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Finally watching Korra, and I’m struck by how aggressively & annoyingly American it all is.
I’ve always been told it was “steampunk” and I like that the industrial revolution has happened. Which I was really excited about, but it’s actually just set in a mashup of US cities.
I’ve always been told it was “steampunk” and I like that the industrial revolution has happened. Which I was really excited about, but it’s actually just set in a mashup of US cities.
Like, I get this is made by & for Americans, but after how much Avatar grounded its worldbuilding and aesthetics in wuxia, in asian cultures, etc, I was hoping to see a sort of attempt at imagining the industrial revolution happening outside of the white/western paradigm?
Aang’s statue is very obviously meant to mirror the Statue of Liberty?
I can’t see much influence from the huge Buddhas & Kwanyin statues in Asia? It’s not derived from that artistic tradition so much as posed so that he looks like Lady Liberty from certain angles.
I can’t see much influence from the huge Buddhas & Kwanyin statues in Asia? It’s not derived from that artistic tradition so much as posed so that he looks like Lady Liberty from certain angles.
You can go through the fan wiki and read the entries on the buildings! Their influences are well documented. This bridge is modelled after Manhattan Bridge in NY and Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver.
It’s not even that I dislike these aesthetics or influences, but it feels off for Korra and where the world setting was going. They don’t work for me as shorthand. There’s a lot of jazz-ish music on the soundtrack, for example, and I keep wondering that stands for in the setting.
It’s disorienting because in Avatar, I often felt like I could trust my instincts when I see the aesthetic/visual shorthand. When Zuko cut his hair or when Sokka put on makeup before war and things like that? They aren’t just aesthetics, they meant things.
And those things aren’t explained. They didn’t have to stop the narrative to exposit the symbolic value of hair cutting or war paint. It’s just understood as significant and I understood based on having understanding of the real world cultures they’re drawing on.
I will add that this doesn’t always work out for me, because I assumed the monks and nuns were celibate and that the air nomads referred to a separate population that, I dunno, were nomadic and didn’t live in non-moving temples. But anyway.
Point is that I don’t understand why the primary influence for the New Republic city hall is the German Reichstag? Or why they seem to have a Eiffel Tower knockoff (is this a reference to the Tokyo tower that’s in the background of many anime)?
This is Plaza Hotel in New York. But called Four Elements which resembles Four Seasons, a Canadian hotel chain.
And Air Temple Island is inexplicably Alcatraz. I don’t know either.
And Air Temple Island is inexplicably Alcatraz. I don’t know either.
There are influences from early 20thC Shanghai fashion, lots of standing collars and cravats. But like, may I remind you that those things in the real world didn’t organically grow from Chinese culture. There was this whole Thing with encountering and being influenced by the West
So it feels... strange? Suits evolved out of frock coats and European royal court dress. They structure of them is very specific and I’m seeing it everywhere in Korra. I don’t know how you go from basically robes to that.
I mean, the cheongsam comes from a horse-riding culture, that’s why you have a high slit up the side of the robe, it’s again, quite specific and I don’t believe we had any analogue to the Manchus in Avatar?
And normally using aesthetics as shorthand for “now the industrial revolution is happening” or whatever doesn’t really bother me. I don’t demand every fantasy comic or tv show explain the evolution and influence of every object but I find it hard to suspend my disbelief here.
The Pro-Bending Arena is the only landmark building on the wiki that lists a non European influence (Harmandir Sahib), but it’s a bit icky to me in using a temple as the base design of your sporting arena?
And tbh, I mostly saw old madison square gardens...
And tbh, I mostly saw old madison square gardens...
The inside, though, reminds me mostly of grand central station and the Crystal Palace, with a smudge of the British Museum’s glass ceiling? Maybe there are only so many ways you can draw a glass ceiling and have it look unique.
Aside: the whole “colonies that have developed their own culture so much that they can’t simply be ‘returned’ to the sourceland so want to be independent” backstory of United Republic should strike a deep chord in me, what with being a Hong Konger but so far it’s left me cold.
Or to put it another way, Republic City doesn’t currently feel like an melting pot of cultures and elements born of a messy painful colonial past struggling towards equality? There is no leftover fire supremacy, for example. The “main” plot is all about bender vs non benders now.
PS: I refuse to believe Toph became a cop in a city. Seriously. She made it very clear in the BSS arc that she hates cities, rules and authority figures.
PPS: what is it with all these water tribe antagonists? Did they just say, “ah well, Fire and Earth bad guys in the TLA so now it’s Water’s turn”? In general the way they are writing water tribe is incredibly uncomfortable. It’s making TLA feel like a fluke success.
