Tasty Tahno

tv aesthetic → avatar: the last airbender

Oh, I totally agree. The decision to go with Kataang came up well after the general story for Book 3 was thought up, so a lot of Zuko and Katara’s moments together were no doubt conceived back when they were still planned to wind up together. Like Aang getting so jealous of them during the play. And he even brings up his issue with opening his final chakra, then Katara rejects his kiss. And all of that…led to nothing. Which is why so many of the writers were so surprised when the final draft had the Kataang kiss. It’s very easy to see why.

They still have many very important moments together, they spend a lot of time with each other and their personalities are very compatible. This is why it was so important for Bryke to come up with a contrived way for her to hate Zuko for most of Book 3. Otherwise, they’d have too much obvious chemistry and Kataang would seem even more forced than it already was.

But you can still see times where they did have special moments, even in canon. Especially in episodes by Joshua Hamilton, and the Ehasz couple, who all shipped Zutara. There are little hints that constantlyshow how he wanted to make them a couple.

And the show constantly parallels their characters. Zuko is dealing with Ozai during The Awakening, written by Aaron Ehasz and directed by Giancarlo Volpe, both Zutara supporters.

And at the exact same time, Katara is dealing with her pain about Hakoda. This was completely intentional.

The same is true during The Eclipse. Zuko is having a character-defining moment confronting Ozai and leaving for good.

And Katara is having to separate from her father. 

Katara tells Zuko the story of how her mother was murdered. This is something deeply painful that she never shares with Aang. And by the end, she feels grateful to Zuko for going with her, unlike with Aang, who judged her.

Zuko’s feelings about Iroh are so fundamental to his character, and it is only Katara who he feels safe confiding his worries in. He never once talks about anything like this to Mai, and Katara is far more supportive than she ever was.

Zuko is so happy when Katara is reunited with her father and the episode goes out of its way to show that in the same episode he dumped Mai.

Zutara Month 2016: Beauty & The Beast

Spite, fuel me

Katara: *Waits patiently* Zuko: *bored but happy in the end*

Yeah, there’s a reason for that.

Lisa Edelstein is Jewish.  As are Idina Menzel and Amy Winehouse, both of whom I have seen compared in looks to Gothel.  Gothel’s design is a pretty clear caricature of ethnically Jewish women.  

This is a pretty good contrast between Rapunzel and Gothel.  Rapunzel has the “typical Disney face”:

Here’s a more close up look at her features.

The hooked nose becomes even more pronounced as she becomes “eviler.”

If you wanted to claim that there was noting out of the ordinary for Disney animation when it came to Gothel’s features, you would have to find at least one Disney princess or heroine with similar characteristics (long hooked nose and dark curly hair, etc).

But here is what we have is -

small noses that turn up at the end:

wide, flatter noses (though cheers to Disney for not putting button noses on their characters of color, although Esmerelda’s clothing design deserves another essay on Rromani stereotypes and there are some major issues with Pocahontas as well)

And then a few misc noses (again, props for Jasmine’s nose not being a button):

Apart from just the design of Gothel, there’s also the whole: “obviously ‘other’ (read Jewish) woman kidnaps the pretty blonde (read: gentile) kid to use her for ritualistic/magical purposes”

Like that right there on top of the aesthetic Jewish-coding is what pushed the antisemitic caricature over the top for me.  It harkens back to antisemitic blood libel that claimed that Jews stole gentile children for all manner of nefarious reasons. Even when Gothel is in “mother” role to Rapunzel, she’s is shown as nagging and passive aggressive, both antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish women.

There is no one thing that makes her an antisemitic caricature, but the design, plus the storyline she plays out, plus her characterization cement the overall character as antisemitic.  

Jew-coding a villain is not in itself always antisemitic when there are also Jewish coded heroes. Rapunzel does not have that.

Having a villain steal a baby for magical/ritualistic reasons is not always antisemitic as long as the villain is not Jew-coded.  Rapunzel fails this as well.

Having a nagging and passive aggressive mother character is not antisemitic provided that she is not, again, coded as Jewish.  Rapunzel fails once again.

Hope this helps.

Jewish people don’t get that.  When we are portrayed in live action, our characters are more often than not whitewashed and in other media, our features are used and caricaturized to create “evil looking” villains.

You don’t see it because you’ve been ingrained with the idea that “ethnic” features are just “how you make a character look evil.”  You don’t look at Gothel and see your mother.  You don’t see yourself and your people.  You don’t see decades of propaganda aimed at fostering hate against you and ultimately seeking to destroy you.  

But seeing how you also seem to think that saying you’re not attracted to an entire race of people ISN’T racist, you really don’t get any say on any of this.

So really, you need to chill the fuck out and stop telling marginalized people to stop talking about the tools of our own marginalization.

Let’s play a game I like to call: Movie Villain or Antisemitic Propaganda:

Many “evil witch” tropes were built on European antisemitic stereotypes, not just in appearance but in the storylines they play out as well. Greediness, stealing children, killing children, hunger for power, etc.  Every time a movie villain design uses stereotyped Jewish features to communicate “evilness” to an audience, they perpetuate the marginalization of the people they are using. 

One big issue I have is that Gothel’s didn’t start out as the antisemitic caricature that made it to screen.  Much of the early concept art has a more dark romanticism feel.  

They changed the original design. Presumably to make Gothel more “other” from the good characters in the movie.  At some point, a decision was made that dark curly hair and a hooked nose wound better convey their villain.

It really doesn’t matter if any of this was intentional, I’d actually bet that it wasn’t.  However, antisemitic tropes are so engrained in our societies that people like you, even when confronted with a step by step break down of what it is, feel comfortable thinking that there’s nothing wrong with it and mocking those calling it out as if we are overreacting.

You seem to have completely ignored the majority of my post.  It is the character design, plus the characterization, plus the story line that mirrors blood libel that makes Gothel an antisemitic character.  It’s not just about someone of a certain race or ethnicity being a villain.  It’s about how stereotypes of a certain ethnic group are understood as “villainous” due to villains being repeatedly coded as Jewish over decades of film and tv.