How The Legend of Korra Restored Balance to Media Politics

And let’s not forget Varrick; a slimy capitalistic genius who represent Rand’s ideal of the intellectual master class upon which society relies for advancement. He’s the exact kind of character any story would love to have for a villain; greedy, arrogant, self-centered, ambitious. And awesome. Varrick is awesome. Arguably the most eccentrically charming character on a show full of eccentric charm. It takes style to take traditionally villainous character archetypes and make you love them and traditionally heroic ones and make them the bad guys.

The show’s ultimate message is one of responsibility to your fellow humans rather than to abstract ideals. As high and mighty as your morality may be, the end doesn’t justifies the means. Killing people to save them or enslaving them to set them free just doesn’t hold up philosophically or intellectually. True morality comes in the form treating other people with respect and dignity rather than doing awful things to them for their own good. There are no good or bad political philosophies; only good or bad deeds done in their name. Korra and her friends never adhered to any movement. They just did what was best for whatever people happened to be in need.

Lives are lived on an individual basis and trying to enforce blanket tactics to “make the world a better place” will not only accomplish the opposite of the stated goal, it’ll make you a bad person. Whether you’re a political leader enforcing order by keeping the lower classes down, a freedom fighter creating equality by assaulting the ruling class instead of lifting up the less privileged, an internet troll battling social justice warriors by harassing people online, a social justice warrior battling online harassment by harassing people online, a feminist Youtuber profiting off of the insecurities of the ignorant by attacking other peoples’ hobbies, or a cartoonishly indignant FOX News pundit doing the same thing it doesn’t matter what side you’re on. The only thing that matters is that you’re doing something wrong by at attempting to force your ideas on other people, regardless of what excuse you hide behind.

The Legend of Korra’s biggest strength in the end was in illustrating the moral corruption inherent in the extremes of any philosophy. The first season introduced us to Republic City, a corrupt democracy not unlike our own, and from there traveled across the political spectrum, showing us the positives and negatives intrinsic to each, and each teaching Korra a lesson, allowing her to grow and mature. The final verdict is that you can’t create perfect balance in a world so full of different people with different ways of thinking, but you can create balance within yourself through knowledge, experience, and discipline and use it do the right thing in any given situation without owing allegiance to any single ideology.

It kind of makes sense to me now, why Nickelodeon exiled the show. That channel makee its name with the kind of moronic, vacuous kiddie fare you use to keep your children out of your hair for a few hours. Legend of Korra was the real deal; you can’t even qualify it as a children’s programming. It didn’t rely on that Pixar/Dreamworks humor to keep adults interested (“Nice As…cot.” Get it, adults? WIIIINK!) by going over the kids’ heads. This show sailed over most adults’ heads.

It made me a little sad when Zhu Li responded to Varric’s classic invocation for her to “do the thing” with “I’m afraid there are no more things left to do” in the finale as our heroes faced impending doom, but it was a fitting statement. The Legend of Korra has done more things than any other show in terms of making a case for political sanity in a media environment where selfish childishness and judgementalism are the only acceptable points of view if you want to be heard. Maybe people didn’t get the message, but at least somebody out there was willing to try and deliver it in a show that never failed to entertain even as it tried to give us a deeper story.

The creators have thrown in the towel on the Avatar series as a television franchise and we should all be very sad about that. It was something that was frankly too damn good for the network that owned it. Things might have been different if it had been on Cartoon Network, but seven seasons of the kind of quality animated entertainment that seldom gets made outside of Japan is still nothing to sneeze at. For now, let’s just celebrate that something this good even got made in the first place, even if it got unfairly cut down.

There’s no more Avatar and we’ve ALL got to deal with it. And no, I’m not crying. My eyes are just waterbending…