FLUX INCAPACITATOR

IN THE EARLY 1990S, MTV HAD unparalleled cultural currency. As well as showcasing the frontline of music, it explored other media, including experimental, edgy animation via its series Liquid Television.

One of the jewels in its crown was Aeon Flux. Created by Peter Chung, it challenged audiences not only with its heavily stylised action, featuring bloody massacres, but also by confronting ethical and existential quandaries. Aeon faced off against Trevor Goodchild: she an agent from the anarchic Monica, he the benign dictator of the ordered but oppressive Bregna – though to simplify the motives at play would underserve its rich complexity.

Chung devised in part to explore the ambiguity behind what could easily have been labelled as a simple utopia vs dystopia narrative. But his background was in work that was much more innocuous. “I studied animation at CalArts [California Institute of the Arts] and went to work at Disney, and then on the original series,” Chung tells . There, he was out of step with many of his colleagues, who felt that animation and , but I’d always been interested in making animation for adults.”