OK..i have been wondering about this short for over 10 years...Can someone please explain to me what Aeon is doing after she drops the egg. She seems to be suffering from some disease as she wallows in pain and grabs at the green curtain...And what are those little things floating behind the curtain??????I need an answer!

-- Rich (Forelorn@ga.prestige.net), September 07, 2001

Answers

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003Ipd

-- n.k. (trnqt666@aol.com), September 09, 2001.

To Quote Peter Chung, which is what the above url is referencing:

"'So the people at Checkers/Rally's changed their minds and the commercial is postponed for a week. I'm not off to Korea just yet...so I'll post a few words here while I have the time. I just looked at the tread "Leisure-Episode Analysis" What on earth? All right, first of all, there's a lot written here that crosses over the line into geek territory. Questions of why the aliens haven't colonized the region if they've been there for a long time; whether the guy in the cupboard is Trevor before or after he became chairman of Bregna; whether or not it's a clone of Trevor and on and on. It may be fun to speculate, but when they start talking like this they become perilously close to Trekkies ebating whether Spock's Vulcan or human genes are dominant, or whether it's the Klingons or Romulans who are more technologically advanced. Who cares? These issues are besides the point, arbitrary, and make the speaker sound like he's lost touch with the fact that we're dealing with a work of fiction. They also distract the viewer from being able to understand the point. In the reply to Steve Mirachi, I tried to say that the particular elements in a plot are not the point of a story. These can often be interchanged without affecting the meaning of a story because the meaning actually lies in the relationships between events and characters--the spaces "in between". People often ask me why I came up with the character of Aeon Flux, am I personally a gun- leather-s&m-fetishist? (by the way, the answer is no) In truth I could probably tell essentially the same stories-stories about betrayal, guilt, the problems with communication, etc using a different protagonist, say a potato farmer living in the steppes of Kazakhstan. But who would watch it? The point of a story is whatever the viewer can manage to extract from it. I say this because this is the way it is in life. What stories exist in the real world? Perhaps there are none; the accumulation of raw events and experiences invite us to find the connections but these depend on the needs and disposition of the person trying to make sense of it all. What is the story of World War 2? Of the Kennedy assination? Of the Clinton Whitehouse? Where do these stories begin and end. Who is to say. We manage to trace a series of causes and effects because the players in these events are motivated by human drives which we identify. The players are the authors of their own experience just as you are the author of your own life. But just as in a work of fiction, the meaning of an even is at odds with it's players original intent. That is why I say that trying to deduce the intent of an author in his creative process can only take you so far in understanding what he's created. The artifact that is the residue of that process is almost always an imperfect realization. The episode "Leisure" is a good example of this. The particular difficulties attending the production should be immaterial to anyones appreciation of the pattern staining this particular strip of celluloid. The fact is I only had the resources to animate one set of acrobatic moves as Aeon jumps through the wire grid. In an arcane way the repetition of this sequence during the episode draws attention to itself--and becomes significant it comes to signify that the first run is a rehearsal for the latter one. It became a limitation which I turned to my advantage. On the other hand Aeon's emoting while she tears the fabric inside the alien ship was inaccurately animated (by an otherwise brilliant Japanese animator, Mr. Nonaka); the intended performance was not achieved, and so countless interpretations have sprung up as to what she's doing by justifiably confused viewers. To put the question to rest; she's supposed to be agonizing while breaking one of the eggs. Her desire to play with the embryo is stronger than her good sense to get out of the ship quickly before the parent alien comes. But if you like your own version of it better than by all means stick with it. It pains me to go on beyond this but everyone has seen this episode enough by now, that I guess I won't be spoiling it too much. I know I'm going to catch some flack for this but here goes...It's true that I got the idea to do this episode after watching Star Trek 6. (What was I doing after watching Star Trek 6? At the time animator friends were recommending that I see Disney's Beauty and the Beast, for it's technical virtues and against my better judgement on a lazy summer afternoon I relented and headed for the multiplex. After about 20 minutes of agony, I couldn't allow my memory of Cocteau's masterpiece to be further corrupted by this atrocity, and I slipped out to check the screen next door. Apart for being stupidly entertaining, "Star Trek 6" for once laid bare the Star Trek strategy for making ethnical stereotypes acceptable in the 1990's. (Now being further explored by the unaware George L). Commies from the planet Klingon! Alien motifs and manners used as the rationale for a blatant characture of foreign people! I was inspired, I knew of course that Aeon would die in this episode. But unlike her other deaths I wanted this one to feel justified. She would encounter aliens who would appear monstrous. At some point in the episode the viewer would realize Aeon was the true alien. A line would be crossed and our sympathies would be upended. Aeon is shown in this episode to be a game addict in a cruel sport. Her leisure consists of stealing the eggs of a sentient alien, then torturing and killing the embryo's for amusement. Being unable to resist playing her game despite the danger of being caught in the alien ship brings about her end. It was only after finishing the episode and viewing it several times with friends did I realize what I had done. The episode it turns out lays out a very neat metaphor for the misuse of abortion to deal with the consequences of recreational sex. In this case the pleasure of the sexual act has been merged with the process of dismemeber the fetus--well why not? In the end if the one leads to the other the where is the boundary? Aeon has gone from experiencing pleasure by having sex, followed by the abortion, to simply enjoying the abortion process for its own sake. So I've decided that this is what the episode is about. Feel free to respond. " --Peter Chung/June 10, 2000

-- Barb e. (Suesuebeo9@cs.com), September 09, 2001.