When I search for personal role models, I think of my childhood pediatrician, a bespectacled woman with sandy-brown hair and a cookies-on-Christmas-morning smile. She was a phenomenal doctor, but more importantly, she saw intelligence in children she worked with. She spoke to me in the language of pathology —inflammation, antibody response, programmed cell death, and never gave me the cloying superiority that I received from most adults.
That same respect led me to watch Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and its sequel, "The Legend of Korra." On the surface, both series follow a tried-and-true plotline: the hero learns skills from various side characters in order to defeat a power-hungry Big Bad. However, the writing of ATLA and Korra has a remarkable quality that most children's media lacks—respect for the viewer's intellect. The writers explore many of the same themes often reserved for more "adult" shows like "Grey's Anatomy" or "Suits." Instead of gimmicks involving canines with blogs, ATLA and Korra ask questions: What are the different types of love that a person can feel, and how does love drive people to act in healthy or damaging ways? Is it right to protect people against their will for their own good? Why does revenge have a cyclical nature? As Korra enters its final season, I would like to explore some of the lessons that I've learned from the two shows.
1. Running away from problems never solves them.
Aang, the first series' hero, comes into the show frozen in an iceberg. Over the course of the first season, we come to learn how he ran away from home in order to avoid his responsibilities as a spiritual leader, and and the full consequences of his actions: We see families torn apart, people murdered, and evidence of genocide as a result of his irresponsibility. Too much carnage for childhood innocence? Probably not. Careful storytelling on DiMartino and Konietzko's part manages to show the long term effects of these violent incidents on families and communities, without plunging children into scenes of bloodshed.
2. People grieve, and that's OK.
Death plays an interesting role in children's media. Many television shows opt to avoid the subject of death entirely. ATLA chooses the opposite, showing, for instance, the death of a central character's son. The character's grief destroys him. He abandons his military career and, in many ways, never stops mourning. The focus on the topic of grief produces perhaps the most powerful moment in the entire show. DiMartino and Konietzko realize that all children eventually confront death, often before reaching adulthood (whether it's the death of a pet or of a family member), and he knows that they are mature enough to understand such an "adult concept." The character picks himself up and moves on with his life. So will the viewers.
3. Your destiny is your own. Always.
Perhaps because she comes closer in age than her predecessor to teenagers and college students, Korra more clearly relates with them in sense of being pulled in many directions by multiple influences. At one moment, she's trying her hardest to keep up with the harsh demands of her mentor, at the next, pulled into propaganda schemes by a multitude of politicians or doing her best to fit in with the people her own age. Small wonder many fans are teenagers—Korra's constantly asked in gestures, actions, and words, "What are you doing with your life?" What I find remarkable is that she usually lacks a concrete answer. She doesn't know. But she'll follow what her instincts tell her, and they usually lead her in the right direction.
Once every couple of years, I find a children's cartoon that concerns itself with the human condition, unlike shows that serve as marketing vehicles for card games (I'm looking at you, "Yu-Gi-Oh.") Behind the smokescreen of martial arts and firebending, DiMartino and Konietzko do just that—they ask the big questions of the little people.
Kevin Vo is a junior in Columbia College. He knows a limited amount of Tai Chi Chuan. This means, of course, that he'd be a waterbender. He has his blue fur coat ready.
