From: dan@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Dan Parmenter)
Subject: Re: Aeon Flux trivia factoids :...
Organization: /home/fsg/dan/.organization
	<1992Sep28.193010.29170@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
	<DAN.92Sep29095310@wombat.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
	<1992Sep29.235808.16534@athena.cs.uga.edu>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 17:34:59 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.235808.16534@athena.cs.uga.edu> jordan@castor 
(Chuck Jordan) writes:

>   But you have to understand that these filmmakers, even Kurosawa and
>   especially any guy whose project is shown on MTV, are not perfect.  Instead
>   of saying that the audience failed to recognize that they were being
>   manipulated, maybe you should say that the filmmaker failed in making the
>   film realistic enough to generate the emotion he was looking for.

I think that a lot of the misunderstanding of AF comes from MTV
showing it in bits and pieces.  Obviously this subject was on the
guy's mind (so he claims) and so I'm willing to give him the benefit
of the doubt that he wanted to make a commentary on violence.  

>  I don't think the violence in "Aeon Flux," or "The Terminator," is way cool.
>  I think it is taken to such an extreme that it becomes absurd, even funny.
>  "Aeon Flux" is such a ridiculous film that for anyone to say that it's a 
>  statement on violence, is either really pretentious or is mistaken as far as
>  how to make an effective statement.  

Well hey, I "got it" after seeing the episodes where her victims were
shown suffering.  It's so easy to accuse people who try to analyze pop
culture of being pretentious.  

> First of all, it's a cartoon.  It's a
> lot more difficult to stir up real emotion from animation than from live
> action, especially in places where animation has been traditionally used for
> comedy (like the US.)

So many animation fans seem to be attached to the idea that all
animation in America has been traditionally just silly comedy stuff
for kids.  Where does this come from?  There are many classic animated
films that are deeply emotional and sophisticated - a movie like
Pinnocchio is an extremely dark vision with a strong emotional pay
off.  People joke about it, but quite oviously a movie like Bambi
also had a great deal of emotional impact.  And it goes without saying
that Japanese animation ofen has a strong emotional content, whether
on a purely soap-opera level or at deeper levels in some of the more
sophisticated stuff (Galaxy Express 999 for example, is filled with
some  fascinating Freudian subtexts)

>   Also, there's nothing in the film to clue the audience in that all this
>   violence is really weird.  We're presented in the first few seconds of the
>   film (from what I've seen, I haven't seen it all in one piece) with this
>   grotesquely drawn woman who goes around shooting people.  Okay, that's the
>   "world" of the film, so we just accept it and run with it.  There's nothing
>   realistic in the movie, so the violence isn't really violence, it's just
>   action.  The only character we identify with is the woman with the hair 
>   who goes around shooting people, and even she has a happy ending -- she gets
>   to go to her foot-fetish heaven.

Have you seen the parts where the victims are shown suffering quite
realistically?  I'd say that it's pretty clear that we're supposed to
feel bad about it.

I stand by my assertion and the claims of the filmmaker - the film is
clearly a commentary on violence.  Whether it's also a commentary on
the shallow standards of beauty in bad genre comics and animation is
unclear (you thought she was ugly, as did I.  Many people I know think
she's a "babe").  Given the filmmaker's claims it wouldn't surprise me
if he were also making statements about every aspect of the "action"
genre. 

- Dan
--
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| Dan Parmenter       |"Everybody don't like something and we all |
| dan@gnu.ai.mit.edu  | don't like you" - Richard Thompson        |
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