In general, when someone speaks, they reveal something about gender, either by upholding or subverting social expectations and ideology about gender. By analyzing the linguistic forms of a conversation, we can gather information about the ways in which gender ideologies permeate language. Examining a conversation from the media can additionally reveal something about how gender is viewed and upheld or subverted in our society. In the animated children’s show Avatar: The Last Airbender, there are both characters who challenge gender roles and some who uphold them.
In a conversation from the episode “The Blind Bandit,” the characters perform gender, either through subverting expectations, as seen in Toph and Aang, or upholding them, like Sokka and Katara, and reveal their gender ideologies through their speech, views which are influenced by their backgrounds and societal expectations. In Avatar, some people, called ‘benders,’ can telekinetically control an element of nature. Aang, a twelve-year-old boy, is the Avatar, who has the ability to control all four elements, and he’s on a mission to save the world from the Fire Nation with his friends Katara and Sokka.
The conversation in question is between Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph, a master earthbender who’s also the blind daughter of local aristocrats. The three hope Toph will teach Aang earthbending, but she dislikes Aang because she fought him when he tried to talk to her at an underground competition, and lost. This conversation begins after the trio uncover Toph’s identity and show up on her property. In these opening lines, the characters establish a few things about how they each perform their gender: Toph is commanding and hostile, in a way that wouldn’t be expected of young aristocratic girl, and insults Aang with a nickname that, according to Sokka, isn’t “manly,” because men shouldn’t be gentle and light on their feet. Aang, however, isn’t bothered by the insult, so Sokka berates him for his lack of manliness, which reveals their contrasting concerns and beliefs about gender: Sokka’s views are based on a stricter gender ideology than Aang’s and align more with common societal views equating masculinity with strength.
Sokka’s strong views come from growing up in a setting where men were expected to becor warriors, while Aang was raised in a pacifist, spiritual nation where masculinity played a less significant role. This explains why Aang makes no attempt to defend himself, but Katara does. She’s Sokka’s sister, so her background also, to some extent, leads her to believe that it’s shameful for a man to act “feminine,” and she insults Sokka in the same way because she feels it’s necessary to defend Aang’s masculinity.
In this piece of the conversation, Aang rambles until Katara cuts him off and explains the situation concisely and tactfully. It’s worth noting that this is the second time in the short conversation where Katara has spoken for Aang, demonstrating that she acts protective and motherly – she corrects Aang’s mistakes and defends him the way a mother would to protect her child. This shows that one way Katara performs her gender is by acting as a caretaker, because she associates that role with the female role of motherhood.
However, she also acts in a more dominant way by interrupting a man and taking charge, while Aang takes a submissive role in the conversation. This flipflop of dominance and submission demonstrates how the gender dynamics between these friends can subvert traditional gender roles. Toph, meanwhile, is aloof and demands they leave. For Toph, performing gender doesn’t include acting feminine – she is unapologetically rude and uncaring, which isn’t common in women’s speech. Even when Katara takes charge, she’s straightforward, not abrasive like Toph.
At the end of the conversation, Sokka makes a final attempt to onvince Toph to help Aang. His approach is more direct: he uses the powerful word ‘war,’a choice that may be part of his performing masculinity: men are viewed as strong, so they wouldn’t shy away from talking about war. He also may have been trying to make Toph uncomfortable to persuade her to help. Then, there’s a sudden shift in Toph’s tone. She raises her voice, both in pitch and volume, to call the guards to scare away the trio. When they scatter, Toph speaks timidly to the guards, sounding much more like one would expect of a twelve-year-old blind girl.
The raised pitch is more feminine, and she says she “thought” she heard someone, which implies that she was mistaken, just a silly little girl, and she says she got scared, because that’s what society, particularly her protective parents, expects of her. This drastic change reveals how people may perform their gender differently the expectations of them given their current audience. This brief conversation cannot capture the extent of the gender dynamics of the show, but it does reveal a lot.
Toph is a disabled girl who is very powerful and rejects gender roles when she’s away from authority figures with certain expectations about how she should act. This could be a social commentary about how societal influences force people to perform gender in a way that upholds gender ideologies, an argument which could be bolstered by Sokka and Katara’s speech, which demonstrates the pressure they feel from these ideologies, while Aang never felt those expectations and doesn’t feel pressured by gendered insults.
However, this is a cartoon geared towards children, so it’s more likely a message to children that they can break free of societal expectations and perform gender however they want – a girl can be strong like Toph and a boy can be as gentle as Aang – which is achieved by including characters with diverse ideas about gender and different ways of performing gender, as exemplified in the conversation.
