The Avatar Television Franchise: Storytelling, Identity, Trauma, and Fandom

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Description

Nickelodeons Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-08) and its sequel The Legend of Korra (2012-14) are among the most acclaimed and influential U.S. animated television series of the 21st century. Yet, despite their elevated status, there have been few academic works published about them. The Avatar Television Franchise: Storytelling, Identity, Trauma, Fandom and Reception remedies this gap by bringing together a wide range of scholarly writings on these shows. This edited collection is comprised of 13 chapters organized into 4 sections, featuring close readings of key episodes, analyzing how they create meaning as well as illustrating how established theories can guide those readings. Some chapters explore different theories relating to identity as well as considering the repercussions of depicting real-world identities in these shows, while others examine the various manifestations of trauma from throughout the franchise as well as illustrates different scholarly approaches to the topic. Still others utilize fan studies to understand the myriad ways viewers have responded to and interpreted the Avatar franchise.

Reviews

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are 2 of the most beloved contemporary animated television programs, with multifaceted characters, intricate storylines and a beautifully-rendered and morally complex world. It is only fitting that they deserve a scholarly treatment worthy of their complexity. The Avatar Television Franchise: Storytelling, Identity, Trauma and Fandom is that volume. The essays constitute a remarkable and thorough investigation into the franchise as situated across multiple disciplines. This book is highly recommended as a comprehensive resource for students, researchers and fans alike. * Amy Ratelle, Strategic Research Development, Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto, Canada *
It is always cause for celebration when new academic scholarship on animated media announces its arrival, and even more so when the final outcome is of this quality and scope. The international and interdisciplinary range of scholars assembled here takes the reader confidently through the metaphors, myths, and meanings of Nickelodeon's successful media franchise, exploring how and why each series has garnered such critical and commercial acclaim via impressive examinations of individual episodes, narrative arcs, character relations, and key themes. This collection will undoubtedly become a central text not just for the sustained focus that it affords its primary case studies, but for the effective conclusions drawn throughout that hold wide-ranging implications for the study of popular animation, contemporary U.S. television, on-demand and streaming platforms, fan communities, and children's media culture more broadly. * Christopher Holliday, Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education, King's College London, UK *
The Avatar Television Franchise: Storytelling, Identity, Trauma, Fandom and Reception provides an exceptionally eclectic collection of essays, approaching the series with a wide range of innovative methodological approaches. The result is a fascinating dive into varied thematic content across storytelling, identity, trauma, and fandom from multifaceted perspectives including feminism to posthumanism and beyond. A must read for those interested in mining the many different ways this series can be interpreted and what it might tell us about the world. * Caroline Ruddell, Reader in Film and TV Divisional Lead for Production and Performance, Brunel University London, UK *

Author Bio

Francis M. Agnoli is an independent scholar in the U.S. whose previous research has focused on the intersection between race and animation studies.