Now meet Maxx. Maxx is a stunningly ugly superhero who stars in a new cartoon series called ““The Maxx.’’ (Maxx, apparently, has a better agent than Jim.) Maxx’s home is a crummy cardboard box in a squalid alley. His only pleasure is watching cheesy, Saturday-morning cartoons. His only friend is the voluptuous Julia, a social worker with a mouth. After Maxx delivers a floridly despairing monologue about his latest nightmare, Julia sweetly inquires: ““Jeez, who writes this crap?''
MTV, that’s who. With the premieres of ““The Head’’ and ““The Maxx’’ on Dec. 19, the music channel will boldly confront the ultimate metaphysical question: is there life after ““Beavis and Butt-head’’? In search of the next cartoon rage, MTV has set up a lavish animation studio, enlisted a cadre of under-30 artists and begun rolling out five over-the-edge creations. That’s known as taking care of business. Demographic research shows that, for the teens and Gen-Xers who form MTV’s core audience, cartoons now rival music videos as a common language (and an even cooler way to bug Dad). ““Animation fits us perfectly because it’s the visual equivalent of music,’’ says MTV animation head Abby Terkuhle. But the man who graced America with the Butt-boobs claims he is aiming for an even higher road this time. ““We’re not doing a “Bimbo and Bugger-head’,’’ says Terkuhle. ““We’re going off in a whole different direction.''
The most visible difference involves gender. In the three decades between ABC’s ““Spiderman’’ and USA’s ““Duckman,’’ the world of the outre adult cartoon has remained a males-only club. (““Ren and Stimpy’’? Obviously, a married couple, but almost as obviously a gay one.) But just as every other MTV video now stars a girl group, the leads in several of its new cartoons are of the female persuasion. ““We’re trying to pull more women in,’’ explains Tracy Grandstaff, 27, a member of the ““Beavis’’ team. ““We did focus-group research and the girls kept saying, “All we get is lip service’.''
Three female-driven toons arrive on MTV in early 1995. The weirdest is ““Aeon Flux,’’ a creepily cyberpunkish fantasy about a female mercenary who looks like a dominatrix and behaves like a psychopath. Plotless and virtually dialogue-free, this enigmatic serial pulls us inside a postapocalyptic dystopia and asks us to find our own way out. In ““Daria,’’ geekish Daria Morgendorffer – the only girl on the planet who will talk to Beavis and Butt-head – gets her own show. As smart as the boys are moronic, Daria combines a spry tongue with a helping hand for lost soulmates, be they cheerleaders or sluts. ““Sneeze Louise’’ tells the tale of a size-4 Sandra Bernhard: this kid is funny, hip and loud. She’s also got a strange sneeze, which, thanks to a childhood collision with a truck carrying experimental atomic nasal sprays, trips a chain reaction of violent color bursts. Says ““Louise’’ creator Stephen Holman: ““It’s like, “Wow, what the hell happened to my TV set?’ ''
What’s happening – and not just to Louise – is ““Liquid Television.’’ That’s the name of MTV’s popular animation showcase as well as the label for a whole new cartoon esthetic. Gone are linear story lines or, for that matter, narrative structure. The operative style is anarchy, a barrage of chaotic, disconnected images for a generation raised on equally chaotic videogames (and ready to zap the instant an image begins to bore). Liquid TV’s lines are jagged and edgy, its colors riotously garish, its settings constantly fluid. For instance, the klutzily chivalrous Maxx keeps flitting between a down-and-gritty Gotham and a hallucinatory jungle dreamscape. Maxx is Don Quixote playing Tarzan on acid.
Yet for all their deconstructionist affectations, MTV’s new toons hew to a formula as predictable as any sitcom’s. They’re almost invariably gross, self-referential, stuffed with attitude and obsessively, um, suggestive. Even an alien can see that Jim’s elongated cranium resembles a phallus, and the slit through which Roy comes and goes an animated vagina. Then there’s ““Aeon Flux’’: you could call it TV’s first bondage cartoon, except that would be too confining.
Is this good for us? Of course not. It’s a known fact that early exposure to disconnected, sex-crazed cartoons produces serial rapists, gangsta rappers, derivative salesmen or, worst of all, television critics. None of which seems to worry ““Maxx’s’’ Julia. Upon discovering the big dummy zoned out from an overdose of Saturday-morning kidvid, she assures him with a shrug: ““It’s not like a wacky cartoon is gonna infect your brain . . . I’ll make us some cocoa.’’ Perfect. For the vidiot who’s seen everything, just feed ’em something hot and liquid.
