The
second film in my Analysis of The Films of Karyn Kusama is the dystopian
dialectical sci fi flop Aeon Flux. Adapted
from the series of the same name, this film version was a chance for Kusama to
prove her grit by successfully helming a big budget studio film of a beloved
property, while showing that such adaptations can be developed with an arthouse
flair, years before the concept was a known commodity. Unfortunately, the film
was not created nor received in the spirit of the original film pitch, nor its
source material. This paper seeks to understand the historical context in which
these decisions were made, while looking at the sociological concepts of the
film, and the consequences of the film’s fallout, which impacted Kusama longer
than her fellow male directors.
PLOT
In 2415, a soldier in a rebel
faction against its Orwellian government attempts to assassinate their dictator.
Finding that she is uncharacteristically unwilling and unable to complete the
mission, Aeon Flux (Theron), searches for answers and uncovers the truth about life
and death; a secret that threatens to shake the last human city of Bregna down
to its core. Alienated from both the
Government and the rebels, Aeon Flux must make unlikely allies in hopes for survival
for herself and the rest of humanity.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Source
Material
The
original Aeon Flux was a post-apocalyptic sci-fi adult animation created
and directed by Peter Chung. The plot centered around the warring factions of
the last two human cities: Monica and Bregna. Where Bregna was a totalitarian nightmare
of rigid order, Monica was based on anarchistic hedonism. The series follows
Aeon through various missions to ultimately kill the sovereign leader, Trevor
Goodchild. Not only were Aeon and Trevor constructed as the typical
protagonists and antagonists, but also their opposite, the exception to their identity
and skill set. Aeon, a master assassin, and warrior can do anything, except
kill Treavor. Treavor, a Brilliant Scientist, and military tactician, can have
anything he wants, except the thing he wants the most, which is Aeon. Each encounter between them played on this tension
leading to sex, betrayal, and violence, often all three at the same time.
Throughout the shorts and the series, the audience vacillates their allegiances
from Aeon to Treavor and back again; highlighting that they are both despicable
people in pursuit of their own goal(s).
The series was originally presented as a combination
of shorts and a limited series broadcasted by MTV as apart of their “Liquid
Television” line up from 1991-1995. This
series, especially the original shorts, captivated the attention of viewers
because of the animation’s fluid and BDSM influenced sexuality and violence. Because Chung never desired an adaptation of
his work, most of the shorts included the death of Aeon, which confused the
audience as to how the stories were being told, for even though Aeon seemed to
die, the story still progressed, sometimes continuing with Aeon, and sometimes
with other soldiers. It was eventually revealed/retconned that both cities had
invented and implemented cloning technology and used it against their enemy.
Marketed and chiefly
consumed by Generation X, (1964-1980) Aeon Flux, the series, was one of
the few at the time that had a broader perspective on war and violence that
mirrored the anti-war, cold war despair felt by the latchkey kids of pro
capitalist Boomers. In the first short, as Aeon Flux runs through a factory
indiscriminately murdering all of the soldiers in her path, the story leaves
her and makes the audience sit in the carnage that she created. In the
aftermath, gravely wounded soldiers find each other and spend their last few
moments together before dying of their injuries. The short continues following the
crew tasked with cleaning up the massacre and return everything to Bregna’s
pristine totalitarian order. This is one
of the first US animated series with a clear anti-authoritarian message, forcing
the audience to sit in the inevitable collateral damage of war of which Gen X were
so emboldened to resist. It was a perfect counter cultural moment for the quintessential
dissonant generation.
Production.
First announced in 2003,
the film was the brainchild of Shelly Lansing at Paramount Pictures. She brought
on Karyn Kusama just after her brilliant debut in Girlfight. In the beginning, Kusama’s indie
female focused sensibilities seem to be in lock step with the animated
characterization of Aeon, and the characterization and tone Lansing was going
for… and she was hoping to reteam Kusama with Michelle Rodriguez in the titular
role. The role eventually went to Charlize Theron coming off of her Oscar win
for Monster, adding even more indie drama credibility. Yet, regardless
of executive enthusiasm, and the acquisition of award-winning director and
star, the film became fraught with problems that plagued the film from all
aspects of production.
The first hiccup came
when Kusama began to scout locations for the bulk of the shoot. Kusama’s initial choice of location was
Brasilia, Brazil; believing it to fit the aesthetic of Bregna. This was
summarily rejected by the studio citing both the expense and the
unsubstantiated belief that the city could not sustain the budget and scope of
the production. Given that this was Kusama’s second film, and first studio
picture, she did not have the clout to make a final decision on the matter.
Like many indie directors on their sophomore outing, they have to prove
themselves to be “bankable” to a studio. Therefore, many directors in this
position are ostensibly directors-for-hire because of how little impact and input
they have on the film. This became apparent the deeper Aeon Flux went into
production.
The next hiccup came
during principal photography. After reading a copy of the script, Peter Chung, publicly
denounced the adaptation, saying that “[He] did not see Aeon in this film.” To
his point, the writers of Aeon Flux, Phill Hay and Matt Manfredi, were
the same writers behind award winning hits like RIPD (the Ryan Reynolds
Jeff Bridges travesty about a supernatural police force) and Ride
Along (the buddy movie starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart). Yet, chagriningly,
this is also the writing team for most of Kusama’s body of work (except Girlfight
and Jennifer’s Body). Kusama met Hay during production and were
married a year later. To square this cognitive dissonance, one must take into
consideration their entire collaborative body of work. In that context, aside
from this film, which Kusama had little control over, by far the best stuff
that Hay and Manfredi have written, has been with Kusama. This could be due to the chemistry and
unlikely symmetry between Kusama and Hay, that they just understand each other
so completely that it elevates their work. Or, more likely, it was less an
equally collaborative affair, and more Kusama’s influence on their future writing
partnership.
The third and final
hiccup, and one that signaled the film’s asphyxiation, came during postproduction.
During the editing of the film, producer Shelly Lansing, the biggest champion
of Kusama’s vision for the film, left the company and was replaced by Donald Doline.
After the first round of edits, Donald Doline left and was replaced by Brad
Gray and Gayle Brenneman. Thus, because production companies are motivated by profits,
each new producer took the film away from Kusama and heavily edited it. Of
Kusama’s 105-minute R-Rated cut, Gray and Breneman eventually created a 71-minute
PG-13 film to try and widen the market for the film’s release. After the producer
cut got horribly reviewed at a preview screening, they brought Kusama back to
re-cut the film, but exclusively NOT to her original vision. It was because of
this experience that Kusama now demands final cut on all her projects, even if
it means a pay cut.
Unbeknownst to Kusama at
the time, the unraveling of Aeon Flux was a symptom of Corporate
Capitalism. In 2002-2005, the production time of the film, Viacom, the parent
company of Paramount, was going through massive restructuring; splitting, and
merging various parts of themselves to avoid repeating anti-trust litigation
they once faced in 1948. Because of this, executives were moved around in a
shell game of corporate responsibilities and profit consolidation. Yet, in this profit driven system, many of these
new executives, to show their value and worth to the company, came up with new
ideas and edits for the films under their purview, while ignoring what their
predecessors did; regardless of if the ideas were good or not. This reinforces
the importance of context in pop culture criticism, lest we forget that the
film is a product of the conditions under which it was made. Thus, it should be
no surprise that a film like Aeon Flux was created at a time of greed
and corporate malfeasance.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
Kusama
being a “hired gun” on Aeon Flux resulted in a lot of the socially
relevant and sociological themes that will be consistent across her later work,
to be sparse here and muddled in their presentation. A lot of the interesting ideas that this film
touches on, are not well conceived or given much weight, even though they are
the central foundation for the setting of the film. Thus, this film attempts to
touch on fascism, totalitarianism, bodies and their biopower without
conscientiously engaging with them.
Totalitarian
Dystopia
Aeon
Flux, like a lot of sci-fi films take the imagery and the rhetoric of
Orwell’s 1984 as a shorthand for despotic futurism. Yet, these films
often only use that imagery as window dressing rather than conducting a
thorough interrogation. In this context, Orwell’s 1984 is dime store Max
Weber with a sprinkling of C. Wright Mills.
According to Kelner
(1984)[1]
The differences between Orwell and Weber are subtle,
but present:
Unlike Max Weber, Orwell does not conceive
of bureaucracy as containing its own dynamics, its own rationality, or its own
contradictions. Consequently, especially in 1984, Orwell reinforces
the predominantly conservative-individualist vision that the state and
bureaucracy per se are repressive and serve to concentrate power in a
bureaucratic caste. For Orwell, power and the will to power are depicted as the
prime goal of a bureaucratic society and the primary motivation for party
bureaucrats. Power is not a means but is an end in itself, the end
or telos of at least the political elite's individual and societal behavior.
Revolution, in this picture, is primarily a project of seizing power and
establishing a new class of party bureaucrats whose primary goal is maintaining
their own power. For Max Weber, by
contrast, bureaucracy contained a certain amount of logic and rationality and
was part of a process of rationalization and modernization which produced at
least some social benefits and progress (i.e. rational calculation,
predictability, law, governance by rules rather than force, etc.)
Whereas Orwell narratively constructs a Bureaucracy as
a conscious enemy of the people, and a focal point for revolution away from it,
Weber understands that a lot of social control is the most effective through noninvasive
coercion, rather than direct oppression. Weber (2019) knew that direct
oppression would increase the likelihood of resistance. To curb resistance, the
bureaucracy traps individuals into an endless cycle of routines and standardized
behavior, the Weberian “Iron Cage”, to make the people more pliable (Weber
2019). For Orwell, the bureaucracy is a
mustache twirling villain with morose machinations. Instead, Weber (2019)
realizes that the true terror of a bureaucratic composition is in its banality,
and apathy towards its prisoners. Because it is not about the people trapped, it
is about the continuation of the system.
The crux of the difference between an Orwellian narrative and a Weberian Perspective is that between an individualist and collectivist perspective. Orwell assumes that individual people desiring power are the driving force of the domination and oppression of the system. Weber, on the other hand, understands that systems, once developed and implemented, do not emphasize individuals beyond just a resource to keep the system operating. The domination and oppression in the Weberian system is an afterthought of the mechanisms of control implemented upon individuals, to make society operate with calculably efficient rationality (Weber 2019). Upon closer examination, the common system that Orwell describes seems to fit more with C. Wright Mills idea of The Power Elite; a predatory system that keeps power in the hands of a few, while actively oppressing others. Yet, because Mills (1956) is a student of Weber, he does not place too much value in the importance of the individuals in power because they can be cycled out. The position within the institution of power is more important than who holds the seat.
Bodies, Reproduction and
Bio Power
The film’s revelation that
the consciousness of the citizens in Bregna are recycled into different bodies
as they age and die, points to the execution of Foucauldian Biopower over the
populace. Biopower is the ability for individuals, organizations, or systems to
have control over how a person experiences and defines their body (Foucault 1977).
In a very direct sense, this can be expressed through controlling when people
eat, sleep, use the restroom etc. This usually takes place in Total
Institutions.
According to Goffman (1961):
A Total Institution is a particular type of social institution within
the social order. This is a hybrid between a residential community and formal
organization
Components[2]:
1) All aspects of social life are conducted in
the same place and under the same single authority
2) Each phase of the member’s daily activity is
in the immediate company of a large batch of others
3) All activities are tightly scheduled
4) All forced activities are brought together in
a single rational plan to fulfill the aims of the institution.
5) Person is often excluded from knowledge and
decision regarding their fate.
Total institution’s control allows them to be
easily harnessed by would-be or established dictators. This is accounted for in
the film when Trevor Goodchild, the scientist that created the cure for the
genocidal virus, became the ruler for over 400 years. In that time, the
biopower he administered was a moratorium on natural pregnancy with an over
reliance on cloning. This overreliance on cloning led to the fraying of
recycled psyches resulting in developing madness and eventual death. However,
Goodchild’s brother (an original character for the film to which all of
Trevor’s “bad” qualities from the series could be grafted), believing that the
totalitarian system is perfect, ultimately sabotages the reemergence of natural
births through the murder of expectant mothers.
The
film’s antagonist exercising of biopower, to maintain the population, is of the
very real social problem of the rollback of reproductive rights for women in
the US. Outside of the directness the act of murder represents in the film, the
general denial of natural births can be interestingly paralleled with the birth enforcement enacted in ½ of US states[3] after the overturning of Roe. in June
of 2022. Just as the people of Bregna were forced to relive their lives and
have their consciousness recycled through cloning (while openly eliminating
natural births), so too are US women in ½ the states in the country forced to carry
a child to term: regardless of the effect on the health of the mother, even rape survivors as young as 10, nor the quality of life for the child after birth. This parallel is just one of many made
between current US politics and various examples of misogynistically despotic
pop culture[4]in
recent years; all of which should be met with alarm. Unfortunately, rather than
get outraged at such an apt comparison, the result of this widely consumed and
eerily prophetic form of entertainment is one of normalized acceptance rather
than indignation. And, so long as our real politics do not exclusively copy the
imagery of pop culture, they will be used as an unfair comparison; minimizing
the impact of these decisions and shrouding the failure of allowing Supreme
Court Justices to legislate from the bench to circumvent the democratic process.
We will say “Well, at least its not exactly like Handmaid’s Tale.” Or
more likely: “Those women Protesting in Handmaid’s outfits are embellishing/
being overly dramatic. The US constant
consumption of content has not only eroded our imaginations, but for
comparisons to be considered apt in our culture, they must also be literal.
Otherwise, the analogy is left open for criticism, especially a dismissal as hyperbole.
Hollywood double standards…no surprise.
After
the release and subsequent implosion of Aeon Flux, Karyn Kusama
languished in “director
jail” for years. This is a state of limbo filmmakers get put into after a
notable or typically horrendous film is poorly received by both audiences and
critics. Incarcerated directors are given few offers to direct projects, and
any personal or independent projects they have will not gain traction. Unfortunately, but to no one’s surprise, female directors
often are given longer sentences than male directors. Since the patriarchy
tends to see women in occupations to be niche, and therefore both being too
specific and too general at the same time, the industry is unwilling to “take a
chance” on another “female director.” Meanwhile, if male directors get sent to “jail”
they often do not stay long, constantly giving many of them another shot.
However, there has been an increasing trend of male directors being allowed to fail upwards. In these situations, male
directors don’t go to jail, they’re given the industry equivalent of diplomatic
immunity. No matter what these director’s make, and regardless of how well
their film is received they are given bigger budgets, more control, and greater
desired IP.
This double standard exists
because of the patriarchy valuing men and their perspective over any other. Therefore,
men are given ample opportunities to express themselves, or if they make a
mistake, correct their behavior by the simple “virtue” of being men. We see
this in every industry from business executives, teachers, authors etc. In film,
men are given near unlimited chances to succeed, and when their projects or
personal proclivities fall short, meaning they
turn out to be rapists, abusers and assaulters, there is a codified redemption model that they can follow to make their comeback. Mel
Gibson, Robert Downey Jr. Aziz Ansari and Louis C. K. have all used it. Male
directors are specifically lauded and exalted usually because at least one of
their films are so revered that the director is later deified. Conversely, the reality
for female directors is the opposite. If female directors make a well received well
reviewed film, the industry automatically treats it like a fluke, and
the female director will have to work twice as hard, and will be under greater
scrutiny on their second, and any future projects.
CONCLUSION
Aeon Flux
is not a good film. It has pacing issues, a thin story, regardless of the foundational
source material, the action is full of wire work and edited quickly to hide
poor choreography and the dialogue is atrocious. Sociologically, there are a
lot of interesting things that this film touches on but does not delve into
with any meaningful depth. None of the responsibility for this should have been
laid at the feet of Karyn Kusama. It is not her fault, but she bared the brunt
of the consequences; taking her another 4 years to be offered another film.
Imagine if she was given another opportunity sooner than that, and what if she
was encouraged to keep writing and directing her own work? It is another common
story of Hollywood dispossessing another female Hollywood auteur in favor of the
fraternal order of fragile filmmakers.
REFERENCES
Foucault,
Michel 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison new York:
Vintage Books
Goffman,
Erving 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and
Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books
Kelner,
Douglas 1984. “From 1984 to One-Dimensional Man: Critical
Reflections on Orwell and Marcuse” Retrieved at https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell13.htm
Retrieved on 11/5/2022
Mills,
C. Wright 2000. The Power Elite New York: Oxford University Press
Weber,
Max 2019. Economy and Society: A New Translation Massachusetts, Harvard
University Press
[2]
Goffman (1961) Asylums
[3] (12
states Abortion is illegal, and in an additional 13 states, laws are openly
hostile to abortion access)
[4] The
Handmaid’s Tale being the common example, and used often in protests
