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ljwritesContinuing from Part 1 of the essay about the combination of steadfastness and dynamism that makes the Earth Kingdom so formidable, this second part of the Earth Kingdom culture essay is an examination of its diversity and ultimately identity.
Identity and Pride in Earth Kingdom Culture
On the Korean Avatar discussions, the consensus was that if the Earth Kingdom were a united country it would have crushed the Fire Nation long before the show began. So the puzzle becomes, why didn't it? Why not form a united front against the Fire Nation invasion, instead of fighting it piecemeal and often losing?
As stated in Part 1 of the essay, the Earth Kingdom is a vast place with very diverse regions and peoples. Iroh in his discussion of the four nations in "Bitter Work" mentions this diversity as part of the Earth Kingdom's strength, but diversity has its shadow side, too. The Earth King in the powerful and ancient city of Ba Sing Se may be respected, even revered, but he does not seem to exercise direct political influence far beyond Ba Sing Se, or even in his own capital even before he was deposed. Regions like Kiyoshi Island, while nominally part of the Earth Kingdom, seem to have remained neutral for years even while its capital Ba Sing Se was under assault. Those communities that were under attack defended themselves, but often in a piecemeal or civilian-driven way that did not bespeak the presence of a strong central government coordinating the defenses. Ba Sing Se seemed cut off from the rest of the Earth Kingdom, partly by the Fire Nation's design no doubt, but the city itself did not exhibit the will to give help to or accept help from other regions in the Earth Kingdom to drive back the invaders. Here in Korea we use the term "grains of sand" when a group is not cohering well. The Earth Kingdom communities in the war were definitely grains of dry sand that do not stick to each other, but rather scatter under pressure.
In discussing this lack of unity in the Earth Kingdom, it is instructive to look at the real-life motifs that have been used in its design. As previously discussed, Earth Kingdom designs draw on various historical sources throughout Asia. Just to take some of the more noticeable ones, you have Ba Sing Se, Kiyoshi Island, and Song's village, which respectively look like Manchurian China, Japan, and Korea in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Much of the rest of the Earth Kingdom look like the Han ethnicity areas of China. So let's look at the happy history of these real-life societies during the seventeenth century alone:
If they were real they'd be killing each other right now.
The regions of the Earth Kingdom, in other words, are deliberately designed to resemble societies who fought years of bloody war against each other. Sure, like sensible peoples they also enjoyed trade and political alliances, but they remained distinct peoples even when they formed political unities, as in the case of Qing's unification of China in 1645 or the Japanese takeover of Korea and China from the late nineteenth century to 1945. The Manchurians, reduced in number and power, now live under Han-majority rule but remain a distinct group, while neither Korea nor China has forgotten (or quite forgiven) the Japanese occupation. I would not be surprised if the peoples of the Earth Kingdom feel a similar sense of separate identity, or if they also feel resentment against each other for various past wrongs. All these factors are barriers to forming the kind of strong political unity that the Earth Kingdom needed in the face of the Fire Nation invasion.
In this context you can kind of see why the Dai Li headed by Long Feng did not want the Earth King to take an active political role. In a very real sense, the authority of the Earth King was only possible because he was a symbolic figure above the fray of everyday politics. The moment he started making decisions, particularly ones that reached outside of Ba Sing Se, interests would be divided, resentment would arise, and dissent would break out among those affected. For instance, what if the needs of the war called for troops be drawn from one province to defend another, e.g. Gaoling supplementing Omashu's defenses? Gaoling would immediately suspect favoritism and/or a plot to leave Gaoling defenseless, and acrimony would rise as Gaoling's young men died far from home. This could very well weaken whatever hold the Earth Kingdom had on Gaoling. Ba Sing Se could issue ultimatums, but at the end it would have to be willing to send troops to subdue this far-away province, which is an excellent idea in the middle of war--an excellent idea to ensure Fire Nation victory, that is. So the Ba Sing Se elite chose a way to rule these wildly different peoples by not ruling at all, but only reigning. It may have not been the best way, but it was one way.
This importance of identity shows up at community levels, too. Notice the extremely distinct battle dress of the Kiyoshi warriors, whose look is virtually unchanged from Avatar Kiyoshi's own battle garb almost four centuries before. (On the subject of Kiyoshi, Grey by Allekha is the best story I've read about her life.) It's also significant that the Earth King's main role before he awoke to the reality of war was to preserve culture and history, in other words the identity of Ba Sing Se. The community in "Avatar Day" cling to their traditions (and resentments) just as the Kiyoshi Islanders do. As discussed in Part 1, this commitment to identity can be a weakness that tends to rigidity. On the other hand, it can also be a strength--this stubborn independence, both from central government and invaders, was probably what kept them resisting the Fire Nation's aggression for a hundred years.
Identity also plays an important role in individual stories. Quite a few earthbenders seem to celebrate quirkiness, for instance. The first named earthbender we meet in the show is Bumi in "King of Omashu," who is not only weird but proudly weird. It is his quirks that give him the ability to see things differently and enabled him, in part, to fight off the Fire Nation for so long. The second named earthbender we meet is Haru in "Imprisoned," who must hide his earthbending, an important part of who he is and his only connection to his father, if he wants to keep his freedom. This story of a young man forced to hide who he is takes on particular resonance if you go with the fan theory that Haru is gay.
Could be further proof that God hates straight women.
And then you have the Earth Rumble, a celebration of earthbending prowess and, much like its real-life model pro wrestling, of highly colorful characters. And of course there is Toph, who hides the badass earthbender she is from her parents for years before finally coming out, so to speak. She shows a rare moment of vulnerability as she confesses her love of and talent for earthbending to her parents:
When her parents still refuse to acknowledge her true self, rather than live a lie Toph finds the courage to leave her affluent life with companions who accept her as she really is. (We're still talking about earthbending, right?) Nevertheless, her relationship with her parents and her desire to be loved by them for herself remains an issue with her. Unused to socializing and running hard and fast from the helpless blind girl her parents wanted her to be, Toph initially insists on total self-sufficiency, but she learns to be part of a group when she comes to realize that giving help to friends and accepting help from them takes nothing away from her independence as a person. Her strong sense of individuality comes into conflict once again with Katara's emphasis on group discipline and on mutual caring in "The Runaway" in what I see as a cultural conflict as well as a personal one, but they are able to work through together as friends. And that's the thing about many Earth Kingdom folk--they might be slow to warm to you, but once they do, you're their friend. And I believe that quality will be key to the future of the Earth Kingdom at large.
The Earth Kingdom and the Future of the Avatar World
We have examined the culture of the Earth Kingdom, that vast grouping peoples strong in their resilience and dynamism, proud of their history and identity. As the Fire Nation discovered in the course of the war, these qualities let them weather a hundred years of war, sometimes waiting in patience, sometimes striking with unstoppable force, and always remembering who they are as a people and as a person. Sozin's dream was to remake the Earth Kingdom peoples, among others, in the image of the Fire Nation, but he did not take into account their incredible strength and deep pride, which were so formidable that Ozai, a century later, decided the only way to subdue them was to destroy them.
However, if you get a sense of Earth Kingdom culture, and if you are not a genocidal lunatic, you can easily guess that trying to subjugate the vastness of the Earth Kingdom is a nearly impossible undertaking, something Zuko sensed in his travels there. The only way to coexist with these strong, proud people is to respect who they are and meet them on equal footing, as friends. In turn, the various societies that make up the Earth Kingdom will have to accept each other and other nations, even the Fire Nation and their former colonies, for partnership and alliances. Else they will remain isolated from each other and vulnerable to further conflict, internal and external.
What is the future of the Earth Kingdom in the post-war Avatar world? My guess is they will continue to be a loose grouping of different societies, unlikely to cohere into the kind of unity that could turn its sight outward and become a threat to peace. Given their lack of unity, fighting between the different groups could become a problem now that the war with the Fire Nation is over, and it is something that the Earth King, the Avatar, and others will have to work to contain. Strengthening their alliance with Ba Sing Se at the core seems to be a good choice for both internal stability and defense against external threats, so long as the differences between the societies are respected and even celebrated. Increased internal and external trade would bring material gain as well as accelerate social change, which is ironically close to Sozin's justification for starting his world war.
In the end, Sozin's was an impossible as well as immoral vision because it counted on force and oppression to create a better world. The remarkable peoples of the Earth Kingdom exposed the lie in that dream by refusing to bend or break before the pressure he and his descendants brought to bear. And what Sozin failed to achieve with violence, the Earth Kingdom now has a chance to achieve through friendship and mutual trust. It will take all their patience, steadfast will, and acceptance of each others' identity and independence, but they have the chance to make it happen. Their success, more than anything else, would be the ultimate refutation of Sozin and his dream. If the Earth Kingdom makes good use of the opportunities of the post-war world, its peace and prosperity will remain a lasting monument to Sozin's folly and utter defeat.
D'oh!
The next culture essay will have a great deal more to say about Sozin and his line. It will be about what drove Sozin, and the role of conviction in Fire Nation culture.
Identity and Pride in Earth Kingdom Culture
On the Korean Avatar discussions, the consensus was that if the Earth Kingdom were a united country it would have crushed the Fire Nation long before the show began. So the puzzle becomes, why didn't it? Why not form a united front against the Fire Nation invasion, instead of fighting it piecemeal and often losing?
As stated in Part 1 of the essay, the Earth Kingdom is a vast place with very diverse regions and peoples. Iroh in his discussion of the four nations in "Bitter Work" mentions this diversity as part of the Earth Kingdom's strength, but diversity has its shadow side, too. The Earth King in the powerful and ancient city of Ba Sing Se may be respected, even revered, but he does not seem to exercise direct political influence far beyond Ba Sing Se, or even in his own capital even before he was deposed. Regions like Kiyoshi Island, while nominally part of the Earth Kingdom, seem to have remained neutral for years even while its capital Ba Sing Se was under assault. Those communities that were under attack defended themselves, but often in a piecemeal or civilian-driven way that did not bespeak the presence of a strong central government coordinating the defenses. Ba Sing Se seemed cut off from the rest of the Earth Kingdom, partly by the Fire Nation's design no doubt, but the city itself did not exhibit the will to give help to or accept help from other regions in the Earth Kingdom to drive back the invaders. Here in Korea we use the term "grains of sand" when a group is not cohering well. The Earth Kingdom communities in the war were definitely grains of dry sand that do not stick to each other, but rather scatter under pressure.
In discussing this lack of unity in the Earth Kingdom, it is instructive to look at the real-life motifs that have been used in its design. As previously discussed, Earth Kingdom designs draw on various historical sources throughout Asia. Just to take some of the more noticeable ones, you have Ba Sing Se, Kiyoshi Island, and Song's village, which respectively look like Manchurian China, Japan, and Korea in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Much of the rest of the Earth Kingdom look like the Han ethnicity areas of China. So let's look at the happy history of these real-life societies during the seventeenth century alone:
1592-1598: The Japanese Invasion of the Year of Black Dragon (壬辰倭亂). Yes, it was another damned lucky Black Dragon year that kicked off a seven-year war, during which at least 180,000 and up to a million people died in Choson including civilians, and 66% of arable land was destroyed. This was a time when the entire population of Choson was less than five million.
1618-1645: The Ming-Qing War, when the Han-majority Ming and the Manchurian-controlled Qing fought for control of China.
1636-1637: The Manchurian Invasion of the Year of Red Rat (丙子胡亂). Another great war in Choson's proud history of having its ass handed to it, when the Qing dynasty of China invaded and gave Korea a historical drubbing. About 200 nobles and royals including Crown Prince Sohyeon and his brother were taken by the victorious Qing as hostages, and 600,000 Choson subjects were traded as slaves. Yes, this was while Qing was also fighting the Ming Dynasty back home.
If they were real they'd be killing each other right now.
The regions of the Earth Kingdom, in other words, are deliberately designed to resemble societies who fought years of bloody war against each other. Sure, like sensible peoples they also enjoyed trade and political alliances, but they remained distinct peoples even when they formed political unities, as in the case of Qing's unification of China in 1645 or the Japanese takeover of Korea and China from the late nineteenth century to 1945. The Manchurians, reduced in number and power, now live under Han-majority rule but remain a distinct group, while neither Korea nor China has forgotten (or quite forgiven) the Japanese occupation. I would not be surprised if the peoples of the Earth Kingdom feel a similar sense of separate identity, or if they also feel resentment against each other for various past wrongs. All these factors are barriers to forming the kind of strong political unity that the Earth Kingdom needed in the face of the Fire Nation invasion.
In this context you can kind of see why the Dai Li headed by Long Feng did not want the Earth King to take an active political role. In a very real sense, the authority of the Earth King was only possible because he was a symbolic figure above the fray of everyday politics. The moment he started making decisions, particularly ones that reached outside of Ba Sing Se, interests would be divided, resentment would arise, and dissent would break out among those affected. For instance, what if the needs of the war called for troops be drawn from one province to defend another, e.g. Gaoling supplementing Omashu's defenses? Gaoling would immediately suspect favoritism and/or a plot to leave Gaoling defenseless, and acrimony would rise as Gaoling's young men died far from home. This could very well weaken whatever hold the Earth Kingdom had on Gaoling. Ba Sing Se could issue ultimatums, but at the end it would have to be willing to send troops to subdue this far-away province, which is an excellent idea in the middle of war--an excellent idea to ensure Fire Nation victory, that is. So the Ba Sing Se elite chose a way to rule these wildly different peoples by not ruling at all, but only reigning. It may have not been the best way, but it was one way.
This importance of identity shows up at community levels, too. Notice the extremely distinct battle dress of the Kiyoshi warriors, whose look is virtually unchanged from Avatar Kiyoshi's own battle garb almost four centuries before. (On the subject of Kiyoshi, Grey by Allekha is the best story I've read about her life.) It's also significant that the Earth King's main role before he awoke to the reality of war was to preserve culture and history, in other words the identity of Ba Sing Se. The community in "Avatar Day" cling to their traditions (and resentments) just as the Kiyoshi Islanders do. As discussed in Part 1, this commitment to identity can be a weakness that tends to rigidity. On the other hand, it can also be a strength--this stubborn independence, both from central government and invaders, was probably what kept them resisting the Fire Nation's aggression for a hundred years.
Identity also plays an important role in individual stories. Quite a few earthbenders seem to celebrate quirkiness, for instance. The first named earthbender we meet in the show is Bumi in "King of Omashu," who is not only weird but proudly weird. It is his quirks that give him the ability to see things differently and enabled him, in part, to fight off the Fire Nation for so long. The second named earthbender we meet is Haru in "Imprisoned," who must hide his earthbending, an important part of who he is and his only connection to his father, if he wants to keep his freedom. This story of a young man forced to hide who he is takes on particular resonance if you go with the fan theory that Haru is gay.
Could be further proof that God hates straight women.
And then you have the Earth Rumble, a celebration of earthbending prowess and, much like its real-life model pro wrestling, of highly colorful characters. And of course there is Toph, who hides the badass earthbender she is from her parents for years before finally coming out, so to speak. She shows a rare moment of vulnerability as she confesses her love of and talent for earthbending to her parents:
"So now that you see who I really am, I hope it doesn't change the way you feel about me."
When her parents still refuse to acknowledge her true self, rather than live a lie Toph finds the courage to leave her affluent life with companions who accept her as she really is. (We're still talking about earthbending, right?) Nevertheless, her relationship with her parents and her desire to be loved by them for herself remains an issue with her. Unused to socializing and running hard and fast from the helpless blind girl her parents wanted her to be, Toph initially insists on total self-sufficiency, but she learns to be part of a group when she comes to realize that giving help to friends and accepting help from them takes nothing away from her independence as a person. Her strong sense of individuality comes into conflict once again with Katara's emphasis on group discipline and on mutual caring in "The Runaway" in what I see as a cultural conflict as well as a personal one, but they are able to work through together as friends. And that's the thing about many Earth Kingdom folk--they might be slow to warm to you, but once they do, you're their friend. And I believe that quality will be key to the future of the Earth Kingdom at large.
The Earth Kingdom and the Future of the Avatar World
We have examined the culture of the Earth Kingdom, that vast grouping peoples strong in their resilience and dynamism, proud of their history and identity. As the Fire Nation discovered in the course of the war, these qualities let them weather a hundred years of war, sometimes waiting in patience, sometimes striking with unstoppable force, and always remembering who they are as a people and as a person. Sozin's dream was to remake the Earth Kingdom peoples, among others, in the image of the Fire Nation, but he did not take into account their incredible strength and deep pride, which were so formidable that Ozai, a century later, decided the only way to subdue them was to destroy them.
However, if you get a sense of Earth Kingdom culture, and if you are not a genocidal lunatic, you can easily guess that trying to subjugate the vastness of the Earth Kingdom is a nearly impossible undertaking, something Zuko sensed in his travels there. The only way to coexist with these strong, proud people is to respect who they are and meet them on equal footing, as friends. In turn, the various societies that make up the Earth Kingdom will have to accept each other and other nations, even the Fire Nation and their former colonies, for partnership and alliances. Else they will remain isolated from each other and vulnerable to further conflict, internal and external.
What is the future of the Earth Kingdom in the post-war Avatar world? My guess is they will continue to be a loose grouping of different societies, unlikely to cohere into the kind of unity that could turn its sight outward and become a threat to peace. Given their lack of unity, fighting between the different groups could become a problem now that the war with the Fire Nation is over, and it is something that the Earth King, the Avatar, and others will have to work to contain. Strengthening their alliance with Ba Sing Se at the core seems to be a good choice for both internal stability and defense against external threats, so long as the differences between the societies are respected and even celebrated. Increased internal and external trade would bring material gain as well as accelerate social change, which is ironically close to Sozin's justification for starting his world war.
In the end, Sozin's was an impossible as well as immoral vision because it counted on force and oppression to create a better world. The remarkable peoples of the Earth Kingdom exposed the lie in that dream by refusing to bend or break before the pressure he and his descendants brought to bear. And what Sozin failed to achieve with violence, the Earth Kingdom now has a chance to achieve through friendship and mutual trust. It will take all their patience, steadfast will, and acceptance of each others' identity and independence, but they have the chance to make it happen. Their success, more than anything else, would be the ultimate refutation of Sozin and his dream. If the Earth Kingdom makes good use of the opportunities of the post-war world, its peace and prosperity will remain a lasting monument to Sozin's folly and utter defeat.
D'oh!
The next culture essay will have a great deal more to say about Sozin and his line. It will be about what drove Sozin, and the role of conviction in Fire Nation culture.
