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ljwritesPreviously in this series, I have discussed the subject of war in Avatar: The Last Airbender. In this post, I'd like to discuss the larger context of the war and how it was handled as a political situation in the show, making it truer to life and more interesting.
At first blush, politics might seem like the polar opposite of what good fiction is made of. All good fiction is about truth, genuine emotion and plausible events. Fiction is the point of the knife where the soul is tested and shows its true mettle... or the lack of it. Politics, on the other hand, is disingenuous and dishonest, all about mouthing insincere slogans that don't mean anything while grubbing for self-gain. Politics, it seems, is about avoiding responsibility, playing it safe and not doing anything meaningful. 
In the meantime the problem of the war grew worse, and Ba Sing Se, the greatest threat and bulwark against the Fire Nation, did nothing to actively end it. Only the Earth King had the kind of authority and power to unite the diverse and scattered communities of the Earth Kingdom to fight back, but he couldn't do anything because the war was being kept from him. Hoping very hard that the crisis would go away wasn't doing a thing to solve it. (As I have often discovered in my own life.) And all this time, the rot of repression was spreading in the very foundation of the city, ready to tumble it to the ground. 
He does his best thinking with a lemur on his shoulder.
It was Aang and his friends who finally delivered the wakeup call to the Earth King, after forcing their way through the physical and informational barriers in their way ("The Earth King"). At first disbelieving and understandably hoping it wasn't true, the King finally decided that the war was real and started dealing with the problem instead of just ignoring it. He even decided to commit his forces to an all-out invasion on the Fire Nation on the day of the eclipse. At long last, it looked like the beginning of the end for the war.
At first blush, politics might seem like the polar opposite of what good fiction is made of. All good fiction is about truth, genuine emotion and plausible events. Fiction is the point of the knife where the soul is tested and shows its true mettle... or the lack of it. Politics, on the other hand, is disingenuous and dishonest, all about mouthing insincere slogans that don't mean anything while grubbing for self-gain. Politics, it seems, is about avoiding responsibility, playing it safe and not doing anything meaningful.
So how can a story like Avatar be a political tale? Can it even be a good story if (as I believe) so much of it is about politics? For that, I will talk a little about what I think politics is, before I move onto the role of politics at Ba Sing Se, in the Fire Nation, and for the world at large.
In Defense of Politics: Why It's Not a Dirty Word (Honest!)
Fire Nation partisan politics
Political cynicism is everywhere, and in fact you have to be a little cynical to stay sane about it. Graft, cronyism, the public welfare squandered on powerful lobbies, lies, scapegoating, and plain insanity seem to be the order of the day. I would never ask anyone to buy all wide-eyed into the political rhetoric at any part of the political spectrum. Because it's true that politics is often wasteful and dishonest, and a healthy dose of skepticism is both reasonable and necessary.
But at the same time, that reasonable cynicism and the depressing daily headlines can blind us to the fact that politics is really about something meaningful. The word comes from the Greek politikos, "of citizens of the state," which is from polites "citizen," which comes from polis. "City." Politics is about community, about living and making big decisions as a group that rises and falls as one. That community can be a little village, it can be a municipality, a city, a state, or a whole nation.
When you get right down to the roots, politics is about people as part of that community. Citizens in the city. It's about the person, that side of a person that belongs with a greater whole. You can be a human being, someone's lover or child or parent or friend without the larger community. But without the it you can't be a citizen, part of the greater whole. Politics is about people in their togetherness, about how they will live together as a group.
Politics, in other words, is about relationships. It's about how we relate to each other as part of a larger community. And it's a universal force, an issue that is vital enough and important enough to be the stuff of outstanding fiction like Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Avatar in the Shadow of Politics
So what role does politics play in Avatar? Just to rattle off some major story arcs, political repression and a struggle over power were big parts of Book 2's main plot from "City of Walls and Secrets" through "The Crossroads of Destiny." The same themes occur throughout Book 3 in the Fire Nation, in episodes like "The Headband," "The Painted Lady," "The Avatar and the Fire Lord," "The Day of Black Sun, Part 2," and of course, "Sozin's Comet."
It's also easy to see that the entire war was a political phenomenon, even without going to the famous von Clausewitz quote about war being politics by other means. In order for the war to happen in the first place Sozin had to overcome opposition to the war by killing his own lifelong friend ("The Avatar and the Fire Lord"). And in order for it to end peacefully, the Fire Nation needed a new Firelord ("Sozin's Comet, Part 2" and elsewhere). So all of the action, the spectacular battle scenes, the covert ops, in fact most of the show takes place in the shadow of politics. This is what I mean when I say Avatar is a political story. It's very possible to analyze the story with a political viewpoint, and doing so uncovers, I believe, new and interesting layers of meaning.
With that in mind, in the first part of the essay I will discuss the political conflicts that took place in the Earth Kingdom in Book 2, the Fire Nation in Book 3, and how they were resolved and what this means for the story as a whole. Specifically, the struggle in Book 2 is about the Earth Kingdom central government trying and failing to deal with the problem of war, once by shutting it out ("City of Walls and Secrets"), then by trying to confront the Fire Nation by military means but failing ("The Earth King"). In the second part I will talk about attempts to change the Fire Nation regime, first by conquering it ("The Day of Black Sun"), and then by succession ("Sozin's Comet"). Finally, in the third part, I will tie together the recurring theme of the common good and examine the role of the Avatar in both the war and the after the world in that context.
I will further point out the different issues and problems that arise at each stage of the political narrative, and make the case that the political story in Avatar brings home important themes: Our common humanity, and the eternal tension between self-interest and the common good.
So let us begin...
Behind the Walls: How Not to Deal with a Worldwide Crisis
Your friendly guide to Ba Sing Se. Or the Uncanny Valley. One of those.
In the previous post on war, I discussed the episode "Zuko Alone" and how the Earth Kingdom commoner family depicted there represented the decent and moral social order that war threatened to destroy. These people, I thought, were the solid foundation of any healthy community, and they were under threat from the amoral forces of war.
But what happens, I asked at the end of that essay, when the social order is neither humane nor moral, but rather repressive and violent? What happens (to continue the rock metaphors just a little longer) when political power is a crushing, oppressive force?
Meet Ba Sing Se in "City of Walls and Secrets." As revealed in that episode, the city's walls are not all external. There are walls inside the city as well, upholding the rigid system of lower, middle, and upper classes. The strength of the element earth, a comforting defense against outside threats, is turned inward and becomes an instrument of oppression.
Walls don't just keep people and objects from moving freely. Walls restrict the flow of information, too. If you live in an apartment or dorm, chances are you have a a person within a few yards from you whenever you're home. Do you know what they are doing at a particular moment, without their telling you? If you did, either you would have committed an infraction by spying on them, or they are being inconsiderate with too much noise or vibration. The walls, and by extension floors and ceilings, are meant to protect your privacy and theirs. Sometimes they're too effective, as in the case of people being found dead in their homes after weeks or even months.Walls, in other words, keep information out in addition to physical movement.
The same is true of the famous walls of Ba Sing Se, both outside and in. The secret police of the city, the Dai Li under Long Feng, try to keep the war out of the city. But of course, even the mighty outer walls can't do that. Refugees come into the city all the time, as do soldiers and merchants and all sorts of people who know about the war. Since the physical wall alone can't keep out information, the Dai Li step up to become a wall against information, a system of controls that suppress the rumors of war. An informational barrier that you might call... a firewall. (Yes yes, throw things at me. I deserve it.)
But what happens, I asked at the end of that essay, when the social order is neither humane nor moral, but rather repressive and violent? What happens (to continue the rock metaphors just a little longer) when political power is a crushing, oppressive force?
Meet Ba Sing Se in "City of Walls and Secrets." As revealed in that episode, the city's walls are not all external. There are walls inside the city as well, upholding the rigid system of lower, middle, and upper classes. The strength of the element earth, a comforting defense against outside threats, is turned inward and becomes an instrument of oppression.
Walls don't just keep people and objects from moving freely. Walls restrict the flow of information, too. If you live in an apartment or dorm, chances are you have a a person within a few yards from you whenever you're home. Do you know what they are doing at a particular moment, without their telling you? If you did, either you would have committed an infraction by spying on them, or they are being inconsiderate with too much noise or vibration. The walls, and by extension floors and ceilings, are meant to protect your privacy and theirs. Sometimes they're too effective, as in the case of people being found dead in their homes after weeks or even months.Walls, in other words, keep information out in addition to physical movement.
The same is true of the famous walls of Ba Sing Se, both outside and in. The secret police of the city, the Dai Li under Long Feng, try to keep the war out of the city. But of course, even the mighty outer walls can't do that. Refugees come into the city all the time, as do soldiers and merchants and all sorts of people who know about the war. Since the physical wall alone can't keep out information, the Dai Li step up to become a wall against information, a system of controls that suppress the rumors of war. An informational barrier that you might call... a firewall. (Yes yes, throw things at me. I deserve it.)
Why were the Dai Li so obsessed with keeping information about the war secret, even an open one? My boyfriend theorizes it's to stabilize the ruling structure and keep control, and I agree. War, as I will discuss in the fifth and last essay of the series, brings social change. If the war became a political issue, changes were almost inevitable. Reforms might be demanded to rise to this new threat. Citizens might want more political power in exchange for the higher taxes and military service that the war effort will require. There might even be demands for internal war to unite the sprawling, disunified kingdom so they can fight the Fire Nation effectively.* At any rate there would have been confusion and upheaval, and the Dai Li did not want such a challenge to the status quo.
* Arguably, if the Earth Kingdom had been united they would have crushed the Fire Nation. On the other hand, maybe they'd have just fallen to pieces fighting and become easy prey. In this light, the Dai Li seem almost sympathetic. Almost.
To this end the Dai Li employed pretty despicable means, from imprisonment to mind control and blackmail ("City of Walls and Secrets," "Lake Laogai"). Jet is brainwashed because he insisted there were firebenders in the city, which there probably were and not just Iroh and Zuko. Aang is threatened with the safety of his animal companion if he doesn't keep quiet about the war. We have no idea about the history of the many Joo Dees, but my guess is they started out as political dissidents of some sort or were labeled as such. The Dai Li were ruthless in their quest for stability, destroying minds and lives in the process, but what they offered was no longer stability. It was a tyranny of fear.
In the meantime the problem of the war grew worse, and Ba Sing Se, the greatest threat and bulwark against the Fire Nation, did nothing to actively end it. Only the Earth King had the kind of authority and power to unite the diverse and scattered communities of the Earth Kingdom to fight back, but he couldn't do anything because the war was being kept from him. Hoping very hard that the crisis would go away wasn't doing a thing to solve it. (As I have often discovered in my own life.) And all this time, the rot of repression was spreading in the very foundation of the city, ready to tumble it to the ground.
The Earth King Steps Up... Then Steps Down
He does his best thinking with a lemur on his shoulder.
It was Aang and his friends who finally delivered the wakeup call to the Earth King, after forcing their way through the physical and informational barriers in their way ("The Earth King"). At first disbelieving and understandably hoping it wasn't true, the King finally decided that the war was real and started dealing with the problem instead of just ignoring it. He even decided to commit his forces to an all-out invasion on the Fire Nation on the day of the eclipse. At long last, it looked like the beginning of the end for the war.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be the beginning of the end for something else entirely: The Earth King's rein, and any prospect of Ba Sing Se becoming a large-scale threat to the Fire Nation. The new openness of Ba Sing Se understandably resulted in some blunders, and the biggest mistake was accepting strangers in positions close to the Earth King without fully vetting them. This turned out to be a fatal error.
How did this happen? After Long Feng's rigid rule, the sudden flow of new information and people caused chaos. Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph, any of whom could have discovered the true identity of the "Kiyoshi Warriors," received withheld letters and missions all at once instead of one by one, creating chaos at the exact time the fake Warriors arrived. Katara, who stayed in Ba Sing Se, stumbled onto the truth, but all her back had left (or been kidnapped from) the city by then and she became easy prey, unable to sound the alarm. The sudden end to rigidity gave rise to chaos, and Ba Sing Se paid the price.
How did this happen? After Long Feng's rigid rule, the sudden flow of new information and people caused chaos. Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph, any of whom could have discovered the true identity of the "Kiyoshi Warriors," received withheld letters and missions all at once instead of one by one, creating chaos at the exact time the fake Warriors arrived. Katara, who stayed in Ba Sing Se, stumbled onto the truth, but all her back had left (or been kidnapped from) the city by then and she became easy prey, unable to sound the alarm. The sudden end to rigidity gave rise to chaos, and Ba Sing Se paid the price.
You can bounce back from most such mistakes, but not this one because of one factor: Azula. Much has been written about her takeover of Ba Sing Se as a major moment of awesome, but let me take a moment to add to that chorus. There's no way to overstate her personal valor in entering enemy territory nearly unprotected (remember what those Earthbenders in "The Spirit World" tried to do to Iroh? These were not warm fuzzy teddy bears she was messing with.), her unparalleled sharpness in manipulating the expert manipulator Long Feng, and the sheer scale of her plan and vision. An ordinarily capable mind would have pulled off a nice undercover spy mission, and that was plenty ballsy in itself. But Azula saw clear through the power and pomp of the city to its naked power structure and how she could exploit it. I can't help but think maybe she went insane in the end not in spite of her extraordinary mind, but because of it. It's hard to believe she could come up with and execute a plan so beyond the normal if she weren't at least a little crazy.
"Terrifying and inspirational." An understatement, but close enough.
Azula, in other words, had seen the rot at the city's foundation, the one that made the seemingly impenetrable city vulnerable. She saw that at heart the city was not about loyalty to the Earth King, nor to any idea of Earth Kingdom unity or identity, nor the well-being of its people. It revolved around the vested interests that wanted to keep the city in its rigid status quo, and the Dai Li were the defenders of those interests. If she had the Dai Li, she had Ba Sing Se. It would not matter to the Dai Li and the interests they represented whether the Dai Li worked for the Earth Kingdom or the Fire Nation. The Dai Li would still be in control, and the business of repressive government would continue as before. Maybe a bit harsher than before to the commoners, since the Fire Nation was a foreign power, but why would the real masters of the city, the inhabitants of the Upper Circle, care about that?
Before I move on, I should note for future reference that this was another case of the interest of a few overwhelming the welfare of the many. For the vast majority of people it would have been better if Ba Sing Se intervened and ended the war, but the Dai Li and those they represented didn't care about that. They were safe behind their walls, after all. All the war meant was that refugees would keep flooding into the city, and they could be kept out of the Upper Circle with walls. And from a purely economic standpoint the refugees created a big pool of cheap, desperate labor. This would have depressed the price of labor for the middle classes as well, making them poorer and less able to demand political power. That made the upper classes more secure in their wealth and status. The squalor, misery, and indignity of these masses was of no concern to the ruling classes, and in fact worked to their advantage. This conflict between the interests of the few and the common good will be important in the last part of this essay.
And so the Earth King was deposed, though he escaped with his life (and pet bear). Ba Sing Se had fallen the only way it could have fallen--from the inside. The well-meaning and reasonably capable Earth King, alerted to the true state of the world and his kingdom, had tried to confront the problem war instead of ignoring it. However, he was undermined by the true rulers of Ba Sing Se, the Dai Li, and she who was brilliant enough to see their importance. Who knows what might have happened if the Earth King had incorporated the Dai Li into his rule instead of pushing them away? It might have been the smart thing to do, but it might also have been an injustice of its own. There are no easy choices in such complex situations.
From a worldwide perspective, another attempt to resolve the crisis of war had failed. Ignoring the war did not make it go away. A courageous political leader tried to remedy that, but he ran into stiff political resistance and lost power himself. The Earth Kingdom's strongholds like Omashu and Ba Sing Se fell one by one, and the others were unable to stand up to the Fire Nation or had their hands full just defending themselves. The Earth Kingdom as a political entity no longer had the power to end the war and stop the Fire Nation's path of conquest.
That meant there were now two entities left who could end the war. A coalition of individuals and small groups, and the Fire Nation itself. The first turned out to be unable to stand up to the Fire Nation by itself, as we saw in "The Day of Black Sun." But when these external forces worked together with forces inside the Fire Nation itself, they were able to end the war together. The Fire Nation itself needed to change in order to end the war it had started. What's more, in order to be legitimate the change had to be in the interest of justice, not for the sake of special interests. The second and third parts of this essay will deal with these issues.
