This is Bryan “Big Boy” Konietzko and Michael
Tortelini Dimartino, the creators of Avatar
Following the success of The Last Airbender Bryan and Michael set out to create a more
mature followup series that would introduce nuanced political themes
The only problem is
Mike and Bryan don’t understand political ideologies
Book 3 and 4 are what I think of as the better half of the Legend Of Korra, they were produced
simultaneously and Book 3 confidently sets up characters and ideas that don’t really
pay off until Book 4, by the time Book 2 wrapped up The Boys announced they would be doing
2 more seasons, and knew exactly when and how it would end, which can only benefit the
writing process, so let’s see if this allowed them to develop the political ideas in their
work a little further than they’d been able to do previously. This time around The Boys
revisit some of the ideas they touched on in Book 1. Questions of authority, of hierarchy.
Are these things justified? What actions are justified in response to finding yourself
at the bottom of a hierarchy? But their approach is slightly different this time.
The antagonists of book 3, the Red Lotus, set themselves apart from the other enemies
Korra faces throughout the series in two key ways. The first is that they are completely
transparent about their ideology. They explicitly state they are anarchists multiple times while
Amon, Unaloq, and Kuvira in season 4 require a little bit of exploration to understand
what kind of ideological gears are turning in their heads. The second distinctive quality
the Red Lotus has, is they mean it. Anarchy is not a convenient cloak for a quest to gain
power, these guys genuinely hold these beliefs. Zaheer, even in defeat, is still espousing
his ideals, he never cared about taking power for himself. He genuinely thinks the world
would be a better place for everyone if his plan to end all nations and governments succeeded.
The Boys, however, don’t agree. In previous seasons their go-to tactic to uhh “prove”
why someone’s ideas are wrong is to have them not genuinely believe in the ideals they
espouse. To be using communism or environmentalism or what have you to give an air of legitimacy
for their personal petty vengeance or hunger for power. When The Boys don’t do that,
when they write an antagonist with actual integrity, who believes the things they say,
their only other option if they require that antagonist to be Wrong, is simple. Their ideas
need to be dumb as shit.
If you think Henry Rollins here sounds like a 14 year old boy who just discovered Black
Flag and thinks this anarchy thing is pretty cool, whatever it is. Well it’s because
he does. But before we dive into that, we should understand the status quo that these
anarchists are fighting against in the first place.
When the gang arrive in Ba Sing Sei they see a city divided by a rigid class system. Literally,
there’s giant stone walls segregating the city into the Outer, Middle, and Inner ring.
The inner ring is a beautiful landscape of palaces and gardens while the outer ring is
a deeply impoverished slum where massive families cram into small, poor quality homes, and fruit
stands sell rotting produce. This is meant to be shocking and a contributory factor to
the Evilness of the Earth Queen, who is written to be deeply unsympathetic.
But does Republic City not have an underground shanty town full of homeless people? When
the gang discovers it in season 1 it’s made out to be almost idyllic. The one resident
we meet is cartoonishly happy go lucky and even expounds how tolerant and equal everyone
is down there. What is bad under monarchy becomes good under liberal democracy and capitalism.
Or at the very least it becomes an acceptable price to pay.
Or how about when the Queen drafts the air benders into her army, something clearly depicted
as terrible, as tantamount to kidnapping. As if the real world parallel of the United
Republic has never had a draft before? From the perspective of The Boys: We’ve agreed
the absolute rule of monarchs is unacceptable. This means they are able to criticise monarchy
in a way that they seem to suddenly become blind to the moment the object of said criticism
becomes a system more akin to the one they live in. It’s a blind spot you notice a
lot throughout the series, as we’ve touched on before.
And we only know about the underground shanty town beneath Republic City or the impoverished
slums in the Outer Ring of Ba Sing Sei because our protagonists visit them. But the way they
interact with these places is telling. They rarely have much to say about the incredible
poverty around them, and they certainly don’t discuss these economic circumstances or the
system that designed them with the people who live in these places. They’re more than
happy to forget about them and hang out in mansions and palaces.
But you know who we never see in the shanty town or the outer ring? You know who we never
ONCE see having a conversation with a normal person, with a worker or a peasant or an otherwise
oppressed member of society? The Red Fucking Lotus. Zaheer’s entire plan to liberate
the people and bring about a non-authoritarian anarchist society is to never interact with
the people, to turn up and assassinate the Queen, President, whoever, and then announce
over the radio “there you go, fuckinnnn figure it out my dudes” and then just leave.
Throughout history, kings and queens were assassinated or otherwise died unexpectedly
all the time. You know what generally happened? Their successor would take the throne, and
the power structure would carry on.
In fact at the beginning of season 4 Prince Wu was set to do EXACTLY that. And he would
have, if not for Kuvira taking advantage of the instability and the power vacuum caused
by the assassination. You know, the vacuum, that great void where an organised working
class movement should have been. Whoopsie.
So with all that in mind what was the point of killing the Earth Queen?
Do The Boys think that an individual leader IS the system? IS the government?
A mindset that might have you thinking all the terrible things that have happened under
the Trump administration are unique to Donald Trump with no thought to a system and a culture
that permitted these things to begin with. Trapping you in the mentality that if we can
just beat The Bad Man everything will be Good Again.
At first I thought they simply wanted to depict Zaheer as thinking that way, to show that
he doesn’t understand how power can be systemic, rather than held by individuals alone. But
the second he announces the Queen is dead, the people begin to riot, loot, and burn their
city. Apparently all the super powered guards disappear with the queen? Apparently the people
suddenly stop fearing for their safety and family and begin doing all sorts of violent
shit the second the leader dies? Why? Do The Boys think this happened whenever a monarch
died? Most people likely didn’t even think that much about it, like when a new president
is elected it just means a new monarch will be crowned shortly. Literally nothing changes.
And what a high opinion of The People The Boys seem to have, as soon as the status quo
is disrupted in any way they immediately set fire to the place. Again… Why?
This is presented as exactly what Zaheer expected to happen. With all his weird poetry about
chaos being the natural order we can assume this is in no way a surprise to him. But here’s
the problem. That’s not what anarchists think.
Anarchists don’t think the concept of chaos will magically fix society's problems. I don’t
think.. Anyone believes that. That’s not a real political position that anyone has.
The Boys have crafted a perfectly ridiculous strawman that communicates a clear message:
the people questioning the status quo, challenging the hierarchies that exist in our society,
don’t have a real plan, and haven’t thought this through.
Anarchists believe that capitalism and private property not only inhibit the freedom of the
vast majority of people but cause them needless social and economic hardship. And this system
is enforced by the state, which must be done away with or radically transformed to accomodate
a more equitable society. And that doesn’t mean everyone gets paid the same and shares
a toothbrush, it means people have common ownership of the means of production, of property.
Anarchy is at its core about democratic control of the things we need to keep society running
which are currently in the hands of a wealthy ruling class who is able to dictate their
will unto us in a distinctly top-down way. In a hierarchy.
In order to achieve this kind of world, you would need to elevate the class consciousness
of the people dramatically. People are not used to having this kind of control over society,
over their own destiny. We are still trapped in a mindset of looking to leaders for guidance
in a way that makes many of us averse to this kind of system. And that’s not a personal
shortcoming, it’s the result of the environment we live in. We have very little control over
our environment, even if we’re sold an idea of independence that is entirely superficial,
so many of us are trapped in jobs where even out bathroom breaks are controlled, we’re
conditioned to not have autonomy. This means education and organising with other working
class people or peasants in this case has to be at the FOREFRONT of any anarchist’s
plan to transform society, and indeed any mass movement that wants to succeed.
But Zaheer and the Red Lotus don’t do that. They don’t educate people, they don’t
build solidarity and confidence in these oppressed communities, they turn up from out of town
and off their leader. Their so called revolution has no involvement from the people. We don’t
even know to what degree people disagree with the status quo, because nobody ever asks them.
These “anarchists” who claim to be liberating the people without ever engaging with them
are delivering a distinctly Top Down revolution. There was never any way this could go other
than a new ruler coming in to take the throne because they built nothing, they planned nothing.
The people had no idea what to do when the system was suddenly pulled out from under
them because they didn’t even know it was happening.
Pick any country in the world. Do you think if you went and eliminated whoever was in
charge and sent out a message to all the people to Just Do An Anarchy Now that they’d do
it? Or would they regard you as some weirdo terrorist and ignore you. There is no revolution
without the people, you cannot build a world where things are collectively owned and operated
without collective action. Anyone who knew even the first thing about what anarchists
actually want and believe could tell you that. But The Boys decided the vague and inaccurate
notion of anarchist politics that I have to imagine they got from watching The Dark Knight
would suffice for exploring the ideological opposition to authority.
The Boys are so deep in the ideological framework of Capitalist Realism that they can’t even
imagine an anarchist revolution that isn’t Top Down. That isn’t being thrust upon the
people without their consent or involvement, by a few Great Men.
And what’s more, they have a weird focus on the individualist aspects of anarchy. At
one point Zaheer says this.
Even your more individualist anarchists understand COLLECTIVE POWER as the key to individual
liberation. I was confused when Zaheer came out with this highly conservative “I just
gotta look after me and mine” sentiment, but then it hit me. The Boys don’t know
the difference between anarcho communism and anarcho capitalism. Once you come to that
realisation it all starts to make sense. Of course they weren’t doing real revolutionary
work, of course they had no concept of class consciousness or building power among the
people. They’re a freaky mishmash of left and right. And the only thing ancoms and ancaps
really have in common is an opposition to the state, supposedly.
But with that in mind, of COURSE Zaheer’s ideology boils down to Chaos Reigns. When
you strip away all the actual substance of anarchy until there’s nothing left but an
opposition to authority, to states and heirarchy, you’ll find you’ve stripped away the REASONS
that anarchists are opposed to these things. Leaving nothing but a lifeless husk of an
ideology. One that is easily dismissed as juvenile, and misguided.
But simply having a poorly thought out ideology isn’t quite enough to make The Red Lotus
as villainous as we need them to be. They also do a lot of very bizarre things that
don’t really gel with their anarchist philosophy. Like when they threaten to commit a second
air nomad genocide to get to the Avatar. Or when they gratuitously torture Korra in a
scene that I can only describe as grossly fetishistic and I think The Boys have some
explaining to do.
Matter of fact have you noticed that Amon and Zaheer are portrayed as more frightening
than any of the other antagonists Korra faces? That the distinctly anti oppression guys give
her nightmares and torture her until she looks like this, something no other foes she faces
even come close to. Now on your first watch you might not have noticed that pattern…
but your brain did.
Anarchy is foolish. Idealistic. Dangerous. The problems of Ba Sing Sei are very real
but the answer is not to radically change the system. It’s to have those same problems
but enforced by elected representatives instead of hereditary leaders. What a coincidence
that the solution happens to be the system The Boys live in today. Once again, the status
quo is untouched, even when the text itself tells us liberal democracy does NOT solve
these problems. What message can we take from The Legend Of Korra other than a clear statement
that these problems CAN’T be solved. That we CAN’T prevent homelessness and starvation.
That we just have to accept things the way they are and hope we can vote in a good guy
next time who will slightly lessen the burden, until the next election at least.
After all, It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.