About Avatar: The Last Airbender

[james_davis_nicoll]

Over in soc.history.what-if, Doug M. says I have to point out that while the /world/ of Avatar is very Asian influenced (and in a charmingly syncretic way...love that Balinese monkey chant), the ethnicity of the characters is quite deliberately blurred. Ang has pale skin, brown eyes, and vaguely Caucasian features; Saka and Kitara have olive skin, vaguely Asian features, and blue eyes. Zuko and the other Fire Nation characters tend to look Northeast Asian, but their eyes are usually orange, red or gold. In fact, this was one of the fun aspects of the series; the various "tribes" were to some extent racially distinct, but in ways that didn't map to here-and-now ethnic groups.

I have not seen Avatar but the above makes me want to track it down. I don't see any particular reason why the particular constellations of associated features in humans in secondary worlds would occur as they do in our world [1] if the histories of the worlds are distinct (and assuming we're not talking about a world crafted by some Dull God too uncreative to avoid blatant ethnological plagiarism).



1: A special stabbity-stabbity to all those authors who have secondary worlds with nations and ethnicities unlike our world's except for the gypsies, who apparently spring up like mushrooms everywhere even in worlds where their historical roots do not exist.

Comments

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[bwross.livejournal.com]

Avatar is really good. Especially for a NA show making use of anime styles... I think a good part of how they managed to get that to work (where so many have failed) is that they kept things straight. They didn't try to duplicate "wacky" anime stuff, instead they did things like take inspiration from works like Miyazaki. Not that there isn't humour (there's a lot of it), it's just that that part came more from themselves and not an obvious attempt to copy anime humour.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the ethnicity is totally blurred, though. Once you ignore the eye colour (which seems to be partially based on the element the tribe bends... Kitara is a water bender, Zuko is a fire bender), a lot of the blur is gone. For example, the Water tribes, which live at the poles, resemble the Inuit in look and dress. Water bending style, however, is clearly based off of Tai Chi (so there is that level of blur). In fact, each element's bending style is based off of a different marital art (with some room for exceptions... Toph is a non-standard earth bender based off of Mantis style).

Re: Would you let us know what you thought of it?

[(Anonymous)]

"Once you ignore the eye colour (which seems to be partially based on the element the tribe bends... Kitara is a water bender, Zuko is a fire bender), a lot of the blur is gone. For example, the Water tribes, which live at the poles, resemble the Inuit in look and dress."

-- except for the one water tribe that lives in the Great Swamp. They have grey or green eyes.

They also dress like South American Indians, with leaf hats and tattoos and all... while talking like L'il Abner and the Clampetts. "Whut ya reckon that thing is, Pa?" "Dinner."

Of all the weird mashups in Avatar, that one's my favorite.


Doug M.

Oh, my

[(Anonymous)]

It was just pointed out to me that:

1) the two named swamp-benders have Vietnamese names, Tho and Due; and

2) they are in homage to, not Li'l Abner or the Clampetts, but Bo and Duke Hazzard.


Doug M.

Re: Oh, my

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Hah. Seems to sort of fit, having twice in the past week been told about Vietnamese settling near the coast or swamps of Louisiana.