It’s not even that I dislike these aesthetics or influences, but it feels off for Korra and where the world setting was going. They don’t work for me as shorthand. There’s a lot of jazz-ish music on the soundtrack, for example, and I keep wondering that stands for in the setting.
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It’s disorienting because in Avatar, I often felt like I could trust my instincts when I see the aesthetic/visual shorthand. When Zuko cut his hair or when Sokka put on makeup before war and things like that? They aren’t just aesthetics, they meant things.
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And those things aren’t explained. They didn’t have to stop the narrative to exposit the symbolic value of hair cutting or war paint. It’s just understood as significant and I understood based on having understanding of the real world cultures they’re drawing on.
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I will add that this doesn’t always work out for me, because I assumed the monks and nuns were celibate and that the air nomads referred to a separate population that, I dunno, were nomadic and didn’t live in non-moving temples. But anyway.
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Point is that I don’t understand why the primary influence for the New Republic city hall is the German Reichstag? Or why they seem to have a Eiffel Tower knockoff (is this a reference to the Tokyo tower that’s in the background of many anime)?pic.twitter.com/y2j0FRPNy2
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This is Plaza Hotel in New York. But called Four Elements which resembles Four Seasons, a Canadian hotel chain. And Air Temple Island is inexplicably Alcatraz. I don’t know either.pic.twitter.com/jwLGr3ucBg
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There are influences from early 20thC Shanghai fashion, lots of standing collars and cravats. But like, may I remind you that those things in the real world didn’t organically grow from Chinese culture. There was this whole Thing with encountering and being influenced by the West
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So it feels... strange? Suits evolved out of frock coats and European royal court dress. They structure of them is very specific and I’m seeing it everywhere in Korra. I don’t know how you go from basically robes to that.
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I mean, the cheongsam comes from a horse-riding culture, that’s why you have a high slit up the side of the robe, it’s again, quite specific and I don’t believe we had any analogue to the Manchus in Avatar?
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And normally using aesthetics as shorthand for “now the industrial revolution is happening” or whatever doesn’t really bother me. I don’t demand every fantasy comic or tv show explain the evolution and influence of every object but I find it hard to suspend my disbelief here.
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I really enjoy Korra, but I always had a problem with the weird aesthetics and what I felt was a move away from the martial arts focus with the bending in Avatar.
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