I’m no fan of the cable TV monoliths that held us in their stranglehold for so long, but the act of discovering weirdo art/tv while up late at night doesn’t exist anymore, or has morphed.
I was made keen by Dave Conery to a piece Kenneth Lowe recently wrote about one such, late night, weirdo piece of art, Aeon Flux.
It’s a wonderful love letter to the show, and a time when everything wasn’t so regimented, and algorithm-ed, and you could just haphazardly stumble onto the weirdest shit you’ve ever seen merely by flipping the station on your television.
That’s how I discovered Punk Rock. That’s how I became enthralled with trash cinema. That’s how I was exposed to the wild, untamed, violent world of non-Disney animation like Anime, or Liquid Television, the late night cartoon showcase on MTV that featured Aeon Flux.
I’m not saying there isn’t space for that discovery nowadays. I hope there still is, but you need much more determination today. You need to know what your looking for and where to go. The choices are vast, yet somehow, everything still feels the same level of mediocre.
We need more weirdo art. Well, I do, at least.