I made a powerpoint of why I’m mad about the Korra pull. I understand it’s not cancelled (thank god), but I’m still upset.
please nickelodeon
It’s so sad. I think Spongebob was Nick’s best show until it hit it’s peak in 2004, ironically the year before A:TLA came around to take it’s place. These days it’s absolute turd, and yet Nick gives it so much attention because it gets views, ratings, and money from dumb, impressionable children. LoK might not be the greatest animated series around, but it was still easily the best show on that network (similarly “problematic but good” shows like TMNT and Kung Fu Panda followed behind). Spongebob, like Fairly Odd Parents, deserves to die and rot in TV Hell.
This made me realise that Nickelodeon probably just got booted one of their few-or maybe even only-handicapped characters off their TV network before we even got the chance to really learn more about her.
That’s not problematic AT ALL (in addition to the other shitty things that all of this implies).
Probably only handicapped character who isn’t the butt of a joke (apparently there’s at least one show that has a character who may or not have a disability who’s often made to be the butt of some joke).
But yeah.
A:TLA was similar with Toph. She was a blind, strong, female. True, she was the butt of a few jokes, but she wasn’t created that way. She’s blind, but doesn’t act blind, so her friends actually forget she’s blind, which is actually easy to do with any disability, especially if the person in question isn’t acting like they have it.
Compare that to Spongebob, where characters were created to just be butts of jokes. I firmly believe part of the bullying problem is caused by impressionable children seeing characters do stuff that’s easy to imitate, like pressuring someone to do something.
Back to Avatar, as I said, Toph is blind, but where other shows might treat blindness as debilitating, A:TLA doesn’t. Her friends don’t make fun of her behind her back, Toph is able to fight with her friends, and Toph adapted a style of Earthbending that caused her friends to forget she’s blind. As far as I’m aware, the only other show to treat blindness as no big deal is Power Rangers.
On to Korra, the Female lead has trouble with using Airbending, even though she’s the Avatar, and that’s brilliant! By doing that, she showed that even the Avatar isn’t always a prodigy. True, Aang had problems with Earthbending, but it was his opposite, of course he’d have trouble. Here, Korra’s naturally a Waterbender, who’s opposite is Firebending, yet she has trouble with Airbending. That is brilliant writing.
If it wasn’t getting enough views then it’s not going to help the company turn a profit, that’s a good reason to take it off the air. Like it or not they’re still a business and they have to look out for their own numbers.
One main reason for this is that nick is made for children many adults do their best to avoid kid stuff. So a majority of audience are children, watching spongebob and laughing. They don’t care about how deep the avatar lore goes. They don’t care about the politics of a world where people can bend the elements to their will. They just care about the lowest forms of humor, as they should. They are children.
