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Today I will complain about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SEXISM.
In the Girl Power Kills comments I was having a spoiler-ridden conversation with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kaigou about the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender and its treatment of Azula and Ozai. (You should read her whole first comment, because she makes some really interesting observations.) This is how it was going:
And my response was getting way too long! So I'm turning it into a post.
I agree that some of these choices were made because the ending was rushed. I mean, I absolutely don't believe that the writers of Avatar were consciously trying to create a storyline with the moral, "women should not wield political power." We can say with some confidence that this was not a group of people who would sit down at meetings and say, "So! How can we reinforce the patriarchy today?" And then they all brainstorm on the whiteboard. In the lower right-hand corner, someone has written, "maybe Vajazzle?"
I cannot rule this process out as a possible explanation for what goes on in Kubo Tite's studio - but the Avatar people probably weren't doing it. I think that there are very few big commercial kids' shows with better intentions than Avatar, and very, very few that carry them out so gracefully.
But the thing is that that's what stereotypes are - they're the things that people, even people with very good intentions, fall back on when they're in a hurry. And I think it shows in Avatar, because things did get iffier on the gender front in the final season. Like:
Also, on the racial front, the Water Tribe members aside from Sokka and Katara got less and less visible and important as the series went on.
And all these issues are caused by structural things within the narrative, and we justify them like this: "Well, the Water Tribe is geographically isolated, and Sokka and Katara had their plotlines early on, so now it's time to focus on the Fire Nation," or "Aang's the Avatar and Zuko's the Firelord's son, and Aang's going to fight the Firelord, so there's got to be a lot of focus on the manpain," or "Ursa's story is probably really awesome and they're planning on doing something with it later."
(There's no good reason the White Lotus Society's such a sausagefest - Kanna exists! So does Aunt Wu! - but you get the idea.)
We can come up with these justifications - but in the end, they're meaningless. Because the story's structure was not sent down from heaven set in stone and inviolable. Human beings wrote it, and every narrative reflects its writer's/writers' priorities and biases. I mean, if the writers had been more interested in the Water Tribe, they would've, say, set the final battle at the North Pole, because Ozai's evil plan is to melt the ice cap to destroy the Northern Water tribe and cause tsunamis to scare the coastal Earth Kingdom cities. Or, if they'd been more interested in Toph, they could have had her parents sell out to the Fire Nation on the condition that she be reprogrammed at Lake Laogai and sent home obedient, and she could have had her own big angsty family storyline in there. They could've scribbled a wig and boobs onto one of Roku's teachers.
There are a lot of things they could have done differently but didn't - because when you've got too many things on your plate, whether you mean to or not, sometimes your brain's going to default to the stereotypes. I don't want to pass judgment on the writers here - unlike (ahem cough) certain parties whom I may have been talking a lot about recently, I think that they were very sincere and trying their best, and that on the whole it shows.
But even in the rare cases like this - in which an artist not only had good intentions, was willing to do the work necessary to carry them out, and told a really, really good story while doing it - I think it's appropriate to be critical of the places where the story does mess up. I think that's appropriate anywhere but the writer's deathbed or birthday party. This is a principle I will defend until my dying day.
(So you people better not show up at my deathbed with that bullshit about how Mew and Mewtwo couldn't have a baby, because that goes AGAINST MY PRINCIPLES.)
kaigou about the finale of Avatar: The Last Airbender and its treatment of Azula and Ozai. (You should read her whole first comment, because she makes some really interesting observations.) This is how it was going:me: I think
In some ways, I think part of the difficulty with Azula is that the writers were so excited about having a female villain who is actually pretty freaking scary that they didn't really think through either the progression of bringing her down ("and then, uhm, Zuko will, uhm, DO something! right!") or realize just how compressed that come-down would end up being -- such that instead of seeming to be eaten up by paranoia, instead there's only like two episodes to go from capable and scary to complete nutcase.
But then, Avatar is one of those in which for all my other complaints, I'll still take it over just about anything else out there, because even with its flaws, it's one of the few that gets so much more right than say, oh, Bleach. *whistles nonchalantly*
And my response was getting way too long! So I'm turning it into a post.
I agree that some of these choices were made because the ending was rushed. I mean, I absolutely don't believe that the writers of Avatar were consciously trying to create a storyline with the moral, "women should not wield political power." We can say with some confidence that this was not a group of people who would sit down at meetings and say, "So! How can we reinforce the patriarchy today?" And then they all brainstorm on the whiteboard. In the lower right-hand corner, someone has written, "maybe Vajazzle?"
I cannot rule this process out as a possible explanation for what goes on in Kubo Tite's studio - but the Avatar people probably weren't doing it. I think that there are very few big commercial kids' shows with better intentions than Avatar, and very, very few that carry them out so gracefully.
But the thing is that that's what stereotypes are - they're the things that people, even people with very good intentions, fall back on when they're in a hurry. And I think it shows in Avatar, because things did get iffier on the gender front in the final season. Like:
- As previously discussed, Azula, upon finally becoming Firelord (I think we should call her Firelady), immediately loses her self-control and grip on reality. Her father Ozai, upon achieving his own goals, merely becomes more hardcore.
- "Where is Ursa?" This plotline never got resolved, which means we never found out what had happened to the single most important adult woman in the series. (Think how many important adult men there are in this show. Enough to - perhaps - form a secret club?) Because what we know about her comes from Zuko and Azula's flashbacks, we see Ursa entirely through the Woman in the Refrigerator lens; though we can guess from Zuko's memories that she made some sort of difficult choice the night she disappeared, we don't know what that choice was or why she made it. The only choice we think we can be sure of - because Zuko, in his more lucid moments, is sure of it - is Ozai's: that in one way or another, he decided to sacrifice his wife for power. This takes away Ursa's agency, making her the passive object of Ozai's manipulations, and Zuko and Azula's confused affections.
- None of the awesome secret society were women, because Men Wield Political Power.
- In the Roku flashback episode, none of Roku's teachers were women, because Martial Arts Masters Are Men.
- Toph, the protagonist who was neither 1) a guy, 2) stereotypically feminine, nor 3) involved in a romance, had very little character development at a time at which Aang, Katara, Zuko, and Sokka were all growing and changing.
- Edit: As pointed out by meganbmoore here: When Aang and Zuko get a Firebending power-up - the Dancing Dragon - they become better friends, learn more about their history, and are more in contact with nature. They learn it from a wise, kind old man.
When Sokka learns swordsmanship, it's good for his self-esteem and gains him entry into the Awesome Dude Secret Society. He learns from a wise, kind old man.
When Katara gets a Waterbending power-up, it's the deeply morally-ambiguous Blood-bending technique, which tempts her to abuse her power for revenge. She learns it from a deranged, genocidal old woman. She apparently eventually chooses to discard the technique as unethical.
(Toph's Metalbending was obviously excellent, but it was also a Season 2 development.)
Also, on the racial front, the Water Tribe members aside from Sokka and Katara got less and less visible and important as the series went on.
And all these issues are caused by structural things within the narrative, and we justify them like this: "Well, the Water Tribe is geographically isolated, and Sokka and Katara had their plotlines early on, so now it's time to focus on the Fire Nation," or "Aang's the Avatar and Zuko's the Firelord's son, and Aang's going to fight the Firelord, so there's got to be a lot of focus on the manpain," or "Ursa's story is probably really awesome and they're planning on doing something with it later."
(There's no good reason the White Lotus Society's such a sausagefest - Kanna exists! So does Aunt Wu! - but you get the idea.)
We can come up with these justifications - but in the end, they're meaningless. Because the story's structure was not sent down from heaven set in stone and inviolable. Human beings wrote it, and every narrative reflects its writer's/writers' priorities and biases. I mean, if the writers had been more interested in the Water Tribe, they would've, say, set the final battle at the North Pole, because Ozai's evil plan is to melt the ice cap to destroy the Northern Water tribe and cause tsunamis to scare the coastal Earth Kingdom cities. Or, if they'd been more interested in Toph, they could have had her parents sell out to the Fire Nation on the condition that she be reprogrammed at Lake Laogai and sent home obedient, and she could have had her own big angsty family storyline in there. They could've scribbled a wig and boobs onto one of Roku's teachers.
There are a lot of things they could have done differently but didn't - because when you've got too many things on your plate, whether you mean to or not, sometimes your brain's going to default to the stereotypes. I don't want to pass judgment on the writers here - unlike (ahem cough) certain parties whom I may have been talking a lot about recently, I think that they were very sincere and trying their best, and that on the whole it shows.
But even in the rare cases like this - in which an artist not only had good intentions, was willing to do the work necessary to carry them out, and told a really, really good story while doing it - I think it's appropriate to be critical of the places where the story does mess up. I think that's appropriate anywhere but the writer's deathbed or birthday party. This is a principle I will defend until my dying day.
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Urgh. I'd forgotten about that, why did you have to remind me? Yeah, it's skeevy that when Aang and Zuko power up, it puts them more in touch with nature and their roots and such, and it's a purely good thing; but when Katara powers up, it's a bad thing that tempts her to abuse it.
...okay, I'm adding this to the post, actually. YOU MADE ME DO IT.
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This could perhaps be seen as an aspect of the show's critique of the Fire Nation philosophy -- or rather, Ogai's philosophy -- that life is a zero-sum game and in order for one person to win, another has to lose. This is in contrast to the whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts credo that the Gaang embodies. Zuko and Azula were trapped from their childhood in a situation where it was not possible for both of them to win at the same time.
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This same pattern has recurred millions of times in millions of different stories. They almost all have some internal rationale for it that's not just "she was a woman, so she went nuts." ("The scientist who genetically engineered her messed up." "They had to get her pregnant somehow or else there's no heir to the throne. There are like thirty more books in this series!" "She symbolized East Germany.") After a while I think it kind of stops mattering what that internal rationale is.
I'm not sure it's appropriate to say that the show is a critique of someone-wins-someone-loses as a way of thinking about conflict - I mean, I think we were supposed to be pretty happy that Aang and co. won! I don't think we were supposed to be sad that everyone couldn't win, given that certain segments of everyone were genocidal maniacs.
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"Why is the computer doing this?"
"I SYMBOLIZE EAST GERMANY god what do you want from me.")
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Even though they were rushed, I don't have much mercy for them, especially since the entire arc of Season 3 was the question, "What do you do with people who cannot be bargained with?" - in a show for kids 7 and older. You can't put that question on the table without thinking damn hard about how you want to address it from the beginning- especially since we're talking animation here- you have to plan things out a lot more than a filmed tv show.
If they had set things up and ran them differently:
- Azula vs. Katara - gets blood bended into a prison cell/ cell made of earth ("Thanks Toph!")
- Azula vs. Zuko - Missing Mom shows up as super bender to stop Azula (Deus ex machina, but hey, we still get the mom.)
- Fight gets taken into the spirit world. Azula gets taken out or trapped (huh, Ursa maybe?)
- Azula vs. Aang- Roku manifests and stops Azula by out firebending her
- Azula vs. Iroh - I'm sure Iroh had something in mind. Maybe he's learned some bending-blocking pressure points from White Lotus?
- The Water nation had the big sea and moon spirits at their city in the North- what if the Fire nation had some kind of spirit for the sun living in their nation? What happens when it gets pissed and manifests? Under the comet?
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I was seriously hoping that this would happen.
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(Anonymous) 2011-07-12 12:49 am (UTC)(link)no subject
I have heard the creators of ATLA recently have said they held off on revealing what happened to Ursa because they were "waiting for the right story to tell it in" (not that this excuses much: I also recall RDM and co. saying the same thing about including gay characters in BSG, and then the following season including two explicitly gay characters just to say they were both psychotic, unfit for command, and needed to die for the sake of everyone else's survival), and that there's been some buzz they may be doing an animated movie or two to follow on from the series. It's my fervent hope, if this happens, that a major part of that story also involve Azula's rehabilitation and/or recovery, because ending her story like that is majorly unsatisfying and frustrating.
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+1. If they do continue the story somehow, there's no way they can leave Azula where she is. I will not allow it.
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(Anonymous) 2011-07-12 12:53 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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So I can't really get outraged about her lousy ending, although I acknowledge it as being part of a larger trend in the writing.
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That weirdness about Ty Lee and Mai's motives is definitely the sort of thing that bugs me. Part of why I particularly object to her ending is that you can totally make these sorts of omnipotent villains screw themselves over in ways that make sense in their own context. (Given that it is impossible for them to make sense within the context of reality!) Magus from Chrono Trigger is my favorite example of this. Both before he messes up and after, I think his behavior is pretty consistent within its own absurd parameters. Professor Nova from Battle Angel Alita goes through self-destruct and rebuilding cycles something like six times, but he's always the same shallow, ridiculous character.
Whereas the laws governing Azula's behavior aren't consistent - socially incompetent party-goer Azula is not the same character as evil childhood flashback Azula, who is definitely not the same character as Crazula. Her losing her grip is not only part of a sexist pattern, it doesn't even make sense within the story.
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(Anonymous) 2010-03-21 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)The granddaughter of the previous Avatar would have been a good member of the White Lotus amiright? The way I see it, she's more qualified than a pre-epiphany Iroh.
Also, the White Lotus...in addition to them all being dudes, I was really bothered by Katara's step-grandad being a member. All the others were notable for thinking outside the bun wrt their cultural traditions. He was notable for being a massive sexist who was bitter about getting dumped. Grangran, and her ability to duck an engagement to run for another hemisphere seemed more likely.
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True. I totally can't see Iroh getting along with that guy! Iroh and Bumi would be singing something inappropriate, and he'd be all sitting with his arms crossed and glaring. Where I can see Grangran getting along with these guys - particularly Jeong Jeong, I think.
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They did a wonderful job with creating powerful and interesting young adults, but the girls have no one in terms of role models. I guess you could argue Kyoshi, but she was dead. On the other hand, the boys have a lot of older adult male mentors. Who do these kick-ass females grow up to be?
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What I find interesting is Azula's case. During the finale we see her start to lose control of herself, but I think we see her become powerless, too. She's made Fire Lord (or is about to be made Fire Lord), but under the ~Phoenix King~ that isn't going to mean much. After that decision (of Ozai's) we see Azula suddenly worrying about assassins and berating her attendants about health and safety. For the first time in the whole series, I think, she implies she wouldn't be able to do something. Does anyone really think Azula couldn't kick an assassin's ass within about three seconds?
Obviously a big part of this is trust, since she's been betrayed by Ty Lee and Mai, but she attacked the Air Temple without any problems, and she was set to go out and be a crazy genocidal badass with her father - until he made her indefinite babysitter of a mostly-obedient population. No more hunting down traitors or commanding commanders with giant drills or staging coups. I think it's powerlessness that drives Azula up the wall. The rug gets pulled out from under her feet entirely.
ANYWAY. This isn't to say that I don't have problems with the writing/plotlines for a lot of the other girls, or the horrible lack of kick-ass women. But one way of looking at Azula's story (and honestly, I hadn't really thought about others until I read the other post last night, so this could all just be MASSIVE PROJECTING) is an interesting deviation from the power-sends-women-mad trope. It's just sad that it still ends up with a kickass woman crying and writhing on the floor.
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Ehh. She's in charge of the country. I really don't think you can argue that that somehow makes her less powerful. And it's not like Ozai said, "Well, now that you're Firelord, you'll have to stay in the palace all the time and make SERIOUS DECISIONS. Send me status reports every day. Walk the dog. Keep your room clean. NO RAMPAGING." Ozai said, "I'm leaving. Here are the keys." He didn't care what she did.
I think you could argue that, if Azula wanted to be a responsible Firelord, her freedom would have been curtailed, because she would have been too busy with statecraft to go off on a rampage whenever she felt like it - but that's a totally different thing from being powerless. And Azula wouldn't be a responsible Firelord anyway. She thinks that a country exists to serve its sovereign, not vice-versa.
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I think maybe it's an exhaustion, too, of all the times popular media has let me down, that when someone gets as much right, storytelling-wise, as Avatar did, it can be hard not to cheer despite its flaws. As opposed to ignoring its flaws, which no can do, but cheering despite that... well, I'm willing to cheer if it makes someone else get the idea that there'd be even more cheering for the story that gets even more right.
that said, here is small part of reaction, because I have shellac drying and need to get back to shelf-building:
(Toph's Metalbending was obviously excellent, but it was also a Season 2 development.)
Regardless of when it was, I think the important detail is to compare it to the others in terms of a pattern. Unlike all the rest, Toph learns her skill in adversity (when it's all right there on the line with actual stakes, compared to Zuko/Aang learning as preventative), and she teaches it to herself, no master required. She's the only one of them who ramps her power up entirely on her own. In some ways, I think that's why the lack of angst actually works in her favor, along with playing against the Poor Little Disabled Girl stereotype.
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(The reason I'm not talking about Toph's Metalbending here is that this post's thesis is basically, "SOME BITS OF SEASON THREE MADE ME SAD WAHHH." The first two seasons were in general excellent on gender stuff - I do not dispute that.)
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Although I have quibbles with some of the specifics for each (some of which align with what you mentioned), I can see how the writerly method might have gone. It's almost like the ideas might've been planned out in context of "what are the different ways a kid can learn, so we can show that each style has value?" and then a style assigned to each character in the planning.
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In addition to the "once she gets power (independent from her father's orders) she goes crazy" one of the things that bothered me about Azula's descent was the desertion of her friends. I get that there are plot reasons for Mei to leave (I choose my boyfriend over my best friend! gag) and it's been a long time since I've seen Avatar so I don't really remember why Ty Lee left, but their interaction was an awesome counterpoint to the Avatar Gang and I was sad to see the idea that women simply can't get along by themselves shot to hell (again).
Do we really need another example of women (albeit young women) not being able to sustain a friendship that excludes men? It just reinforces the idea that women are catty and horrible to each other, and without men in the group, would never be able to get anything done. The Kiyoshi warriors are an obvious counter-example, but look how they got sidelined as soon as Sokka started getting more badass!
Also, East Germany?!
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Second reply (and if I keep thinking of things to reply, I may just have to do a post and we can hold a cross-journal dialogue or something) -- I can't recall now where I was reading someone's reviews/critiques of the series, but the reviewer made the observation that there's an interesting message in Aang's learning path versus Katara's. That is, that Aang is the Avatar, so has the potential to master all four form, while Katara will always be limited to water -- but her ability with water does eventually outstrip his (in the series), even though he's the avatar. That's because, the reviewer noted, Katara is shown working her ass off to gain her skills, while Aang is more likely to goof off. The underlying message there is that when it comes to someone who works hard and practices, that person can surpass even those who supposedly have an 'innate' skill.
(It also makes me wonder if the Aang/Katara skill contrast is in some way a finger-flip at Naruto, where if the story truly had a message of "hard work will get you to the top!" then the hero of the story would actually be Rock Lee, and not any of the supercharged chi-genius kids running around -- because Katara and Rock Lee are cut from very similar cloth, in some ways.)
I bring that up because it wasn't until I rewatched Avatar that I could set aside the "uh, what's happening now?" to actually watch as it happened. So didn't notice this until the second time around, that Sokka goes to find his master, talks himself into the student position... and then we see montage of calligraphy, some sword practice, painting landscapes, more sword practice, blah blah blah.
And then the master says, "that's pretty good for your first day."
Me: first WHAT? Like HELL!
Makes me wonder if any of the kids noticed, since analytical skills not the best for the average kid, especially when the story presents a pressing reason for the time-crunch, that the solar eclipse is in only three days, something like that. So, of course (I can see a kid's brain saying) naturally Sokka has to learn all this in three days, but he's good, he can! I mean it's a subtle thing, and I'm not sure the writers would even have realized, given how they're pretty workmanlike in most parts.
But the message under there is pretty clear: Katara has to practice, practice, practice, even go so far as to steal a text to learn more, has to argue with the Northern water tribe guy to be taught, and then lots more practice. Meanwhile, Sokka walks in, lies about who he is, and the entire education isn't just handed to him on a platter -- he's able to take it in and come damn close to mastering it within a two-day span. Wow, must be awfully nice, to be a boy.
The only place the writers get any credit in that segment is that Sokka still couldn't beat the master, so it's not like they turn him into 100% wonderboy... just 95% wonderboy. Not entirely certain that really makes it any better.
(For that matter, yes, he's given the coin for the Awesome Dude thing, but isn't told about it, and seems to pretty much dismiss the game piece as some kind of weird parting gift. Without Zuko's interaction with the same group, it would've been a major plothole if Sokka had somehow instinctively known to call on the group's help despite no instructions. But he didn't, and when he did meet the group, there wasn't any indication he had any clue of the connection between the game piece, his master, and the group.)
Also, again watching the first time, I registered the lack o' women in the ADSS, but wrote it off to me not catching everything. Only on rewatching did I realize that it wasn't me, there really weren't any women making an appearance... and then, yeah, I was gnashing my teeth, too. Would it really have been that hard to just draw an equal number of women, even if those ended up being NPCs?
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But even in the rare cases like this - in which an artist not only had good intentions, was willing to do the work necessary to carry them out, and told a really, really good story while doing it - I think it's appropriate to be critical of the places where the story does mess up. I think that's appropriate anywhere but the writer's deathbed or birthday party. This is a principle I will defend until my dying day.
I know I'm late to the party, but I just wanted to say: Yes. This. At times I can be especially critical of the books or movies that I love because I know that the stereotypical tropes that are used so often and yet overlooked and the narratives that are buried or ignored are reflections of real people's biases to the detriment of real people's lives. However amazing a single book or show may be, when we say "we shouldn't criticize this because it's already surpassed our expectations" then we have also come to the point of saying "this is good enough." And I think that "this is good enough," is just as dangerous as not criticizing a lesser-quality book or show at all.
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(Anonymous) 2010-06-23 01:49 pm (UTC)(link)That being said, a few scattered thoughts. First, wrt to Sokka's training sequence: I'm probably willing to forgive it too much because it's just such a pretty episode (the same perhaps goes for the one with Hama...), and I agree that the 'for your first day!' moment is initially a wallbanger. But I'd say they do a lot to dilute the usual power-up fast forward problems: Sokka may be ridiculously handy in his final fight scene, but as you point out, he doesn't win. In fact, I'd say that the revelation that this is a *day long* training montage doesn't so much slip the episode into silly-power-up land so much as it lampshades the fact that it isn't a power-up episode at all, but one dedicated to showing the value of the 'Sokka style' used to such effect when Sokka beaned the library-spirit back in Book Two ('learn it!'). It's all about boosting Sokka's confidence in being the idea guy, not suddenly making him a sword master - as spelled out by Piandao at the close of the episode ('no, it certainly wasn't your skill...'). For me, the 'and this is just the first day' moment highlighted the fact that we hadn't actually seen Sokka do anything that couldn't be done in a day, or that didn't amount to his usual thinking-outside-the-box wackiness. Even the practice sword-fighting looked believably amateur to me. He needed a master, not a sword.
Then, of course, he gets an awesome space sword and a cool fight scene, so, yeah, I'm not claiming this episode didn't have its cake and eat it.
My take on this episode, though, does feed into my general satisfaction with Suki's role in the last few episodes. While I absolutely agree that the Kyoshi warriors as a group pretty much hail from the land of missed opportunities for girl bonding and adult female role models, Suki herself fills a pretty big gap in the final Gaang: she's their Piandao, a non-bending fighter with a sense of storied tradition behind her techniques and persona - not to mention a history of knocking some sense into Sokka. It's not perfectly done - she's still pretty much sitting at the girlfriend table - but I'll take it.
Sokka himself, of course, ends up firmly established as the plan guy - he even has to let go of his weapons (space sword, we hardly knew ye). He's essentially the Gaang's version of the Mechanist - interesting, in that the Mechanist himself is very pointedly not a White Lotus style Old Master, but instead starts out co-opted by the Fire Nation, and makes his bid for redemption in the failed Day of Black Sun invasion. Sokka, in contrast, is a core member of the younger group. It's this sense of historical progression as much as anything else which makes helps make up for the missteps on gender roles in the series as a whole: the wins against sexism on the part of the kids aren't isolated, single-episode aesops, but part and parcel of establishing a new order.
Oh, and another thought re Sokka and 'the power of stuff' - I found it delightful that Sokka and Aang both get important, exciting, dignified fight scenes in Kyoshi drag (well, Aang shucks off the kimono, but still). Even Zuko spends half a series in a fetching apron. And while, yes, Azula's mirror scene did start warning bells ringing for me, it's worth noting that her hair-chopping may be a lady-specific sign of craziness, but it's far from gratuitous: it's a callback to her introduction ('one hair out of place'), but also the final significant haircut in a series which has given at least one to all its male leads. This is a big Unfortunate Implication in and of itself, of course - when Azula does some decisive haircutting, it's a defeat. Equally, Katara's flowing locks in season 3 arguably reinforce the way her (moon-based! female-taught! potentially eeevil!) powers serve to lock her into girl-mode (rather than, say, leader-mode) by the series' end. But Azula's haircut also echoes Zuko's shameful loss of his ponytail-thing at the start of the second season - it's far from being a simplistic marker of lady-craziness. In fact, it's the kind of little physical detail that the series is often more sure-footed with than with bigger stuff - the material world building is just fantastic.
One last thought re Katara - I think her character, and the series as a whole, suffered from her role as 'the girl' in season one. She's a very well-executed example, for sure, but not really a groundbreaking one - even her struggle for her rights in the Northern Water Tribe isn't that unusual for a fantasy heroine - and I think it really unbalanced the series when it came to establishing her relationship with Aang as the show's big romance and paramount emotional arc. It's sweet, for sure, but it doesn't have half the complexity and emotional resonance that the writers managed to give to the relationship between Zuko and Iroh - I'd say it even suffers in comparison to the other romantic relationships, which I thought were very well done. Poor Katara had to be *the* girl of the show in season one, while Sokka and Aang both get to step much further away from the conventional limits of their 'hero' and 'comic relief/sidekick' roles, and while her later development did a lot to show what this would really mean - the ramifications of her 'team mum' persona are particularly well explored - I'd say this came at the expense of showing why this meant she had to be *Aang's* girl, not to mention vice versa. The writers tried - that dance in 'The Headband', for instance - but I never really bought it, and I think 'more girls earlier' might have let the relationship develop a lot more organically, rather than remaining suspiciously close to its roots in top-girl gets top-boy.
Phew! Apparently Avatar is pretty fun to talk about: thanks for the impetus to get all that off my chest.