ATLA Book One: Water
Chapter Eleven: The Great Divide
In Which… Gah. Let’s just keep flying.
It’s not that this episode is unbearable to watch. Because
it isn’t. It’s a cute morality play, 25 minutes of television that breeze by
easily enough. It’s quite fair that this episode is usually at the bottom of
people’s lists, however, and that it’s usually a story people skip on a
rewatch. I talked in my post on “The Spirit World” about filler episodes, but
the truth is, this is the one story that just adds nothing to the show. It
doesn’t expand on the characters, or introduce an element that affects the
overall narrative of the show in an appreciable way. And that is a nightmare of
an episode to try and write an analysis of.
It is, however, helpfully placed in the middle of the
season. It is a useful point at which to stop, breathe, and consider what we’ve
learned on this blog so far. So let’s do that. As Aang, Katara, and Sokka guide
two squabbling villages across a vast chasm, let’s look back at the previous
ten episodes, and look at what our now fully-formed show is, and look ahead a
little to the kind of show it might become.
ATLA, first and foremost, is a show that follows the hero’s
journey narrative, with Aang on a classic “chosen one” journey as he seeks to
become a fully-fledged hero capable of ending the war that has ravaged his
world. He is, however, an unusual protagonist to place in this familiar story,
embracing familiar archetypes such as the reluctant hero and the “goofy kid”
character moulds, but he is also a pacifist Buddist monk, trying to maintain
the traditions of a long dead culture. The tension between his role as a fun
loving child and a reluctant hero interacts in an unusual way throughout the
series, and this interaction is in fact in evidence in “The Great Divide”, as
he struggles to find a peaceful solution to the conflict between the tribes,
and does so by making use of the fact he was alive over one hundred years ago.
The trouble is, this never quite synthesises: Aang has not saved the day by
meshing together the different parts of his identity, but by lying and making
up an origin story for the conflict.
Katara and Zuko are also on hero’s journeys that parallel
Aang’s, with Katara working as the narrator and main point of view for the tale,
and Zuko as the banished prince seeking a return from exile as he follows a
redemption arc he has yet to fully understand. In roles just behind the three lead
characters, we have Sokka and Iroh, both of whom offer subtle and nuanced
variations on their initial appearance of being comedy sidekicks. “The Great
Divide” is also frustrating because it removes the nuance from the characters,
as they almost become parodies of themselves: Sokka is a wisecracking, meat
eating slob, and Katara is fussy and overly prepared. The morality play genre
warps their characterisation, as they revert to types instead of the fleshed
out they always have been.
On the subject of Katara, it is worth discussing the show’s
treatment of its female characters. So far Katara has been the main female
character, with the show seeming somewhat stuck in the “one girl” model of
fantasy universes, as the only other female roles of note go to Suki, Gran Gran,
and, in fact, the unnamed Gan Jin leader in this episode. But in spite of this,
the show has demonstrated plenty of refreshing approaches to gender politics,
treating the female characers present with respect, critiquing sexism and toxic
masculinity with a great deal of nuance, and giving complexity and depth to
Katara, female lead. This refreshing take on gender politics will continue to
grow, as the franchise becomes increasingly female centric, with a vast array
of female characters driving the narrative.
ATLA is also a show that subverts or exceeds expectations, examples
including the handling of Sokka, which treats an apparent comedy sidekick with
a surprising amount of nuance and respect, “Jet”, which is a subtle variation
on a tired and harmful love triangle narrative, and “The Warriors of Kyoshi”, a
story that is far more complex than it initially appears. Arguably the most
frustrating thing about “The Great Divide” is that it’s a story that doesn’t
subvert expectations or offer surprising depth: it’s reasonably well made morality
play, and that’s it.
And it is a show that sides with the marginalised,
offering a new storytelling lens through its point of view characters: Southern
peasants Katara and Sokka, Aang, the last remaining citizen of nation wiped out
by genocide, and Zuko, a prince who was banished, scarred and abused by his own
father. To quote highlyclassifiedshit’s wonderful comment on Katara: “We’re
seeing the world through the eyes of a 14-year-old living in a dwindling
village on the underbelly of the world, whose mother was killed in a genocidal
raid, and whose father is at war”. There are hints of class conflict in the
divide between the two tribes, with the Gan Jins claiming Wei Jin was a petty
thief, and the Zhangs claiming he was wrongfully imprisoned, but this reading
is cut off by the morality tale structure, and the idea of the tribes being
exact opposites, and just as bad as one another.
The different perspective of The Last Airbender also stems
from the different kind of fantasy world it portrays, drawing on Eastern
cultures, as opposed to European feudalistic culture, which is still the go-to
model for fantasy worlds. It is still clearly a world created by two white men
living in America, but that does not mean the perspective it offers to genre
fiction isn’t incredibly fresh, different and exciting.
It is also very much a show about the world it is set in,
about the different places and spaces the cast encounter and discover as they travel
around this world into female-dominated spaces like Kysohi Island, a mad and
skewed cave of riddles in Bumi’s palace, and spaces haunted by grief and loss
in the Southern Water Tribe and the Northern Air Temple. We hints of this in “The
Great Divide”, which attemts to establish the titular Canyon as a vast and
hostile space, but this feeling never comes across particularly strongly: a
similar sense is built up much stronger almost exactly a season from now in “The
Desert”.
In spite of my harsh judgement of “The Great Divide”, it is
worth noting that it is a story with interesting ideas and themes: in some
ways, the morality play structure works as a one off, and its characterisation
of the Gaang as types instead of fully fleshed out characters gives an
interesting read as to how they operate as characters in this genre of story.
It creates simplistic but interesting parallels between the tribes and the
siblings, creating an interesting implication that all conflict, large or small
scale, ultimately ends up looking the same. But the show has handled more complex
themes handled with greater respect and care: stories of War, grief, family,
and maintaining culture and identity in the face of conflict have run
throughout the first ten episodes. “The Great Divide” is a step back from these
themes and ideas. However, there is no need to despair.
The show is many, very good things, and the depth it has
demonstrated before now means it has earned the chance to get away with a
slightly duff episode. Besides, I think one of its very best episodes may be
just around the corner.
End of Part Ten.
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