Class Struggle in the Avatar: Legend of Korra

The Equalists vs. Benders social conflict growing in Avatar: Legend of Korra reflects a pretty big question I had with Avatar the Last Airbender: how benders commanded no special apparent social standing in spite of their massive natural advantages. AtLA was very good at establishing that bending was a practical art and a form of combat. These powers are even casually introduced, with waterbending used for fishing, airbending used for flight (obviously) and earthbending used to (get this) deliver mail. They're useful and practical and they fit into the whole world, and it's easy to think that somebody who can move tons and tons of earth or water  with a gesture would reap benefits from the natural consequences of their inborne abilities. A master earthbender could gather a lot of wealth by doing in seconds what mundane people would need years to do, and even if no privilege is accorded, there has to be some wealth that accumulates, and all wealth eventually becomes privilege.

Anyway, that divide doesn't happen at all in AtLA, but it shows up centrally in LoK. Non-benders suffer in a million ways. The police are benders and answer to a council of benders that--even if they're elected--appear to simply represent the four bending nations, rather than any sort of geographic or culturally distinct group within Republic City. All the crime we see except for expressly Equalist activities are performed by benders. As Equalist activity begins to spread in the city, the council responds by cracking down on non-benders and five minutes in one episode is the closest we get to a relatable non-benders other than Asami.

It's hard to sympathize with benders, too. Amon's little junta somehow goes off without (apparently) killing anybody at all, but every time a bender loses their bending everybody reacts like their were brutally murdered and their corpse desecrated in the street. I understand that it must be culturally appalling, like a roving female circumcision gang or something, but at the same time the bulk of the Avatar's world are non-benders who seem to survive just fine except for all the cultural oppression they suffer at the hands of benders.

The show even takes some effort to sort of hide the inequality they wrote into their own script: rather than an angry mob of non-benders sympathetic to Amon's cause, aggressive acts by Equalists are with like one exception carried out by  uniformed Equalist footsoldiers. The entire thing is framed as a squaring-off between the plucky hero and a military force, but the plucky hero is a tool of the establishment looking to maintain the status quo. Think about that for a minute. Realistically the Equalists look like a popular movement--all those footsoldiers aren't professional soldiers, they're freedom fighters.

Korra kind of sucks as the avatar, too. She is briefly faced with the reality that benders have privilege and threatens to punch the guy who tells her. Watching one episode, her rage for the injustice of imprisoning non-benders is there, but it doesn't look like she'll do much until her bender friends are arrested, too.