Introduction
The series takes place in a world with elements inspired by various Asian and Indigenous cultures. Some people in this world have the ability to “bend” (i.e. manipulate) one of the four natural elements of earth, fire, water and air. The Avatar is a being that has been reincarnated and the only one that can bend all four elements.
The story follows young Avatar, Aang, and his friends Katara, Sokka and Toph on a quest to prevent the Fire Nation from taking over the world.
The Blind Bandit – Toph Beifong
One of the characters with a visible disability is Toph, who was born blind.
She was brought up in a wealthy royal household with overprotective parents that isolated her from the world to prevent her from getting hurt due to her disability.
Toph learned earth-bending skills from badger moles, blind creatures that live underground, which she related to. She would sneak off to earth-bending tournaments under the moniker “The Blind Bandit”, often defeating opponents that were more able-bodies, athletic and stronger than her.
Disability Representation
Toph is a powerful earth-bender, not despite her disability, rather because of her blindness. Her blindness heightens her perception to sound and touch through vibrations travelling through the ground.
In the beginning, Toph tries hard to prove that she can “carry her own weight” as a projection and overcompensation of her overprotective parents’ excessive coddling. She gradually overcomes her fear of “being a burden to others” through learning to lean on her friends for support and guidance throughout the series. This “counter-frame of interdependence” of solidarity and friendship between the team grows as they continue on their adventures.
In the series, Toph is portrayed through her strengths and weaknesses, such as showing how she navigates environments that are inaccessible to her (i.e. in the air or water), or when she lets her friends down in ways that are related to her disability in battles. Doing so moves away from the “supercrip” model of representation and offers a more “dis/humanized” perspective of how Toph is represented (Goethals et al, 2022) as we see her growth and character development.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge my positionality that this is a personal analysis of a disability representations as someone who is no blind. However, I was able to find discussion threads on Reddit with personal experiences of those who are blind, which provides a “cross-expertise, iterative and dialogic” approach to participatory framing analysis (Goethals et al., 2022).
I was able to learn earth-bending not just as a martial art, but as an extension of my senses. For them, the natural earthbenders, it wasn't just about fighting. It was their way of interacting with the world" ---- Toph Beifong from Book 5 Episode 12: The Firebending Masters
References
Avatar: The Last Airbender. Directed by Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, Nickelodeon Animation Studios, 2005-2008
Goethals, T., Mortelmans, D., Van den Bulck, H., Van den Heurck, W., & Van Hove, G. (2022). I am not your metaphor: Frames and counter-frames in th representation of disability. Disability & Society, 37(5), 746–764. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2020.1836478
Purks, E. (2020, July 6). Writing disability: Black Girl’s Digest. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from https://www.blackgirlsdigest.com/post/writing-disability