12/6/2023 0 Comments Aeon flux anime netflixÆon Flux’s current appeal harnesses the purchasing power of the Y-generation and exploits their access to a wide range of screen technologies. When Æon was expanded to fill a half hour slot, the creative team were under instructions from MTV to reduce the violence in order to avoid Federal Communications Commission restrictions and to make the 30 minute episodes appeal to a broader audience, so they sought subtle ways to ‘maintain the edge’ and push the boundaries, including double entendres in the dialogue, a suggestive soundscape, and oblique sexual references in the imagery. Æon Flux’s incorporation of a sexualised, violent aesthetic mark it out as forbidden fruit, which augments its appeal in a context where network television is subject to conservative constraints on language, sexuality and violence, by contrast with the more liberal parameters of cinema, subscription television or the Internet. Æon Flux clones kiss in “A Last Time for Everything.”īecause prime time free-to-air television must cater to ‘family viewing,’ texts that challenge taboos frequently acquire cult status. Through identification with Æon, cultists vicariously participate in her transgressions. Certainly, Æon captivates her fans with secret messages exchanged via tongues tangled in an illicit kiss, a dominatrix aesthetic, a recurring lesbian subtext, and her role as a Monican spy in a forbidden, passionately adversarial relationship with Trevor, leader of the rival state of Breen. Studlar argues that the social function of many cult texts is linked to redefining social norms by representing sexual ‘deviance’ and gender performativity. Gaylyn Studlar develops the idea that cult audiences with a taste for excess and perversion express dissatisfaction with the status quo by identifying with transgressive characters who “ritualize perversion into a subcultural icon of rebellion against bourgeoisie norms by celebrating the possibilities of sex as ironic play and playacting”. It seduced its audience, the late night young adult niche market, with an anarchic heroine styled as a leather-clad ‘bitch fatale,’ and it offered viewers more aesthetically and intellectually challenging material than standard MTV fare. The show was born from a desire to break the conventions of screen language, and to push creative boundaries with an enigmatic and aggressively anti-narrative style. In today’s fast moving mediascape, it is already acquiring ‘nostalgic appeal.’ Through the obvious influence of Asian animation, it also hooks into anime subculture. It first aired as animated shorts for Liquid Television in 1991, which developed into a season of half-hour episodes for MTV in 1995. Æon Flux is as definitively edgy as its heroine proclaims. Most cult media exhibits several of these characteristics, but Æon Flux, the television series created by animator Peter Chung and later remade as a feature film, incorporates every element. Opening sequence from “Skating the Edge.”Ĭult media theorists Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Roberta Pearson refer to cult television as any text “that is considered off-beat or edgy, that draws a niche audience, that has a nostalgic appeal, that is considered emblematic of a particular subculture, or that is considered hip”. What is it, then, that makes Æon Flux so fascinating, and why did her move to the big screen polarise her devotees? Telotte argues that a transgressive, oppositional stance in relation to mainstream culture is central to understanding cult texts and their audiences. Æon’s caustic reply could just as well apply to the transgressive pleasures of cult fandom itself: “Can’t give it, can’t even buy it, and you just don’t get it.” Cult media texts often defy commodification and offer an allure that mainstream audiences ‘just don’t get.’ Indeed, J.P. “What you truly want, only I can give,” he insists. “You’re skating the edge,” Trevor Goodchild warns his lover, nemesis, and would-be assassin “I am the edge” Æon Flux retorts in the cult television classic that bears her name. What happened to the transgressive pleasures of Aeon Flux when it moved from small screen to large?
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