Three Dangerous Things About Amon: Legend of Korra Episode 3 Review (2 of 2)

[ljwrites]

Moving on from Part 1 on the characters and shipping, this section of the review is about the main adversaries Amon and the Equalists. I'd like to talk about why these guys (and they do mostly seem to be guys, though I'd love a ruthless female villain, too) are so dangerous, and why they make excellent long-term adversaries.

Let's put my reaction to Episode 3 this way: If I were a character in Legend of Korra I would totally be an Equalist. Or at least a wannabe, because the Equalists are going to spawn hangers-on and copycats of various levels of effectiveness. I think that's part of Amon's plan, more on that near the end.

I think three things make Amon a highly dangerous adversary for Korra and much of the world, in ascending order: First, his henchmen, because what good is a villain without good help? Second, his ideological jujitsu in destroying tradition in the name of older, purer tradition; and third, his scary level of tactical and strategic thinking, including an understanding of symbolism and story.

As for energybending, that sort of counts as a part of Elements Two and Three, Amon framing himself as a purist while setting out to destroy tradition. To me, though, energybending isn't the scariest thing about this guy by far. His true danger is in his ability to wield the symbolism and to spawn terror from it, as I will explain.

The first, though not the biggest, factor that makes Amon and his Equalists so dangerous is their prowess in battle. Watching them kick serious bender ass, I was reminded of amyraine and amanda_violet's discussion about the martial skills of benders vs. non-benders. Here again we see highly trained and motivated non-benders beating benders in battle. This isn't the outcome for the population at large, as the average bender will still beat the average non-bender, but it's certainly galvanizing for those who might feel overwhelmed at the idea of fighting benders.

Speaking of resentment against benders, there certainly seemed to be a lot of it judging from the attendance at Amon's Energybending Gala. It seems that non-bender oppression is a real issue, so Amy Raine was totally right. It's telling that so many more people were willing to gather in a harbor under cover of night than are willing to gather in a park at day. It shows that a) there is a real problem, and more seriously, b) people are afraid to openly take an anti-bender stance. After all, as Amy pointed out, the cops are all benders themselves and so are the Council members. It also shows a deficit of open discourse in the city, which creates conditions ripe for uprising.

Before I move on, I want to briefly mention the role of technology in the way Equalists fight. It wasn't hard to predict that technology would be a great equalizer between benders and non-benders, and this is emblematic in the Equalists' use of technology like motorized vehicles (motorbikes!!!) and tasers. Bending techniques have progressed and diffused over the decades, too; metal-bending is widespread, further fueling the development of technology, and lightning-bending, once the domain of select elite firebenders, has become a workman's skill. However, the improvement in bending and training simply hasn't caught up with the leaps and bounds in technological progress, a factor that both fuels the Equalist movement and makes Amon's core group of highly-trained fighters deadly even to fairly skilled benders.

So the Equalists, or at least Amon and his core group of henchmen, are a martial force to be contended with. That's fine and good, and certainly necessary for their work, but it's not enough. As stated above, the average bender will still beat the average non-bender when it comes to a fight, and there aren't enough resources in the world to bring all non-benders martially up to par with benders. But as I will discuss below, that doesn't matter. Amon's game isn't beating up a few benders, it's starting a movement. That's what makes him so dangerous.

Amon's true game, starting a movement, brings me to the second factor that makes Amon so scary, and that's his ideological positioning. It is absolutely fascinating to listen to Amon's speech and detect the rhetorical backflip he's performing. He is basically proposing eliminating all bending from the world, a world whose nations, customs, traditions, and civilization are based on the power to bend elements. And yet Amon isn't positioning himself as a radical who wants to smash the old ways; no, he presents himself a the true traditionalist, the one who is channeling an older, purer tradition. That's an important point, because non-benders might not like the current state of affairs but everyone is scared of change. He needs to assure them that this is not a radical departure but rather a return to something even older.

In making himself seem the traditionalist Amon invokes the spirits and the time before element bending, which is no doubt helpful and makes him sound spiritual and everything. But the person, the spirit, that he's truly invoking is Aang. The dude whose statue stands over Republic City, the man who brought an end to a century of war, who stopped one of the worst benders in history without killing him. Through energybending Amon is calling forth Avatar Aang's legacy of non-violence, that a pure heart trumps bending prowess and mercy triumphs over violence.


This is all your fault, Statue Aang!

This is why I think the symbol of energybending is far, far more important than the power itself. So Amon can take away people's bending, assuming what we saw on stage was real; who cares? Much like he and his henchmen's fighting prowess, that's not going to get them very far. What's he going to do, kidnap every bender and forcibly remove their powers? Yeah, good luck with that.

No, any use that energybending has in the larger fight is symbolic: The fact that this thing can be done and the terror it inspires, on which more later, and that the power allows Amon to claim an older, more legitimate legacy than the corrupt bender-dominated social and political system. It even has the advantage of seeming non-violent, at least in the sense of killing people, and only makes people equal without bending--hence the name Equalists.

Now, I happen to think it's still violent. Aang's taking Ozai's firebending away was plenty controversial, and this was a guy who was trying to annihilate an entire continent of people. Apply the same treatment to people who, no matter how abusive or corrupt, probably didn't do anything nearly as bad, and the idea becomes appalling. You're basically taking away a huge chunk of their marketable skills, and the hours of their lives they've devoted to improving that skill. It has also been made clear throughout ATLA and into this new show that bending is a huge part of practitioners' identities. So I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say energybending is comparable to forcible and medically unnecessary amputation, for all that the victims may look whole. That's why Amon is still a villain and not a sympathetic protagonist, but oh what a compelling villain.

On a side note, a serious hat-tip is due to DiMartino and Konietzko for so thoroughly delving into the implications of their own  earlier creation. Entertainment that is so willing to engage in its moral implications, and so respectful of their audience's intelligence, is a rare treat.

Moving on, the third factor that makes Amon so dangerous is his strategic thinking. Here is a guy who knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. He's no power-drunk megalomaniac with delusions of energybending every bender in the world, though he may still do so to a few chosen and highly symbolic targets. Like I said, any victories won with energybending will be symbolic, not practical. Aang's victory over Ozai was similarly a symbolic one in the end.

No, Amon knows he's ultimately playing a mind game. He's playing for the mind of the city, not its economy, military, or power structure. At least not yet. He will reach those things through the collective psyche of the city.

That is why he let Korra go, to send the message. He needed to get into the head of the city, its fears, hopes, dreams, and nightmares, and that was the point of the energybending show. Taking the bending away from a few thugs, even powerful ones, isn't going to fundamentally change anything. If that worked the War on Drugs would have been over decades ago. Neutralize a thug and more thugs pop up to take his place. But change minds, change the frame of reference, and you change the game. That is what Amon is doing, and that's why he is a scary, scary guy.

Amon is showing, in other words, that benders are just people. I mean everybody knows that, but I think it can be hard to believe when you see these people wield the powers of nature itself. It's kind of like death: We all know we're going to die, but we don't believe it. (I think I read that in Jurassic Park.) Amon by his little demonstration is helping people believe benders are human beings, by showing them without their bending. Benders will start believing it, too, and in so doing they will start fearing. Fear, after all, is the point of terrorism. And fear kills; aversion to flight and increased road travel led to more deaths on the road than usual in the three months after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Terrified people will overreact, sometimes violently. That kind of chaos seems to be just what Amon is aiming for.

At this point it doesn't even matter if he actually does bend energy, or did a sneaky bit of chi blocking, or paid the thugs to put on a show or what. Mind games are games of perception, not truth. Similarly, it doesn't matter for his purposes whether his professed life story is factual or not. It resonates as something that could have been true and probably is true for a number of people. It was certainly true for Mako and Bolin, for all they're benders, and the juxtaposition couldn't have been accidental on the writers' part.

I think the most convenient effect of that story is that it gives Amon the cover to wear a mask. There might or might not be some great reveal about the face behind that mask, but I'm not interested in speculating about that. I am interested that this mask turns Amon from a man to Everyman, like it did for V in V for Vendetta. The facelessness universalizes Amon's grievance. His story becomes the story of every injustice suffered due to inequality, and thus galvanizes people. When people see Amon and they resonate with his message, they will see themselves behind the mask. Behind the mask Amon becomes no one, and everyone.


See the family resemblance?

And that is Amon's true game, that he will motivate people to fight for his cause instead of trying to fight his way to power with his merry band of chi-bikers. He will become not a man but a cause, and the cause will be taken up by others. Much like Al Qaeda successfully spawned franchises and lone wolves, self-professed Equalists, some just discontent youths, others much more dangerous, will start cropping up. Even more dangerously, ordinary citizens will sympathize with the cause or at least with the discontent at the heart of it, because unlike Al Qaeda the Equalists do not profess openly violent solutions and so can gain mainstream acceptance. I've already discussed why the seeming non-violence is a false perception, but it's still a perception which can be more powerful than truth in the short run.

Who knows what Amon's ultimate goal is? Maybe he really is what he calls himself, an idealist who feels for the injustices suffered by non-benders. Maybe he's whipping up chaos for some other purpose. Whatever his aims, however, he is dangerously effective at what he does because he ultimately knows that his job is to create a narrative for his audience--and he knows the power of story, the power of symbols, and the power of a show. He is much like the writers and creators of the show in that way, and like many good villains he sits in the writers' seat, becomes their mask. This gives him the aura of a sort of omnipotence, which is just what he's aiming for.

But good as he is Amon will slip, I think, and he will have blind spots occasioned, perhaps, by his very brilliance. And it is that moment, when the writer's stand-in loses control and the story takes on a life of its own, that truly great story is born. I look forward to that moment, because the bigger they are, the harder they fall--and what a show that will be. I will revel in Amon's fall, even as I mourn what is already proving to be a great villain.