Toph Bei Fong fromAvatar: The Last Airbenderwas a character I really connected with as a kid. While she was raised as an esteemed daughter in a wealthy family who were beloved by the people of Ba Sing Se, she sought to leave this position of privilege behind at every turn.
Born blind, Toph was sheltered from birth and seen as someone who wasn’t capable of truly looking after herself or succeeding in life beyond hanging from the arm of a wealthy man. It’s something that forced her to run away from home and strike out on her own while mastering the art of earthbending to become one of the most powerful people in the world.
As a little girl who couldn’t see anything, you would expect Toph to need help, but this is the assumption that led her to change her character, and to develop a personality that allowed her to go anywhere and do anything. Her tomboyish energy was a big part of this, and a part of her character I was hoping the live-action Netflix adaptation would keep intact. With its absence, it’s hard to even view Toph as the same person.
There Is No Other Character Quite Like Toph Bei Fong
Miya Cech, who is set to portray Toph in the next season of Netflix’s live action show,has expanded on her version of the character: “My version of Toph is going to be a little older and slightly more feminine. I feel like I wanted to work into a very humanizing space for her because, you know, she was a cartoon.”
I understand the need to alter a character for live action, such as changing their appearance or altering certain parts of their respective arcs to better work outside of animation, but when it comes to Toph, it doesn’t feel like any of these concerns are relevant. Making her older can risk removing the vulnerability her character has as a child expected to navigate a brutal and adult world on her own, and how, because of her age and her disability she isn’t trusted to be left on her own.
Ageing her up to even a teenager adds a false sense of agency that Toph is only going to suffer from. Do they want to make her a more viable romantic interest for other characters like Sokka, or pave over the potential issues that surface from casting a younger, androgynous actor who can do the role justice? All questions with inconsistent answers.
Toph is 12 years old in the original animated series, which is evident by the childlike wonder she still expresses under the right circumstances, and how she can have a warped and selfish view of the world despite always trying to do the right thing.
Then comes the suggestion that Netflix is going to make Toph more feminine, which seems like a fundamental betrayal of everything her character stands for. Toph was feminine once, while trapped inside a family dynamic where she was treated like a damsel in distress with no means of protecting herself. She turns down the expectant feminine presentation and the systems associated with it because they suffocate her.
to prove she was capable and to stand on her own two feet, Toph cast aside dresses and make-up in favour of something dirtier and gruffer. A version of herself that allowed her personality to rise to the surface and her powers to take root in ways that would change things forever. There is even a scene in the animated series that has her use such things and expressing that she feels alien, almost outside herself in disgust.
She doesn’t care what she looks like and isn’t looking for approval to justify her existence. A mantra that carries throughout the entire show right up until the end of Toph’s journey.
Netflix Has A Responsibility To Do Toph Justice
We now come to the idea that Toph must be more feminine, realistic, and human since she’s no longer a cartoon, which opens a new can of worms regarding the assumption that since a show or film is live-action, it should be viewed as inherently superior. This is, and always will be, a load of nonsense, andspeaks to a tired assumption that has persisted for decades.
But it’s not surprising that Netflix would adopt such a stance given how it’s treated the medium in the past, although I’d expect more from an actor responsible for bringing these adaptations to life. Feel free to interpret characters and storylines, but don’t rip away their very essence or imply by merely existing you are going to improve upon what came before, because this isn’t true, and hasn’t been the case of Avatar for a long, long time.
The first season of the Netflix show was rather middling, and I need not mention the car crash that was the M. Night Shyamalan film.
Toph is one of the most human characters in modern fiction because she is happy to both defy expectations and present herself in a bitingly authentic way, animated or not. Making her prettier and more feminine in a conventional sense feels like a betrayal of the feminist values her character has always harboured, as a human being who deserves to be valued, even if she goes against everything society expects of her. Toph earns that respect and still forms relationships with people she cares about despite everything. I will never forget how she grew close to Uncle Iroh, forming a warm bond she never had back at home.
Everything about Toph’s situation reminds me of how the first season neutered Sokka’s toxic masculinity and how his treatment of female characters is key to his growth. He comes to respect women and realise that just because he’s a man doesn’t make him inherently superior. This view also mirrors Toph as she becomes a member of the main cast and is not only a woman who isn’t trying to be feminine, but is easily the strongest out of herself, Aang, Katara, and Sokka. Every member of the main cast feeds into one another because, despite being so different, they still act as a single cohesive unit.
No matter what direction Netflix inevitably heads in for the next season, tearing away Toph’s tomboy aesthetic and personality is going to neuter so many important parts of her character that I’m left questioning what the point of this adaptation truly is. If it struggles to respect the source material while viewing it as inferior, it’s only going to fall flat.
