I’ve set myself a pretty tough task here.  I’ve picked a film clip I find particularly memorable from my childhood, with a character who utters some immortal words that I’d like to use to pose you all a related question.  Jessica Rabbit.  She’s a pin-up, and a cartoon, and a key part of the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, from which the clip is taken.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the film before, this is the first time we (and Eddie – Bob Hoskins’ character) see Jessica, who we already know is married to the eponymous Roger (a cartoon rabbit). There’s a lot more to this film that we first realise, as I discovered recently thanks to this article, and it’s got me thinking about Jessica and her famous line – is there more to her too?

“I’m not bad… I’m just drawn that way.”

That’s a line that I’ve always been fascinated by, even as a kid.  Jessica’s appearance never sat well with me: the dress, the heels, the boobs, waist, lips, eyes – everything was just designed for one reason.  That reason is summed up very simply with that line she delivers in Eddie’s office.  Were the film writers trying to draw attention to something?  She’s been made by men, for men – but she isn’t too happy about it.

Here’s your food-for-thought prompt: Is the character’s acknowledgement that she’s been made a certain way an important admission, or a clever distraction from her creators?

I’m a massive fan of Star Wars – from back when I was growing up watching old VHS tapes containing 1980s commercials (and that fizzy line that would go down the screen indicative of tape data decay), to the voluminous novels and graphic novels I read as an awkward teenager, through to the infamous new trilogy with all its flaws – and there definitely are many flaws. Even if we excuse the bad dialogue of 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, the ongoing debate about the canonicity of the Star Wars timeline, or even Jar Jar Binks, there are distinct flaws present in the first trilogy which make the films fare pretty badly in the politics of difference.

For a fantasy science fiction world with all kinds of alien species, the first Star Wars trilogy didn’t fare well in terms of embracing real-life social diversity. There were very few non-white or female characters, and when they were present as main characters, they weren’t exactly charitable representations. Leia is defined first by the fact she is female (gold bikini, anyone?), and (perhaps because there are so few women in the galaxy?) even her own brother is initially attracted to her. Although Leia had many heroic tendencies, the original trilogy would surely fail the Bechdel test since there are so few women visibly present in speaking roles. Don’t get me started on the lack of (human) ethnic diversity – put it this way, when the species of Mon Cala mari are better represented than human diversity, you know something’s wrong.

This aside, I’ve quite enjoyed a recent offering from the Star Wars cash empire: the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (or TCW). The premise of the series is that it’s supposed to take place in the couple of years between Episodes II and III. The later novels and films have integrated a little bit more diversity into the series, even trying to retcon why there are so few women around in the Empire (it’s due to the Emperor’s sexist ideology).

TCW is set in the period where destined future villain Anakin Skywalker is now an established Jedi Knight and takes on an apprentice of his own. The moment of Found Feminism for me arrives with the five-foot-something appearance of his apprentice: the awesome Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka (nicknamed ‘Snips’) is an unruly teenage Jedi whose aggression and flagrant disrespect for authority is markedly similar to Anakin’s.

After some reflection, I found myself liking Ahsoka more and more. She’s a swashbuckling Jedi risking her life on a regular basis with bravery and self-sacrifice, but sometimes she also shows a capacity for self-criticism and learning, and at no point do the other Jedi pass demeaning comment on her on the basis of her gender, nor is she defined as a character by any sense of sexuality. Most of the criticism she does receive comes as a result of her young age and brash manner. It’s refreshing to see a character like her represented in a less gendered way, and that the ways in which she is both awesome and flawed don’t come down to essentialist concepts of femininity or female sexuality. She isn’t depicted in a putative gendered manner – even when other Jedi such as Anakin or Mace Windu are exemplars of a archetypical masculinities, from ‘hunky hearthrob’ to ‘badass motherf*cka token black guy’, Ahsoka’s merits as a character come from her inner resolve, personal strength and her commitment to the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic, and not her looks, what she wears or who she fancies.

Granted, I suspect most episodes of TCW fail to pass Bechdel, and there are few moments of female interaction which do not involve talking about men¹ It’s hard to call TCW a ‘feminist’ show by most stretches, but it is refreshing that this action-packed show, which has little to do with romance, does not exclude women from roles of leadership and armed conflict.

BadRep Towers: Thinking about Star Wars continuity for a moment, Ahsoka obviously isn’t in the movies. Although LucasFilm isn’t exactly famous for continuity, what do you think will happen to her at the end of the series?

I think she’s going to die, but the question of her fate will probably be answered in the final (perhaps 5th?) season. The show builds up a positive and somewhat simplistic view of the Republic, partly because it’s a kid’s show, but there’s a sense of pathos for the older audience who know all the relationships between the clones and Jedi will break down – and that Palpatine is really the bad guy. Ahsoka’s death is prophesised between the episodes 3×09-13, but these episodes were very weird and hard to interpret.

BadRep Towers: We found some forum posts from parents saying how much their daughters admire Ahsoka – though there are a few questions about her costume being raised which we also thought were interesting – do you think her bare midriff is a less applaudable design decision, or does it fit well with her teenage tearaway identity?

This is one subject that I didn’t want to acknowledge because it’s so complicated – but it is a critical consideration if we’re looking at this as feminists. I just did a Google image search to remind myself of her different outfits, and I found some fanart, ‘sexy’ cosplay outfits, and a few actual pictures from the series. In a way, I think that reinforces the answer I was originally going to give to you. My view is this: the show is expressed through a male gaze in the sense that in a series about war, technology, weaponry and realpolitik, almost all of the people in positions of authority (clone commanders, Jedi generals, Palpatine, Dooku, Yoda etc) are men. To be honest, I don’t know how to interpret Ahsoka’s bare midriff. In one sense you might say that because it’s science fiction, all kinds of kooky outfits can exist to highlight non-human styles and costumes. You might also say that female Jedi tend to dress a little bit differently to male Jedi. On the other hand, when I did that Google search, under ‘related searches’ there’s ‘ahsoka tano pregnant’. I’ve also found some fairly sexualised fan pictures. So I think it’s fair to say that among a large number of (probably) male fans, her outfit has been interpreted as ‘sexually provocative’.

I think this is the kind of issue that people will have to interpret in their own way – just because she dresses in a certain way that some men definitely think is sexual, doesn’t mean there isn’t scope for alternative interpretations. However, I’m no sociologist, and I’m not a woman. I lean on the side that it’s a bit ‘male gaze’ since Padawans would officially wear something like what Obi-Wan did in Episode 1, and judging by some of the fanart out there of what is a fictional teenage girl.

BadRep Towers: Touching on something you said earlier about heroines being defined by sexuality or romantic roles – do you think Ahsoka’s relative lack of sexuality is actually, perhaps, an existing trope? I’m thinking of young female warriors such as Joan of Arc (what TVTropes calls the ‘Jeanne D’Archetype’, although they list Leia as an example, which might not fit your take on her!). I like Joan-type figures so I don’t see this as a bad thing, but I think it’s interesting that trends in TV and Hollywood are often so overbearing that a reaction against “defining women by their sexuality” is to remove sexuality wholesale. Would you put her down as a Jeanne D’Archetype?

The short answer is that I’m not quite sure how to think about this issue. There are so few female characters in significant roles in TCW – 3-10 characters represent the whole of the galaxy’s female gender. As you point out, Jeanne D’Archetype is defined in non-sexual terms, and Ahsoka fits this. She also has a rare force power that can see the future, so that and being part of a religious order kind of puts her strongly in this trope. But without doing a discourse/content analysis on 80 episodes of the show, there are a good few instances of other significant female characters portraying a sexual/romantic dimension. Padme’s is Anakin’s secret wife; Duchess Satine has a hinted romantic relationship with Obi Wan (but she isn’t defined by it) and there is a controversial banned clip of one episode where the dark Jedi Asajj Ventriss kisses a clone as she kills him.

I think it’s quite notable that Ahsoka is one of the most important female characters and is not defined by who she fancies. Of all the things I am currently watching and streaming, it’s probably the only instance.

• Michael moderates and blogs at Noumenal Realm and tweets at @NoumenalRealm. Last year at a talk he gave, Michael was critiqued for perpetuating a ‘white and bourgeoisie elitism’ for his Kantian/Adorno-influenced views on art and culture. If it’s possible for a British Asian from a working class background to be accused of being a white dead German, he supposes its okay for him to be accused of being a feminist too. His favourite character in Star Wars is Palpatine.

1. Examples of this include Ahsoka working with Jedi Apprentice Barriss Offee on a difficult mission where they are on their own without support, and an instance where Senator Amidala works with head of state Duchess Satine of Mandalore to solve a corruption scandal, each expressing their political values along the way.

My Little Pony "Vintage" range - I feel old...

After spending a while bemoaning the absence of Cool Cartoons For Girls That Aren’t Avatar Legend of Korra, I went home for the weekend to be reunited with my My Little Pony collection when my Dad and I cleaned out the garage.

This then spurred me on to sit down and watch the new series, more in hope than expectation.

• My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Episode One clip on YouTube
• Official site for the show

Well, that was brilliant, wasn’t it? Funny, well animated, lots of female (pony-shaped) characters – which interestingly sidesteps that all-animals-are-male problem. Then came feverish research – where did this awesome thing come from? Well, let me tell you. It was created by Lauren Faust, she ofPowerpuff Girls fame, and intended to be just as wisecrackingly cross-generational as those three super powered big eyed girls. MLPFIM is a strong candidate for being a Found Feminism on content and provenance alone.

But what really sealed the deal for me was the discovery of the Bronies – men who like My Little Pony, and who like it so much that they went up against the Bastion of Internet Testosterone, 4chan. Seriously guys, you are my new heroes, swatting aside all kinds of gender conventions in a mighty leap of Being Able To Like What You Damn Well Please. *round of applause*

My personal favourite of the new batch of ponies are Scootaloo, who likes sports and lives in a treehouse, and Twilght Sparkle who is telekenetic, serious, bookish, has a pet dragon and owns her own steampunk zeppelin that doubles as a nightlight. I am not joking. I may have to buy one.

So, Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s childhood-favourite series (and don’t forget the films!) The Borrowers, which is about an ecologically invalid subspecies of human beings that are inexplicably about five inches tall or less and basically subsist off stolen goods and services. This adaptation is by Studio Fucking Ghibli, who also did my favourites Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. Oh, and not forgetting the godlike Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro.

I literally couldn’t love Studio Ghibli films more if I tried. They are a tour de force in animation, steadfastly championing the 2D cel-shaded animation genre like the 24-carat geniuses they are. Pixar and Disneamworks can’t touch them. People are leaping frogs about Pixar producing its first female protagonist!! with the (and rightly so) hugely anticipated Brave – but Studio Ghibli have been writing fantastic, inspirational female protagonists since they first began with Sheeta in 1986’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I mean, come on. While we’re fannying about here in the West with bloody Sucker Punch apparently making history with having so many female protagonists, they’ve made things like Princess Mononoke, where not only is the title girl a complete badass, she’s also actually not by-the-book squeaky blameless sacrificial-lamb benevolent. She has power and flaws and rage and potency and – wait, this is a review of Arrietty.

Arrietty is the first film to be directed by the Studio’s newest induction to directing, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and it’s absolutely magnificent. I am slightly ashamed to admit that, while I read the first Borrowers book when I was a kid, I can’t remember much about it, other than Arrietty being great fun and very empathic as a main character, and that I wanted to know exactly how they made their clothes. The film does an awful lot for scale fetishists like me (SMALL VERSIONS OF BIG THINGS THAT ARE JUST THE SAME!!!) and explores in quite some visual detail the things that will change at that level of minutiae – in particular, surface tension and the behaviour of liquids. How they pour tea! Is amazing! I squealed in the cinema!

The story is simple and quite static. It takes place in only a few days, and really, nothing huge happens in the vast scheme of things, but that’s just it: from your perspective as an audience, nothing much has changed at all. But from Arrietty’s tiny perspective, everything has! Her house that she’s lived in all her life has had to be abandoned, she’s met more of her own species, having believed that her family were the only ones left, and she’s made friends with a human boy, despite her parents, Pod and Homily, warning her of the inherent dangers therein. Everything’s changed. Her whole worldview has been rocked to the core – and yet Yonebayashi keeps us, the audience, at this cool, gentle, static distance with his long still shots of water dripping off the edges of plants and Cécile Corbel’s gentle music. It’s amazing. It’s like he does perspective with your perspective.

That was the most amazingly pretentious sentences I’ve ever written and I’m not even sorry. But yes. There’s a lot of focus on scale, naturally, in this. That’s where the magic is. From the moment you see Arrietty, fleeing expertly from a laugh-out-loud-amusingly-faced fat cat, you’re enchanted. She’s so small. And everything she has in her life, from bay leaves to fish hooks, feel so familiar and worn with use. You’re captivated between the alien nature of observing life lived at 1/8th scale, and being charmed by how familiar it is at the same time. It’s perfect. Dude, did I mention the tea?

The main difference between (what I remember of) the first book and the film is firstly that it’s vastly simplified, and the inclusion of Spiller (“Dreadful Spiller” in t’books) as a motion catalyst. He’s introduced having rescued Pod from a sprained ankle in the rain – and my god, the moment he came on screen? I fell in love. I am going to cosplay as that boy every day for the rest of my life. He’s completely amazing. He’s wild and awkward and ingenious and has a KETTLE FOR A BOAT. He’s a little bit of a shoehorned-in love interest of sorts for Arrietty, but the shows of affection are mostly from him to her – she’s far too busy escaping crows and playing catch with woodlice. And even then, there’s only arguably two of these awkward Spiller-y shows of admiration, so you needn’t worry – as I do – that an oafishly stapled-on heteronormative TWOO WUV will impinge upon your film-viewing.

Basically, I want Spiller to have a cameo appearence in everything. Which will happen, because I will dress as him and climb onto sets of productions and films and things and run around in the background.

Overall, this is a brilliant directing debut for Studio Ghibli’s brand spanking new physics-obsessed boy, and I’m very excited to see what else he’ll be doing in the future. I’d compare him to Miyazaki, but I can’t, because all I’ll do is shriek “HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE” seventeen times before passing out in a flood of my own tears.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You should always see a Studio Ghibli film immediately and without reservation because if you don’t, I truly believe you become one of the soulless
• This is a charming adaptation that I think does Norton proud – if only for the fact that it engrossed me so completely that I now have to return to the novels!
• Niya the cat is side-splittingly hilarious
• THE TEA. LOOK AT HOW THEY POUR THE TEA.

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• I can only think of one reason that’d prevent you from seeing this film, and that is if all the cinemas in your area immediately burn to the ground tonight.

Well, because given how good the original was, the sequel might just be the Most Feminist Thing On Your TV when it comes out next year.

Also several of team BadRep are raving fans already, so you’ll just have to put up with us jumping up and down every time they release new material. Which is exactly what happened when we saw this trailer, which just premiered at San Diego Comic Con!

Produced by Nickelodeon, Avatar: The Legend of Korra is a show with the female lead character in the title. This is actually incredibly important, and of course vanishingly rare in a series which then goes on to be mostly about fighting, growing up, choosing your own path, and not pre-packaged ‘girl content’ that some networks assume must follow from a female name on the poster. Korra is the Chosen One, not the sidekick, doing real-world martial-arts, with added fire. Buffy can claim to have done it, maybe Max in Dark Angel, but we’re still looking back for only a handful of shows in the past 20 years.

As for the trailer, we love that she’s the star, but a lot of our current excitement is based on how fair and equal the previous show was, while still remaining incredibly exciting and not at all preachy. If you don’t understand why the shots of statues and cities are AWESOME and IMPORTANT then that’s because you need to go and watch it!

We will update you when more Avatar: The Legend of Korra material shows up. (We’ll have to, because it’s the only way to get at least three of us to shut up about it.)

Now stop asking such awkward questions.

Gather ’round, Internet; let me tell you the tale of how I became a feminist. It’s a good one, I promise. Take a seat, please! Open your mind-hatch and brace yourselves for my infosquirt.

(How many articles have I opened like that? ALL OF THEM)

I discovered that I was a feminist at university. I was nineteen. It took an enthusiastic, fiery, inspirational woman with icy blonde hair and a stack of books about gender and queer theory explaining to my class that feminism was, you know, Feminism, and not, in fact, the exclusive reserve of stereotypical humourless Second Wave womyn-born-womyn fanatics.

This came as a great relief to little transgender me, and highlighted that everything I thought about sexuality, gender expression and the nature of equality neatly fitted under the feminist banner. What a relief! So that made me a feminist, because I held those views. And those beliefs were almost unanimously implanted in my psyche by an anime called Revolutionary Girl Utena at the age of about fifteen.

They love each other very much. Did I mention how gorgeous this series is?

An anime? I hear you cry! An anime? Being feminist? An animé?, your incredulous cries ring loud through the intertubes to my desk, what, the Japanese cartoons that are full of the degradation and exploitation of women, where the source material contains less-than-consensual sex and the American dubs sanitise out all the lesbianism? Surely not.

Where did all this incest come from?:(

Well, actually, yes. It’s true as treacle. Readers who’ve seen it will already know why, of course, but let’s take this from the top – be warned, people who haven’t seen it: here be spoilers.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a shoujo (“girls'”) animé set in a high school. It’s all very sweet to start with; you’ve got the hero (Utena) and her best friend, and you’ve got the absurdly powerful school council. And then there’s a heavy injection of what-the-fuck when you meet the Duelling Theme. There’s a mechanism in place for long, convoluted reasons, whereby selected Duellists – designated by rings – duel (with swords) to win the Rose Bride as a prize. Her name is Anthy, and her entire purpose is to be a fought-over, won-and-owned slave.

So far so messed up. But it’s fucked up for a purpose. The hero, Utena, has a prince complex. She wants to – literally – be a prince that rescues princesses – that’s her gender expression. She cross-dresses habitually and is frequently described as “a tomboy” (despite actually being quite femme), and she falls in love with Anthy, primarily by wanting to save her. The whole series is full of fluid, ambiguous gender expression and sexuality, and it’s treated and handled in a non-sensational, perfectly intelligible way. Nothing is mysterious or exotic – it is just the way it is.

The greatest thing about Utena, however, is that it tells the story of a woman who desires and ascribes to an atypical gender expression and her struggle to make her gender expression fit and work in a world that is vehemently and viciously opposed to it – and wins. Sort of. Utena’s own end (and I’m sorry for the spoilers here) is sacrificial and tragic, but in sacrificing herself she saves and liberates her friends who go on to live and love as they want. It’s not your average coming-of-age, adolescence-is-hard story: there’s pitch black themes of rape and sexual coercion in there that are painful and harrowing to watch, but resolve themselves. It’s a story of survival, but it’s not just a story of female survival. There’s Utena who is absolutely not your average girl, and there’s Mamiya and Miki, both femme men, and survivors of the destructive obsession of others.

Mamiya

So I fell madly in love with it, as I’m sure you’ll understand, because it was a thing that showed me that there was hope for me, as a trans* person, because here was a whole series full of atypical gender expression that just existed, neither as a joke nor as a plot point. It also demonstrated to me me that it is possible to fight and vanquish your ascribed social role. It’s a story of seeing oppression and unfairness and fighting it with every fibre of your being. Utena literally gives her life to liberate Anthy from her sexual degradation, slavery and torment because she cannot live in a world that would condone and support such condemnation. Every time I watch the series to the end (and it’s bloody long!) I end up in floods of tears and with a profound desire to march around town shouting at people.

Usually I draw things instead. But, you know, the desire’s there.

I absolutely recommend Revolutionary Girl Utena to you guys – I mean, it’s not without its problems, nothing is – because of how powerful and liberating it is to watch, but I caution you that the themes get darker than the forgotten recesses of hell and some bits are genuinely hard to watch. Each character is sympathetic, but flawed to fuck, and no-one emerges at the other end untarnished – and that’s perfect. Everyone fights and is wounded, because that’s how life is. Everyone’s got a streak of trauma or viciousness in them, because that’s how people are. Despite its weird, fantastic elements, it’s very engrossing and believable – and that’s what makes it so effective. It deconstructs the idea of rigidly set, gender-ascribed roles in an allegorical tale full of people. Flawed, understandable, hurting people.

And that is why I am a feminist. Because my adolescence was spent watching the adolescence of Utena. Do seek it out. It’s incredible. And deeply, deeply weird, but we all love that.

Images courtesy of Giovanna at the fantastic Empty Movement Utena fan resource.

A new 12-part miniseries is being made, this time with a female character in the title role. This image of her has been released and is doing the rounds on fan blogs and so on, and some of the comments which have greeted it are very interesting.

Here are some of the initial replies I’ve seen (not exact wording):

• “Why does she look like a boy?”
• “She looks well butch.”
• “Take the pigtails out and you have a dude.”

All of which might arguably be true, but that’s firmly in the tradition of Avatar playing with gender in awesome ways. For a start, the character of the Avatar is a holy person who has reincarnated as male and female over the centuries. They have a long line of both to call on for wisdom during meditation.

Aang, the boy monk who is the lead character of the original Avatar: TLA series. Image copyright Nickelodeon.

In the original series, the Avatar is a boy named Aang, who presents as relatively gender-neutral: his young age and upbringing as a monk make him quite androgynous, his head has no hair or facial hair and he wears mainly shapeless robes. While physical power and combat are key measures of success for the world he lives in, Aang refuses to take the hyper-masculine pose which is constantly encouraged. He is instead always flying out of reach and using his enemies’ aggression to quickly slip behind them to safety (a key technique of the Ba Gua martial art which his tribe learn). He doesn’t judge or take sides, but is laughingly delighted to meet anyone. He has been away from the world, and society’s restrictions on gender simply make no sense to him compared to love for your fellow beings. Expectations of male and female conduct are explored (and often refuted) by everyone around him, but he stands alone in the centre. He is a pacifist trickster, unique in the world.

Tricksters in mythology are often linked to exploration of gender roles. They can be shapeshifters, disguise themselves as anyone, and try out, or even master, traditional women’s or men’s skills. Shamans in some communities (who can in many ways embody the trickster role) may not consider themselves to be male or female: some cross-dress, or adopt the conventions of different gender roles at different times. Tricksters are also usually Outsiders. They all know loneliness and derision, and can only succeed in their task if they do NOT fit the safe confines of known social roles. Aang is definitely an Outsider, and the lonely last of his kind.

The fact that the series can do all this while still being a genuinely thrilling, hilarious and entertaining children’s show is just one of its strengths (do you get the impression I like it quite a lot?) The attitude of neutrality with regard to gender isn’t laboured, and as the episodes progress Aang develops a hetero attraction towards a female character, but by that point it doesn’t feel like it was inevitable in a Hollywood kind of way.

When we look at who the commenters expected Korra to be like, the closest fit is probably the main female of the original group – Katara, a teenage girl who, like Korra, also comes from the Water Tribe. Katara has complete agency over her actions and repeatedly refuses to fit into everyone’s expectations for what ‘a girl’ should be able to do. She does take on the familiar female roles of healer and nurturer, but only after proving she is as strong and determined as the men around her and choosing the additional activities for herself. Demanding them, in fact, when there is so much which she rejects and fights against as well. But at the end of the day… she is also very conventionally pretty.

Korra doesn’t give the studios that reassurance. You can usually be as liberal as you like in a new show – provided you have a white male lead. I think Avatar: TLA did the minimum it had to in order to be made, and took great risks after it had snuck in under the radar. Avatar: TLK isn’t putting up with that nonsense at all, has a teenage young woman of colour as the protagonist and (if the previous writers were anything to go by) will not be taking any crap about it.

I can’t wait to see what Nickelodeon do with Korra, and in many ways “she’s not feminine-looking enough!” is a wonderful comment to have provoked. Television for children is SO important in terms of teaching norms to a new generation. The original depicts the heroes observing the world around them, choosing for themselves which parts to take into their life, and being treated with honour and respect no matter who they feel they are. I just wish we were getting more than a 12-part miniseries this time!

Just trawling for images to use had me wanting to watch the whole series again! (Image and characters Copyright Nickelodeon productions.)

I’ve had a few people ask me about one of the presents I mentioned in my suggestions for Team BadRep’s Christmas list: the cartoon series Avatar – the last Airbender. Unlike some of the gift suggestions it’s not a specifically feminist item, but I recommended it because I think it’s awesome on many levels and feminist-friendly as well. (Some spoilers ahead!)

First of all, there’s a rough gender balance. The core group is made up of two boys and two girls. They are as important as each other on average – one of the boys is the title character, but the other is something of a clown figure who doesn’t have any of the powers that the two girls do. It’s not that clear-cut because everyone has a lot of growth over the series, but there is no “male hero and some sidekicks” dynamic going on here. They are all important, and talented in different ways.

The enemies are initially men (especially a teenage boy and his grandfather), but his sister and her female friends take even more of the villain roles later on (and are frankly better at them). When the core group gains another man, a woman who was previously a side character gets more screentime too.

What’s more interesting to me than strict number balance is that the roles for women are very, very good. The show is set in a fantasy world in which combat is a critical part of cultural identity and power, but if anything the women are more precise and technically proficient at fighting than the men. There is even an early scene where a blustering male fighter spars with an expert female warrior, assuming he’ll have to go easy on her, and she deliberately and calmly takes him apart. In the ‘enemy’ family, the sister has a greater knowledge and tighter focus of their family’s technique than anyone else.

Another thing it does well is to show real martial arts, and how women can be just as effective at them without falling into the typical trap of only being given the soft and gentle styles. In this story the arts are learned by tribe, and if either men or women show talent then they can perform them. So the main young woman in the group does Tai Chi (thought of as soft by anyone who hasn’t had to go up against it, seriously, bloody hell) but all the men of her tribe do too. In fact, she encounters prejudice from a teacher who won’t train her because he doesn’t see it as a woman’s role – so the show certainly didn’t assign her the style because it sees it as soft and feminine.

The other girl in the main group (and I mean girl, I don’t think she’s a teen yet?) knows the style which is the heaviest and most unmovable, based on rock. When you have a mixed group like this the female roles often just happen to result in “Invisible Woman with passive/protective powers”. Healer girlfriend, in other words. Not here – these female characters are determined, immensely capable in attack, and in some cases the most ruthless people in the show. The camera doesn’t cut away from the effects of their rage or violence either, as we’ve seen a trend recently where women aren’t shown equally during violent scenes. The fighting is an extension of their character, even their soul, so is shown in great detail because it is relevant and part of the storytelling.

The series is also very good on race. The “Tribes” are roughly based on Asian countries, with Japan, China and Tibet being obviously represented. The Water Tribe live at the poles (on the ice), and are darker skinned than everyone else. This is never once commented on: they are the Water tribe, of course they’re the colour they are. While there’s plenty of tension between the groups, there’s absolutely no racial hatred. Characters acknowledge that one of the tribes is being warlike right now, but they know that all four make up the world and never treat anyone as lesser based on skin colour. Those planning the long-term subjugation of other tribes are shown to be dangerously out of control and out of balance.

(This became a sore point when M Night Shyamalan made a Hollywood movie of the series and cast predominantly white actors as the all-Asian characters. And a British-Indian actor as the baddie, who ironically is the palest person in the cartoon series).

Most of all I recommend Avatar: The Last Airbender to everyone because it’s just so full of joy. The comedy is genuinely funny and never gets old; the sentiments are exactly what I want kids to be learning from TV. The characters are deep, flawed, and have development arcs, the women are not sidelined even though the cultural and fantasy setting could have made that easy and even likely. It celebrates establishing yourself but doesn’t glorify violence. It’s just superb, frequently beautiful and very admirable.

I’ve seen quite a lot of the anime series and movies which are popular in the West. I’d put this up as one of the best children’s shows I’ve seen in any format, an anime which holds its own alongside more famous adult fare such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Neon Genesis Evangelion etc.

It’s critical that we teach equality to our children from an early age and TV is still the best medium to reach the most people. I think this is a series you can choose without hesitation. Look for it in the post-Christmas sales!

There’s more good news too: a sequel series, The Legend of Korra is underway. The Avatar is reincarnated (and can contact their past incarnations, who are men and women of all the tribes). This sequel stars the next Avatar to be born – who is Korra, a teenage girl of the Water tribe.

Promo Image for The Legend of Korra, copyright Nickelodeon productions.

Despite running for several seasons and finishing a few years ago, Avatar: The last Airbender is still surprisingly unknown in the UK compared to the US. Have you seen it? Did you like it, from a feminist perspective? Share your thoughts with us!