Reflection and Analysis

Avatar: Live Action Got Katara Wrong? (10/15/2024)

I'm restless right now and found an article on Salon called "'Avatar: The Last Airbender' gets Katara all wrong to make amends with the show's past sexism" by Nardos Haile, a female writer. I suspect that's the case with all the writers for this publication. This particular article starts off with the following paragraph.

"As a child, I always saw myself in Katara from She was stubborn, loudmouthed, questioned authority, and had an overbearing, sexist brother who pushed her buttons. Oh yeah — she was also a badass water-bender who can manipulate water with her hands and mind."

And this is the paragraph-- I didn't even get past the first paragraph and decided to write a reflection on this one. The first thing popping into my head is that Katara and Sokka are still these things, minus her brother being sexist. Well, let's say I've got some questions regarding the words loudmouthed being used here. But my question is, why does no, did Sokka have to remain sexist?

I mean, is it that important to present the men of the various native tribes in the Americas as being sexist by having both tribes presented within the live-action series feature cultures that are sexist towards females? Isn't that the perspective of two white-men (Bryce -- Bryan, and Michael, the ones who made the series pitch) looking in at a non-white culture and interpreting it from the perspective of two white-men with a savior complex towards the Indigenous people?

Here, I admit that I used quite strong words here, but there is no skirting around the fact that in LoK and the comics (which were done to retcon things for LoK) crossed some lines, such as having the water tribes assimilate the culture of two-white men, such as voting their chieftain in, or even forming colonies as if they were the European people first discovered the Americas.

Let's make it clear here that the Southern Water tribe is not a colony of the Northern Water tribe, that the idea that it is is a retcon that served the narrative purpose of taking away Katara's princess equivalent status and shifting it onto Korra just so Korra could be the princess of both tribes from a narrative point of view, so that Korra could be a better strong female than Katara was, completely missing what makes a female character be a strong female character.

But then, this writer points out that Katara is loudmouthed in this same paragraph we're discussing, which is a significant cringe on the writer's part. Now, I think the article's writer intended loudmouthed to be a positive trait, and if the writer means this, Katara is still this kind of character who speaks her mind. Which, of course, leads to the first problem of using the words loudmouthed instead of saying "speaks her mind", or any other way of saying that which didn't come across as a negative trait.

The other problem is this is contrasted against the following sentence, a sentence that linguistically parallels the first, with three words being applied to each sibling saying this is who they were. Loudmouth in turn is the middle of these three words just as sexist is for Katara's brother Sokka, thus giving the feeling of the word having a negative connotation.

I'd love to believe this was deliberate, although the use of words later on that were obviously not carefully picked by the writer makes me question this. Even if it were deliberate, I can't give the writer a pat on the back, as there is that negative connotation of Katara being an "annoying loudmouth" in the same way Sokka is an "annoying sexist" in the original, the point I'm making here being that the reason Katara was "loudmouth" and Sokka "sexist" wasn't for any narrative purpose other than to make them annoy.

And by loudmouth, I mean the bossy know-it-all type that got Hermione Granger disliked upon her introduction in the Harry Potter series that she ended up growing out of, that was never there as the first impression of Katara, but conveniently showed up whenever Katara needed to be put in her place just like Sokka's sexism was conveniently there whenever he needed to be put in his place, but in Sokka's case it was often to make him the brunt of some laugh with Katara either not being the case, or less so.