or more authoritarian structures to take over.
Yep just the dumbest baby take of someone who's never encountered anarchist theory or tactics. Labor unions, political parties, dual power. The point is to build a non-hierarchical social structure to take over once the revolution comes, to ensure that there isn't a period of chaos and that the working class is immediately able to democratically organize life.
@@sepulchuredynarus2293 But that just defeats the point of anarchy, since you put people in charge after everything is said and done. What you described sounds more like a communist revolution.
Having kuvira as a benevolent dictator as a villain would be a great choice if the writers fixed a few things to the story.
1. Try not to make her a nazi at the same time
2. Give democracy as a substantial alternative to kuvira's dictator views.
3. Show the extent of kuvira's actions.
That way there would be a nuanced discussion over a benevolent dictator and democracy. The audience would have to side with democracy though due to the self defeating concept of the benevolent dictator because once that good dictator dies and is replaced with a horrible one it defeats the purpose of having a dictatorship.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is just one of the all-time world classic anime, and it did the "Is it better to live in a good empire or a bad democracy" thing better. In that it did that at all-
A bad dictator still accomplishes more than a good president. Whatever a "good president" is anyway.
I'm late to this video, but I think they also would have benefited by giving Kuvira a Nazi ally who does the fascist shit they wanted to show is bad while allowing Kuvira to retain her, "heart in the right place," justification. Show how even a benevolent dictator can create a pathway to fascism. And then maybe let her veer off course at the end - either in the sense that she falls to being a fascist or in the sense that she abandons her movement because the Nazi in her corner has made everything worse and scarier.
Like, imagine a scene with kind, triumphant, proud Kuvira ends up seeing children starving. In HER Earth Empire. Because of the Nazi in her corner in the war. That would be an interesting character moment.
@@DoctorMagoo111 Except why would children starve in her Nasi empire? Does the existence of national socialism blight the crops or some convoluted bs?
@@scutumfidelis1436 Fueling a war machine and concentration camps tend to lead to suffering poor people.
They say they go "too far" with ideologies, not realizing how capitalism went too far now.
"how capitalism went too far now" Ohh yeah, what a horendous thing to happen: that the people could be free ina freemarket society!
Another stupid commie...
Akuma Bakemono You ever think about how it’s global capitalism that created the conditions for the largest slave market in the world? We have more slaves today than any time in history but you don’t learn that when you learn about “history” in school. We have surveillance technology that is literally unprecedented. There’s factories that farm blood from real humans who get kidnapped and enslaved because there is a market incentive to do so. Real people are living in poverty that causes real deaths. Democratic nations are overthrown to align their interests with that of neoliberal organizations like the world bank that offer loans on the condition of policy reforms that are in US interests. I don’t know how you can honestly look at the whole of the world, culture, humanity, increasing mental illness and instability, and see a world that’s been blessed by a free market that’s made an enslaved people. Sign your labor to capitalist class for a wage that necessarily doesn’t give you the full value of your output or die under the conditions set by a market that creates a pseudo nature where real needs are seen as secondary to the needs of making more profit. What a joke
@@carsoneastman5709Your statement is really umtrue. Even if you class extremely cheap labour in the modern world as slaves ahd just slavery in the past, the slavery seen in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire are FAAAR larger. An estimated 20% to 50% of the entire population of the SPQR were slaves. That level of slavery lasted for about 1000 years. The SPQR at it's height had around a population of 70 Million, meaning 14 Million to 35 Million were slaves just at ONE POINT in it's history
Free the International Labor Organization estimates that their are 46 million people 1 in every 150 in textbook definition slavery today. But if we use your looser definition of extremely cheap labor that number jumps up to 3.4 billion, (half the global population) and given that there weren’t even a billion people on earth until 1804 I’d say thats fairly unprecedented in history
Yeah, they’re more than happy to talk about all the time socialism has failed but not how many times capitalism has failed, or the human cost behind that. It’s always, the Soviet union killed such and such number of people, with no hint of irony
Can't believe The Boys™ never made a season around my flawless ideology of anarcho-monarchism, the cowards.
Seriously, great work, this was a fun, if at times painful, series. TLoK had to be difficult to rewatch at points.
Azula would work for that one lol
Bruh I wonder how would that work...
Is that like a king...ruling over *nothing??*
@@GreaterGrievobeast55 anarchy, but there is a king with almost absolute power whose only job is making sure that noone else gets power, preserving anarchy
@@isakpalsson9012 Isn't that just a warlord then?
Also we find out this season that the reason Verrick is rich is because he's a genius who thought up and created the things his company makes all by himself with only a little help from assistants. He knows how every single bit of technology his industry makes works which is exactly how real billionaires earn their money. Like that Elon Musk guy who came up with the brilliant idea of less efficient subways systems, and also other really dumb shit....
I hate when fiction tries to explain how their rich capitalist characters actually eArNeD his wealth.
yeah, also, they take Assami's father out of prison because "they need all geniuses they can get", but they never think of recruiting, you know, engineers or whatever
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Honestly when i think about how much Tony stark has ruined public billionaire understanding.
@@Poadiup gotta make the hero somehow likable
@@Ttegegg but when you really understand the relationship between labor and production it just seems so obviously pure capitalist make believe.
@@Poadiup don't forget about Batman
To Quote Magneto "I've Been At The Mercy At Men Just Following Orders, Never Again"
8:00 It also does a third thing. It assassinates Toph's character. Besides the whole establishing a police thing that was a massive red flag for her trajectory. The way she developed originally was deeply tied to her rebelliousness, the thing she overcame originally was apathy and being stand-offish towards the gang from AtLA due to neglect and possessiveness from her parents. Her as a crotchety old hag who is disenfranchised from her children is born from her wanting them to be independant from her...
So why did a complete antiauthoritarian to the point of offering so much freedom to her daughters that it turned into emotional neglect lead a fucking police force? That never sat right with me.
What? Police are necessary in every society.
@@MusaMansu acab
@Fabian Kirchgessner togh literally says in the show that she regrets being a cop and that no matter how hard she'd try to stop crime it'd never end from her actions which is the main reason she's so isolated from the world.
Fabian Kirchgessner you’re one hell of a boot licker lmao
A 50 year old is quite different than a 12 year old, you know.
The Legend Of Liberal Fantasy
It gets so much worse in Ruins of empire.
Kuvira is mostly forgiven and is instead put under house arrest so she can live with her adoptive "family".
The family she tried to nuke, including her ex-fiance who she was willing to sacrifice after he eloped with her.
She's forgiven since she did a lot of good hence her the nickname the great unifier. She only wanted to fix the power vacuum zaheer created. Korra could see that and didn't want to punish her dhe to her good intentions but absolute power corrupts
@@quietcontender6969 power reveals, just as you've revealed yourself.
@@quietcontender6969 Sorry,but that ain't how it works.
When you're a dictator, you ruin people. It's part of the job description. If you're forgiven for that, that's because your world's idea of politics is so shallow that they think that something like that excuses you.
It's injustice. Simple as that.
@Sir Reginald Meowington To be fair, that point about Kuvira imprisoning ethnic minorities was just a throwaway line clearly added on a whim to make Kuvira less sympathetic to the audience. It is never brought up again, or even mentioned by any of the other characters.
This is the main problem with Kuvira as a character - the writers clearly did not know what to do with her. They could have turned her into the morally gray Napoleon-like figure that she was implied to be in the first few episodes of season four, or they could have went with the Nazi angle from the beginning. Both would have been infinitely better than what we got in the end, which was an antagonist filling two conflicting narrative roles at the same time without being a good representation for either of them.
@@alyseleem2692
So did Zuko ruined people when he became the absolute monarch of the Fire Nation?
Now this is some LoK criticism I can get behind
Now I really want to see a leftist Korra adaptation on TV.
Tankie Lily Orchard would bitch about it
A good fanfiction would do the trick, I think.
Adrian Dezendegui lily is a tankie? damn that’s epic
It would be a really good idea. The new avatar escapes from fascist earth nation to join a revolutionary front.
@@unknownhandyman6821 Maybe she has to keep the fascist state running because destroying it would kill more people?
Togh is a Cop, so yeah.
this was the most disappointing thing about Legend of Korra
That was utter fucking nonsense. Toph would never, ever, be a cop.
Yeah when I heard that I was like "come again? Anti-aristicrat, down-to-earth Toph a cop??? You sure about that one guys?"
@@starfinney6308 She invented and founded the metal bending cop department.
I was really pissed about that. Toph was a real freedom fighter in the last Airbender.
Let me start by saying: Great series. Really loved these four episodes. I haven't been as excited for a RUclips video as I have with this one
At around 19:00 you begin to discuss the difference between the nationalism of oppressed people and the nationalism of oppressing people. I really don't think this lack of distinction was touched on enough.
What I found interesting about this is that it's a distinction that fascism doesn't make. Pre-war Nazi Germany began it's expansion by "liberating" German peoples. The Rheinland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and even Poland (Specifically Danzig) started as the unifying of German people. He was, by his rationale, freeing occupied German territory. As you said at the beginning, fascism exists as the solution to a problem. Fascist rule was not forced onto Italy or Germany. It was largely supported by the people, "Give you a job and make the trains run on time." The entire existence of a fascist system hinges upon the notion that you are freeing your people, that you are taking back your stolen birthright.
Mussolini and Hitler, on the face of it, wanted to create nation fitting of the superiority of their people, anything less was oppression. In this sense, The Boys making no distinction between the colonized and the colonizer is fitting. In the people's eyes, the fascist state they live under is only ever the colonized; it is only ever restoring the world to it's rightful place. The Boys justify Kuvira with actual fascist rhetoric. They are, by substitution, saying that the Nazi's assimilation of Czechoslovakia or Austria was a good thing; it was the oppressed unifying and taking back what was rightfully theirs.
Another way to view this in a more modern light is the real life examples of the earth kingdom and republic city aka China and Hong Kong.
Just like in the show China is saying that Hong Kong is theirs and it was taken by colonizers (which is true) and should be returned basically they framing this as them fighting against the oppressive west. While they oppresse Hong Kong whom doesn't want to merge with China since they are a independent state with distinctly different culture but China like kurvira is using military force to force them to join.
black sleep differences is China wasn’t forcing Hong Kong to join the mainland. It the leadership of Hong Kong that decided to try to do that. Hong Kong is the one place that China allows capitalism to exist. The people weren’t just rebellious against their government they were rebelling against capitalism too.
It always rubbed me wrong when Verrick and Bolin said that Kuvira is crazy. Verrick, dude, you blew up a building and built a giant Alphonse Elric and she is crazy?
It just becomes more horrifying every book, lmao
@@hudsondunn8385 dafuq are you even going on about?
THAT MINION MEME NOOOOOOOOO
Don't forget to do engagement comments to support kay
You've become one of my favourite new channels, Kay! (you too Skittles!) I have really enjoyed this mini series on the show!
I love LoK but having become more politically aware hurts it for me. So for the sake of making it enjoyable I like to think that an older Korra and her gang realize the fundamental flaws of the system and work together to take it down.
I had hope and waited the entire show for this moment that she finally realize that this system isn't so great balanced and would start to question if her former enemies may have a point, or the normal people which clearly didn't had a good time in this system...
if you think of it, the antagonist were right and had good reasons for the things they did ON AVATAR´S WORLD, but, yeah, those ideologies are not even realistic for our world
@@damianfafnirsson2318 That applies to Amon,kinda yes,but the rest...
They all have analogies here. They're caricatures of our world.
Kuvira did nothing wrong, but the writers are so politically illiterate that they sincerely believe that a decadent and collapsing state is better than a revolutionary order initiated and led by a strong(wo)man. So they add to shoehorn the most retarded stuff possible to make her look bad and conveniently tie the plot together. I am embarrassed for them tbqh.
@@MrViki60 Well, Kuvira did set up camps were people could learn new trading skills”. She was also forcing people to accept her as their new ruler. But aside from all that, I think she did have the right idea of reunifying the earth kingdom and making it a safer and better place. Just get someone less tyrannical to run things and we’re pretty much set. The fire nation didn’t disband it’s monarchy just because the last ruler was evil.
The comics double down on Kuvira being a redeemable character. Like, they invent another, worse fascist who figures out brainwashing technology and she is appalled, because sHe onLY WantEd tO INspiRe PeopLe iNto oBediEnCe and the re-education camps were uuuuh... supposed to be not coercive??
Like, what the hell.
yeah it really doesn't. it would have been better if she wasn't nazi tho.
This, this is it. I've finally seen it. You've identified the national liberation element of colonization history behind the Earth Empire.
I knew what Kuvira was supposed to represent, and it made me question my leftist values quite a bit when I agreed with her. Nobody else points out that Republic City is unceded land, and that the struggle of the colonized to right colonial wrongs is an independent topic in itself. The Earth peoples had been treated as a joke or as an enemy throughout all of both Avatars that I wanted to see some demonstration of strength for them, some representation that they can overcome everything if united behind a cause. It was foolish to think these writers could have turned it around, but I found myself agreeing so easily with Kuvira that I had to step back and try to figure out why she was so persuasive.
How easy it is to fall.
If you read the ATLA comics "the promise" series it actually touches on the fire nation colonies in the earth kingdom and expands upon how life was like to the citizens. It however doesn't build on the idea that you're asking for; that the earth people are strong. it does, however, imply that the mixing of fire nation and earth kingdom people led to assimilation and a cultural mixture and that they have become united and it would be wrong to establish that land as earth nation or fire nation property, as both people have become united. so they decide to make the land independent, similar to the UR's position in LOK, you see it resemble the united states as a hotpot for different cultures mixing and coexisting. but in hindsight, I do understand Kuvira's intent in taking back the UR because like you said, it was un-ceded land taking by the then imperialist fire nation. but what taints her ideals is the fact that they tried to make Kuvira a benevolent dictator but still established nazi allegory in her regimen and tossed out into the sidelines by the end of the show in order to redeem her character ark.
But wait. Didn’t they do a whole bit about how you can’t just kick out people who have been born and mixed into a new place? Specifically with a family that had 2 sons, an earth and a fire bender and how you can’t take them away from the colonies because it’s their home now.
kutkuknight yeah, thats what i meant when i said that it touches on "the mixing of fire nation and earth kingdom people [that] led to assimilation."
@The Ravenous Lamppost Thus it is a good ideology, minus that.
Wait a minute, in the comics, Earth King Kuei did seceded that land to the United Republic, this gets explained in The Promise.
14:20 the headline of that article reminds me of a bit from a documentary about civilian life in Nazi Germany. One interview with a former Hitler Youth is something that has always terrified me. Because he doesn't deny concentration camps he just justifies them as we thought we were using them as slave labor not murdering them as if rounding up people for slave labor would have been okay.
I remember in one of three arrow's videos where it has a clip of a protestor during the 1990's where the Clean Wehrmacht myth was finally being challenged and the guy who was old enough to have his father be a Wehrmacht soldier was screaming that they just hanged civilians which in his mind made them less evil. It was wild.
What Kay forgets to mention is that Korra is so different from Last Airbender because Aaron Ehasz left the team to work on Dragon Prince. Aaron was the lead writer for Airbender.
What he also forgets is that the politics of The Dragon Prince are even more disgusting. Apparently, if you kill an animal, you deserve to have your entire race subject to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Tbh TDP is even more Liberal than Korra.
i'm still reeling with how these are the same people who made the original ATLA
Aaron Ehaz wasn't involved.
I fucking know right!
WE NEED AARON!
PLEASE! 😭
@@thevarietychannelofyoutube4769 hes involved with dragon prince thank god
@@alexarviso6836 I know. And the politics of The Dragon Prince are somehow even worse "committing genocide and using dark magic are totally the same thing guys!"
Kay and Skittles, masters of politics bending and analysis bending. Praise be!
@@hudsondunn8385 Troll bending
A non-negligible element of my political growth was watching this and realizing that after brutually killing off multiple characters in book 3 they decided to have the avatar forgive Hitler and distract from it with Korrasami. TLoK made me realize performative inclusivity was a thing.
skittles is such a good video maker
this series of videos about korra and neoliberalism are a masterpiece, than you so much for making this, the end was just superb, concratulations you really did an incredible job and delivered a powerful message
Remember, Kuvira got a redemption arc. The fucking fash did, but the commie, the hippie, and the anarkiddie were just too mean and didn't.
Zaheer did too. He healed Korra after seeing what he did was wrong.
Yep.
Amon was too dangerous to be kept alive, they had to boom my boy up 😭🙏🏻
"If you tried to do good you'll fail and make things worse" is almost word for word a thing Jordan Peterson got an applause for... I'm not sure where it's originally from. I heard it in a video that laid his voice over video of Kermit the Frog at a TED talk.
That's why right-wingers get so impossibly bent out of shape by the song Imagine, too.
@@RoyalFusilier You're probably right, they just fear change so much. Though they couch their opposition to Imagine usually in a fear of atheism. (I'm Unitarian and a positive agnostic.) Let me know if I can help with anything, man, it's great to meet you. :)
The moment when I found out about the "re-education camps" was where the writers lost me. I was like hang on, you have fire and water benders which are powerful tools of industry, and instead of presenting them with opportunities to improve their standing and use their abilities as valuable technology you lock them up to do nothing? The same goes with those who are simply ethnically from other nations. Why squander those people?
The counter argument is that they were probably labouring in those camps but at no point do we see anything created as a direct result of this. All technology we see is either created through Varrick+Metalbenders = Profit. The metalbenders are Earth Kingdom citizens and were not forced to work at all.
The smarter thing to do would be once Zaofu was taken, invest extreme amounts of the Earth Empire's resources into industrial projects and entice benders to migrate. Bring in labouring jobs that would employ lower classes from both the former Earth Kingdom and the impoverished citizens of Republic City. Waterbenders and Earthbenders working together could create massive canals and sewage systems at rapid speeds. Firebenders would be the driving force behind steam and electrical power. Kuvira is shooting herself in the foot with racial tensions she has no reason to possess.
Exactly. Also I love your profile picture heh
If Kuvira were a rational benevolent dictator, the mythical enlightened philosopher queen, sure that could be an interesting foil and a fun society to try and design. Planned economies are very effective, which people kind of ignore.
Re-education camp isn't the same as death camp. Modern China has re-education camps yet no one in this comment section would seriously make a comparison to the Nazis over that.
@@AsymmetricalCrimes Please read more than the first sentence of my comment before replying.
@@wafflingmean4477 No.
I don't think a nation being both oppressed and the oppressor at the same time is completely unrealistic. Isn't that essentially what happened in the Falklands War? Argentina was killing communists, preparing themselves to wage war against neighbor countries like Chile at the same time they were fighting an imperialistic nation (the UK) to regain control of the Falkland Islands AT THE SAME TIME they were part of Operation Condor
Although I don't think Korra's writers were think about Argentina when writing this season, and it certainly doesn't work if applied to Nazi Germany.
It does work if applied to Nazi Germany tho, Germans were legit oppressed by the Czechoslovak government in Sudetenland. Which does not justify war crimes or the genocide, obviously, but it shows the complexity of actual history.
We are never shown the details of Republic's politics actually. Did all the people there supported its independence? What about the decendants of its pre-colonial Earth Kingdom population? It would make total sence for them to see themselves as oppressed and be anti-Republic. Is there a pro-Earth Kingdom political party? If, for example, we assume that about half of the Republic's population is decendant of the Earth people, and that there is substantial reunification support among them, Kuvira's action become much less black-and-white. But I guess we can ignore all of this because she has a mecha.
As an Argentine, I'd also like to point out the war wasn't a necessity. There had been negotiations for years before the coup in 1976, there would probably had been an agreement if the dictatorship didn't happen and the islands would have been at least under a shared control between the two countries.
The reason I say this is because many people on the internet seem to think the fact that an illegitimate government lost a war that makes us the "bad guys" and our claims invalid.
Doesn't work, Argentina was ruled by essentially a pseudo fascist dictatorship that launched an invasion of an irredentist claim (Falklands was never Argentine land, their claim at best was based on Spanish colonial claims) to distract dissidents.
@@mkd2839
Not really, claims over the islands predate the war, and there were ongoing negotiations over them with the UK before the coup in 1976.
@@LautaroArgentino your claims over the islands are false it belongs to the United Kingdom in fact there claims predate the existence of your nation and the people there voted to stay as British subjects stop whining
So glad The Almighty Algorithm™️ showed me this series. It articulated so many of the issues that I had with the political messaging of TLOK.
Stray observation about Book 4: it's revealed that the Fire Nation is still a hereditary absolute monarchy. Zuko's daughter Izumi has this minor #girlboss moment in which she declines to launch a preemptive strike against Kuvira's forces because of her people's history with war. It's presented as a show of growth for the Fire Nation and a celebration of Zuko's legacy, but it achieves the opposite imo.
The only reason why the Fire Nation isn't plunged into another war is because of the whim of an all-powerful ruler. The idea that Zuko would leave the political mechanism by which the Hundred Year War was possible in the first place intact (when he is shown time and time again being incredibly politically astute in ATLA) is an insult to his character and his arc in the previous series.
It could be argued that Zuko didn't actually have any models from which to engineer any kind of real political reforms. The only other models at the time were the Earth Kingdom, which was a monarchy, the Northern Water Tribe, also a monarchy, and the Southern Water Tribe, which was a tribal eldership that functions essentially like an elective monarchy. Maybe Kyoshi Island's mayoral system could have been used, but even then it's pretty much like an elective monarchy but with voting rights extended to the commoners too.
@@DasMudPie That's a good point. There really weren't any major examples of non-autocratic government when Zuko rose to power. Though he does help found the United Republic of Nations, which of course did not become democratic until towards the end of his life but did have a notion of representation and balance between the four nations via the council.
I suppose I'm just confused as to what the conditions are for the discovery + establishment of democratic governance in this universe. The United Republic becomes a presidential democracy overnight after the Equalist revolution is quelled. Wu decides (on his own, almost on a whim) to abolish the monarchy and establish a democratic federalist system within the Earth Kingdom after Kuvira's downfall.
I would imagine that "this polity led a genocidal colonialist war for a century" would also be a strong incentive to consider at least some form of proto-democratic system with checks and balances. Bryke's solution to the Fire Nation problem seems to be "it's fine now because the absolute monarch is a Good Guy™️ and he made the Avatar promise to kill him if he ever becomes Bad™️"
@@waverunner6 Yeah, the introduction of democratic systems does seem to appear out of nowhere in the series since their origin is never really explained. I guess the URN's absence of local nobility forced them to think of more creative ways to designate its leaders. I also think that Wu was simply "advised" to step down and reform
My own theory for the development of democratic mechanisms in-universe is that the selection process for the president of the URN is based on that of Kyoshi Island's mayor, but on applied on a larger scale. However, it's not clear whether or not the council has any real power, if its members are still appointed or if it still even exists.
Being a federation, the reorganization of the Earth continent would likely provide the next step towards representative democracy. Because of its federal nature, and based on the URN's example, it's plausible to imagine a governing body consisting of a council with elected members from each region of the continent.
As for the "checks and balances" part... Whether or not the Earth Federation's council shares power with an executive committee or council president above them depends on whether or not the URN's council is still relevant, I guess. Although, since the URN president more closely resembles an elected absolute monarch than someone who has to answer to another politcal body, I somehow doubt it.
"it's fine now because the absolute monarch is a Good Guy™️ and he made the Avatar promise to kill him if he ever becomes Bad™️"
Makes you wonder if Avatars should be subject to checks and balances themselves... Zaheer might have had a point
@@DasMudPie • Interesting theory re: the inspiration for democracy. I don't know a whole lot about the Kyoshi Island system so I'll have to dig into that lore. In the comics, the predecessor to the URN and its council is a committee of local business owners that are the de facto governing body in the region. So that seems to be one of the first hints of a (major) non-monarchical system.
• Bryke confirmed in an interview that the URN Council was dissolved in between Books 1-2 but they opted not to delve into that political transition in the season 2 premiere because they didn't want it to feel "Trade Federation-y" ie the heavily criticized way the Star Wars prequel trilogy deals with politics. It's an understandable decision imo but it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of addressing the issue of benders vs. non-benders and political representation.
• Agreed that the (former) Earth Kingdom seems like the perfect candidate for a more sophisticated federalist democracy. It'd be cool to see that sociopolitical evolution......and how it could relate to real-world transformations in the mid-to-late 20th century.......maybe in a sequel series of some sort.....centered around an Earth Nation Avatar??? (hi Netflix/Nickelodeon!)
• I mean, I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying that Zaheer made some excellent points about the role of the Avatar in the world's affairs and the failure of the White Lotus to provide a meaningful counterbalance to his/her unchecked power, but.....👀
@@waverunner6 Oh, I just extrapolated Kyoshi Island's system from the fact that we never saw a local nobility and the fact they had a mayor. Since I didn't read the comics, I don't actually know if they expanded on that! And that bit of info about the committee of business owners is interesting. Knowing this, the URN council makes more sense.
Though it's a bit disappointing that TLOK didn't give us at least a glimpse of how the URN government works, given how the series didn't turn out to be as... politically savvy as it could've been, maybe that was for the best.
I'd be very curious as to how this new Earth Federation is going to turn into! How is federal and local power divided? Does every part of the continent join the federation? Are some places going to be more autonomous than others? So many things to explore!
... yeah, Zaheer does underline quite an interesting problem, doesn't he? :p
I was so eager to check this out. You do a very, very good analysis of this series. Honestly, it was really hard for me to not feel like they just made Zahir bad at the end because until that point he was just being a more effective hero than.. our heroes.
@@hudsondunn8385 What the hell are you even trying to say?
I just finished Book Four today and I was surprised you didn't bring up the "Nazis were leftist actually" the show did when Kuvira explicitly states that she intends to seize Zaofu and redistribute its technology equally, a point that comes out of nowhere.
Why are you so amazin?
I had my mouth gaped open the entire time and could only think, "Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!'
You really don't realize propaganda until it's pointed out to you. My God!!
I feel like I should watch it over and see how much more I missed and why I hadn't caught on to everything you've talked about.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this series, and you and Skittles (who is your editor? Or just your Lil buddy?) did such a good job.
Welcome to ideology
I always assumed the bandits were funded by Kuvira as an invented threat. I kept hoping they would establish that as true, but instead it's just somewhat implied and then dropped
I took it as implicit right away and ended up forgetting it wasn't outright confirmed. And that was when I was still a lib.
Even with the show itself ultimately giving Kuvira an actual "Barbarians at the gate" situation to take advantage of, The Boys should have doubled down on the bandits technically just being victims but spurred on by a fascist wanting to control the narrative and use them as pawns. I could have swore they were gonna do something with the scene where Kuvira demands the bandits swear loyalty to her, directy tying it to when the bandits steal the supplies of the Earth kingdom town that she grilled earlier, trying to get their mayor to submit.
The Boys could have actually said something about how fascists create (or at least escalate pre-existing) problems then sell solutions if they made it so the scene where her followers are so "benevolent", feeding the townsfolk with their own damn food which Kuvira stole in the first place was explicitly perverting by the angle of "no, Kuvira and her followers are just snake oil salesmen, they aren't solving a single damn problem because they're actually the cause of said problems". Would have been a great cautionary tale for the show's target audience, but nope. They completely dropped that potential plot thread as far as I recall.
I mean yeah escalating and creating problems to use your political ideology as a solution isn't exclusive to fascism
The eyeball zone has gazed upon thee.
You gotta love it.
In ATLA, every society is presented as flawed, but trying (not on equal levels but still)-
Even the Fire Nation has whole redeemable towns full of people who also suffer under the heel of the Fire Lord.
Even the philosophy of the Air Nomads proves to be a not-one-size-fits-all (Aang NEVER lets go of his Earthy attachments, and this didn't make him weaker or incapable of controlling the Avatar State).
The conflict the Avatar is meant to be in the world to help with is that all these different people CAN coexist, with the right compromises. And should they refuse and try to impose their system by force, they may be bent (haha) into stopping.
But that's the thing. ThE BoyEes envisioned Republic City as the solution to that conflict. A perfect melting pot of all cultures where all people are, in theory, equal under the law and free to pursue their best life. And should they work hard enough, find success. Sounds familiar?
Basically even though all cultures in ATLA where distinctly non USA, apparently if civilization goes long enough you get to the USA anyways. Which is the perfectly balanced civilization.
Not uncommon in USA media, btw. Even Game Of Thrones made a joke about that.
Great comment. Completely agree with your take!
Aang did let go of his earthly attachments, dude. That's why he was able to master the Avatar state once his chi got realigned by that convenient rock. What westerners don't understand, is that "letting go" doesn't mean becoming an emotionless stone. He let go of his obsession around Katara, not his love for her. He focused on duty first, rather than fear of loss. Letting go of earthly attachment means not being ruled by them. It doesn't stipulate cutting them off entirely.
Watching this series of videos I saw how the north american (as we call in portuguese "estadunidense") productions deals with colonialism and 3rd world questions.
As a perspective of someone's actually living in Brazil which is either a colonized country, and nowadays a almost fascist one, I really enjoy how sensitive you were to analyse who the ideologies are represented in Avatar.
Once again it all comes down to a case of “my parents never loved me”
I kinda feel like a dumbass for not seeing this coming while watching Korra. Even if I already considered myself a leftist, I only had the vague feeling that something was off, but it was probably because I was younger. I like to believe that the person I am now would likely see the bullshit for what it was. Thanks for the amazing serie, I was really looking forward to watch your take on the final season.
Wait, you mean to tell me Kuvira was meant to be a Nazi? Shit, I was thinking Napoleon the whole time. Emperor, "I am the revolution," himself. Off the top of my head - restoring stability back to a kingdom in revolutionary chaos. Spreading progressive ideals through violent conquest. Scary competent as both a political leader and military commander.
Somewhere between Mao and Jiang is more accurate. She is extremely clearly meant to be a Chinese nationalist.
@@appa609 Huh. Obvious in hindsight. Never would have crossed my mind. Guess my grasp of history is pretty eurocentric. Although, to be cynically honest, unless the western writers of the show have an excellent grasp of Chinese history (they might) Kuvira probably is just a Nazi. It'll be the example they know best.
Kuvira said 'some people use fascism to cope????' Yikes lol
The "We all like a bad boy though , don't we?" "Not a fucking terrorist though ,Chris." scene from Gogglebox UK is Brike trying to redeem Varrick and make Kuvira sympathetic
Personally I always found Kuvira to be pretty weak as an antagonist. While the other Korra antagonists actually had some kind of ideology that you could sympathise with to some extent (as much of a half baked fraud it turned out to be) Kuvira always came across as nothing but wanting power for power's sake. Kind of a boring motivation. The scenes where they tried to redeem her always felt unearned to me. Korra's own personal struggle through Book 4 was always way more interesting.
Also I hope you like the Korra game. I do like it a fair bit myself. I'm a huge fan of Platinum's work, and even though Korra is far from their best, some of their magic still shines through there. I find the game is much better on an NG+ run though, when you have all the bending styles unlocked already.
She's ideologically lacking (because the liberal framework of the show struggles to meaningfully critique fascism) but imo she personally has much more going for her than the likes of Zaheer who just kind of recites poetry for the whole season or Unalaq who... actually kind of also recites a lot of poetry and then isn't around for half the season. This show is really messy.
I enjoy the game because it doesn't try to tackle political ideologies badly for once and instead just gives us a simple, but utterly weird, adventure.
@Rjlin Kyles
She wasn't trying to destroy the city. Kuvira actually managed to take city without damaging it. It got destroyed because Korra and crew ignored Raiko's surrender and initiated a fight with her to reclaim the city from Kuvira.
Kuvira didn't commit a single war crime during the attempt to reclaim her people's ancestral lands while Korra and allies commited at least two which were the utilization of child soilders and taking hostages to use against the enemy.
Every time someone describes fascism, Im trying to apply it to US (both modern and of WW2 era)
Im yet to find any description that isnt match up (atleast with WW2 era)
"Fascists is the people who strive for political capital over everything else, like how capitalists usualy strive for economic capital" - check
"Authoritarians who violently suppresses the opposition by means of active censorship, espionage and phisical violence" - check (Maccarthyism)
"People who make up a threat or create it to then scare everyone into supporting them and only them" - SUPER check (islamists*, "tough on crimes" policy, redscare etc. just so many of them)
Yet no one ever see US, specialy (of the 1st half of 20 century) as a fascist state, I wonder why.
*actual threat, largely created by US negative influence on mid.east
"I wonder why" -- propaganda, mostly. we bought a lot of cred defeating the worst fascists around, so we wind up getting away with doing a fascism ourselves from time to time.
"Because they were attacked by the Fascists (Imperial Japan) and joined the fight against Fascism. So they can't be Fascist themselves." If Pearl Harbor hadn't been hit then who knows ... They may have stayed Isolationist or (with the Fascist sympathies) may have even joined on the side of the Axis if they were presented with (or found) a reason to do so.
America wanted Revenge for the bloody nose Imperial Japan gave them. It's the only reason they joined the Allies.
Capitalism can't exist without Fascism. It depends too much on conquest and slavery to go without white supremacy.
@@a.wadderphiltyr1559 Aw. You're new. I bet you still equate Capitalism with voluntary exchange. Care to tell me a period of time when Capitalism, a word younger than the United States which has always meant the rewarding of profit to the investor, wasn't hand-in-hand with conquest and slavery?
@@a.wadderphiltyr1559 Modern era? Ok. NAFTA destroyed unions by employing slaves oversees. Europe's "post-industrial society" also depends on this.
The US denies citizenship to a majority of immigrants, solely to weaken unions, by forcing them into black market labor.
Our prison system is as close to Black slavery as the letter of the law will allow. Over-policing -> denial of programs that disincentivise crime -> pressuring the innocent into plea deals with bail -> forced labor that produces a surprising amount of products and also busts unions.
For-profit eminent domain still tramples on US private landowners and Natives alike.
The entirety of our military involvement in the Middle East, starting in the installation of the Shah in '53, was to protect private oil interests and the petrodollar.
Amd then there's South America and the CIA. I don't know all the specifics. I went to college for engineering.
When first watching this season I actually thought the bandits were part of kovira's army. that would've made a whole lot of sense
yeah if they were portrayed as people who she just hired to pretend to be bandits that actually would've been way better, and few real bandits were just extremly desperate people trying to survive in the only way they could
Well this was disheartening to watch but I'm glad I did - I haven't seen Korra since its original airing when I was apolitical and loved it.
You could have talked about how the Earth kingdom and the United republic situation is how people in the west two sides the Colonization of Palestine by Israel. It’s almost a perfect parallel for some of the straw men people use.
Unfortunately there's many parallels. China/Hong Kong, North/South Korea, Israel/Palestine, the USA's own history when it was just a couple of colonies with New Amsterdam/York being the main shining beacon. Ireland/Northern Ireland. There's probably even more examples I'm missing.
At the end of the day Israel is objectively a better nation to live in than Palestine
@@thefutureisnowoldman7653 Indeed.
Is that why they're making it bigger,and throwing out the natives?
Sorry,brother,but not exactly.
The United Republic was created from the oldest colonies established about 30 years before the War. Before that,it was a multicultural area filled with Earth Kingdom farmers,Fire Nation traders,and Southern Water Tribe pirates who would later create the Fifth Nation, alongside other outlaws.
The problem with the idea of colonisation here is two things:
1. There not so much colonised as they were pumped with more Fire Nation immigrants,the original population still existed and remained in their homes. In fact,Sozin is said to have attempted to get a bit more chummy with them. He succeeded.
2. The Nature of the Earth Kingdom, i.e,the fact that it is neither a Kingdom or even a truly unified state. Each and every part of it is essentially it's own Nation, with only the wars made by the Kings of Ba Sing Se bringing anything close to unity. If given a choice, they'd bow to neither the Impenetrable City or the Fire Nation.
They'd be free.
P. S,I'm with Palestine. This is just different.
Gamers rise up
"Maybe our children can inherit something other than fear" is such a raw line
When it comes to Korra's personal growth and dealing with trauma, the show is great. The animation (aside from most of season 2) is also amazing, the world design is gorgeous, and the fight scenes are freaking incredible! But outside of all that... I think it really missed the mark and fell flat.
I really hope that "the boys" don't inject their flawed politics into the live action remake of ATLA. I mean, we'll always have the original series to go back to, but many kids will grow up with the remake, which could potentially have these troubling political messages. But of course, we shouldn't shelter kids from other views.
On the flip side, I also hope that "The Boys" have gained a better grasp on these political ideologies after Korra, and will put that to good use in not only this remake, but hopefully also a remake of Korra with a more leftist perspective. But one can only dream....
At least we have The Dragon Prince, which so far seems to have a better understanding of the politics that it's conveying to kids. (I could be wrong about that, though)
You def feel how I feel- I like the characters (esp Korra) and the world and fights but man... the stories were.. uh a choice?
It’s important to note that The Dragon Prince wasn’t created by ‘The Boys’ but by Aaron Ehasz (and Justin Richmond), who was the head writer of the ATLA series, and wasn’t involved in the making of LoK.
I thought Korra's arc was uninspired.
So you wouldn't shelter your children from fascism? You do understand that treating everything as acceptable, means granting truly malevolent ideas legitimacy, and free room to grow? It's a liberal conceit that ONLY the "good" ideas, will naturally win out in the "marketplace". This is demonstrably untrue. The best ideas don't win: the best silver-tongue, the one most skilled at rhetoric, wins.
Hey Kay, have you considered offering up your soul for eternal torment in the Eyeball Zone? I feel like Thought Slime would be happy to promote you, and your stuff is really underrated for how quality it is
I believe something along those lines is in the works ;)
I’m not saying that Elizabeth ehasz (and Aaron too probably) would’ve done a better job with the premise the boys wanted to execute, but I would have paid good money to see her try - zuko alone is such a masterpiece in storytelling in general and the way it portrays poverty and oppression of non-benders makes me hopeful that she’d made a brilliant job on at least season one
I really enjoyed the four videos about ATLK. Have you ever watched Mr. Robot? I think that it would make a great discussion over politics and ideology from the writer's and team perspective, which happens to be completely different of the boys imo. The series is actually full of criticism over neoliberalism and it digs better into the consequences of actually beating some of the core aspects on which the system relies.
The worst part is that most of these most likely weren't on purpose. They were just socially, politically, historically ignorant.
TLOK was just never destined to be the politically savvy show it claimed itself to be :(
Interesting, “stay in your place or fascists will take over” is what Jordan Peterson tends to say.
And it's funny cause he kinda is one.
@@nicolasglemot6760 how
@@nicolasglemot6760 He’s far from that.
@@tudoraragornofgreyscot8482 he's a useful idiot for them,
I may not like Korra, specifically for the way politics are used poorly in the show, but this series was a huge eye opener and made me rethink a lot of things, even about politics in general. Thank you
If the legend of Korra had been written competently, Toph would’ve been an anarchist instead of a cop
Toph shpuld have been a mountain hermit. She eventually got there but with a weird aithoritarian phase
no she wouldnt be 💀
@@appa609 she wasnt authoritarian you people need to look at this from the context of in the universe
What’s really sad is that in both republic city and the earth kingdom they transitioned to democracy which means the story could have been about a pro democracy revolution. Instead democracy came when the revolutions failed which doesn’t make sense
I'm leaving a comment for Skittles
Watching these videos was extremely satisfying. Thank you for making them. I was looking for similar analysis, but all I could find online was "The Legend of Korra deals with complicated political issues". Yeah, it does... but HOW is important. And the answer, of course, is that it misrepresents political ideologies that are NOT the statu quo. It's amazing how the series consistently make the idea of a revolution the boogeyman of the world: Zaheer and Amon are revolutionaries, sure, but it also manages to make Unalaq babble about revolution at some point. And even Kuvira says "this is about EQUALITY". Dudes, we already understood that you don't like equality: don't make even the fascist dictator talk about it.
To be honest when one looks at her motives and the situation that produced her, this lady is basically earth kingdom Napoleon. A historical figure that falls far closer to a moral gray area, and actually took a progressive approach to science. Not to mention much closer to Suyin beliefs.
I think this is the big problem with Kuvira. I think she’s a morally grey character who they wanted to be a villain. So they vilify her with throwaway lines about concentration camps and forced labor without any thought as to the big implications of said lines.
@@elim4181 pretty sure not making her a black and white villain would have made her more interesting.
@@nathanielbables8652yeh neoplean do good stuff and bad stuff
EXCELLENT CRITIQUE!!! I did not notice any of this stuff in Korra back then. But of course back then I was just a naive fish who did not know what water was, aka a naive Liberal that didn't know he was immersed completely in Liberalism.
"Kuvira is right ... and later declaring a part of the land they took as an independant nation." Does this sentiment transfer to Hong Kong?
Edit: since I forgot the full quote and context, 20:01
The United Republic would have been too interesting and well written if it paralleled Hong Kong instead of the United States.
Olivia S I know right? I was always wondering like why did they turn a city in a fictional world based predominantly on Asian culture in fucking New York instead of Hong Kong?
Chanson maybe but not in a positive way. Like the comics show that republic city didn’t want to be re absorbed by the earth kingdom, just like Hong Kong where the residents didn’t want to be a brutish colony but they also didn’t want to be conquered by authoritarian China. Both earth kingdom and China believe they have some inherent right to some historic land but really it’s just more imperialism,
@@calebweldon8102 Hong Kong was illegally taken by Britain at the first place and later decolonised as it has been part of China for thousands of years.
Pro colonialism much?
Just because you hate China doesn't justify colonialism.
This trope of "well our colonialism is good because if it wasn't us others would've done it(which is false in this because Hong Kong was LITERALLY part of China but the tone of your comment makes it appear otherwise)" is really overused and a disgusting justification of colonialism, westerners should stop using it to feel better about themselves and their history as well as present.
@@calebweldon8102 it's also funny that you specifically described China as "authoritarian" while not doing that for British imperialism. What should we think of this? That being a LITERAL colony by a country an ocean away and is literally colonising a quarter of the planet is not authoritarian?
i'm really glad you added that bit about it not really being about the boys, but about the social constructs we were all brought up in, because it addresses one of the biggest problems i had with this series: fixating too much on a few bad guys, ironically the same exact problem we have with the writing of fascism in tlok. you can see this reflected in your comments sections consistently fixating on the boys, and it's no surprise because one of the constructs we find ourselves in is a fixation on whether someone can be judged a good person, rather than whether their actions are making the world better. that's why the boys wrote redemption arcs for varrick and asami's dad, and whether you villainize or humanize kuvira or any other fascist analog, it's still falling into this same trap.
if i had to write fascism, i would probably experiment with making their leader completely unknown to the main characters with only their propaganda visible. this would emphasize that it's not about who they are, it's about what their system is doing.
it also just occurred to me that this is basically how immortan joe is presented in mad max, which is ironic given that most people read/watch mad max and just think anarchy = post-apocalyptic wasteland
Just a footnote: it’s heavily implied that those airplane bandits are the same that attack kuvira at the beginning of the episode, and that Is kuvira who sends and equipped those bandits to attack the airbenders on their mission to smuggles supplies for the earth kingdom town.
Só, as the video points out latter, the treat is, in fact, a lie, fabricated by kuvira
How is it heavily implied Kuvira sent the bandits? Kuvira's forces didnt even make use of planes when she attempted to reclaim the United Republic. The area was ridden with banditry before Kuvira even arrived.
The scene also demonstrated that Kuvira was the only entity capable of providing a stable food supply for the town that was had no protection or food supply.
It was also show that the airbenders were stretched thin so they were unable to be as effective as Kuvira who was on paper the head of the EK at the time.
I want to see a spin-off show that depicts the Foggy Swamp Tribe as the true antifascists to Kuvira's Nazism for the 3 years before Korra came back into the picture. It would be perfect because Kuvira would not be able to be depicted as "good" when she is ethnically cleansing swampbenders that we all know have lived in the Swamp in the Earth Kingdom for generations, and it could be like a prequel to LOK Book 4. Maybe the swampbenders team up with the sandbenders of the Si Wong Desert, too.
Huge Korra fan here and yet the legitimate observations made in these videos were embarrassingly overdue for me to consider. Great stuff.
Just watched all of these and I watched legend of Korra before avatar last airbender(I was in middle school and heard of korra first because cora was my name) and I'm surprised and didn't really realize/see all the political shit. Anyways very cool thanks.
I just got around to binging Legend of Korra on Netflix and absolutely loved this analysis series! You made the depressing fact that neoliberal ideas permeate every aspect of our society fun and informative 😅. Thank you for that.
I'm equally disturbed by their influence and inspired by people like you, capable of pointing out its flaws.
Why did they have to massacre my girl Toph like that?
i hate the way they try to redeem kuvira in the comics as well like 😐
Good video. The green filter, while understandable for copyrigth-claim reasons, gave me a headache though.
I enjoyed the show mostly aesthetically (Korra and Asami's personal style are just really cool. Bolin and Mako... Kinda bland.) it's 'everyone took things to far' rang hollow for me. And continually letting Varrik (who admittedly is an entertaning character) of the hook just really bugged me.
S1&S2 were annoying with their 'the antagonist is a fraud'-spiel. Unalaq was also kinda dull. I was still thinking with the rules set in the first show and was on board with a second counter-avatar.
S3 Zaheer struck me more as a political nihilist despite identifying as an anarchist, in the sense of Sergey Nechayevs Catechism of the Revolutionary. Which is a lot closer to what people assume anarchism is: Destroy the hierarchy. What comes after? We'll figure that out later, if at all.
S4: Kuvira despite having an awesome character design, cool voice and a more sympathetic portrayal never came of as more than a pretty cool villain. Probably since my personal biases and interests lean a lot more to the political left and anti-capitalism.
Yeah, I thought the bandits attacking Yi were like an Earth Nation protection racket or something.
Kuvira: You've got a nice village here, Governor. It would be a shame if something... happened to it.
Governor of Yi: We don't need your help
["desperate" bandits who somehow have jeeps and an airplane attack Yi a lot]
Kuvira: What did I tell you, Governor?
Liberals trying not simp for fascist challenge (impossible)
Cringe comment.
@@AsymmetricalCrimes there has never historically been an example where liberals side with the left over the fascist that’s because they both follow the same economic system just one is open about hating every race gender and ethnicity expect straight males of the fascist and the other is like no we love our minorities any ways here is more cops beating you