Oozing Lore
(Illustration by Nathan Graber-Lipperman)
MacGuffins and White Russians is a new bi-weekly letter from Jake Graber-Lipperman about all the things in pop culture and entertainment he now has time to consume. Get ready for all the sarcastic takes and oddball references you never knew you needed.
As a man of high culture and the resident culture sommelier on my little brother’s internet website, I recognize my duty to share with you the culture I’ve been consuming so that one day you too can become as high-cultured as me. Welcome to MacGuffins and White Russians!
Nostalgia-bending culture
MOM - GET THE CAMERA! IT’S HAPPENING!
That’s right ladies and gentleman, Netflix just dropped the biggest nostalgia bomb in the history of the platform this week in the form of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
I was a mere lad when Nickelodeon released the hit cartoon back in 2005. Like Pokemon before it, Avatar became mandatory viewing in my household. From the get-go, I was hooked on the epic struggle between good and evil, incensed by every dope bending-battle between the outrageously OP Aang and the dastardly Zuko. On a Saturday afternoon you could have probably caught me mock-battling my siblings with my totally real bending abilities.
The content of our childhood often holds a near and dear place in our hearts. We associate it with great memories, of discovering the world and curling up on the couch with our family. But ordinary nostalgic content hardly merits a relentless binge that could engulf my entire Memorial Day weekend. I don’t think you could pay me to park in front of my TV and consume The Fairly OddParents or Danny Phantom (no disrespect to Timmy Turner and Danny Phantom, both tremendous shows). If you want to make me revisit my childhood, I need something extraordinary.
I’m talking about lore. And Avatar simply oozes lore.
I adore lore. I first cultivated my appetite for the sweet nectar as I tore through the Game of Thrones books, crafted to contain just as much rich backstory as the gargantuan plot propelling the novels. Minutes after flipping the last page of A Dance With Dragons (almost a decade ago, where’s TWoW George?!), I immediately scoured the internet for Easter Eggs of the Westorosi variety, entranced by the inklings of R + L = J. I devoured fan theories, brushed up on my GOT history, all in the name of trying to get a sense of where the story could go next by looking to the past. Lore can be addicting. It’s led me to my new favorite podcast, Binge Mode, seemingly tailor-made for people like me to (as they say on the show) dive deep into the annals of modern classics GOT and Harry Potter.
Likewise, as a lore-enthusiast, the opportunity to binge on Avatar proved irresistible. And in case you were wondering, Avatar’s lore is top-notch.
From the legend of the Avatar to the hidden powers of bending, down to the treacherous familial history of the Fire Lord’s kin, Avatar delivers. Episode to episode, I caught myself wondering: Why were the Air Nomads wiped out? Why did the Fire Nation start the war? What happened to Zuko’s mom? How powerful is Iroh? What kind of bending exists beyond the traditional four elements? While these questions didn’t keep me awake at night as a kid, the mysteries of the show which I had largely forgotten kept me pressing onward (smashing the Next Episode button on my phone).
Margaret Thatcher once said, “Fantasy resembles the onion; it has layers.” The surface level presents a gripping tale of an unassuming hero who rises up to fight off a great evil and save the world. If you’ve watched the intro to Avatar 61 times in the past week like I have, I imagine you’re familiar with this element of the show. But the heart of impeccable fantasy lies in its world-building, the beautiful cascade of underlying layers that continue to peel back as the story marches onward. Within this world-building, however, the sweetest onions have one more surprise hiding at their core; the tasty history that the best fantasy content allows us to digest here and there, a fleeting tease from time to time, the perfect golden-brown crispy bites of Bloomin’ Onion. (Editor’s Note: All opinions of Outback Steakhouse products are the author’s own. We can’t claim we’re sponsored by Australia’s finest restaurant…yet.)
I gravitate towards this pillar of fantasy. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “The lore never gets old.” Long after you know (Spoiler Warning) that Aang successfully defeats Ozai while sparing his life, the tension has dissipated, and long after the many stops of Avatar’s buddy road trip become familiar pass-throughs for the repetitive viewer, the lore never gets old.
It’s why fans still speculate about what happened to Zuko’s mother, crave more backstory into Aang’s past lives, and salivate over learning the secret ways of the Order of the White Lotus. While for the most part Avatar plays as a serial episodic, with a loose thread guiding one-off plotlines towards one final location / battle for the season finale, the showrunners manage to keep the intrigue machine running by dropping tasty lore morsels throughout. After all, plot alone can hardly carry repeat viewings.
Avatar starts slow, with the cartoonishly-evil Zuko repeatedly failing to accost Aang and company in the South Pole. Only after the flashback episode “The Storm” does the show truly take off, as we finally gain a larger picture of the history of our characters and the greater Four Kingdoms.
The episode offers glimpses into the life of the late Air Nomads, wiped out a century ago by the Fire Nation, and shows how Aang was forced to detach himself from his peers and assume the mantle of the Avatar, an unimpeachable protector of the realm. Similarly, Iroh’s tale of Zuko’s tragic maiming at the hand of his father pulls back the curtain ever-so-slightly on the nature of the Fire Lord’s court, an ever-omnipresent threat largely lacking in the show on an episode-to-episode basis. As “The Storm” fleshes out the backstory of the Four Kingdoms and our protagonist / anti-hero, the lore simultaneously develops the characters while widening the scope of our understanding of the War’s history.
Likewise, “The Storm” is later outdone by brilliant backstory-heavy episodes like “Zuko Alone” and “The Avatar and the Fire Lord,” both delving into the political maneuvering of past Fire Nation despots and how their actions tore apart families and friendships. The latter episode induces a spine-tingling moment when Avatar Roku’s final stand atop an imploding volcano ends in his demise right as Aang is brought into the world. The room soon deflates when the viewer realizes this was the moment that Fire Lord Sozin decided to commit genocide against the Air Nomads to eliminate his mortal foe, the new Avatar. Powerful stuff.
Lore is the backbone of a great story, the bedrock for an already entertaining tale that makes the ordinary fascinating. It’s the differentiator between the eternal Harry Potter saga, rich in the history of the Wizarding World and its many inhabitants, and the mostly-forgotten Lightning Thief series. One stands the test of time through its fully-inhabited lore, from the story of the Deathly Hallows to the founding of Hogwarts to the legend of Albus Dumbledore. The other relies on pre-existing Greek mythology, albeit essential tales in their own right, to completely buttress its similarly brilliant fantasy world. While I loved Percy Jackson as a kid, there’s so much more to rediscover in the secret passageways of Hogwarts than there ever was on Mount Olympus. Also, the Percy Jackson movies were hot garbáge. So there’s that.
Avatar skeptics might brush off the show as one for kids or drop it in the not-for-me bucket of anime (although I believe true anime fans would scoff at the notion that the heavily-westernized Avatar could be considered anime). But for entertainment connoisseurs like myself (and my readers), the lore is simply too juicy to pass up when it comes to Avatar.
If you want to enjoy a tasty, fast-casual lore without all the pomp and darkness of more complicated fantasy like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, Avatar provides a perfect diversion for the quarantined mind. Firm warning: make sure you select the animated children series as you peruse Netflix, or else M. Night Shyamalan will have a surprise for you that will make The Sixth Sense look like child’s play.
Did I miss out on any must-watch culture you’ve been consuming? As a man of high culture, I find it unlikely, but not impossible. Tweet at us with any comments you may have!
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