I was catching up this weekend on my Avatar: The Last Airbender (…who am I kidding? I’ve seen the entire Nick series via Netflix and a marathon happened to be on this weekend from the 2nd season, so I watched a few episodes). Toph is an interesting case of a blind cartoon character. Sokka, the show’s consistent comic relief, often makes stabs at her blindness for humor’s sake, yet Kitara, the strong mother character of the “Fearsome Foursome” (or “Team Avatar” or…) also often slips and says something that could be offensive to Toph, but is often read as funny. Toph, also, isn’t afraid to crack a joke about herself. Here’s a YouTube collection someone uploaded of Toph making light of her blindness— the person who put it together did a rather good job and added a 90s sitcom-sounding laugh track.
The major difference between the depiction of Helen Keller on Family Guy and the blind Earthbender on Avatar is that Toph can “see” with her earthbending and is depicted as an intelligent character. The Family Guy clip depicts Keller only briefly and doesn’t allow the viewer to gauge her intelligence at all. Toph describes her earthbending in the same way that Helen Keller describes being able to “see” in selections of her autobiography, which is interesting.
