Typically for Pre-Socratic philosophers, nothing of Empedocles’ writing has independently survived, so we have to take Aristotle at his word. Empedocles did not invent the four elements. Each of them had already been individually identified by earlier philosophers as the building blocks of the cosmos, but Empedocles was apparently the first to combine them in a system where they were continually united by the power of Love and separated by Strife.
Aristotle did not fully approve of Empedocles’ system, and it’s not the one that came to dominate chemistry for the next two thousand years. For one, Empedocles does not call the four “elements” (stoicheia) but rather “roots” (rhizomata). They are not coequal; Fire is apparently as strong as the other three combined. Aristotle thus criticizes Empedocles for subscribing to only two principles instead of four. He also identified his “roots” with the Greek gods. Zeus and Hera are Fire and Air, while Hades and Persephone are Earth and Water. Why not Poseidon for Water? Beats me.
In Aristotle’s conception, there were actually five elements. The moon and everything above it is pure, unchangeable Ether. Everything in the sublunar world is composed of the four intermixing, changeable elements. The elements themselves are not irreducible but are combinations of two pairs of opposing states: wet, dry, hot, and cold. Each element has two of these characteristics and can be changed into another element by altering one characteristic into its opposite.
Thus: Water is cold and wet. Change wet into dry and, presto, Earth (cold and dry). Change cold to hot and you get Fire (hot and dry). Change dry to wet and you get Air (hot and wet, like your Mom). Change hot to cold and you get Water again (cold and wet). This continues in a perpetual cycle.
If you are very perceptive, you might notice that Water–Earth–Fire–Wind is the very sequence in which the elements are introduced at the beginning of every episode of Avatar. It is also the order in which the Avatars are reincarnated. Aang (wind) was preceded by Roku (fire) and Kyoshi (earth); he is followed by Korra (water). It is this very sequence that convinces me we are dealing with Aristotle and not godai.
Aristotle’s system directly fed into the pseudoscience of alchemy. Under Aristotle, all metals on the planet are subspecies of “Earth.” Since the elements can all be changed into one another through slight modification, it only stands to reason that slight tinkering might turn one kind of Earth (lead) into another kind (gold).
This secondary aspect of the Aristotelian system plays a plot-critical role in Avatar. Although she is no alchemist, the young but talented Earthbender Toph can also bend metal when she is really, really angry. Which is most of the time.
Alchemy provided the experimental aspect missing from Aristotle which eventually led to modern chemistry and its 92 naturally occurring elements. The four elements (or four plus one) perdure, however, in music, literature, and film. And television.
Notwithstanding its indebtedness to Aristotle, Avatar’s religious influences are overwhelmingly Asian and primarily Chinese. Each of the elemental peoples roughly corresponds to a real-world Asiatic culture. The shamanistic, polar-dwelling Water Tribe is vaguely Inuit. The Air Nomads (which, despite their name, are only portrayed living in monastic communities) are reminiscent of Tibetan Buddhists. The militaristic, honor-obsessed Fire Nation corresponds to imperial Japan. That leaves the Earth Kingdom, which comprises most of the world map and where most of the action takes place, as China. There is also an Indian guru, but I don’t know where he could have come from. Maybe he slipped in from our world.
Anyway, India and Japan, as stated above, have a five-element system. So does China, but the Chinese system, called wuxing or “Five Phases,” is quite different. The elements here are Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal. Whereas the other systems have the same four terrestrial elements and a nebulous, loosely-defined fifth element, wuxing has five earthbound elements. But no Air!
This is a great puzzle because not only is the show called The Last Airbender, but the Chinese characters for the elements (and associated qualities) appear in the opening and again in the logo. So what in blazes are they using for Air?
The character for “Air” (气) is another fundamental concept in Chinese philosophy, chi (or qi), paired with he (和), meaning “peace” or “harmony.” Popular culture has made this concept more familiar as a kind of life force or, at the very least, fuel for handfarts.
Krillin after the baked beans.
The word literally refers to mist or vapor. The ideogram above is supposed to be a bowl of steaming rice. If my research has not misled me, the original connotations were negative, referring to pathogen-bearing winds. By the Han dynasty (ca. 200 BCE–200 CE), it referred to an interior disposition one needed to keep in balance to maintain good health. The semantic range is similar to Hebrew ruach or Greek pneuma and is divided between the English words “wind” and “spirit.”
Chi is mentioned by name a few times in Avatar, though never as Aang’s preferred element. It is used to designate whatever energy is necessary to bend (read: fuel for handfarts). A minor antagonist has the capacity to cut off the flow of chi, paralyzing the heroes. The manipulation of chi itself is critical to the resolution of the plot. Yin-yang, the complementary forces at work in the cosmos, is also mentioned at least once, in the battle that concludes Season 1. These three concepts—wuxing, chi, and yin-yang—are all fundamental concepts of traditional Chinese medicine.
The three concepts are not tied to one specific Chinese religion but permeate them all. The central ideas—the constant flux of the universe and the need for harmonious balance among all its elements—are already present in the I Ching (Yijing), which literally means Book of Changes. The classic explication of wuxing, however, does not appear in that ancient text but originates just before the Han dynasty, where it informed Confucian state ideology.
Buddhists also employed the Five Phases. The five main characters of the staunchly Buddhist Journey to the West—the monk, the monkey, the pig, the dragon-horse, and the sand… thing—are commonly interpreted as embodiments of the five elements.
Finally, for Taoism, one need not look any further than the most important source of Taoist thought, the 1997 film Warriors of Virtue, winner of eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
“I’m the king of the wood!”
So much for the Airbender part of the title. Now for the first, more actionable half, the Sanskrit word Avatar. I have already discussed the concept earlier this year. An avatar is an incarnation of Vishnu. The avatar in Avatar is a reincarnation in a long succession of savior figures who have perfect command of all four elements. There is a subtle difference here. Krishna is the eighth avatar of Vishnu, but he is not a reincarnation of Rama, the seventh avatar. Aang, however, is a reincarnation of Roku, and Kyoshi, and a whole lineage of beings going so far back that I would need to (but will not) watch the sequel series in order to get to the bottom of it.
In any case, Aang is more like Buddha, who also underwent a series of reincarnations recounted in the Jataka tales. There’s a catch here too. When Buddha became Buddha, he stopped reincarnating. Gautama was the end of the line. This would be the same for any buddha.
Mahayana Buddhism, however, has the concept of the bodhisattva, a benevolent being on the cusp of enlightenment who remains in the world out of their compassion for others. They have also come up already this year. My impression was that bodhisattvas were deathless. I don’t think of Kannon or Maitreya as constantly reincarnating.
Nevertheless, in Tibetan Buddhism, there is a variant of the concept called tulku, the bodily emanation of a bodhisattva. The tulku takes the form of a spiritual master who, upon death, immediately returns in a new incarnation—not by compulsion but by choice. The most famous example is the Dalai Lama, and Aang appears to be modeled on him. Not only does Aang look like Caillou all growed up…
…but, as an infant, he showed an affinity for his predecessor’s possessions, one of the ways that Tibetans test for the new Lama.
The stated goal of the Avatar is to maintain harmony among the nations and to serve as pontifex maximus between the material and spirit worlds. To achieve this aim, he can draw on the powers and memories of his predecessors to go Super Saiyan and enter an “Avatar state.”
We see a visualization of the Avatar state at the end of Season 2, as Aang progressively unlocks his chakras (an originally Hindu concept I refused to investigate further because of all the stuff this series was already throwing at me). During this process, the viewers see a cosmic Aang who seems to exist independently of Aang himself. In this, I detect faint echoes of Vairocana, the cosmic buddha in (again) Mahayana Buddhism, who undergirds all of reality, including the historical Buddha.
Aang initially fails to achieve this cosmic state because of his attachment to a woman.
…her?
This illustrates a tension between the Hindu and Buddhist elements of The Last Airbender. Vishnu’s avatars live in the world, rule over earthly kingdoms, and have children. The Ramayana is, among other things, a love story. Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, had a wife and child but left them after achieving enlightenment. Aang observes certain austerities (he is a pacifist; he does not eat meat), but celibacy is not one of them.
If you have been following my progress on the Alternate Ending Discord (click the banner on your right), you already know that trudging through the sixty-one episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender was an uphill battle. I instinctively hate TV because of its serial nature, but at least Avatar is not interminable like some of its influences, such as Dragon Ball and other shonen anime.
This wholly American series was pretty clearly inspired by anime and is a serviceable gateway drug to the real stuff. The creators themselves were not shy about admitting inspiration from Studio Ghibli, most apparent in Avatar’s kami-infested Spirit World. That seems impudent on its face, but what should they have drawn from? Hanna-Barbera? If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.
My biggest issue with Avatar is that it is insufferably bland. The story is Hero’s Journey boilerplate, made slightly more exciting by its setting. The three seasons of the show map onto the broad strokes of the Star Wars trilogy (Mark Hamill is even stunt cast as the evil emperor). It’s not really a bad story. But it’s been done an awful lot. The ideal audience for Avatar is people who have never experienced that kind of story before, say, children between the ages of seven and twelve.
The character designs are also boring. I am no great connoisseur of shonen, but even the series I have seen and dislike, such as Dragon Ball (sorry) and One Piece (not sorry) have rather, shall I say, distinctive character designs, with their dumb massive shoulder pads and their punchable sharknose faces. I wish I could pull out one of those noses. In Avatar, what are the distinctive features of a fan favorite like Azula? Like the fans of the show who will read this sentence, she’s just an ill-tempered child.
The caveat here is that if I had seen Avatar when I was twelve instead of as a pudgy, moribund, pai sho playing old man, it would probably have been my favorite TV show ever. I would hesitate now to call it the best anything, although it might have been the best show airing on Nickelodeon at the time, and probably long after. Its creators haven’t been able to make lightning strike twice, to say nothing of drivel like The Fairly Oddparents or The Loud House.
One benefit is that the show gets considerably better as the story becomes more focused (I would not say darker; there is still plenty of clowning in Season 3). There is also the irreplaceable joy of watching it with a child, which I started to do a little more than halfway through. There are very few shows of this caliber and maturity that I can watch with a six-year-old, and Bluey is a finite resource. So until my children are old enough to watch Fullmetal Alchemist or Neon Genesis Evangelion, this will have to do.
For more Sects, Lies, and Videotape, see the Index!
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity.” He has recently achieved the terminal status for someone with a humanities degree, which is unemployment. He also runs a book club out of Alternate Ending’s Discord, where we read novels and short stories that were later adapted to film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.
