11/23/20 - Book 2: Chapters 13-16

Book 2: Earth

Part 4 - The Poisonous Promised Land of Ba Sing Se

Darth Vader is only onscreen in the original Star Wars trilogy for 34 minutes - roughly twelve minutes per movie and only about eight in the first film. 

And yet Vader was - even in 1983, when the first trilogy ended -  an undeniable, international, cultural icon.

The mega-city of Ba Sing Se becomes the primary setting of Avatar: The Last Airbender for roughly the last third of Book 2 - about seven episodes (counting “Appa’s Lost Days”), or about two and a half hours of screen time. In its entirety, Avatar is an approximately 22-hour series start to finish, so Ba Sing Se takes up only about 11% of that total runtime. 

And yet, no one who watches Avatar ever forgets Ba Sing Se.

After a series of action-heavy episodes (“The Blind Bandit,” “The Chase,” “The Drill,”) in the first part of the season, in Ba Sing Se, the narrative shifts from a journey story to a more nuanced narrative of trying to navigate the sinister, manipulative politics of the Earth Kingdom capital. The pacing slows down as the cast - both the Gaang and Zuko & Iroh - slow down to reflect and regroup after what they’ve been through this season. 

This batch of episodes is an excellent showcase of the range of storytelling variety on display across the run of Avatar - it is an action-packed adventure show, but it can have villains more threatening in their political power than their physicality (in Long Feng and Joo Dee); likewise it is a simple, light show about children trying to discover their place in the world, as well as a somber reflection on animal cruelty. 

The Ba Sing Se episodes bring out (almost) everything that Avatar can be, and I think that’s part of why they’re unforgettable.

We’re speeding towards the Book 2 finale now folks, so without further preamble let’s dive into this week’s set of eps. 

2.13 - The Drill

• The Drill is supported by a division of tundra tanks - clearly more versatile than their designation; furthermore the Drill has no more proper title than being the definitive article (The Fire Nation Drill). 

• Perhaps one of the most glaring flaws of Ba Sing Se’s defenses - any skilled enough earthbender can scale the wall, as Toph and Aang demonstrate.

• Toph gets a distinctly suspicious look from Sokka when she mentions the Dragon of the West to General Sung. 

• I’ve always gotten a healthy chuckle out of the Na Sing Se joke.

  • “Not a good enough reason to use the word penetrate.”

• While I suppose we can assume there’s some cinematic license taken - Ty Lee floors the elite “Terra Team” in thirty seconds flat.

• I dunno what it is about Ba Sing Se bureaucrats but I also adore the sour-then-sweet woman Iroh flirts with at the monorail station.

• In attempting to heal the Terra Team, we get the first time Katara mentions chi-blocking by name.

• What is this Mad Max-ass steampunk outfit that Fire Nation engineers wear, I love it.

• I legitimately never noticed this until my rewatch of this episode - when Jet takes Zuko aside, you can clearly see Iroh in the background first checking if the coast is clear; then covertly firebending his tea.

• In the establishing shots after the Drill makes contact with the wall, we get a view of the slurry pipeline that plays a part later; Chekov’s Slurry Pipeline if you will.

• Qin’s terror when he realizes the Drill has been infiltrated is warranted; were ATLA not a kid’s show, I could easily see Azula summarily terminating him, Vader-style.

• Aang just airbending-sprints past the engineers - Looney Tunes.

• While they’re homonyms and practically mean the same thing, the Netflix subtitles spell chi as “qi.”

• When Katara and Toph repulse the slurry stream back up into the drill, they easily could’ve unwittingly drowned Ty Lee.

• Azula vs. Aang atop the drill is just a flawless, awesome fight sequence - it also marks the first time Aang uses all of the bending arts he’s learned so far against one opponent. 

  • This also marks the first time we see Azula using “charged” firebending attacks.

• Furthermore the sequence of Aang’s final strike on the drill is just spectacularly epic; the score, the running straight up a 90-degree wall, Azula’s blazing fury as she puts it all together (speaking of unwitting murder - as Azula is repulsed by Aang’s air blast she should’ve easily died from blunt force trauma as she is propelled backwards along the Drill).

• Jet notably launches his vendetta against Iroh and Zuko not because they’re Fire Nation soldiers, but firebenders, at all. After a century of war and everything Jet’s witnessed I suppose you can hardly blame him.

• I always forget that Iroh briefly meets Ying, Than, and Hope on the monorail into the city. 

• “Stop trying to make ‘Team Avatar’ happen, Sokka - it’s not going to happen…”

2.14 - City of Walls and Secrets

• As Bryke explain in the Art of the Animated Series, Ba Sing Se has a lot of representational meaning for the whole cast of the show - even if it’s only been Aang’s Team’s destination for three episodes, it holds a lot of symbolic weight as the last bastion of power and security against the Fire Nation’s domination; and as the site of Iroh’s loss of Lu Ten and military downfall.

• The ring-regions of Ba Sing Se are:

  • The Outer Wall - (the massive, Great Wall of China, depicted-on-maps size structure) - the largest manmade structure in the Avatar world.

  • The Agrarian Zone - Underdeveloped farmland; new site of Ba Sing Se zoo

  • The Inner Wall - Border/defense of the city proper

  • The Lower Ring - Home to poor classes, laborers, and refugees; uniform brown roof tiles; undeniably a ghetto for “less-thans”

  • The Middle Ring - Middle-class society, Ba Sing Se University; green tiles.

  • The Upper Ring - Upper crust; military and government officials; yellow tiles.

• “Just a bunch of walls and rules” - Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming. 

• Joo Dee is quietly one of the more horrific characters in Avatar; when the reality behind her cheerful demeanor is revealed it simply underlines how banal the evil of Long Feng’s regime is; frighteningly, she is inspired by real-world Chinese and North Korean “handlers.”

• Quickfire Iroh one-liners:

  • “Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not.” 

  • “This tea is nothing more than hot leaf juice!” “Uncle, that’s what all tea is.” “How could a member of my own family say something so horrible?!” 

• The Dai Li are drawn from both legendary and real-world secret police forces throughout the world. Their status as “agents… of the cultural heritage of Ba Sing Se,” is true enough in that they covertly (and if need be violently) control public opinion and thought to preserve the “culture” as it is. 

  • The Dai Li has two namesakes; firstly, the Chinese word “dai” means “hat;” and the word “li” is the cone shape of the hat worn by the agents in the show; together the phrase “Dai Li” can also mean “proxy” or “agent.”

  • Furthermore, Lt. Gen. Dai Li was an early 20th century Chinese spymaster and the leader of Chiang Kai-Shek’s secret police (the Investigation and Statistics Bureau); as well as the leader of ultranationalist Blue Shirts Society.

• Team Avatar first questions a pet shop owner, then a University of Ba Sing Se student about leads to find Appa; the University is referenced in The Shadow of Kyoshi, when Kyoshi’s enemies requisition a pair of shirshus from its zoology department to track her down.

• “Sick of tea? That’s like being sick of breathing!”

• Spark rocks, like the pair Iroh uses to start cooking fires in his and Zuko’s apartment, are mined from the Fighting Cliffs - a unique pair of outcroppings within the bounds of Ba Sing Se.

• “Just bear…” - the other bear varietals named by Aang, Sokka, and Toph include platypus-bear, skunk-bear, armadillo-bear, and gopher-bear.

• Sokka and Aang play a Four Nations-fied take on “Rock, paper, scissors,” while they wait for Katara and Toph to dress up. 

• Iroh and Zuko work for less than a day in the Pao Family Tea Shop before the owner remarks they’re “due for a raise.”

• The dual swords duel between Jet and Zuko is yet another underappreciated fight scene in the show; notably, Zuko commandeers a pair of dual broadswords from a normal Ba Sing Se security officer. Is that standard Ba Sing Se cop weaponry?

• Knowing his mastery of manipulation, I wonder if Long Feng orchestrated his encounter with Katara and Toph from the get go. 

• Knowing what awaits her for failing in her duties, seeing Joo Dee’s smile melt is heartbreaking.

• I was never able to tell on SD television, but it is distinctly the Earth King - Kuei - on the palanquin in shadow. 

• No one is taking the crown off Azula’s head (for me anyway); but damn, Long Feng is a great villain. He written with such a verbose, manipulative, quiet menace, masterfully performed by Clancy Brown (of Mr. Krabs fame); the whole scene in his library is excellently compelling - the monologue.

  • The name Long Feng translates to “Dragon Phoenix,” which traditionally was a colloquialism for the Chinese Throne.

  • In re-watching the show in 2020; a sinister law-and-order-at-any-cost villain really just hits different.

• “There’s no war in Ba Sing Se.”

• The closing introduction of Joo Dee 2 is such a creepy note to end on. 

2.15 - The Tales of Ba Sing Se

The Tale of Toph and Katara

• Honestly, it wasn’t until watching this episode as a kid that I realized Aang had to shave his head; it of course makes sense it just never occurred to 12yo me.

• I so appreciate the writers/animators giving Toph a spittoon. 

• Katara leads Toph through a self-care gauntlet of a pedicure, a mud bath, a sauna, and a makeover. 

  • While it’s played for laughs; Toph could have easily killed her pedicurist, throwing her through a door with earthbending. Yike.

• Earth Kingdom Mean Girls - “On Wednesdays (and every other day), we wear green.”

  • Again - played for laughs; and these girls suck - did they really deserve assault though?

• “I don’t care what I look like, I’m not looking for anyone’s approval.” - Toph good.

• “I’d return the compliment, but I have no idea what you look like.”

The Tale of Iroh

• I aspire to be as kind and genial a man as Iroh is in this sequence. 

• In preparing for Lu Ten’s memorial, Iroh purchases a basket and browses a selection of musical instruments; he borrows a stringed instrument called a pipa to play to stop a young boy crying.

• Iroh encounters a group of boys playing a game similar to soccer called earthbending ball; an Earth Kingdom counterpart to the Air Nomads’ airball.

• Tycho, the man who attempts to mug Iroh, briefly appears in the previous episode examining a sword as Team Avatar tours the Lower Ring.

• “While it’s always best to believe in oneself, a little help from others can be a great blessing.”

• The calligraphy on Lu Ten’s portrait roughly translates to “General Iroh, I will see you again when victory is obtained. Your loyal son, Lu Ten.” 

• The final chord of the song and the “In Honor of Mako” is such a mic drop.

The Tale of Aang

• It’s not a contest - but Aang’s tale is probably my least favorite of the set? Just compared to the others, it doesn’t do any significant character building and isn’t notably funny.

• The Ba Sing Se Zoo is kept by Kenji, the man Aang bonds with in this episode; Kenji is actually the younger brother of the organ grinder seen in “The Tale of Momo”

• The zoo keeps a diverse menagerie of animals, including: dragonflies (the serpentine flying insects); an elephant mandrill; gemsbok bulls, hog-monkeys, a platypus bear, a rabaroo, a tiger-dillo, and a turtle seal. 

• I do appreciate the episode highlighting the cycle of poverty; “I don’t have business because I don’t have money, and I can’t get money if I don’t get business.” 

• After seeing the soul-crushing bureaucracy of Ba Sing Se, I can’t help but think of the paperwork/legal nightmare Aang created by unilaterally annexing land for the zoo.

The Tale of Sokka

• This sequence is easily among the Top 5 Sokka moments; haiku rap battle ffs.

• I appreciate Sokka toys with his boomerang when he’s bored. 

• The haiku group Sokka happens upon is the Five-Seven-Five society, led by Madame Macmu Ling - the woman who tries to dress down Sokka.

• This vignette kinda speaks for itself; including the introductory haiku, there are ten poems recited in this sequence.

• “Uh, that’s one too many syllables there bub.” **Proceeds to yeet a man out the door**

The Tale of Zuko

• Zuko is so repressed he can’t even recognize a crush, poor thing; I furthermore appreciate Jin’s attraction to Zuko in spite of his scar.

• I additionally appreciate Jin saving Zuko from Iroh’s nerdy hair arrangement. 

• “What do you do for fun?” “Nothing”

• “You have… quite an appetite for a girl.”

• Lighting the lamps at the fountain is a deeply stupid move on Zuko’s part; especially after being attacked by Jet under suspicion of being a firebender; but I’ll confess it’s sweet.

• “It’s a coupon for a free cup of tea.”

• “It was nice,” - The kid is at least trying to break out of his shell.

The Tale of Momo

• Momo sleeps in Sokka’s bag/murse that he (Sokka) has had since “The Blind Bandit.”

• The felines that attack Momo are pygmy pumas, who bear the cute/intimidating title of “King of the Alleyways.”

• The back-alley butcher who captures Momo and the pygmy pumas is a morbidly humorous obstacle. 

• I appreciate that after such a diverse array of short stories, the writers are content to end on a more simple, humorous tale with no dialogue.

2.16 - Appa’s Lost Days

• Perhaps unsurprisingly - as Avatar’s anti-animal cruelty episode, “Appa’s Lost Days” won a Genesis Award from the Humane Society of the United States.

• One of the rare explicit dating interstitials - this episode starts “Four Weeks Ago,”; in episodic order, Appa was abducted five episodes ago; in original premiere order, it had been about three months (July-October 2006) since audiences had seen Appa.

• We follow Appa through roughly nine “stops,” in this episode; 1.) his captivity with the sandbenders; 2.) his brief ownership by the Beetle-Headed Merchants; 3.) his captivity by Ty Lee’s circus; 4.) his return to the site of the Library; 5.) the Si Wong Rock; 6.) hiding out in a barn; 7.) the forest where he encounters Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors; 8.) The Eastern Air Temple; 9.) and finally, Ba Sing Se.

• There are a lot of great little connections in this ep I don’t think I initially picked up on - for example, Appa sneezes the sand sailer the Gaang later finds into the dune where they recover it.

• The Beetle-Headed Merchants are notable for being the oldest culture in the Si Wong desert, though they are outnumbered in population and distribution by the sandbenders.

  • The merchants use shirshu darts (a la June’s steed) to tranquilize Appa; furthermore they mention the option of “selling him for parts.” Yike.

• The Fire Nation circus is explicitly Ty Lee’s former troupe; in spite of reference to the array of animals they keep, the only one seen onscreen other than Appa is a lion-vulture. 

• The Fire Nation boy who bonds with Appa is a nice bit character; I appreciate how badly his guardian (my guess is stepdad) absolutely sucks.

  • In seeing a Fire Nation civilian event, we the audience see a nice preview of the array of reds, maroons, and pinks that dominate Fire National dress; these will take center stage in Book 3. 

• On the continuous note of probable murder - in yeeting the trainer out of the tent, Appa proably killed that abusive twat.

• I appreciate Appa tries to eat a cactus - and I likewise appreciate he fails because I can only imagine how dangerous a cactus juice-d Appa could be.

• The dream about Aang’s first meeting with Appa is obviously adorable, and implied to be shared by the pair. The Eastern Air temple was (exclusively) occupied by the Air Nuns; the one who introduces Aang to Appa is Sister Iio.

• The couple who confront Appa in the barn use the same torches as Chong and the hippies’ group.

• The huge boar-q-pine that attacks Appa in the forest is similar to many violent historical, mythological boars; it also bears similarity to the demon boars in Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke - a major inspiration for Bryke.

• This episode marks the first time the audience has seen the Kyoshi Warriors in full makeup since their introduction in Book 1 - over thirty episodes ago.

  • While they are sadly no match for Azula’s Team, the skirmish between Azula and the Warriors is a great, brief fight scene - in no small part for showcasing the broad range of the Warriors’ arsenal.

  • “Any friend of the Avatar is an enemy of mine!”

  • “Don’t you know fans just make flames stronger?”

• To the note of little connections - the audience gets our first look at Hakoda (outside of a flashback) as he sees Appa flying past the Southern Water Tribe fleet.

• Up there with Iroh, Guru Pathik has been a major aspirational figure of mine since I first saw these episodes. Oh to be a peaceful old man who’s biggest concern is brewing more onion and banana juice. 

  • Pathik is 150 years old by the time of this episode - living long enough to see both wartime arrivals of Sozin’s Comet.

  • Pathik is featured in the semi-canonical Zuko’s Story; a prequel to the 2010 live-action ATLA adaptation (which I will get to….); Zuko encounters him while searching the Eastern Air Temple for the Avatar.

  • Pathik’s voice actor is Brian George, an Israeli-English actor additionally known for roles in Seinfeld and The Big Bang Theory.

• “You’re still full of love, but fear has moved in, where trust should be.” - Pathik has a calming, wise, unassertive authority I really appreciate.

  • “Your emotions are so turbulent, like swirling storm clouds. Let the clouds in your mind be gentle, peaceful ones.” 

• Sitting down for my rewatch, I actually forgot how Pathik knows to send Appa to Ba Sing Se to find Aang; the guru is able to perceive the spiritual connections between people, similar to the skill Aang used in the bayan-grove to find App and Momo in the Swamp.

  • “Funny, what invisible strings connect us all.”

• In closing - we get a brief glimpse of the pygmy pumas watching Appa fly into the city, and his subsequent capture by Long Feng. 

- - 

History & Culture Corner: A Crash Course in Secret Police

While I’ve already touched on the direct inspirations for Ba Sing Se’s Dai Li, I wanted to take the opportunity to briefly examine (a few) historical secret police organizations that have formed throughout real-world history. Secret police are - broadly - extrajudicial forces who carry out covert operations and investigations against threats to their respective regime; they are a common facet of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. 

From the 1360s to the 1664 CE, the Embroidered Uniform Guard (“jinyiwei”) served as the secret police of China’s Ming Dynasty. While the group was formed as a royal guard and spy network, their power grew beyond the bounds of the ordinary law to the point that Ming Dynasty China is recognized as one of the world’s first police states.

Russia has a long and grim history with secret police, dating back to the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-16th century. Ivan’s “Oprichnina” operated from 1565-1572; the Russian Empire had the Third Section (1826-1880) succeeded by the Okhrana (1881-1917). Soviet Russia has had a long and complex timeline of secret police forces, the most famous of which, the KGB (translated, the “Committee for State Security”) operated from 1954 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

Secret police forces in western Europe were at their height in the mid-19th century, following the French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna; the Secret State Police of Austria and the Prussian Secret Police are particularly notable examples from this era. 

Nazi Germany was infamous for its Secret State Police, the Gestapo (1933-1945); a key organizer of the Holocaust. One of Nazi Germany’s successor states - East Germany - continued the operation of secret police with the Stasi (1950-1990) who were likewise feared and utilized a large civilian informant network.

The Special Higher Police of Japan, colloquially known as the “Tokko” was formed in Imperial Japan in 1911. This organization bears the inglorious distinction of being the inspiration for/namesake of the “Thought Police” of George Orwell’s 1984 - the Tokko were alternatively known as the “Thought Police,” and the “Peace Police.” The Tokko were abolished in 1945 with the downfall of Imperial Japan.

As a closing note - while the terminology of “secret police” has been clearly tainted by atrocities committed by those listed above, at time of writing, roughly twenty countries operate what can be classified as secret police forces. I was personally shocked to read about the United States’ “Operation Legend,” and “Protecting American Communities Task Force” (PACT); both of which were created in July 2020, and both of which have been criticized for using secret police-esque tactics.

It is on that somber note I humbly remind my readers to remain mindful of their government’s actions, and to criticize and protest any steps that might lead us down dark roads towards suppression of civil liberties. 

- - 

Next week, we close out Book 2 with Team Avatar’s stand against the Dai Li, the long-overdue debut of the Earth King, and a “Crossroads of Destiny.” 

Looking forward to it! Until then, be well, be safe, and may the Force be with you,

- JMC