So that one thing

[jlh]

I know this is, for many, a pointless request to make of an SF-F or action/adventure genre canon, but I'm not a genre fan, so I feel okay pushing for the next level. This isn't a diss on Avatar by any means, just something that felt missing, that occurred to me after a few days of thinking about the finale.

I wish there had been important older women. I wish that all the mother figures hadn't either died/disappeared in sacrifice for their children (which no fathers did, except sort-of Aang's) or were useless in the face of the father's rules, like Toph's mother. I wish that at least one of the White Lotus had been a woman. I wish that at least one of the older mentors we encountered was a woman. I wish there had been a woman to balance out that poor insane water bender who taught Katara to blood bend, just as there were so many young women to balance Azula. I wish it hadn't been Katara who was driven to avenge their mom, but Sokka who was driven to find their dad. We have such a variety of younger women, and a heritage of female avatars. What happened to the older women?

Comments

[foxysquid.livejournal.com]

Yes--I was actually discussing that with a friend of mine. That is something that struck me, too, and it was underscored by finally seeing the members of the Order of the White Lotus standing together. It was an issue I had thought about before, but that made it even more conspicuous. Even Yue's mom was dead!

It reminds me a little of the Disney movies (the older ones, especially) and their absentee mother syndrome. Dead (or just gone) and inspirational!

A lot of genres certainly have room for more strong older women.

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

A lot of genres certainly have room for more strong older women.

Here here!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I definitely noticed that too. It sneaks up on you, because all the people in that scene had been there throughout, so the obvious response is, "There weren't any because there weren't any older female mentors before...oh, wait. Why weren't there any older female mentors?"

I remember how a lot of the great female characters we see weren't there originally because the guys started out creating guy characters as defaults, and it seems like just nobody thought to challenge the older characters the same way.

I mean, for some of them you can see why it happened that way. There were a lot of boys who wanted male role models. Sokka, for instance, wanted a male master because he had the whole missing father thing. Iroh was Iroh. Pakku was sexist to begin with. But they didn't all have to be men. It was actually *weird* that they were all men given the balance of the rest of the show.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Why is it okay for the boys to get male role models but the girls to not have any female role models, especially since more mothers were actually absent than fathers? After all, Sokka and Katara are the only characters with a good and living dad; he's just not physically present. Why couldn't Katara have had a female master? I know why in the context of the show, but why did they make those decisions? Why didn't we see one aging Kyoshi warrior, especially as they didn't participate in the war until Suki decided they should, so they wouldn't have been decimated by that? I think you're right that nobody thought to change the older characters, but I wish they had. I think seeing older female role models is just as important as seeing younger female warriors, and maybe even more so because it implies that like the men, you can have a life, maybe a family, and not have to give up being badass.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Exactly--It really seems like with the boys they just automatically thought okay, they need male role models. And then for Katara when she wanted a master they went with Katara having to fight for it because it's a guy who doesn't think girls should fight.

Her female master, as you pointed out, is a total dark figure. Not that Katara doesn't follow her at all--in SR she's bloodbending (and gee, how female is that with the blood bending once a month...).

But it seems like they totally went with the structure that mother/female=early life and father/male=adolescence, doesn't it? Zuko and Katara and Sokka's mothers all sacrificed for them when they were little kids so that they could grow up so they were gone by the time they were teenagers. I wouldn't be surprised if that's partly the reason for it, that they're unthinkingly associating female guidance with younger life, but of course for girls especially that's just not the case.

Ironically, one of the only hints we get of that is that when Azula is going crazy and is left alone it's her mother she hallucinates coming to give her advice. (Beginning with a very female opening at a female moment: What a shame. You always had such beautiful hair.)

I know the writers talked about Azula being crazy because of her mother, but I wonder if that relationship is worth exploring deeper...

[kittyjimjams.livejournal.com]

I know the writers talked about Azula being crazy because of her mother

Did they? Oooh, you wouldn't have a link, would you? I would be REALLY interested to read that. I have to admit to being slightly flummoxed by Ursa as a character, who's the perfect mother to Zuko but also produced a child as damaged as Azula. I wish we had met her and found out.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I know they were asked about her in the interview at the end of the book and that's where I read it...now I'm trying to find the exact quote...

Q: Is Azula really as evil as she seems? Or is there more to her?

M: As with all the Avatar characters, even Azula has a softer side, though it’s buried very deep. As “The Beach” and “Sozin’s Comet” showed, she has a lot of unresolved issues with her mother. She really feels that her mother didn’t love her as much as Zuko, and this drives her crazy, literally.

B: There are obviously some truly evil people in the world, but in the case of Azula, her repressed emotions and jealousies corroded her spirit and made her become that way. It is possible that she could have turned out better in a healthier environment, but growing up in the royal family of a nation seeking world domination proved to exacerbate her problems. But Zuko and Katara spared her life, and who knows, she might have a chance to heal.

[kittyjimjams.livejournal.com]

Oh, well that's pretty vague - but still interesting! Cheers for looking it up for me. :)

[calloocallay.livejournal.com]

I guess. It didn't really surprise me, though. It had been hundreds of yoeuars since a female avatar, it seemed like the soldier groups in all the kingdoms were male, and there were a lot of "dealing with sexism" parts, like with Katara insisting on learning waterbending up north and Toph's dad's overprotective dad bit. Assuming that Kyoshi warriors don't usually live to be old, I assumed the lack of badass old ladies and the presence of badass young ladies was part of the world-building. I believe pretty firmly that Katara and Toph and Mai and Tai-Ly and Suki will all grow old in a bad-ass manner, and as I commented on Friday, it wouldn't surprise me if Toph was inducted into the White Lotus Tea Club.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

This is why I said: I know this is, for many, a pointless request to make of an SF-F or action/adventure genre canon and This isn't a diss on Avatar by any means and framed my musings as "I wish." I'm not sure why the male warriors lived to be old and no female warriors did, but again, I know that I'm not as knowledgeable about or as comfortable with SF-F genre conventions, which is why I don't generally critique anything within SF-F. I didn't mean it as a criticism, but just as something that I thought of at the end that I would have liked to see as part of the universe, though I understand that it is an unreasonable request.