The Maxx!

posted by RICK : 5:45 PM

I had the great pleasure of watching the MTV series "The Maxx" this afternoon in its entirety. For those of you who were not alive in the spring of 1995, or were doing homework or something generally productive instead of watching hours upon hours of MTV, "The Maxx" was a series of 13 15-minute cartoons featured in the "MTV Oddities" block of programming. It was about a giant purple monster/man/super-hero and his friend the "alterna-hot" Julie. While watching the show this morning several things came to mind.

"The Maxx" is heavy. The show is based almost panel for panel on the comic-book series of same name. I've read a bit of the comic and found it quite good, but the tv show was able to find that unique balance between a static, layered, narrative found on the page and the non-stop fluidity of the screen. Regardless, "The Maxx" is some of the most interesting animation you will see anywhere. Its interesting for the same reason really good anime is interesting, and that being the creators had to create movement and action without spending money (i.e. without actually moving a lot of the images). The drawings are as complex as the plot, which, is shockingly dense for a show that aired on MTV in primetime. And really, that's where a lot of the magic from watching "The Maxx" today comes from. The series is pre-9/11-post-feminist-90s existentialism (yeah, that's what I said). It calls back to a particular time in American history where talking about why we're generally unhappy was a national pastime. In '95 there was hardly anything revolutionary about this subject matter, but looking back it seems moderately profound, despite its obvious pretentions. It also brings to mind a type of consciousness that has become a thing of the past. In the current climate, and really, for the foreseeable future, our media has lost a lot of its introspection. And rightly so, I suppose. Its hard to discuss traumatic childhoods with a straight face while people are being blown up all over the globe, but in a pre-Clinton-blow-job society that was JUST on the brink of economic recovery such public insights were a dime a dozen.

I think what's tragic about all of this is how my generation more or less destroyed (for better or worse) pretentious-coffee-house-art. "The Maxx" aired in 1995. Around this time on MTV they were also airing other crazy and noble cartoons: Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, The Head. And let us not forget that the first three seasons of "The Real World" were as much about race, abortion, AIDS and politics as they were about sex, hot people, and whether or not David should have been kicked out of the house for pulling the blanket off Tammi ("It wasn't, NOT, funny!"). But then we had to go and screw it all up by falling in love with TRL and boy bands and general excess. As the dollar signs slowly crushed grunge culture, MTV shifted quite drastically from a network where the programming suits would throw stuff against it and see what sticks to the hyper-slick, reality-crossover-talking-heads-on-fire monolith that it currently is. And maybe I'm being melodramatic, but a lot of good art was destroyed in the process. Of course we'd never know. Maybe the minds behind all of these radical comics and television shows would have dried up as soon as they signed the big contract, but maybe not.

Either way, "The Maxx" is worth taking a look at.

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