Blog 2
Prompt #1
The cultural artifact I decided to choose is yet another
cartoon, this time from the popular series created in 2005 “Avatar the last
airbender”. This cartoon taught me and a lot of other kid’s important life lessons
and was probably one of the best cartoons up to date (just my opinion). Here is
a video clip I am so sorry I couldn’t find another one I really don’t know why Pirates of the Caribbean music is playing https://youtu.be/vlj9Qqgs9vA
.Anyways I wanted to focus primarily on
a strong independent girl named Katara who in the first episode discovered she
had the power to water bend which was a rare thing in her village. Every episode
I saw her become increasingly stronger, she decided to leave her village to
find a teacher that could help her use her power to the fullest extent. I
wanted to focus on episode 18 called, “The Waterbending master”. This episode
is interesting because as Katara and her friends arrive she is greeted by people
from this village and the water bending master, Master Pakku. Master Pakku from
the start already thought of Katara as less of a person because she was a woman
and refused to teach her anything when she got there. He had said women with
powers cannot fight they are only meant to heal the injured. This right here
was an early depiction of trying to create this wall for women where they could
not be seen as prestige fighters but only as nurturing individuals. The women
that had already lived at the village had complied to this rule because they didn’t
know anything outside of the norm. This can be compared to the many women who
are silenced in other countries having no voice, who don’t know any better
because they aren’t exposed to freedom. Katara challenges this mentality because
she doesn’t see anything wrong with women gaining the benefit of learning the
skill of fighting. Master Pakku represents sadly, how many men view women as
fragile and incapable beings. This mentality is seen a lot throughout the world
now as women continue to push through in hopes of being on the same level as
men. Katara can be seen as possibly someone who desires equal rights because her
strength cannot go unnoticed. Throughout the battle Master Pakku spews many
sexist comments at Katara, he had acknowledged that she is a good waterbender
but still denies her as a student. In the end he sees his flawed ways of only
teaching men the sacred art but sadly it is not an outcome that it is always
generated in todays society. I realize on the blog I could’ve gone a bunch of
different ways and picked many other videos but instead of seeing women as only
sexual beings I wanted to focus on the other stereotype of them being fragile
and unable to hold themselves up.
Prompt #2:
1.
I believe the person that created this message
was someone who wanted show a young generation how fierce a girl could actually
be.
2.
Some creative techniques that were used could be
the creators used a cartoon to portray sexism, in a way the youngest of minds
could understand it.
3.
The opposite sex often don’t see the
mistreatment placed on others if it doesn’t directly affect them.
4.
The values represented correlate with each sex having
a multitude of ways of expressing themselves without one weakness determining the
entire genders capabilities.
