Revisit Episodes of Liquid Television, MTV’s 90s Showcase of Funny, Irreverent & Bizarre Animation

MTV stands for Music Tele­vi­sion, and when the net­work launched in 1981, its almost entire­ly music video-based pro­gram­ming was true to its name. With­in a decade, how­ev­er, its man­date had widened to the point that it had become the nat­ur­al home for prac­ti­cal­ly any excit­ing devel­op­ment in Amer­i­can youth cul­ture. And for many MTV view­ers in the ear­ly nine­teen-nineties, youth­ful or oth­er­wise, noth­ing was quite so excit­ing as Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion, whose every broad­cast con­sti­tut­ed a ver­i­ta­ble fes­ti­val of ani­ma­tion that pushed the medi­um’s bound­aries of pos­si­bil­i­ty — as well, every so often, as its bound­aries of taste.

Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion’s orig­i­nal three-sea­son run began in the sum­mer of 1991 and end­ed in ear­ly 1995. All through­out, its for­mat remained con­sis­tent, round­ing up ten or so shorts, each cre­at­ed by dif­fer­ent artists. Their themes could vary wild­ly, and so could their aes­thet­ics: any giv­en broad­cast might con­tain more or less con­ven­tion­al-look­ing car­toons, but also stick­men, pup­pets, ear­ly com­put­er graph­ics, sub­vert­ed nine­teen-fifties imagery (that main­stay of the Gen‑X sen­si­bil­i­ty), Japan­ese ani­me, and even live action, as in the recur­ring drag-show sit­com “Art School Girls of Doom” or the mul­ti-part adap­ta­tion of Charles Burns’ Dog­boy.

Burns’ is hard­ly the the only name asso­ci­at­ed with Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion that comics and ani­ma­tion fans will rec­og­nize. Oth­ers who gained expo­sure through it include Bill Plymp­ton, John R. Dil­worth, Richard Sala, and Mike Judge, whose series Beav­is and Butthead and fea­ture film Office Space both began as shorts seen on Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion.

But no dis­cus­sion of the show can exclude Peter Chung’s futur­is­tic, qua­si-mys­ti­cal, dia­logue-free Æon Flux, whose epony­mous acro­bat­ic assas­sin became a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non unto her­self. The Æon Flux episodes have been cut out of this 22-video Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion playlist, but you can also find a col­lec­tion of uncut broad­casts at the Inter­net Archive.

The Ton­gal video above cred­its the show’s influ­ence to the insight of the show’s cre­ator Japhet Ash­er, who saw that “the atten­tion span of your aver­age TV view­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly young peo­ple, was get­ting short­er and short­er.” Hence Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion’s mod­el: “If you did­n’t like the cur­rent short, anoth­er one, which would be total­ly dif­fer­ent, would be along in a few min­utes. Fur­ther­more, if a seg­ment was so inex­plic­a­bly bizarre and brain-tick­ling, per­haps an even more com­pelling one would come next.” At the time, this would have been tak­en by some observers — much like MTV itself — as a dis­turb­ing reflec­tion of an addled, over-stim­u­lat­ed younger gen­er­a­tion. But with Youtube still about a decade and a half away, it’s fair to say they had­n’t seen any­thing yet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

When a Young Sofia Cop­po­la & Zoe Cas­savetes Made Their Own TV Show: Revis­it Hi-Octane (1994)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.