Part of the crossover between narrative literacy - and I don't just mean being able to make sense of the words but be able to navigate a text as a situation, a cultural object within a context - and daily life is the idea of both redemption and punishment, accountability, and the division between what's an appropriate way to approach a text and what's not.
I'm a little lightheaded today so you'll have to forgive me if I kinda default to my normal academic horseshit instead of something a little easier to parse. It is what it is.
So, like, the idea of a redemption arc is an especially Christian sort of nonsense bullshit and while it's present in other cultures in different ways, the one we're operating in is Christian, Protestant, Puritanical in is roots (and I mean literally the Puritans, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, only the Elect are allowed into Heaven sort).
Which means when a character does something sorta fucked up, we're told we need to see them punished - and this is even codified into law with the Hayes Code (actual name, "The Motion Picture Production Code" beginning in 1934, only ending in the late 60's), and the CCA (Comics Code Authority) in 1954 which was an industry attempt to self regulate content based on moral behavior. These were some pretty strict forms of censorship of material based on what was viewed to be moral, distinctly under an anti-communist, anti-gay, Christian doctrine.
But that colors a lot of our perception of what stories should be with this very doctrinal and moralistic framework - opposed to sexuality, views being gay as inherently depraved, sexual, and sinful, demands what is effectively a Christian morality tale at the end where good triumphs and evil is suitably punished to teach the viewer a moral lesson. Effectively Christian religious propaganda.
And that brings up to the contemporary where I hear nothing but praise from most people about how well, say, Zuko's "redemption arc" is done in something like AtLA. But is he punished? Maybe, but it's not done coherently. Surely Zuko has suffered but who says it's enough. What he's done - was it bad? Can we quantify his sin? It's not a question people really ask, and instead we get a few binaries - the one from people who like Zuko and decide he's redeemed (but from what?) while others who dislike him will say the show itself is bad because he wasn't really punished and as an imperialist he gets off pretty much scott free except for what his dad done did.
Contrast Azula and it's also apparent that she's not an especially ethical or kind person for most of her life, and I would be shocked if she hadn't hurt people, but in the core of the show we don't see that a lot. Instead we know that she's cast in the role of a villain while Zuko comes to be cast in opposition to her, and thus Zuko redeems himself and Azula - who doesn't simply come around of her own volition - must be punished. Maybe forever. And she's a child who's been abused also, but that hardly matters. She needs punishment. She needs to suffer for a time until her sins are purged and she comes meekly and cooperatively back and asks to be forgiven.
In real life there is no way to really be redeemed. But it's also true that there's no way to genuinely be damned. Instead some people will hate you and others will love you. Some will distrust you and others will but their trust in you. You'll make mistakes and some people will forgive you and others won't. And there's not really anything you can do about that. But people believe it's up to them to treat real life just as dimly as they treat media, and they effectively will use whether they personally like you to determine whether you have a soul tainted by sin.
So Zuko might be able to be redeemed even though he's royalty leading an imperialist nation that conquers by literal fire and sword (but he's nice so all that surely stops right away) while someone like Jax Digital Circus gets dubbed by many as irredeemable.
I'm not going to commit the fallacy of ascribing both positions to the same imaginary person, I'm discussing the discourse itself in the aggregate. The fandom of Avatar largely agrees that they like Zuko - the tragically scarred, cool teenager who does cool fire shit helps destroy his family and locks his sister away. Meanwhile, Jax is an asshole.
Yes, I play one up a little while I play the other one down - but Jax has a bad emotional effect on the people around her and that has some tragic outcomes. That's significant, but why is it that Jax is suddenly irredeemable? Well, that happened at exactly the moment she was outed to us as a trans woman. She went from being the guy whose antics were maliciously humorous to the viewership - someone many of the fans related to personally before she came out - to persona non grata and it happened because people despise trans women and view narrative punishment as a way to demonstrate that her identity is unacceptable. They don't do this consciously but it is done.
Now it has no effect on Jax, who isn't real and cannot be hurt or helped in any way whatsoever. Although it is possible to mess with the creator, and many people here have done exactly that. But I would point out that things men can get away with and remain beloved is very lengthy - but the moment someone's a trans woman, the words "accountability" and "redemption" start being circulated. Because unlike Zuko who can be redeemed by being loved, the trans woman must be punished - but since there is no way to absolve a non-existent sin, and no authority outside of ourselves, it's a one strike system. The interloper must be punished indefinitely. This is what we call accountability in search of redemption and forgiveness.
But here's the real trick - have you considered nobody needs you to forgive them? You can't demand accountability unless you already have a relationship with someone and watching someone's TV show isn't a relationship - you're a consumer. Most people on social media create narratives out of real people's lives for their own entertainment without being wholly cognizant of what they're doing, and then they apply their jaundiced media moralizing to them.
It's not like anyone read this but, it's still a really interesting dynamic.
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