Completed LoK last week. Just thinking about all villian philosophy.

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
    1·
    1 month ago

    Korra is basically a neoliberalist propaganda piece in a cartoon’s clothing.

    It shows us a world that is chafing as technological advancement and social change causes conflict with long-standing traditions – Which is a great premise, actually – And ultimately arrives at the answer of “replace all traditions with Capitalism. That will fix literally everything”.

    A billionaire known to be a crook is depicted as a dashing rogue who is an ally of the heroes. Of the three villains, only the fascist-adjacent one gets a redemption arc. Our protagonist deletes all previous incarnations of the Avatar and doesn’t even get a slap in the wrist for it.

    My hottest take? Korra would have been an awesome show if instead of trying to one-up TLA’s stakes (and failing) – It instead embraced being a low-stakes thing and became all about the Fire Ferrets’ professional bending career. Just four seasons of wrestling-esque shenanigans at the ring.

  • qarbone@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    Wasn’t Amon an Bloodbending gangster using a populist ideology to foment a rebellion? I don’t think he was really “all about equality”.

    • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
      1·
      1 month ago

      Yeah arguably the former three villains all sucked.

      Amon was a criminal exploiting social unrest for his personal gain, and didn’t really care about the cause.

      Unalaq was the wuxia fantasy equivalent of an Ecofascist. “We are the virus” type shit

      And Zaheer as an anarchist didn’t really have a project or care about uniting the people, he just killed some powerful assholes and considered himself a hero for it, not even caring that killing a powerful asshole and fucking off basically just opens the door for other powerful assholes to do powerful asshole things. – Which they did.

      The telling part, to me, however, is that only Kuvira got a last minute redemption, where the other three fucking died. Because ultimately neoliberalism considers “violent warmongering and conquest (aka mostly it’s the poors dying)” to be less destructive than social unrest, violent environmentalism, or anarchist movements that target the powerful.

  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
    1·
    1 month ago

    Yeah LoK is a bit of a centrist liberal backpatting session, political philosophy wise, including the corrupt billionaire apologia.

    And then kids-show Hitler, so fair enough.

  • piyuv@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 month ago

    Yes but also no, earth kingdom had despot monarchies for so long kuvira had enough, only to become one herself