By Chris Regan
‘That was my strategy all along, to tell extremely abstruse and kind of bizarre stories that were fairly non-commercial, fairly personal, with a character and a surface that was very appealing and accessible.’ – Peter Chung
With franchises such as Underworld, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider the female action star has become something of a fixture in effects driven sci-fi blockbusters. The Æon Flux movie, with Charlize Theron competing for attention against a sleek CGI backdrop, looks to be no exception, but the source material was in fact one of the most alternative and subversive animations to come out of a once much less commercial MTV.
Created by Korean animator Peter Chung, Æon Flux began as a twelve-minute short animation that was split up into six segments and shown as part of MTV’s Liquid Television series in 1991. Liquid Television show-cased the work of a number of innovative new animators in a compilation of one-off skits and serialised narratives - another famous title spawned from the show was Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead. More Æon Flux shorts followed in the second season of Liquid Television but this time while each episode told a standalone story they also featured the ultimate failure and death of the main character every time. The popularity of Æon Flux far exceeded the confines of the Liquid Television format, which led to MTV commissioning a third season of ten half-hour episodes.
On first glance Æon Flux appears to be fairly straightforward sci-fi/action fare – slinky PVC-wearing woman kills lots of people against a futuristic backdrop. While Chung’s angular visual style does appear wildly different at first it is in fact a combination of European comic art (influenced by acclaimed comic artist Moebius along with the various artists whose work appeared in Heavy Metal) and a clear Japanese anime influence. Seen individually and out of context the Liquid Television shorts seem to adhere to convention, but on repeat viewing it becomes clear that Chung’s approach is actually more progressive than it first appears.
In the first series Chung experimented extensively with repetition – showing the same events over and over again with subtle differences each time to alter our perceptions of them. For example, one episode had Æon killing dozens of ‘evil’ henchman to a suitably thrilling score only for the following episode to focus on the suffering of the slaughtered henchmen themselves forcing the audience to question exactly where the good guys were. Chung also correctly predicted that a show that was to be aired on MTV would be repeated over and over again and designed Æon Flux to accommodate this. As a result Chung managed to tell rather intricate stories in a comparatively minute space of time, hiding clues to the narrative in places that would only be noticeable on repeat viewing, such as using the time display on a clock in the background of a scene being the only clue to a non-linear narrative.
With the third season being presented in half-hour episodes Chung was faced with a much more conventional format. Firstly he now had time to tell a full-length story each time. Secondly the characters could now speak where before they had been silent. Finally the actual creative process was a much larger job and the animation, writing and directing were farmed out to a number of different individuals taking some of the control away from the creator. However, this did not make Æon Flux any less innovative, even with the addition of arch nemesis Trevor Goodchild. Although often coming into conflict, Trevor and Æon were not your usual hero/villain couple as the lines between the two were often blurred.
What Chung achieved over three seasons of Æon Flux was to draw in sci-fi/action genre fans with a character who was sex and violence personified only to change the rules at the last minute, subverting everything the genre stands for. The second season is perhaps the best example of this with the character’s death at the end of every episode a direct challenge to the predictable nature of the genre. As Chung explains, ‘it was a response to my frustration to always seeing it being taken for granted that the protagonist would succeed in what they were doing and also survive in the end, which I think makes a lot of shows or films very... well, dishonest’.
At the same time Chung also challenged the conventions of the animated series, primarily with the adult nature of the shows both visually and thematically. For example, Æon is depicted as a professional dominatrix who receives clients between adventures. Obviously forbidden from showing penetrative sex Chung used the fetishist nature of the character and her world to create hidden yet rather obvious substitutes - ‘In episode nine … there's a group of female characters in search of these machines that are fairly phallic-shaped at the tip, [and they put them in] their belly buttons,’ Chung explains, ‘So the belly button becomes a sexual orifice. In episode ten, the eye socket becomes a sexual orifice.’ However, unlike some of the more extreme Japanese animation it was not merely the overuse of sex and violence that made the series open to an adult audience, especially in the third season. Both Æon and Trevor are fairly introspective characters prone to considering and confronting their mistakes in a way that adds thought-provoking substance to back up the action.
Chung later brought his unique style and vision to the Matriculated segment of The Animatrix proving that he is still one of the most innovative and talented animators working today. Whether the Æon Flux movie will stay faithful to the subversive originality of the source material remains to be seen, but at the very least it will lead to a rediscovery of Chung’s quintessential alternative animation.
The Complete Aeon Flux Animated Box set (MTV) is available to buy on DVD from 13th February 2005 from Paramount Home Entertainment (RRP £19.99) Certificate 15
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