Made for Children

These thoughts were written by Gabe, one of our 2020 summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

In my nigh-infinite free time brought on by being stuck inside my home for months, watching TV shows has been surprisingly absent from the repertoire of time spending. At least, it was until about a week ago, when I decided it was time to rewatch Avatar: The Last Airbender. I had watched the show in its entirety during its original run from 2005-2008, and 15 years after the premiere, I wanted to know if it was as good as I remembered it.

It was better.

This was, by all accounts, a “kid’s show”. Nickelodeon was known for a lot of things in the early-mid 2000s, but “adult programming” was not among them. Avatar’s main character, the titular “Last Airbender” is a boy named Aang, only 12, survivor of the entire genocide of his people. The oldest member of Team Avatar is 16, Zuko, the banished prince of the Fire Nation.

I’ve already written about how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq infiltrated video games. The truth is that the wars infiltrated everything. Avatar begins 100 years after the Fire Nation, in all its technological might, began a large-scale invasion of the rest of the world. The war is distinctly imperial in nature, and it’s justified by the leader of the Fire Nation declaring that they must share their prosperity with the rest of the world. That prosperity is first given in the form of The Airbender Genocide, an event so consequential, the Avatar timeline is marked from the year 0 AG (after genocide).

The Fire Nation immediately rewrites the history of the event. By 100 AG (the year Avatar takes place) the schools and generally accepted history is that the Fire Nation battled the “Air Nation Army”. It’s a blatant lie, the Air Nomads didn’t have a formal army, Aang points this out during that lesson (he was undercover with the rest of the team). He’s promptly shot down for even suggesting such an idea.

Of course Saddam had WMDs, why else would we have invaded Iraq?

Avatar tackles major issues. This is the show that invented the term Hamburger Anime, it had to tackle major issues if it was going to live up to the name. Japanese cultural products following World War II, especially anime, existed directly as an outlet to process trauma. Godzilla began as a meditation on nuclear weaponry. Classics like Akira or Neon Genesis Evangelion derived directly from a post-Hiroshima world. The question was easy to name, difficult, if not impossible, to answer: What the hell are we supposed to do next?

Avatar, at its core, attempts to wrestle with the same question. A century-long war, hundreds of thousands of refugees, chaos, espionage, distrust of authority, every piece was a mythologized reflection of what was happening in America in 2005. That’s a bold attempt for a TV-Y7 show, a “kid’s show”, yet I can’t name a show that so eloquently and successfully wrestled with that question.

Aang is the Avatar; he is the most-powerful person alive. Past Avatars have separated entire peninsulas into islands, rerouted entire volcanos, and Aang is no different. But being the Avatar is a secondary identity. Aang is a child, only twelve, and he is distinctly goofy. He looks out into the world, a world beset by war, a world suffering in ways difficult to imagine, and he refuses to lose hope. He is emotional, empathetic, and exists as an antithesis to the status quo. Even in the intense, four-part finale, Aang commits to his vow to never kill anyone. Throughout the series everyone, including his past lives, told him he would need to kill the Fire Lord to stop the war.

Aang refuses, and it is through the breaking of the cycle of death he can succeed and bring about the end of the war and peace back to earth. Avatar firmly states that death and destruction cannot be stopped by death and destruction, but rather radical love. It is Aang’s love and hope that acts as the font of his power. In one episode, Aang, in the process of aligning his seven chakras so he can control his Avatar State, refuses to align his final chakra, because doing so would require he give up the ones he loves. He essentially throws away the single greatest weapon he could possibly have because it’s such an affront to how he lives and what he believes.

Love is the engine which drives Avatar forwards; it is the core of the show’s morality. Character’s who do not love are both distinctly antagonistic and often punished. 

All of this in a show designed for children.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is 15 years old now. As lovely an experience as it was to return after so many years away, when I decided I would write this essay, I wanted to ensure I incorporated a show of and for today’s youth.

I came upon Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. It’s a delightful (and incredibly well received—both seasons have a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes) series that follows a thirteen-year-old girl named Kipo Oak on her quest to find her father after being forced to flee from her underground burrow and must explore the post-apocalyptic surface world ruled by mutated animals to find him. 

Writing for Polygon, Petrana Radulovic appreciated that beneath a standard fantasy exploration quest, the series is a “vibrant mosaic, with a unique world, multidimensional character relationships, and a deeper underlying plot” about the tensions between the mutated animals of the surface and the humans living below.

If Avatar is driven by love, then Kipo is driven by hope. It is Kipo’s unfailing hope in the humanity in every living creature, even those distinctly not human, that protects the group from danger and gives them opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have. One of Kipo’s first experiences on the surface, a place that by all accounts should kill her, is befriending a six-legged, four-eyed blue pig which she affectionately names Mandu.

Kipo’s first interaction with a human on the surface comes when she has to save Mandu from being eaten. The young, black girl, named Wolf for the wolfskin she wears as a cloak, acts initially as a foil for Kipo. Having spent her entire life on the surface, Wolf’s view is entirely cynical and individualistic, it needed to be; it was the only way to stay alive. Much like Aang’s refusal to kill the Fire Lord, Kipo’s refusal to fall into cynicism shatters the status quo and sets her team up to succeed in a way that humans couldn’t before.

This is to say nothing of how diverse the cast of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is. The two humans that Kipo travels with, Wolf and Benson, are both black. Benson is also gay, and his coming out is such a nonchalant event, happening in the middle of episode six. It’s treated as the nonconsequential event it should be, as impactful as saying “hey, my name is…” not some major revelation. Benson’s sexuality isn’t mentioned again until an episode where he gets a crush on another boy. It’s terribly refreshing: to have diverse characters whose diversity is not paraded around like photos in a college mailing. Their diversity is used to build the characters up and make them more rounded, more dynamic individuals.

Avatar shares a robust range of diversity in a similar way. Each of the four nations: Earth, Fire, Water, and Air, have distinct and beautiful cultures. The Water Tribes are based distinctly on the Inuit peoples, and the character design reflects that. Sokka and Katara are notably not white. The Air Nomads are structured around the Tibetan Buddhists, and the cultural traditions match closely. The Fire Nation is modeled after Japan, and the iconic Shinto architecture is visible in nearly all parts of the nation. The Earth Kingdom is modeled after China, and similarly to the Fire Nation, the architectural motifs are traditionally Chinese.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is ultimately, like all art, a product of its time. The anxieties and struggles the show tackles are those of 2005, but the execution is timeless. Twice as old as when I watched it the first time, my 2020 viewing of the show was filled with endless moments of revelation. Those revelations aided by Avatar’s dramatic return to my social media feeds and timelines.

Avatar, ultimately, is successful because it does not dwell on problems, rather it focuses on causes. Every episode is beset by problems, but the arcs of each season, and the arc of the series as a whole bend toward where those problems are coming from. The final battle of the show is silent, save the music. Aang’s and Fire Lord Ozai’s souls battle for dominance. It’s a duel between rage and love, and it will determine the future of the entire world.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is structured the same way, and is itself a product of its time. The show is built around an ideological battle: either humans and mutes will find a way to coexist peacefully on the surface, or they will tear themselves apart in ceaseless folly. Kipo herself is driven towards the former, often against even the members of her own group.

Yet Kipo is unfailing in her optimism in a world that should hate her in the same way that Aang is unfailing in his love in a world that wants him to kill. They are both revolutionary in a distinctly non-violent way. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts both wrestle with questions and issues that have yet to be totally answered. They do so in a way that is structured for children but executed so well that the TV-Y7 rating seems like a joke. How could this be just for kids?

The answer, of course, is that they aren’t. Both Avatar and Kipo hold within them all the pieces that make excellent entertainment, excellent media, and excellent art. Those are not, nor should they be, kept from anyone because of who the show is allegedly written for.

Avatar: The Last Airbender and Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts are both available to watch on Netflix. I can’t recommend them enough.