We’ve all read books, seen movies, and watched many TV shows. Oftentimes, the stories people read or watch resonate with them in such powerful ways, they feel personal connections to them. Cartoons, in particular, have generated much appreciation for TV shows and lessons to be learned. With the various styles, genres, and applications of cartoons, it acts as a mainframe of creativity and endless possibilities of ideas. So much creativity and imagination in cartoon shows has created some of the most valuable communities by joining together the minds of so many enthusiastic show watchers. A perfect example of a show with these characteristics begins with this saying: Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. This pretty much sums up what the entire cartoon is about. I am talking about Avatar: The Last Airbender.
What is Avatar: The Last Airbender?
Avatar is among the most loved cartoons on Nickelodeon and on TV in general. The setting of the show is on Earth, including continents labeled as “The Four Nations”. Each nation represents a particular element: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air which certain characters, “benders”, are able to control. With the Fire Nation growing considerably more powerful over the years, the show is centered around their genocidal conquest of the Air Nation and further determination to “share” their prosperity with the rest of the nations.
While a world war is in progress, a young boy named Aang awakens in ice to find out he has been asleep for 100 years. Aang, the Avatar, is destined to learn all four elements, save the world from the Fire Nation, and bring balance to the nations. With its brilliance in storytelling, character development, and world building, The Last Airbender has moved the lives of many children and even adults. People still ponder the process that the creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, took to deliver the most impacting messages through adult-centered themes. Corruption, war, genocide, and mental health are few examples of them.
As a Discourse Community
- With all of the creativity and brilliance put into the creation of this show, it also possesses a cult-like fan base of passionate lovers of the series.
- The concept of discourse community has been studied for decades by leading theorists James Gee and John Swales, both affirming the desire to achieve a common goal through intercommunication.
(some of)Swales' Characteristics
1) has a broadly agreed set of common public goals; 2) has was of intercommunication; 3) uses its participatory mechanisms for information and feedback; 4) utilizes genres to further communicate aims; 5) has acquired some specific lexis; 6) has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise(Swales 4).
Viewing the Avatar fandom as a discourse community can help expand the possibilities of multiliteracy, the concept of understanding the design and meaning of information through the manipulation of individual modes. Analyzing multiliteracy can adjust our understanding of discourse communities and of our own identities themselves as it tends to reveal more perspectives of a concept.
Swales talks about focal as opposed to local communities, but the Avatar fandom functions as a “folocal” discourse community by using social media platforms(7). It is only when those who share common goals and ideas about the show meet in person, such as your friends, that it becomes a local discourse community.
The goal of the community isn’t very hard to miss: Keep showing your passion so that the creators will keep making more content! Although encouraging more production was a goal, this wasn’t what actually made the fandom take off. With the growing number of show bingers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the show was added to Netflix and quickly made the Top 10 list for a considerable amount of time as my good friend Thomas, who introduced me to the show, says,
Adding the show to Netflix added a whole new generation and set of viewers to the fandom, indirectly reviving the show from the dead. This prompted the creators to re-open the studio and start making the Netflix series.”
It is the significance of the show that grabbed the attention of so many viewers, ultimately reeling them into a fandom that they will never want to leave. The show uses real world building styles, real-life Taekwondo moves in the bending styles, real world themes, and more creative elements. With respect to this, the series still continues with comics of the main characters and a sequel with a new avatar: The Legend of Korra.
Through primary observational research, I was able to dive into the fandom of Avatar and witness the activity going on with my own eyes. One Quora user, Annie Walker, decided to answer somebody’s question asking why everyone cares about the show so much. It is the power of the fanbase that revealed the demand for more content, which is why the studio is now beginning to make a live-action Avatar series.
- Swales mentions that discourse communities contain people who take on appointed or held levels of discursive authority. Avatar acts a bit different in that regard as my friend Thomas mentions,
When people are more informed about the show than others on social media, they are usually in authority when in debate. The real authority would be the original creators, who sadly won't be participating in the making of the Netflix live-action series.”
- The creators left the Netflix project after getting some of their ideas shut down, which infuriated the fandom. With the real authority of the fandom gone, Netflix was forced to conform to this DC with no real support.
- However, Netflix is beginning to appeal to the fandom by hiring actors that actually look like the characters.
- On an instagram account called “Worldofaang”, they post constant updates on the Netflix show updates. One of the posts is showing the two main protagonists/antagonists of the show with their counterparts dueling(right image).
- Viewers know that Netflix is choosing good actors and that Netflix is trying to focus on their target audience. Because of social media posts like these, fans are more excited for the Netflix live-action series than ever.
The Fanbase Slang
Another aspect of the discourse community that Swales mentions is the use of “lexis” or slang(8). This refers to vocabulary in which members outside of the discourse community would not be able to comprehend. The inclusion of lexis within a discourse community is essential for making interpersonal communication much more proper and efficient.
- For example, people refer to the show as ATLA(at-la) and the sequel to the series, The Legend of Korra, as TLOK(T-lock). The show even includes ironic stereotypical names for people of a specific nation: Earthbenders are typically denoted as “dirt-people”, waterbenders as “ice-savages”, and firebenders as “hot-men”(only firebenders do the insults). Unfortunately for Airbenders, they weren’t around during the series for them to be called names.
- When people discuss the show, they may use other terms such as “chakras”, “sub-skills” and “chi-blocking”. Chakras refer to the seven swirling pools of energy in one’s body that ultimately give people their spirituality. Any blockages in the chakra pathways are a result of existential trauma or, more commonly, chi-blocking. Chi-blocking is a technique, mostly used by non-benders, to block the chakra pathways and temporarily inhibit bending abilities. Lastly, sub-skills are specialized bending abilities that only very skilled benders can use. This represents a lexis that the fandom created, as this term is never stated in the series once and is pretty much implied.
Creating these lexes gives the fanbase an entire life of its own by pushing past the established boundaries and meanings of the show to invent even more language.
Sub Skills in Bending
An example of a firebending sub-skill is “lightning bending”, using a more concentrated and directed form. This is where the show begins to pave the way for imagination amongst viewers, as the idea of sub-skills generates an endless list of possible skills with all logistics in mind.
The show took the idea of sub-skills further when introducing “blood bending” in The Puppet Master episode of Season 3. Skilled waterbenders may have the ability to bend the water within blood and ultimately anything that holds water. The Legend of Korra takes these ideas so much further, implementing sub-skills such as “lava bending”, “metal bending”, “combustion bending”, and even flying!
The lexis created and utilized by this discourse community helps to bring fans into a more spiritual and imaginative commonspace to share ideas and debate technicalities. Because of the show’s creativity, fans often wonder about even more possible bending abilities that aren’t mentioned in the series. One Reddit user(El_Tomahte) asked if “bone bending” could be a possible sub-skill of earthbending. Another user(ThenyThorn) responded with very logical reasoning to the question. The creativity that the fanbase generates from the lexis is what allows these fans to come up with more ideas that are branched off of already established ideas concepts from the show.
Fanbase Creations
As Swales mentions, discourse communities strive to reach a common goal and must intercommunicate in order for that to be achieved(2). What ways does this community communicate? Thomas says,
Sharing very memorable scenes of the show, creating fan art(clothing, posters, alternate realities, etc.), and making tier ranking lists to argue the powerfulness of characters. The fanbase loves to create stuff to show their love for the show.”
Through social media platforms such as Instagram, Tumbler, Quora, Reddit, Tiktok, Wiki, Discord, and many others, users develop genres, creations from the fanbase to set communicative purposes. Genres are essential to discourse communities as they further goals and function as a means of instantiating its participatory mechanisms(Swales 8). A Reddit user created the chart on the left which shows each of the four bending groups with their subsequent “sub-skills”. This person created a chart to lay-out all of the bending styles in a very creative way.
Other times, bloggers or Reddit users will post their “tier-ranking list” of the most powerful benders. This seems to derive the most attention on social media posts as people love to interpret others’ opinions and thoughts on those ideas. An example of this is shown in a Reddit post. This user in r/TheLastAirbender community, containing 1.2 million fans, made a list of his most powerful fighters. Content like this is what sparks creativity and critical thinking of the fanbase.
Engaging The Community
After reading this you may probably think: Why was such a complex show like this aired as a kid’s cartoon? Although the themes and topics in the show are mainly adult-centered, the main message of the show is what makes it so effective for children. The avatar is a 12-year-old boy(technically 112) who has been raised with the ethical and moral responsibilities of the Southern Air Nomads. Being the avatar, Aang has the obligation to bring peace to the world, no matter what. The final conflict Aang encounters with Fire Lord Ozai is the most impactful as Aang is shown to almost end his life but ends up not doing so. Instead, he finds a new way to beat him.
On Reddit, a huge debate occurred over the rationale of Aang’s decision. People are shown to share very thought-provoking ideas in the comments of these posts, such as one person mentioning the resilience of cartoon characters and that they “don’t die so easily”(Reddit). Posts like these are what allow the fandom to circulate on a particular concept, such as common human morals, taking the show’s significance to a whole new level.
Posts such as these are referred to as “nostalgia effect” posts. They are composed of either sad, heartwarming, or down-right awesome scenes from the show. One person created a meme about how sad this scene from the show was using the nostalgia effect. The scene from the show is from The Tales of Ba Sing Se, Season 2. It depicts one of the most deeply loved characters, General Iroh, singing “Leaves From the Vine” to his son who died in the war years previous. The actual scene is very sad and is supposed to be one of the most impactful moments of the show, considering the entire episode was in loving memory of the voice actor for Iroh, Mako. Nostalgic posts like this move the fans in an emotional way and bring them together to think back on moments similar to this.
Influence
The fanbase has been able to expand the show’s inside-jokes and ideas to other platforms such as video games and more. One example of this is the classic “My Cabbages!” inside joke. Shown countless times in the series, a cabbage salesman is shown to have his cabbage collection destroyed by the work of annoying benders. A user on Reddit re-posted a picture made by the “World of Warcraft” official account showing the recreation of the scene with the caption being, “My Cabbages!”.
This proves that the show has inspired viewers to further represent their jokes in creative ways that people wouldn’t imagine. The irony of this show is that it is an inspired show. It was inspired by anime, but was Americanized. It was inspired by Taekwondo techniques and also cultural architecture forms. With all it used to create the show, it all ultimately inspired the viewers to think in different ways and appreciate so much more.
Conclusion
This discourse community is very important to analyze because it shows the existence of a community that is so deeply driven, passionate, and motivated by the art of ATLA. Further, it represents the potential of creativity and imagination that can be induced from just a single cartoon series. The show utilizes various forms of pathos to get viewers passionate about it as it is an expansive alternative universe. Being one of the most popular anime-inspired series’, it seems as though more people in the fandom have been developing much more critical thinking skills about characters and plot lines. The Avatar: The Last Airbender series has created a fandom that functions as a discourse community, but functions slightly differently from Swale’s understanding of typical discourse communities. Overall, the fandom takes creative risks because they are passionate about the series. As a result, the fandom has created a positive social media space where people are able to intercommunicate ideas. Through this amped-up “folocal” discourse community, authority is held in the hands of the entire community as a whole with their acute ability to influence the creators and outside organizations to further the studio makings. Being able to efficiently intercommunicate with special lexis and the creation of genres, the fandom can easily set goals to reach and already has done so in the past.
Viewing the Avatar fandom as a discourse community can help expand the various forms of multiliteracy, the concept of understanding the design and meaning of information through the manipulation of individual modes. Analyzing multiliteracy can realign our understanding of discourse communities and of our own identities themselves as it tends to reveal several standpoints on concepts.
Thank You!
For a more extensive form, check out the full Discourse Community paper on Google Drive!