Katara’s Authenticity in Avatar: The Last Airbender

Authenticity is an important quality every individual should have as it reflects self-understanding and healthy functioning. However, due to the societal norms, such as gender stereotypes, the idea of being authentic has become a challenge. Oftentimes, when it comes to gender stereotypes, women get the short end of the stick—underestimated, ignored, and sexualized. The uprising feminism movement indeed makes a great impact of how women are viewed, but the media is still lacking of authentic representation of female character who isn’t trying to fit into a certain role. Avatar: The Last Airbender is able to provide that through Katara character despite it being a children’s TV series. Using the theory by Kernis and Goldman, this paper explores the four multicomponents of authenticity—awareness, unbiased processing, behaviour, relational orientation—which are all possessed by Katara; furthermore, proving her authenticity. This paper argues that Katara is able to maintain her authenticity by acting in accordance with her internal values, particularly in terms of equality and justice. In so doing, she manages to fight sexism and empower the oppressed

Reframing Sympathy for Indigenous Captives in \u3cem\u3eAvatar: The Last Airbender\u3c/em\u3e

The animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender plays as a response to the broader tradition of American captivity narratives, a genre in which one “captive” character or group is emotionally or physically constrained by a “captor.” Captivity narratives have historical roots in American colonial accounts, especially those by white women, of being captured by mostly male, or at least masculine-coded, American Indians. Avatar: The Last Airbender, commonly referred to as ATLA, takes place in a world of four nations: the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads, which are based on Inuit, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan cultures respectively. It details the journey of a young nomad named Aang and his friends to end a century-long war with the technologically advanced Fire Nation. As the series progresses, it most noticeably incorporates the captor-captive dynamic into its protagonists Aang, Katara, and Sokka, who are fleeing and, at times, captured by Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. It is worth noting that Zuko fills both roles, hoping to convince his father to reverse his banishment from the Fire Nation by trying to capture Aan

When the Fire Nation Attacked: A View of the Colonialism and Imperialism Within Avatar: The Last Airbender

Within this project, the thematic representations of colonialism and imperialism within Avatar: The Last Airbender are explored through the topics of genocide, environmental imperialism, propaganda, and imprisonment. Through primary source analysis and literature review, events from the series are compared to historical examples during expansion such as Manifest Destiny, the Scramble for Africa, and apartheid. Similarities are cast between the Fire Nation and different imperialistic governments to determine whether Avatar is a good representation of these themes and how its portrayal could impact children’s media when displaying historical concepts

REPRESENTASI PERPUSTAKAAN DALAM SERIAL ANIMASI AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

Film merupakan salah satu media representasi yang dapat menggambarkan sesuatu, termasuk perpustakaan. Mengkaji representasi perpustakaan dalam media seperti film menjadi penting untuk dapat mengetahui konsep perpustakaan yang berada dalam pikiran masyarakat. Artikel ini membahas representasi perpustakaan dalam serial animasi Avatar: The Last Airbender dengan menunjukkan fungsi dan komponen perpustakaan yang digambarkan dalam serial animasi tersebut.Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan metode semiotik Roland Barthes yaitu hubungan analisis sintagmatik dan paradigmatik untuk melihat unsur naratif, seperti alur, tokoh, dan latar. Data diperoleh dari kalimat-kalimat dialog dan adegan yang menunjukkan serta menggambarkan perpustakaan. Unit analisis yang digunakan adalah satuan teks atau sekuen. Perpustakaan direpresentasikan sebagai sebuah gedung yang memiliki fungsi untuk menyimpan koleksi dengan nilai informasi yang penting. Komponen perpustakaan yang muncul dalam representasi adalah pengguna, koleksi, sarana dan prasarana. Komponen pustakawan dan dana tidak tampil dalam representasi.Hilangnya komponen pustakawan dalam representasi menggambarkan bahwa peran pustakawan masih dianggap kurang penting dalam masyarakat. Representasi yang paling menonjol adalah perpustakaan yang digambarkan sebagai gudang ilmu pengetahuan. Representasi juga menunjukkan bahwa informasi merupakan aset yang sangat penting untuk dilindungi

Representation in Animation

In this paper I’m addressing what is missing in representation in films today. I take the shows Avatar: The Last Airbender, Steven Universe and Fairy Tail to explain what proper representation should look like in the media. I look at this with the perspective of rhetoric as a communication major. Providing my comment on the shows. I’m examining this show with three factors. Do they have women in roles of leadership? Are characters overcoming adversity? Are there male characters experiencing complex emotions? I’m comparing these shows with most western films. That would usually tell stories through the white cisgendered straight male. I take examples from each show to how these characters are a step in the direction of proper representation. The paper addresses characters such as, Steven, Garnet, Pearl, Lapis, Rose and Greg in Steven Universe. Aang, Katara, Zuko, Iroh, Teo, Katara and Toph in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Erza, Mirajane, Gildarts and Gray from Fairy Tail. I conclude with my take on why these shows are a step in the right direction but where we need to go from here

Animating Race : The Production and Ascription of Asian-ness in the Animation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

How and by what means is race ascribed to an animated body? My thesis addresses this question by reconstructing the production narratives around the Nickelodeon television series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-08) and its sequel The Legend of Korra (2012-14). Through original and preexisting interviews, I determine how the ascription of race occurs at every stage of production. To do so, I triangulate theories related to race as a social construct, using a definition composed by sociologists Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer; re-presentations of the body in animation, drawing upon art historian Nicholas Mirzoeff’s concept of the bodyscape; and the cinematic voice as described by film scholars Rick Altman, Mary Ann Doane, Michel Chion, and Gianluca Sergi. Even production processes not directly related to character design, animation, or performance contribute to the ascription of race. Therefore, this thesis also references writings on culture, such as those on cultural appropriation, cultural flow/traffic, and transculturation; fantasy, an impulse to break away from mimesis; and realist animation conventions, which relates to Paul Wells’ concept of hyper-realism. These factors contribute to world-building and the construction of cultural signifiers, which in turn can project identities onto animated bodyscapes. This thesis is structured around stages of production, including art design, writing, storyboarding and directing, martial arts choreography, music and sound design, voice casting and acting, and outsourcing final animation. At each stage, below-the-line personnel make creative decisions that result in the ascription of race. My findings challenge John T. Caldwell’s conceptualization of how production cultures operate, identifying multiple interlinked groups instead of just one. They expand upon the concept of the bodyscape to account for aural components in the construction of a racial identity. Finally, they build upon Maureen Furniss’ definition of animation as a continuum between mimesis and abstraction to incorporate the impulse toward fantasy

Issues of universal design and the relational model of disability in Avatar: The Last Airbender

Disability issues are prevalent throughout the animated series Avatar the Last Airbender. This thesis focuses specifically on issues of universal design throughout the show, while also understanding disability through the relational model. In particular, two episodes are rhetorically analyzed for their representation of universal design philosophies and the body-environment relationship

Epic Stories: Sequence Fiction, Young Readers, And The Aesthetics Of World Building

This study theorizes the world building processes that sequence fiction engages within a framework of intratextual structuralism and cognitive aesthetic stage theory. The study begins with an interdisciplinary overview of fictional and possible worlds theory before proposing a structural adaptation of this lens that explains the developmental, aesthetic benefits of the genre for young readers. Chapter II is an application of the adapted lens to a canonical epic, the His Dark Materials sequence by Philip Pullman. I interpret the intentional structure of the story world across novels to discuss how these engage readers at different aesthetic milestones and encourage a deeper imaginative construct as a result. Chapter III is a similar application of the proposed theory for the popular television story world: Nickelodeon’s animated epic, The Last Airbender by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. The examination of this story world includes a discussion of how media and different forms of literacy disrupt and encourage specific aesthetic responses to a story world. The final chapter begins with an observational discussion of my two children and their experiences engaging with fictional worlds. My analysis of their responses to a popular sequence proposes the children have an intuitive reading process that revolves around play and multimodal engagement with fiction that enhances the internalization of a story world. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how similar methods in an adult classroom can benefit adult students that struggle with reading engagement