The long running era of the Saturday morning cartoon has officially ended, but no one can stop you from fulfilling your true weekend calling. Cartoons and Saturday mornings were made for each other and no one can tell us otherwise. It is to that end that we maintain vigil, bringing you animated selections each Saturday morning until the internet dies, or until we run out, good thing there’s always reruns.
“Æon Flux” Created by Peter Chung, Starring Denise Poirier and John Rafter Lee; Run time: 2 – 30 minutes; Originally aired September 1991.
When I was young I would sneak downstairs and watch cable TV at night when everyone else was sleeping. I was usually hoping for movies we didn’t have but sometimes I’d catch some bizarre thing on HBO or MTV that captured my attention. This is how, one evening, I stumbled upon “Æon Flux.”
Yes, there was a movie in 2005, and no I’m not talking about that, it was…not awesome.
Well, in truth it was fine I suppose. Standing on its own, with no other context, it’s an okay movie. But considering the source material, it’s a far cry from what it could have been.
Surely Chung’s animation style is impossible to pull off live action, but the series went to much stranger places and forced you to think, that was lacking in the film. Additionally, it’s not a cartoon, so it’s not what we’re here to talk about.
My memories of watching the show in its early years on MTV are fuzzy. Surely I was too young to see the original run on Liquid Television, but the elongated and elaborated third season hit right around when I would have been at sneaking down to watch TV at night age.
Later, when I would hear of an impending movie adaptation, I would get the DVD set and watch it with my friend Bret in anticipation. The seed had been planted and now, in my formative years, it would blossom into this confusing love/hate relationship, one we’ve maintained quite well to this day.
Chung created something so interesting yet so uncomfortable that you’re forced to stand as far away as you can without missing anything at all. Remember when you were a kid and something scary would happen during a movie? You’d put your hands over your eyes but without earnest, you’d peak through the gaps in your fingers wanting to shield yourself but still wanting to see. That’s this entire series.
Chung had previously worked on “Rugrats” where he helped design the characters and directed the pilot episode. If you look closely enough and kind of squint your eyes, you can see the similarity between the two shows. Chung has expressed frustration while working on “Rugrats” due to the limitations of the characters. “Æon Flux” is the release of that particular stretched rubber band. The characters went from stubby to elongated and the content went from family friendly to about as far from it as you can go.
“Æon Flux” contains sexual situations, massive amounts of gore, and a cerebral head trip that would make your grandparents nostalgic. You might notice at this point in your reading that I haven’t yet expended a word in explaining what the thing actually was. That is, for the most part, because there isn’t much to say about it. Prior to the expanded third season what we knew was that there were two central characters Æon and Trevor Goodchild. Goodchild is the head of a seemingly totalitarian police state called Bregna, while Æon is a member of an anarchistic society called Monica. In each episode Æon embarks on a mission against Bregna and in each episode she dies. With the exception of two words throughout the entire original series there is no dialogue, no exposition, no explanation. By paying close attention you can glean some clues to what’s going on, but mostly it’s left to stimulate your imagination without giving your any certainties.
“For me, a degree of ambiguity, or mystery, is the key ingredient of any artistic statement.” – Peter Chung
In “Æon Flux” that degree is convex, curving down past the horizon and out of sight. Ambiguity thy name is “Æon Flux.” The series was eventually turned into a full half hour show with dialogue and some explanation, but those early shorts will always turn a freakish key into a bizarrely shaped lock somewhere in my guts. While I don’t know if I’ll ever understand my feelings toward the show I’m glad that there are places where experimental flowers can bloom.