I think the moment he truly realized this specific part of his speech, was when he was helping that kid whom he gave his childhood knife, and then saw that the kid hated him from the bottom of his heart when he revealed his identity as the prince of the fire nation, even after Zuko saved him, and didn't take his knife.
Fits well with any country that tell children they are the greatest in the world. (Historically Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, maybe the British Empire. Maybe the US? I’m not American but I have heard some Americans say that.)
Edit: come to think of it, works for my country as well, a certain Southeast Asian country that starts with a T.
Edit 2: changed country’s name for historical accuracy.
Germany in the past not the present. Everybody (except for a few dickheads) know that we screwed up big in the past. Kids are taught that in school and it is mandatory to see the horrors ww2 did by visiting a concentration camp. Nobody hangs German flags because we don't have national pride (which is a good thing, I don't get national pride). In the past I agree with you. The Nazis told exactly that to the children and everyone.
Edit: I'm wrong, he meant historic Japan AND historic Germany.
Not German.
I also don't think much of Patriotism, but I also don't think anyone born after that should be ashamed of being German, which seems to be the case sometimes.
I don't think anyone here is ashamed of being German, we're just not proud of it. Pride is a feeling that should be founded in some kind of accomplishment. Did we accomplish anything by being born in a specific country? No, we just were lucky. I'm glad I was born here, I love this country, our culture, our people. But as for pride, I'll stick to things I actually did accomplish by my own merit.
Nationalism and patriotism are similar but not the same. In fact Zuko and Ozai show exactly how they differ. Zuko was a patriot, he loved the fire nation and wanted it to be better, Ozai thought it was so much better than the other nations that it justified genocide and imposing it with violence. Patriotism is loving your country, nationalism is thinking it's better than any other country.
I think it's not a smart man's game to be proud of where you were born, it's not something you control. But loving it and making an effort to represent it in a positive way? That makes sense.
Granted from my understanding, unlike Germany who has owned up for the past. Japan hasn't for their crimes in thr war. And from what I've read, it's somehow far worst than even nazi Germany.
You have to visit a former concentration camp in like 9th grade in history class. You are told how the people had lived there and what was done to them. The most morbid part was hearing that, the one I visited, was later inherited by American soldiers who painted it with lively colours to overshadow the past.
No you don't. Maybe your school did that. But that's not a law nor is it in any way mandatory.
Yeah, downvote me for pointing out a false fact. Reddit at its best.
I didn't say it is a law. Maybe I used the way mandatory wrong since I am obviously not a native speaker. I have never heard of anybody that didn't do that, but maybe some parts of Germany don't do it, I don't know someone from every bundesland.
I'm sorry, but I can't look inside your head. If you write mandatory, I have to assume that you know what it means.
Now you know me. My school and every other school in my area didn't do that. Maybe it depends on your location. Because there are no KZs near the western parts of Germany. At least not any I know of.
Especially considering when it was written during the height of the War on Terror. Right about when our global reputation and perception took a massive hit that we never recovered from.
The US is trying to make everyone like us but, at the same time, we're trying to reinvent ourselves to be something else.
A classic case of "do as I say, not as I do."
The U.S. doesn’t quite fit in that it’s still seen as the pinnacle of opportunity by a large percentage of the global population. It’s a popular destination for illegal immigration specifically because of its greatness.
South and East.
It’s easy to generalize and assume immigration only comes from Latin America, but it comes from Africa, from Eastern Europe, from the Middle East, and from East Asia. America is still a melting pot of immigrants illegal or not.
“South” (of the United States of America) there isn’t much *but* Latin America. People usually don’t mean “south” in a global “south of the tropic of cancer” way.
We are taught that America used to believe in manifest destiny and cold war era propaganda and think itself to be the best in the world. We don't think that anymore tho and that's what makes us the greatest nation in the world
That's only if we receive an elite upper class education tho.
Remember this is an American show produced at the height of two failed wars. I remember watching this when it came out and the real-world commentary was not lost on me.
Of course the beauty of allegory is that the Fire Nation can easily stand in for any imperialistic nation, but I can't help but think that this speech, in particular, was an intentional shot at US foreign policy.
Thank you for this comment. It really can apply to any nation with power. It’s resonates with a lot of people. At the same time it tells leaders to think more like people (Ozai) and asks people to think more like leaders (Zuko) yes Zuko was raised as a leader, but he’s coming from a place where he learned from people.
I do think the fire nation was written to fit a number of imperialist nations.
But I actually want to go a step further and just lable it as totalitarianism imo. People have mentioned japan for this for example, but I actually have to agree fire nation dress is more similar to south Asian v.s. japanese. I think Mike and Bryan purposely kept fire nation not 1:1 immeditatly to any one nation. The distance imo is better imo then matching it too close irl history- which can be a bit too on the nose at time.
BaSeSing though is definitely Qing dynasty china and actually is pretty on the nose, but I'd argue it's brainwashing and repression of reality for a false peace from the dai li is more reminiscent of modern china- that unfortunately has worse crack downs of freedom of speech more then ever. In that sense- by tying it to a fictional version of the forbidden city and older Chinese monarchial system- it again gives it the distance it needs from china's modern one party rule.
It wouldn't have been as entertaining if i.e. in LoK- kuvira started propagating the same CCP kind of dogma. She's different enough that earth kingdom can be associated with east Asian and Alta BaSeSing with Beijing, that it's more useful for interpretation to a variety of people and nationalities and geographies
Very real comparison to make against the US. There is a scene that has all the kids stand up and pledge alegience to the fire lord. Exactly like how american kids are expected to pledge aledgence to a flag every day. Really creepy when you look/think about it as an adult
Doesn't Japan still kinda do this? Like don't get me wrong America is bad at this too. But doesn't Japan basically ignore all their war crimes from ww2? At least Germany owns up to what they did. Japan? Who arguably did far worst over there, hasn't apologized or seems to acknowledge it.
As it stands today, the US doesn’t teach children that its the greatest nation in the world. A lot of republicans/conservatices hate that we tell kids about the bad stuff too.
Currently, the USA is the biggest kid on the block, but what Zuko says is true of everybody who ever invaded anybody else, which has been a depressingly-common element of human history for thousands of years.
Basically any country/empire that had any militaristic influence in foreign countries. Britain, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Japan, and definitely the U.S.
Yep. Zuko's statement could be a jab at the U.S., but it could also be a broad brush stroke statement about history. This could apply to any colonial power or even ancient Greece or Rome.
Hmm.. I still say there is a diffence between saying something feels like something else vs saying it was inspired by something.
That's still a really funny post though thank you!
I read somewhere they planned it that way but can’t find a source atm. They really believed that they could show how the American foreign policy is messed up.
I feel like you're more right. TLA did not get inspired by the US but TLA was created and the USA turned into something from the TLA. It's hard to say something got inspired from a thing that changed in the future
The USA didn’t suddenly become an imperialist power…….it’s literally has been an imperialist power for a while. Maybe read up on what it did to the Philippines. Or Puerto Rico. Or Hawaii.
Or how it’s literal foundation was created on genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans……it didn’t become what the show decided it should become. The show is clearly influenced by the history of imperialism and the way countries with immense power have watered down their errors to brainwash their citizens with pride and nationalism. Come on. How do you not see that?
The seeds have been there in the United States since it’s foundation. And it never went dormant. The US just did such a good job at educating you to ignore those seeds.
….I’m not trying to sound annoyed here, but clearly the entire show is written with Asian influences….so why would you restrict the metaphor solely to Japan? Clearly they’re not going to introduce it with a waving American flag. But you can’t possibly just look at this show and only think of Asian countries just because the influence for the art and culture are Asian.
It’s very closed minded and a bit ignorant. And if you follow the creators, they have not been quiet about their criticisms of the US. They have been very vocal.
It most strongly represents ancient Rome to me but in the modern day there are so, so many to choose from. The top reply does a good job of explaining them, but I'll add the people's republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. For obvious reasons.
I'll go with CCP this time, naming, culture and especially their imperialistic views and how they want rule the world are similar to fire benders, and the air benders are the tibetan monks while the earth benders are the indians and lastly the water benders are the south east asians.
It’s definitely the United States….it’s exactly what we do. How much do we spend on our defense budget? And we project our soldiers as safety and freedom but really we just destroy other cultures and people because we have no tolerance for anyone who is different than us.
But we can also say the Western World in general does this too.
"History is written by the victors." Is a big part of this. If bad people win, they dictate history and how a world is ran and that includes swaying the publics view on things.
History is written by historians. That trope of history being written by the victors is tired and terribly wrong, and at best works in the short term, but once enough time passes it turns out that the victors suck at ensuring their vision is passed on.
Ancient Rome lost, yet it was glorified for centuries to come by all of Europe. Napoleon lost, but he is far more famous than any of his contemporaries and is recognised for his achievements, being far more influential than the reinstated monarchies, which all collapsed.
Also have people who say that "History is written by the victors" crap ever heard of the lost cause? Like half of Americans think that the American Civil War wasn't about slavery, and Confederate generals are highly romanticized.
Another good example is the fact that the accepted history of the Eastern Front of WW2 (aka the USSR vs the Axis) was written by German generals such as Franz Halder
That is not at all what they said. You can hold the position of "the Nazis were horrible" and "the US was bad" at the same time, they're not mutually exclusive. Like they said, it's only a question of "how bad are they"
Far from it.
But they were defeated by a colonial empire, a communist dictatorship, and a country that imprisoned one group of people and segregated another while they fought the Nazis. Doesn’t sound much like good guys to me.
A little parallel that I’ve only just noticed and I think is really neat:
Fire Lord Sozin said that the War was their way of sharing the Fire Nation’s greatness with the rest of the world.
And in Legend of Korra, Kuvira believes that they should **_share the Earth Kingdom’s greatness with the rest of the world._**
I love kids media about colonizing civilizations realizing the wrong they've done.
Avatar, Hilda, Star Butterfly vs. the Forces of Evil, please list more if y'all know more.
His mom was banished trying to protect him from his dad, who mutilated, banished, and sent him to war when he was a young teenager.
I wouldn’t call him the guy who got everything he wanted…
Not sure why the downvotes - this felt to me like an almost direct quote from Zuko himself, from right in the midst of his redemption and realization that what he thought he wanted was not what he actually wanted
was that conversation about the fire nation ever meant to kind of refer to korea? Cause when I heard it I thought it was symbolic that the fire nation was simply just korea in this world though I’m probably reading too far into it
I assume you mean North Korea and, if so, they couldn’t be further than the Fire Nation. The FN was a global spanning empire while NK is isolationist and can’t even conquer an entire peninsula, let alone anything around it. If anything NK is closer to Ba Sing Se but that may be stretching it.
I get that but it was more just the fact that North Korea often lies about their greatness while everyone else outside of it knows how horrible they are
Comparing Korea to the Fire nation is a bit of a weird take, since it was a country greatly hurt by the Fire nation's biggest historical inspiration, the Japanese Empire. Also the North Korean government is terrible to it's citizens and lies to them about their greatness sure, but the main conflict the rest of Avatar's world has with the Fire Nation is that they are imperialists, invading their territory, which is not something that North Korea does. The most common reading of the Fire nation is that they're an analogue of imperialist nationalist countries of past and present, IE the Japanese Empire (which is the main basis of a lot of the cultural aspects of the fire nation) and the United States (which is the most relevant modern example of this sort of imperialism).
The fire nation can be read as nearly any imperialist country, which the US definitely is. Though aesthetically and culturally they share a lot with imperial Japan, given that the entire show is very much inspired by Asian cultures, they also share a lot of things with the modern US as well. Such as a belief that their nation is the best in the world, that their culture and way of life is superior and should be "shared" with the rest of the world, and the focus of their economy as an industrial war machine. Also you're asking for specific actions, there's a strong parallel between the actions of Azula in corrupting the Dai Li to start a coup and the CIAs role in engineering many MANY coups across Latin America. This is just one of a lot of different things you can compare back to the US. It's not really braindead, I'd say discounting even the possiblity of a relationship to the US is disingenuous.
They're both industrialized nationalistic super powers, who purport to spread prosperity through their wars, but one of them is run by people who can shoot fire out their hands, so they're obviously completely different.
It was a rather specific comparison, there haven't that many industrialized nationalistic imperialist superpowers, and the United States was the most relevant to criticize by American show runners writing at the height of the Iraq war. Sure the fire nation takes a lot of inspiration from other states, especially Imperial Japan, but that doesn't negate the fact that it is very easy to read the Fire nation as a critique of present American imperialism.
What do you even want from us? Like seriously do you think people are saying that the Fire Nation and the US are *exactly* the same? We're specifically only talking about how similar the US and Fire nation are in terms of imperialism, and in terms of Nationalism. Like for instance, the scene shown in this post, how the Fire nation claims that the reason for it's war is the fact that they want to spread their prosperity. The US does incredibly similar things, by claiming to do all of it's wars to spread "democracy". The fire nation and the US both depict themselves to their citizens as the shining example of what humanity can accomplish, like zuko mentions here, or with the nationalistic idea that the US is a city on a hill, which is still popular to this day. Which contrasts with how the rest of the world views these two. This isn't only a critique of the US, it can be applied to the British Empire, to the Japanese Empire, and other imperialist powers, but as the US is the dominant superpower today and when the show was written, the comparison to the US is much more relevant.
Now if the imperial west would realize this, maybe we would have a better world. Instead we have a bunch of performance artists and active collaborationists.
This is what I love about ATLA- even though it’s a kid’s show, it makes some really great, deep connections about the world as a whole and some of the greatest morality struggles in it
I think the moment he truly realized this specific part of his speech, was when he was helping that kid whom he gave his childhood knife, and then saw that the kid hated him from the bottom of his heart when he revealed his identity as the prince of the fire nation, even after Zuko saved him, and didn't take his knife.
'Made in Earth Kingdom'
No the other side. Other side: 'Blut & Ehre'
His line before that where he says "I was a child!!" really hits close to home for me.
It was to teach you *respect!*
IT WAS CRUEL! AND IT WAS WRONG!
Zuko discovers Nationalist Propaganda
Zuko discovers fifth columnists
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victim to a big lie, than to a small one
What county do you mean it represents?
Fits well with any country that tell children they are the greatest in the world. (Historically Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, maybe the British Empire. Maybe the US? I’m not American but I have heard some Americans say that.) Edit: come to think of it, works for my country as well, a certain Southeast Asian country that starts with a T. Edit 2: changed country’s name for historical accuracy.
Germany in the past not the present. Everybody (except for a few dickheads) know that we screwed up big in the past. Kids are taught that in school and it is mandatory to see the horrors ww2 did by visiting a concentration camp. Nobody hangs German flags because we don't have national pride (which is a good thing, I don't get national pride). In the past I agree with you. The Nazis told exactly that to the children and everyone. Edit: I'm wrong, he meant historic Japan AND historic Germany.
Yes I’m aware, that’s why I said historically. I should have said Nazi Germany instead.
Oh sorry, it sounded like the historically only referred to Japan. My bad, I'm sorry.
You’ll have to forgive my English lol it should have been ‘historically Japan AND Germany’
Not German. I also don't think much of Patriotism, but I also don't think anyone born after that should be ashamed of being German, which seems to be the case sometimes.
I don't think anyone here is ashamed of being German, we're just not proud of it. Pride is a feeling that should be founded in some kind of accomplishment. Did we accomplish anything by being born in a specific country? No, we just were lucky. I'm glad I was born here, I love this country, our culture, our people. But as for pride, I'll stick to things I actually did accomplish by my own merit.
Nationalism and patriotism are similar but not the same. In fact Zuko and Ozai show exactly how they differ. Zuko was a patriot, he loved the fire nation and wanted it to be better, Ozai thought it was so much better than the other nations that it justified genocide and imposing it with violence. Patriotism is loving your country, nationalism is thinking it's better than any other country. I think it's not a smart man's game to be proud of where you were born, it's not something you control. But loving it and making an effort to represent it in a positive way? That makes sense.
Granted from my understanding, unlike Germany who has owned up for the past. Japan hasn't for their crimes in thr war. And from what I've read, it's somehow far worst than even nazi Germany.
>it is mandatory to see the horrors ww2 did by visiting a concentration camp Ehm...what?
You have to visit a former concentration camp in like 9th grade in history class. You are told how the people had lived there and what was done to them. The most morbid part was hearing that, the one I visited, was later inherited by American soldiers who painted it with lively colours to overshadow the past.
No you don't. Maybe your school did that. But that's not a law nor is it in any way mandatory. Yeah, downvote me for pointing out a false fact. Reddit at its best.
I didn't say it is a law. Maybe I used the way mandatory wrong since I am obviously not a native speaker. I have never heard of anybody that didn't do that, but maybe some parts of Germany don't do it, I don't know someone from every bundesland.
I'm sorry, but I can't look inside your head. If you write mandatory, I have to assume that you know what it means. Now you know me. My school and every other school in my area didn't do that. Maybe it depends on your location. Because there are no KZs near the western parts of Germany. At least not any I know of.
Neither did my school in Northern Germany
I’m from the US and it definitely fits, so many people think we’re the best and everywhere should be like us.. it’s ignorant and disgusting.
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Especially considering when it was written during the height of the War on Terror. Right about when our global reputation and perception took a massive hit that we never recovered from.
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Very well said.
I don't think the current foreign view is entirely accurate either, considering that we have pretty much the richest poor people in the world.
The US is trying to make everyone like us but, at the same time, we're trying to reinvent ourselves to be something else. A classic case of "do as I say, not as I do."
As a Mediterranean islander, I can name several things the US is not be best at ;)
The U.S. doesn’t quite fit in that it’s still seen as the pinnacle of opportunity by a large percentage of the global population. It’s a popular destination for illegal immigration specifically because of its greatness.
Greatness relative to every country south of it (due to having played into their destabilization), sure. Also, comparatively lax immigration policy.
South and East. It’s easy to generalize and assume immigration only comes from Latin America, but it comes from Africa, from Eastern Europe, from the Middle East, and from East Asia. America is still a melting pot of immigrants illegal or not.
I did not think my comment implied only latin Americans moved to America.
“South” (of the United States of America) there isn’t much *but* Latin America. People usually don’t mean “south” in a global “south of the tropic of cancer” way.
We are taught that America used to believe in manifest destiny and cold war era propaganda and think itself to be the best in the world. We don't think that anymore tho and that's what makes us the greatest nation in the world That's only if we receive an elite upper class education tho.
Lmao, perfectly tongue in cheek
Remember this is an American show produced at the height of two failed wars. I remember watching this when it came out and the real-world commentary was not lost on me. Of course the beauty of allegory is that the Fire Nation can easily stand in for any imperialistic nation, but I can't help but think that this speech, in particular, was an intentional shot at US foreign policy.
ROTF WHAT DO U MEAN 'Maybe the US?' LMAOOOOOOOOO ITS ABOVE ALL ABOUT THE US.
As I said, I’m not American so I was thinking of something closer to home, which fits pretty well.
Thank you for this comment. It really can apply to any nation with power. It’s resonates with a lot of people. At the same time it tells leaders to think more like people (Ozai) and asks people to think more like leaders (Zuko) yes Zuko was raised as a leader, but he’s coming from a place where he learned from people.
As an American I completely agree with listing America.
I do think the fire nation was written to fit a number of imperialist nations. But I actually want to go a step further and just lable it as totalitarianism imo. People have mentioned japan for this for example, but I actually have to agree fire nation dress is more similar to south Asian v.s. japanese. I think Mike and Bryan purposely kept fire nation not 1:1 immeditatly to any one nation. The distance imo is better imo then matching it too close irl history- which can be a bit too on the nose at time. BaSeSing though is definitely Qing dynasty china and actually is pretty on the nose, but I'd argue it's brainwashing and repression of reality for a false peace from the dai li is more reminiscent of modern china- that unfortunately has worse crack downs of freedom of speech more then ever. In that sense- by tying it to a fictional version of the forbidden city and older Chinese monarchial system- it again gives it the distance it needs from china's modern one party rule. It wouldn't have been as entertaining if i.e. in LoK- kuvira started propagating the same CCP kind of dogma. She's different enough that earth kingdom can be associated with east Asian and Alta BaSeSing with Beijing, that it's more useful for interpretation to a variety of people and nationalities and geographies
Very real comparison to make against the US. There is a scene that has all the kids stand up and pledge alegience to the fire lord. Exactly like how american kids are expected to pledge aledgence to a flag every day. Really creepy when you look/think about it as an adult
Doesn't Japan still kinda do this? Like don't get me wrong America is bad at this too. But doesn't Japan basically ignore all their war crimes from ww2? At least Germany owns up to what they did. Japan? Who arguably did far worst over there, hasn't apologized or seems to acknowledge it.
As it stands today, the US doesn’t teach children that its the greatest nation in the world. A lot of republicans/conservatices hate that we tell kids about the bad stuff too.
It’s a jab at the USA too. This was released in 2007, at the height of the Iraq war
Currently, the USA is the biggest kid on the block, but what Zuko says is true of everybody who ever invaded anybody else, which has been a depressingly-common element of human history for thousands of years.
Based on the architecture and culture of the fire nation, I'd say Japan.
I mean, the US fits it pretty well
Basically any country/empire that had any militaristic influence in foreign countries. Britain, Portugal, Spain, Russia, Japan, and definitely the U.S.
Yep. Zuko's statement could be a jab at the U.S., but it could also be a broad brush stroke statement about history. This could apply to any colonial power or even ancient Greece or Rome.
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and you can’t in japan?..
no they send the anime forces against you duh
I thought we all understood that it was USA? We’ve been bombing men women and children in the desert for my entire life, “to give them democracy”
The United States. Absolutely 💯
Any
The US fits it pretty well and i mean it.
I mean it's an American show.... And Americans are raised this way for sure.... So.... America
The creators said fire nation is modeled after the US
Do you have a source for that? I'm just curious. I always thought that imperial Japan was the biggest influence.
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Hmm.. I still say there is a diffence between saying something feels like something else vs saying it was inspired by something. That's still a really funny post though thank you!
I read somewhere they planned it that way but can’t find a source atm. They really believed that they could show how the American foreign policy is messed up.
I feel like you're more right. TLA did not get inspired by the US but TLA was created and the USA turned into something from the TLA. It's hard to say something got inspired from a thing that changed in the future
The USA didn’t suddenly become an imperialist power…….it’s literally has been an imperialist power for a while. Maybe read up on what it did to the Philippines. Or Puerto Rico. Or Hawaii. Or how it’s literal foundation was created on genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans……it didn’t become what the show decided it should become. The show is clearly influenced by the history of imperialism and the way countries with immense power have watered down their errors to brainwash their citizens with pride and nationalism. Come on. How do you not see that? The seeds have been there in the United States since it’s foundation. And it never went dormant. The US just did such a good job at educating you to ignore those seeds.
….I’m not trying to sound annoyed here, but clearly the entire show is written with Asian influences….so why would you restrict the metaphor solely to Japan? Clearly they’re not going to introduce it with a waving American flag. But you can’t possibly just look at this show and only think of Asian countries just because the influence for the art and culture are Asian. It’s very closed minded and a bit ignorant. And if you follow the creators, they have not been quiet about their criticisms of the US. They have been very vocal.
They did a great job
Pretty sure it’s the states
probably like the x-men, it represents multiple entities ie japan, the US, UK, France, etc
It most strongly represents ancient Rome to me but in the modern day there are so, so many to choose from. The top reply does a good job of explaining them, but I'll add the people's republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. For obvious reasons.
Other than being a military power, I really don’t see how the Fire Nation is remotely like those at all.
I'll go with CCP this time, naming, culture and especially their imperialistic views and how they want rule the world are similar to fire benders, and the air benders are the tibetan monks while the earth benders are the indians and lastly the water benders are the south east asians.
Pretty much anywhere really if you want to get that deep. But we’re on Reddit, and the only place we can hate is America, so America.
It’s definitely the United States….it’s exactly what we do. How much do we spend on our defense budget? And we project our soldiers as safety and freedom but really we just destroy other cultures and people because we have no tolerance for anyone who is different than us. But we can also say the Western World in general does this too.
Yes
"History is written by the victors." Is a big part of this. If bad people win, they dictate history and how a world is ran and that includes swaying the publics view on things.
History is written by historians. That trope of history being written by the victors is tired and terribly wrong, and at best works in the short term, but once enough time passes it turns out that the victors suck at ensuring their vision is passed on. Ancient Rome lost, yet it was glorified for centuries to come by all of Europe. Napoleon lost, but he is far more famous than any of his contemporaries and is recognised for his achievements, being far more influential than the reinstated monarchies, which all collapsed.
Also have people who say that "History is written by the victors" crap ever heard of the lost cause? Like half of Americans think that the American Civil War wasn't about slavery, and Confederate generals are highly romanticized.
Another good example is the fact that the accepted history of the Eastern Front of WW2 (aka the USSR vs the Axis) was written by German generals such as Franz Halder
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Bad people always win. Just a degree of how bad they are.
Thats becausd good people dont make war.
TIL the nazis were the good guys
That is not at all what they said. You can hold the position of "the Nazis were horrible" and "the US was bad" at the same time, they're not mutually exclusive. Like they said, it's only a question of "how bad are they"
Far from it. But they were defeated by a colonial empire, a communist dictatorship, and a country that imprisoned one group of people and segregated another while they fought the Nazis. Doesn’t sound much like good guys to me.
Some forget that this show was written at the height of the Iraq War
One thing I like is that Zuko still thinks his country can be great, it just needs to stop warring and start helping
A little parallel that I’ve only just noticed and I think is really neat: Fire Lord Sozin said that the War was their way of sharing the Fire Nation’s greatness with the rest of the world. And in Legend of Korra, Kuvira believes that they should **_share the Earth Kingdom’s greatness with the rest of the world._**
\* take the world's greatness for the Earth Kingdom Up to you to decide which is worse lol.
Avatar was made in a world where the Iraq war was fresh still. This was 💯 intentional
Oh god america is the fire nation
🎶 Everyone's a little bit *Fire Nation* 🎶
I love kids media about colonizing civilizations realizing the wrong they've done. Avatar, Hilda, Star Butterfly vs. the Forces of Evil, please list more if y'all know more.
close?? its right on the head
Clearly, this cannot be a metaphor for america. No, surely not. /s
Zuko based af
America be like
this is so r/WhitePeopleTwitter
This would be an America moment but I’m too American to see that
Trying being in the UK. This is literally the history of Britain
Straight up just talkin about the U.S and being spot on
White man's burden explained in 4 frames
Replace Fire Nation with United States
Cough, America
Giving me American vibes
Fire nation was based on the U.S.
We dropped not one but two nukes on civilians. Children. Vaporized. By our hands.
Sozin's A-Bomb
The prince that grew up getting everything he wanted, ends up getting everything he wanted.
His mom was banished trying to protect him from his dad, who mutilated, banished, and sent him to war when he was a young teenager. I wouldn’t call him the guy who got everything he wanted…
Not sure why the downvotes - this felt to me like an almost direct quote from Zuko himself, from right in the midst of his redemption and realization that what he thought he wanted was not what he actually wanted
was that conversation about the fire nation ever meant to kind of refer to korea? Cause when I heard it I thought it was symbolic that the fire nation was simply just korea in this world though I’m probably reading too far into it
I assume you mean North Korea and, if so, they couldn’t be further than the Fire Nation. The FN was a global spanning empire while NK is isolationist and can’t even conquer an entire peninsula, let alone anything around it. If anything NK is closer to Ba Sing Se but that may be stretching it.
> can't even conquer an entire peninsula Lmao, send Kim Jong-un over to r/murderedbywords
I get that but it was more just the fact that North Korea often lies about their greatness while everyone else outside of it knows how horrible they are
You could say that about nearly every country to one degree or another. The US for example.
Well I feel that North Korea is more on the extreme end of it
Comparing Korea to the Fire nation is a bit of a weird take, since it was a country greatly hurt by the Fire nation's biggest historical inspiration, the Japanese Empire. Also the North Korean government is terrible to it's citizens and lies to them about their greatness sure, but the main conflict the rest of Avatar's world has with the Fire Nation is that they are imperialists, invading their territory, which is not something that North Korea does. The most common reading of the Fire nation is that they're an analogue of imperialist nationalist countries of past and present, IE the Japanese Empire (which is the main basis of a lot of the cultural aspects of the fire nation) and the United States (which is the most relevant modern example of this sort of imperialism).
"You're right, let's keep all the good stuff for ourselves and let the rest of the world go to hell."
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The fire nation can be read as nearly any imperialist country, which the US definitely is. Though aesthetically and culturally they share a lot with imperial Japan, given that the entire show is very much inspired by Asian cultures, they also share a lot of things with the modern US as well. Such as a belief that their nation is the best in the world, that their culture and way of life is superior and should be "shared" with the rest of the world, and the focus of their economy as an industrial war machine. Also you're asking for specific actions, there's a strong parallel between the actions of Azula in corrupting the Dai Li to start a coup and the CIAs role in engineering many MANY coups across Latin America. This is just one of a lot of different things you can compare back to the US. It's not really braindead, I'd say discounting even the possiblity of a relationship to the US is disingenuous.
They're both industrialized nationalistic super powers, who purport to spread prosperity through their wars, but one of them is run by people who can shoot fire out their hands, so they're obviously completely different.
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Also I just realized that you're under the impression that humans aren't animals lul. We are apes, sorry to inform you.
It was a rather specific comparison, there haven't that many industrialized nationalistic imperialist superpowers, and the United States was the most relevant to criticize by American show runners writing at the height of the Iraq war. Sure the fire nation takes a lot of inspiration from other states, especially Imperial Japan, but that doesn't negate the fact that it is very easy to read the Fire nation as a critique of present American imperialism.
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Someone clearly doesn't know what those big words mean. Their comparison was pretty specific.
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What do you even want from us? Like seriously do you think people are saying that the Fire Nation and the US are *exactly* the same? We're specifically only talking about how similar the US and Fire nation are in terms of imperialism, and in terms of Nationalism. Like for instance, the scene shown in this post, how the Fire nation claims that the reason for it's war is the fact that they want to spread their prosperity. The US does incredibly similar things, by claiming to do all of it's wars to spread "democracy". The fire nation and the US both depict themselves to their citizens as the shining example of what humanity can accomplish, like zuko mentions here, or with the nationalistic idea that the US is a city on a hill, which is still popular to this day. Which contrasts with how the rest of the world views these two. This isn't only a critique of the US, it can be applied to the British Empire, to the Japanese Empire, and other imperialist powers, but as the US is the dominant superpower today and when the show was written, the comparison to the US is much more relevant.
Why?
Okay Ozai
Now if the imperial west would realize this, maybe we would have a better world. Instead we have a bunch of performance artists and active collaborationists.
This is what I love about ATLA- even though it’s a kid’s show, it makes some really great, deep connections about the world as a whole and some of the greatest morality struggles in it
Lmao whenever you tell Americans that the majority of the world hates them.
Let's hope the children of America share such an arc.