Welcome back for another weekly review of Avatar! This week, we take a vacation to the library, where we introduce some information that keeps us moving through the rest of the show. Read on to see why!
1. The Halfway Point.
As the middle episode of the middle season, “The Library” serves as the official halfway mark for the series. As is the standard for the midpoint of a story, this episode contains a major twist that changes the characters’ approach for the rest of the series: the eclipse. Now armed with the knowledge of the eclipse, the main characters’ goal, to teach Aang all four types of bending (established in episode 2) by the time Sozin’s Comet arrives (established in episode 8), has now completely changed. Their goal is now to plan and launch an invasion on the day of the eclipse.
With this new goal, the series will be able to explore the world through completely different eyes, with more urgency and higher stakes.
2. Sandbenders?
I’d love to hear someone who disagrees about this, but in this episode, the sandbenders come off to me as bad stereotypes of desert peoples, particularly middle eastern peoples. Yes, they get humanized a bit (I repeat, a bit) in later episodes. But in this episode, they’re seen as lowly, uncultured thieves. They don’t speak. They make gross, ugly faces with their crooked teeth when people walk by. They spit on the ground in front of our heroes. The professor doesn’t treat them like humans so much as flies when he tells them, “Sandbenders, shoo!” And to top it all off, they steal Appa!
I do like the practicality of their design, given the fact that they live in a literal desert. I also like the idea of there being more types of bending cultures. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with portraying characters as bad, or even as unredeemable. But here we have an entire culture, based directly off real-world desert cultures given their skin tones, clothing, and environment, and they’re seen as inherently bad. Even with firebenders, the Avatar creators have gone to great lengths to show us how complicated that society’s morality can be (#NotAllFirebenders). So how could they create such one-dimensional stereotypes here?
This is most likely a case of this not aging well. 12 years makes a big difference. And maybe I’m completely off the mark here! It definitely surprises me how strongly negative they come off, though.
3. Wan Shi Tong, pulled right out of a Miyazaki movie.
Back in our first full exploration of the spirit world (“The Siege of the North”), I noted how much the spirits were influenced by the works of Hayao Miyazaki. Whatever I said before, nothing can compare to how Wan Shi Tong and his “foxy knowledge seekers” seem ripped directly out of Princess Mononoke. (Disclaimer: I just saw that movie two days ago.)
First off, there’s the choice of shots with the characters. Wan Shi Tong is often shown with his face taking up the full frame, a technique used for the animal gods in Princess Mononoke to make them seem more powerful and less of this world. More uniquely is the way Wan Shi Tong’s beak moves as he’s speaking. It doesn’t move according to the words he’s saying, as all the other characters’ mouths do. Instead, his mouth opens and closes at a set, slow, rhythmic pace, consciously disregarding the words he’s saying. The only other place I’ve ever seen this technique used was with the wolf and boar gods in Mononoke. Also of note on the visual side is that the library’s knowledge seekers look and act exactly like Nago’s wolf cubs in the Miyazaki film.
On the audio side, Wan Shi Tong’s voice deeply reverberates in his normal form, and it has an unnerving discordant quality when he’s angry, similar to the Mononoke characters. This all works with the characterization of the spirits in both works, whose concerns are so far beyond those of mere mortals.
4. “Humans only bother learning things to get the edge on other humans.”
This episode had some essential Sokka spotlights. He’s in full tactician mode, focused solely on getting information about the firebenders. And he does! He ends up discovering the information about the eclipse and using the tools available to him to turn that information into something practical. But what about the morality behind it? If he steals this information to get the edge on another human, is he as bad as the humans who previously stole and burned the information?
Most humans would be say, well, we don’t care! “All’s fair in love and war.” If our enemy is going to play by these rules and our only option to defeat them is to play by the same rules, then of course we’re going to play by them. It’s especially justified when it’s not just about defeat: It’s about saving innocents and putting the world on a more peaceful path.
Wan Shi Tong doesn’t care about that, though. Are these people stealing from him in order to have power over other humans? Regardless of the ultimate goal, the answer is yes. And for that, he becomes angry.
5. An Old and Disgruntled Spirit.
Wan Shi Tong is an immeasurably old spirit, seeing humans as little insignificant beings that can’t help but be self-destructive. Because of his interest in knowledge, though, he must also see the power of humanity. It’s a duality that he no doubt understands, yet because of past slights against him, he ultimately chooses self-preservation over keeping his library open to humans.
For this, I think Wan Shi Tong is a great foil for Aang. Both are beings of great power who can help humans if they want to. Aang hasn’t gotten the chance to grow old and jaded, nor does he have personal assets that he holds above all of humanity. It’s the perfect explanation for why the Avatar must live among humans and die as they do, only to be reborn anew. The Avatar must always be an agent of positive change for the era in which they live, not an all-powerful immortal being like Wan Shi Tong who loses touch with humanity.
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What did you think of the episode? Are you a fan of Wan Shi Tong? Do you disagree about the sandbenders? Let me know in the comments!
