the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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I just wrote a response addressing this here if you want to get my take.
I don't know enough about Tibet to know whether the Air Tribe is offensive and I'm not Tibetan either so my opinion doesn't matter anyway. I see what you mean though.
I haven't watched the show in a long time either, but iirc Ba Sing Se is most analogous to the Qing dynasty trying to maintain its social hierarchies at the expense of being unable to defend against an invasion or provide for its citizens. The whole Earth Kingdom isn't like that, it's just the capital stronghold with the political elite. I think it distances itself from the racist brainwashing trope because it establishes political reasons for why it's like that and doesn't imply that its people are naturally obedient or uniquely propagandized.
Because the Fire Nation is pretty much the same. Fire Nation kids have to do daily loyalty oaths, are taught a super biased version of history, are sheltered from the war they're waging, and live under martial law in all but name. I think it's important that they're not portrayed as liberators or as a foil to Ba Sing Se and they're not white either.
Westerners are famously media-illiterate so I dunno how much it matters that they're twisting the story to villainize [current enemy country]. They do that with anything and everything even when it doesn't make sense.
Also disclaimer: I haven't seen Korra or watched the movie or read the comics or any other stuff
I wouldn't say that it's offensive but it's definitely a heavily stereotyped representation of Tibetan Buddhism. I'd say it's benign racism, or the western gaze to be precise, more than anything.
Yeah, I get that it's about the Qing Dynasty (hence my reference to the Opium Wars) but it's not just the political elite which is brainwashed and the character Jet literally becomes a Manchurian Candidate in one of the episodes.
Honestly I think you're doing diagetical handwaving to excuse the use of the trope by using in-universe justifications for it. I don't think that it really matters that there's a rationale for the brainwashing within the story because it's literally resting on the well-worn ground of invoking the trope of brainwashing in reference to Asian cultures regardless of that fact.
That's a bit like having a fantasy African culture and establishing the centrality and necessity of having caricaturised witch doctors to the story and using that as a defence for the use of the caricature; it doesn't matter if "ooga-booga" literally represents something meaningful in that universe because outside of the narrative, in the real world, it's still a racist trope. The same goes for Tikki Tikki Tembo;that story has a diagetical rationale for the caricatures but it's still racist all the same.
I'm not saying that the political elite are brainwashed, I'm saying that there's brainwashing because of the political elite. They're pushed into a corner and have turned to increasingly desperate methods of maintaining their power in the face of domestic revolution and foreign aggression. The kidnapping and brainwashing thing came about recently in the city's history. Though I suppose lore doesn't matter if the presence of brainwashing is the issue.
I don't think the trope is comparable to the other stuff you mentioned because it's present in a lot of non-Asian western media too. Like Clockwork Orange, BioShock, the three anti-authoritarian books everyone reads in high school, uh Harry Potter I think.
But yeah it pretty much is the Manchurian Candidate. I think there's less bite to it because there are no communists, liberals, politicians, or real countries involved but yeah the story would be better off without it.