Water,earth,fire,air: Banal nationalism and Avatar: The Last Airbender

Introduction

The question of how people learn, and maintain, national identities is a prevalent one, which has been explored in Michael Billig’s Banal Nationalism (1995). Banal nationalism essentially refers to the means by which the concepts of the nation, nationality and nationalism are repeated in ways that lodge them in people’s consciousness, without being overt or ‘hot’ (e.g. wartime). Several studies have since expanded on this concept and idea (c.f. a recent collection of essays edited by Skye and Antonsich, 2017), and in particular have focused on the influence of media representations and mediations in ‘flagging’ the concept of the nation (c.f. Mihelj et al., 2009; Preston and Kerr, 2001; Skey, 2014). Attention has also been paid the way children absorb ideas of nationality and nationhood, through the institutions they interact with such as schools (Millei and Imre, 2021). Relatively little attention, however, has been focused on how children’s media could play a role in reproducing and reinforcing children’s notions of nationalism and national identity. This is the question that this article proposes to explore.

To do this, I will look primarily at the popular children’s TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender (hereafter Avatar), which ran from 2005 to 2008, with some additional analysis of its sequel The Legend of Korra (hereafter Korra), which ran from 2012 to 2014. Both series were created by Bryan Konietzo and Michael Dante DiMartino. The show initially aired on the American television network Nickelodeon, to large viewing figures, and critical acclaim, with the Season 2 episode ‘City of Walls and Secrets’ being nominated for an Emmy in ‘Outstanding Animated Programme’ (Television Awards, 2007), as well as winning a Peabody Award (2008). The reason for choosing Avatar and Korra, however, is not just because they are popular, but because they prominently foreground anti-nationalist themes. This makes it a worthwhile case to examine, from a banal nationalism perspective, to see how even in critical media the reinforcements of the idea that nations are a part of ‘the natural world’ (Billig, 1995: 37) can still be present.

I will first provide a theoretical outline of the concept of banal nationalism, covering the main arguments and debates. Second, I will set out an understanding of how children interact with, and can be influenced by, media texts, adopting an ecological model framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Jordan, 2004). I will then provide a brief overview of Avatar: The Last Airbender, discussing the main themes as they relate to nationalism. The final section will analyse the show, drawing out key themes and content that banalize nationalism, in order to demonstrate how this could reinforce children’s notions of national identity.

Nationalism and banal nationalism

Nations, in Benedict Anderson’s evocative phrase, are ‘imagined communities’. They are ‘imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson, [1983] 2006: 6). The imagined community, however, is limited in that it does not encompass the whole world, but rather the specific nation-state in which the people live (Anderson, [1983] 2006: 7). Anderson conceptualises this form of nationalism as resulting from print capitalism. The printing press enables the spread of texts, enabling the development and spread of nationalism as it provides a shared grammar that the people of a ‘nation’ use to identify themselves, and the limits of their ‘nation’ (Mihelj et al., 2009: 58). This also applies to other forms of media, such as television, where the shared experience of consuming media content helps form the imagined national community (Mihelj et al., 2009).

Michael Billig’s concept of ‘banal nationalism’ expands on the imagined community idea, as it in essence grounds the way in which people’s national identities, and sense of a nation, is maintained (Billig, 1995). One of Billig’s main targets, within the space of social science but also more widely, is the assumption of ‘methodological nationalism’ (Skey, 2009: 333–334). Methodological nationalism, effectively, sees society and the nation as being equivalent units (Chernilo, 2006). This is problematic, as it treats the nation as being a ‘natural’ unit, and a natural part of the world, despite its recent formation (Wimmer and Schiller, 2002: 304–305). For social science, this hinders analysis and also leads to the perpetuation of nationalism as an ideology. But Billig’s (1995) primary motivation is to understand how nationalism, particularly within Western nations, can be disguised by appearing ‘banal’.

Billig argues that, in Western nations, nationalism is seen as a characteristic of others: a far-right movement, a separatist struggle and so on. It is seen as something that is ‘politically charged’ and draws on people’s emotions, often inciting violence and exclusionary politics (1995: 44). This is what Billig terms ‘hot’ nationalism. For Billig, however, nationalism encompasses not just these hot moments but also has a banal, everyday aspect. Nationalism is ‘the ideology by which the world of nations come to seem the natural world – as if there could not possibly be a world without nations’ (Billig, 1995: 37). By understanding nationalism only in its hot variety, and locating that in others, we can forget our own nationalism (Billig, 1995: 38), reinforcing the ‘naturalness’ of nations.

Despite the overt forgetting of nationalism, it is constantly ‘flagged’ in a way that reminds people of their nationality. Routine words, phrases and images that take the world of nations for granted are a constant in daily life (Billig, 1995: 93). Billig (1995) points to the rhetoric of politicians and the media, who regularly use phrases of ‘we’ and ‘our’ in making addresses to the public and in making depictions of the nation, in the knowledge that the public will know where the limits of ‘we’ and ‘our’ fall (pp. 95–99). This is further reinforced by Mihelj et al. (2009), who noted how newsreaders and news presentations will use similar rhetoric and depictions to convey and capture the sense of the nation to the people, in a similarly banal way.

But this goes beyond just flagging the individual nation to the members of the nation: It is also about conveying the naturalness of nationhood and of a world of nations (Billig, 1995: 84). As Billig (2009) puts it ‘nationalism assumes that particular nations take their place within the international world of nation-states’ (p. 349). He points to how recognition of nation status is often contingent on the international community (Billig, 1995: 85). As an example, we can look at the case of Meiji Japan, where Japanese elites invested significant effort into adopting Western political structures and some cultural stylings in order to prove their ‘nation’ status to the Western powers (Kerr, 2021: Ch. 7). In the modern world, there is also the United Nations which, while an international organisation committed to universal aims, nonetheless centres the division of the world into discrete nations (Billig, 2017; Ichijo, 2017: 309). In this sense, nationalism is what Siniša Malešević (2006) has dubbed an ‘operative ideology’: an ideology that fits into the routine aspects of everyday life and fills out people’s social lives, less overtly than with ‘normative ideologies’, which provide actual beliefs, values and so on (p. 84).

Skey (2009) has offered some criticisms of Billig’s (1995) thesis. Of interest for this article is the critique of how the media is treated. Skey (2009: 335-336) points out first that Billig’s argument relies on an assumption that the media address a coherent national public, which might not always be the case as regional editions of newspapers might take different perspectives from the national ones. Second, the argument takes a ‘top-down’ approach and doesn’t consider how the public may interpret or engage with messages differently to what was intended by the media producers (Skey, 2009: 336–337). Some later critiques have argued that the distinction between hot and banal nationalism is unhelpful. Rather it should be regarded as a spectrum, which helps clarify how hot nationalism is made possible by banal nationalism, and, in a sense, is a feeling that can be ‘activated’ (Skey and Antonsich, 2017: 3–4). These arguments do not demonstrate that Billig’s thesis is false (c.f. Billig, 2009 for his response), but they do point to a greater complexity that needs to be considered, by developing the original argument.

Building on these critiques, Skey (2014) draws on the work and terminology of Madianou (2005) to argue that it is important to look at the mediation of nations, understood as how particular nations, but also the world of nations, is constructed across different media. Effectively, different forms of media, such as digital media, television, the Internet and so on in different ways portray aspects of national life that not only reinforce the idea that people live within a particular nation and have a particular national identity, but also reinforce the existence of a world of nations, and present it as the natural order of the world (Skey, 2014: 6). These processes then ‘normalize a particular view of the world, so that they are neither remarked upon nor seen as remarkable’ (Skey, 2014: 15).

Banal nationalism, therefore, provides a useful tool for considering how nations are portrayed and naturalised through the media, paying attention to how different forms of media may communicate this information. Children’s media, as will be examined through Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, can also play a role in this communication and naturalisation, even while being overtly critical of nationalism.

Before moving on to the textual analysis, however, it will be worthwhile to look at research on how children are influenced by media. To do this, in the next section, we will look at a set of studies on whether the media can influence children, as well as outlining the ecological approach to understanding media influence, which provides the context for thinking about how children’s media can impact on a child’s understanding of the world.

Children and the media

There have been a number of studies relating to the question of how children are influenced by the media. Many of these have been concentrated on questions of violence and pro-social content; however, the jury is very much still out on whether there is any influence with different studies providing different responses (Kennedy, 2021: 257–258).

Wider than this, the results of direct influences are also somewhat unclear. Hayes and Tantleff-Dunn (2010) found no evidence that watching appearance-related media influenced young girls’ body image, though they did note that one-third would change some aspect of their appearance, which might indicate a wider saturation environment that occludes with the specific piece of media that was consumed. In his review of the literature, Steyer (2014) found that a lack of exposure to progressive gender representation could have a negative impact on children’s beliefs on gender equality. Moreover, being exposed to progressive gender representation positively influences children’s beliefs. Looking into fashion choices, Boden (2006) found that consumption of popular culture had an influence on how children engaged with their social identities, though she acknowledged that children are ‘complex consumers’ who could ‘critically evaluate the cultural images that bombard them’ (p. 297).

Boden’s point is a reminder that we should be wary about assuming that there is a straightforward transmission of information from the media and the interpretation that a child has of it. In Stuart Hall’s terms (1973), media are encoded with particular messages; however, the way in which a person decodes those messages can either form an alignment with the intended reading, an oppositional reading or some combination of both. It is not, in this case, clear that we should assume children are any less capable of being critical about the content they consume, or of reading messages differently. For example, villains in earlier children’s cartoons were often coded in particular ways, either queer coded in dress and manner or racialised. However, this could lead to a child identifying with the villains, rather than perceiving them as inherently bad, as they recognise themselves in them (c.f. Wong, 2016).

This is also true in the case of nationalism itself. In Sharon Stephens’ (1997) words ‘young people [are] social actors in their own right’ (quoted in Hart, 2002: 43). This is borne out in the study by Jason Hart (2002), where children in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan characterise their national identity differently to their parents. While their parents invite the children to see themselves as Palestinians, and the generation that will return to the homeland, the children take in aspects of the Jordanian identity and construct more fluid understandings of their own identity.

However, the constructions that Hart (2002) notes are still done within the frame of a national identity, which should serve as a reminder of nationalism’s power to present itself as ‘natural’. This can be seen in Zembylas’ (2010) study of Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot children’s understanding of racism and nationalism, as a result of their interactions with one another. Zembylas (2010: 325) found that, for example, the Greek-Cypriot children would almost exclusively refer to the Turkish-Cypriot children as ‘the Turks’ as opposed to ‘Cypriots’. The institutional setting, and the cultural surrounding of nationalism, that the children find themselves in presents and reinforces the ideas of nationalism and boundaries of identity.

Children, within various limits of parental authority, have their own agency in what they watch and how they engage with it. However, that agency still exists within a particular structure (Buckingham and Sefton-Green, 2003). A way of conceptualising this, and how the media influence can still occur through reinforcement, is through the ecological approach (Jordan, 2004; Scarpa and Trickett, 2022). The ecological approach focuses on the context of children’s lives, situating it within microsystems, exosystems and macrosystems (Jordan, 2004: 196–197). Microsystems are the everyday encounters that children have in their lives, which shape their understanding, such as family life, school life and so on; whereas, macrosystems are the surrounding culture, such as nationalism, that creates the context that governs the institutions and microsystems in which children live their lives. An example of how this works with nationalism can be found in schools. Schools are a microsystem that children live through, informed by the macrosystem context of nationalism. Schools have an implicit nationalism through teaching the history of the particular nation in which the children happen to live, or worldwide history with an emphasis on different nations and their existence. The microsystem, therefore, imparts information from the macrosystem that influences children’s learning and understanding. Children’s media would form another microsystem, contained within the ecological environment, through which children make sense of the world around them.

The macrosphere forms a particular discursive environment, through which people learn frames and language for engaging with the world around them (Hall, 1992: 201–203; Miller, 1990). The nation-state, nationalism and national identity are core components of the surrounding culture, with most elements simply taken for granted and treated as being there (Billig, 1995). While children have agency to engage with the media, that media intersects with a macrosystem that provides a framework and structure of what is ‘normal’, which is shaped by institutional and cultural contexts. And, as Millei and Imre (2021) point out, children are surrounded by a lot of institutional cues, in the microsystems of family life and school life, which primes them to think about nations and nation-states as being normal aspects of life. Consequently, the manner in which the messages in a piece of media might be ‘decoded’ (Hall, 1973) will be influenced to some degree by the frameworks and concepts that have been gleaned from surrounding culture.

As has been discussed above, Avatar and Korra are both overtly anti-nationalist. But there is a tension within the work, between its different significations and meanings (Derrida, [1978] 2005: 358–359). It is a tension that can be productively understood and engaged with through the concept of banal nationalism. Because though overtly anti-nationalist, the shows are primarily critical of the ‘hot’ variety – the more extreme manifestations characterised by the pursuit of conquest, supremacy and imperialism. But there is an underlying banal nationalism, which treats the existence of nations as a given, assuming that cultures have their own peoples and peoples have their own nations. This banal nationalism remains implicit throughout the shows.

The next section will now provide a brief overview of Avatar and Korra, setting out the main details of the plot and world, and pointing to the overt anti-nationalist and progressive, in the sense of promoting values around acceptance and understanding, themes that are layered through the shows.

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra were created by Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, with both initially broadcast on Nickelodeon. Avatar was pitched primarily towards a younger demographic: 8–12 years, while Korra was targeted at a slightly older audience in the 13–15-year range. The series draws on numerous inspirations, primarily from South Asian and East Asian mythology and culture, as well as the stylings and genre conventions of Anime. It combines this with more Western, and particularly American, story-telling conventions and culture (Clark, 2007). For instance, despite the East Asian influence, the show uses the Western four elemental system of fire, water, earth and air, as opposed to the East Asian five elemental system of fire, water, wood, metal and earth.

The show was a critical and commercial success, with the finale drawing an audience of 5.6 million people in the United States (Clark, 2018). The series has since been released on Netflix and, surprisingly for a show that is 15 years old, continues to be among the most watched shows on the platform among Netflix’s worldwide audience (Katz, 2022). The popularity of the show is attested by the fact that Netflix is planning on making a live-action adaptation, following on from the failed movie adaptation (Thomas, 2023), and DiMartino and Konietzko are releasing new animated films set in the Avatar world (Finnighan, 2023). So, though intended for an American audience initially, the show has found popularity around the world.

Avatar takes place in a world divided between four nations: the Fire Nation, the Northern and Southern Water Tribes, the Air Nomads and the Earth Kingdom. Each of these nations possesses people who are capable of ‘bending’: they can manipulate the element their nation is associated with, with the visual imagery drawing on martial art styles (e.g. Waterbending resembles Tai Chi). Benders are only capable of manipulating the element of their associated nation, with the sole exception being the Avatar, a person who is reincarnated into a different nation once a generation and is capable of manipulating all four elements. The Avatar keeps harmony within the world and the four nations.

One hundred years before the story begins, the Air Nomads are wiped out by the Fire Nation as they attempt to conquer the world. Aang, the new Avatar and titular last Airbender, escapes but is frozen in ice until he is eventually found by two siblings from the Water Tribe, Katara (a Waterbender) and Sokka (a non-bender). From there, Aang sets out with Katara and Sokka on his quest to become the Avatar and save the world, journeying across the four nations and learning the different forms of bending. Along the way, they pick up new companions, Toph Beifong (an Earthbender) and [spoiler alert] Zuko (a Firebender), who instruct Aang in the different arts of bending to oppose Fire Lord Ozai. The sequel, Korra, takes place 70 years after Avatar and centres on the new Avatar, Korra, and her efforts to keep peace, largely within the newly created United Republic of Nations.

The shows are both progressive in themes, portraying multicultural characters working together, as well as prominently featuring disabled characters who are active participants in the story (Toph, for instance, is blind). In a famous example, The Legend of Korra featured, albeit briefly and subtly, one of the first representations of an LGBTQ relationship between major characters on children’s television, between Korra and her friend Asami (Dong, 2020). The usual themes of children’s media are present across both shows: being true to oneself, integrity, the power of friendship and so on. But the show was also unafraid of addressing more ‘adult’ themes.

Genocide is explicitly addressed in the Season One episode of Avatar, ‘The Southern Air Temple’, where Aang returns to his home and finds it long in ruins with his friends wiped out by the Fire Nation. The Season Two episode ‘Tales of Ba Sing Se’ follows Uncle Iroh (Zuko’s uncle) as he spends time at his son’s graveside, who died as a result of an attack Iroh ordered on the city years before the plot begins (Clark, 2018). The possible consequences of extreme nationalism, therefore, are shown explicitly, with Fire Lord Ozai represented as a nationalist and imperialist, interested in conquest while using propaganda to claim that the Fire Nation ‘wants to spread their civilisation and share their greatness with the world’ (Zuko – ‘Day of the Black Sun Part 2’). This is revisited in Korra’s final season, where the Earthbender Kuvira is similarly depicted. Following the assassination of the Earth Kingdom ruler, the Kingdom falls apart into a set of states that Kuvira reconquers and reunites into a new Earth Empire. However, she also sees the United Republic of Nations as being ‘stolen’ territory and seeks to reconquer it as well. That nationalist impulse is, thus, connected with the military and imperialist impulse.

The Season Three episode ‘The Headband’ provides one of the more direct critiques of nationalism in its everyday form, and in a way that would be familiar to the initial target audience of American children. In the episode, Aang and the crew sneak into the Fire Nation. In order to lie low they dress as Fire Nation citizens and, through a mix-up, Aang is enrolled at a Fire Nation school. While there we see the effects of nationalism on the Fire Nation children, they don’t dance, something that’s baffling to Aang who remembers the Fire Nation as having very strong dancing customs; the music is formalised and self-expression is frowned upon; and, in a ritual that many American children would take delight in seeing mocked, the school children all have to pledge their allegiance to the picture of the Fire Lord Ozai each morning, in a reflection of the ‘pledge of allegiance’ that children in the United States normally perform to the flag (Billig, 1995: 50).

There is a possible crossover here as well, as the portrait of the leader, or a symbol of them, being present in classrooms as a way of promoting national identity is common: In Imperial Japan, the portrait of the Emperor was placed in schools and houses, so the Emperor was a symbolic presence in people’s everyday life (Gluck, 1985: 78–81). Similarly, until the end of World War II, schoolchildren in Japan would also recite the Imperial Rescript of Education, which contained a pledge to the Emperor as his subjects and a promise to improve the nation through their education (Tipton, 2002: 64–65).

The progressive themes are also promoted through the multiculturalism of the characters. The heroes are made up of one representative from each nation, Air (Aang), Water (Katara), Earth (Toph) and Fire (Zuko), with Katara’s brother Sokka forming a component as a non-bender. Each of the benders in the group is responsible for teaching Aang the different bending powers. The message is clear: Mutual understanding and reaching across cultures make one stronger rather than weaker. It is, again, placed in contrast to the monoculture of the Fire Nation that Ozai seeks to impose across the world. The 13th episode of Season 3, ‘The Firebending Masters’, critiques this aspect of monoculture. Zuko attempts to teach Aang Firebending, in the way in which he was taught: by drawing on his anger. However, this attempt fails as Zuko loses his own Firebending power and Aang struggles to draw on his anger. Together, however, they discover the original practice of Firebending which does not stem from anger and destruction, but rather from desire and life-giving properties (as from the fire of the sun). Therein lies another critique of nationalist ambitions: its erosion of different understandings and culture in favour of a singular ‘national’ narrative which, as per Hobsbawm and Ranger (2012), may in fact be an ‘invented tradition’ of much more recent origin.

With this said, the primary examples of critique are examples of hot nationalism: of what happens when extremism takes over, or nationalism is corrupted with imperialism. The notion of the naturalness of nations is not itself challenged and while national rituals are critiqued, such as in ‘The Headband’, it is framed as being part of an ‘extreme’ nationalism. The critique focuses on how extreme nationalism radicalises banal rituals, rather than on the manner in which banal rituals can promote and make extreme nationalism possible.

In spite of the critiques, then, the show is nevertheless underpinned by a banal nationalist framing. In the final section, I will analyse key imageries, themes and ideas present in both shows, which illustrate how banal nationalism functions through the texts, and how this may, therefore, influence children’s understanding and acceptance of nationalism, when combined with the surrounding institutional environment.

The banal nationalism of Avatar: The Last Airbender

How does banal nationalism come through in Avatar and Korra? This section will be devoted to demonstrating and showing this through analysis. The analysis is divided around three core themes, looking at how territory features in the show; the national coding, particularly through clothing styles; and finally the way in which the core component, bending, itself can show banal nationalism.

Conclusion

This article has argued that children’s media is a vital way of understanding how and why nationalist ideology permeates into social imaginations. To that end, it made critical use of Michael Billig’s (1995) concept of ‘banal nationalism’ to explore how a children’s cartoon, in this case Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel The Legend of Korra might instil a nationalist ideology in children. It argued that despite the overtly critical messages conveyed in the shows, the division of the world into nation-states and the presence of coded identifiers may subtly reinforce the belief in the naturalness of nations.

It is important to note that this critique is not aimed at discrediting the shows. They are admirable in promoting tolerance and understanding of other cultures and are openly critical of extremism in nationalism and imperialism. They were pioneers in featuring a lesbian relationship between two main characters, paving the way for other shows such as Steven Universe and The Owl House (Clark, 2018; Dong, 2020). However, this is what makes them an interesting choice to analyse: even within a progressive, socially conscious entertainment that is critical of nationalism, you find the reinforcement of nationalist ideology.

For this reason, it is valuable to consider the ways in which children’s entertainment, of all stripes and beyond, can communicate notions of nationhood. After all, if adults can be pulled to nationalist movements and have their understanding influenced by movies (c.f. Edensor, 1997), there is no reason why children cannot.

Critiquing nationhood itself is not impossible. Recognising the unnatural nature of it explicitly is a step in that direction. The final season of Korra points towards this with the explicit ‘creation’, or ‘recreation’, of a nation, through Kuvira’s conquering of the broken up states of the Earth Kingdom. More depictions like this, developed further, may help break the sense of reinforcement which the naturalness of nation-states in the real world get from the world of entertainment. As the quote from Hume cautions, ideas that stick in childhood can often stick all the stronger, particularly if everywhere, even a favourite cartoon, says that this is the way the world is and should be.