https://www.npr.org/2021/07/30/1022642071/mtv-beavis-butthead-daria-aeon-flux-liquid-television

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MTV Is Turning 40. Here's How Beavis, Butt-Head And Daria Disrupted
Cable "Animation has been critical to the MTV brand from its
inception," says MTV Entertainment president Chris McCarthy. The
network helped bring adult and experimental animation into the
mainstream.

Television

MTV Is Turning 40. Here's How Beavis, Butt-Head And Daria Upended TV
Animation

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Updated July 30, 20218:42 AM ET Originally published July 30, 2021
5:08 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

Jason Slotkin

MTV Is Turning 40. Here's How Beavis, Butt-Head And Daria Upended TV
Animation

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[gettyimage]
Enlarge this image

When Beavis and Butt-Head debuted on MTV in 1993, critics called the
duo "crude," "ugly" and "self-destructive." That did not stop the
1996 film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America from getting good reviews.
Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Getty Images

When Beavis and Butt-Head debuted on MTV in 1993, critics called the
duo "crude," "ugly" and "self-destructive." That did not stop the
1996 film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America from getting good reviews.

Getty Images

From the moment MTV launched on Aug. 1, 1981, it was bound to rattle
the nerves of parents and moral crusaders. In its first decade on
air, provocative videos and performances from pop stars including
Madonna and George Michael invited attention and ignited controversy.

Though it's fairly established by now that the cable
channel-turned-entertainment brand stopped being the home of music
videos some time ago, its contribution to the television landscape
transcends music and reality TV. By the 1990s, the network's biggest
stars also included its resident pair of animated knuckleheads:
Beavis and Butt-Head.

Critic-proof, crudely drawn rebels go pop

The show about brain dead teens and their pubescent whims debuted on
MTV in 1993 and was quick to catch flack for everything from its
rougher animation style to the impulsive actions of its stars.
Critics called the duo "crude," "ugly" and "self-destructive."

The First 100 Videos Played On MTV

World Cafe

The First 100 Videos Played On MTV

Kris Brown became the head writer of Beavis and Butt-Head in 1994. He
says when he was assigned his first episode, he described the show to
his own father as being "about these two 13-year-olds that are really
stupid and they're just self-destructive. They're really into heavy
metal, and I mean I don't think it's for you really, but I'm really
excited about it." His dad paused and, as Brown recalls, said, "Well,
do you plan on writing for anything else?"

But the show was critic-proof. Beavis and Butt-Head became MTV's
highest rated show at one time and expanded into a 1996 feature film
- Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. The movie got two thumbs up from
critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and featured multiple cameos,
including one from super-fan David Letterman as a roadie who most
certainly sired Butt-Head.

YouTube

A hub for experimentation and innovation

Beavis and Butt-Head may have been a cartoon, but it was also central
to MTV's identity. Animation, it turns out, was baked into the
network's foundation, says Fred Seibert, who helped develop MTV's
initial branding campaigns.

"We kind of realized that in many ways cartoons, like Looney Tunes,
were kind of like the kid equivalent of rock 'n' roll," Seibert
explains.

For animators who wanted to work outside of TV conventions at the
time, MTV became a destination and a laboratory. According to Maureen
Furniss, who is an animation historian at the California Institute of
the Arts, "[MTV] showed people in the public things they had never
seen before in animation and gave opportunities to a lot of
independent animators and experimental animators."

One of the most important of those experiments were shorts that
served as the station's promotional IDs: the "M" of the MTV logo
morphing into various forms, for example.

M IDs [Colossal] Pictures 1981-83 from fredseibert on Vimeo.

The freedom given to the creators of these promos by MTV's marketing
teams helped serve as a prototype for how the network approached its
longer animated shows, says Abby Terkuhle. He became head of the
network's on-air promotions -- and eventually oversaw MTV animation.

"MTV animation was truly an outgrowth and extension of MTV on-air
promotion and MTV on-air promotion was incredible. It was a creative
laboratory, " Terkuhle says. "We were not only allowed to take risks,
but encouraged to take risks and the executives had our back."

[gettyimage]
Enlarge this image

Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge (left) and animation director
Yvette Kaplan (center) work on the production of the 1996 motion
picture, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. From its debut in the early
1980s, MTV proved itself to be a pioneer in adult animation. Getty
Images/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Getty Images/Getty Images

Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge (left) and animation director
Yvette Kaplan (center) work on the production of the 1996 motion
picture, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. From its debut in the early
1980s, MTV proved itself to be a pioneer in adult animation.

Getty Images/Getty Images

That ethos of a creative laboratory that took risks drew show
creators to pitch and push for ideas that wouldn't end up elsewhere
on television.

MTV's first full animated program Liquid Television premiered in 1991
and was a free-flowing showcase of all kinds of animation. It
included the cable debut of Beavis and Butt-Head in the short "Frog
Baseball" - an animation festival favorite at the time -- as well as
parodies of existing TV genres such as game shows and soap operas.

YouTube

Liquid Television also included bold experiments in narrative
storytelling -- and introduced the visually sumptuous world of Aeon
Flux -- a spy who has since become a cult icon.

Peter Chung, who developed Aeon Flux for MTV, says, "It had to be
something you could not see anywhere else. And so that really
encouraged me to make something that was as loaded with as much
innuendo, making it a point to make it as transgressive and as
eye-catching as I could make it."

Self-aware '90s teen angst and claymation wars

From the the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, MTV also ran its own
animation studio which produced multiple series -- including a Beavis
and Butt-Head spinoff that gave audiences another iconic character.

Daria premiered in 1997 and was a show unafraid to bite the hand that
feeds it. Its incisive main character regularly went after the
superficialities and commodification of teen life -- a tendency MTV
itself has long been accused of. But the show could also offer
poignant coming-of-age moments.

YouTube

"We kind of just went with the typical stories that every show about
teenagers covers, but because it was from the eyes of Daria, it ended
up with a completely different tone, which was funny and deadpan kind
of humor," says Daria co-creator Susie Lewis.

YouTube

MTV animation wasn't only hand-drawn images. The network also
produced a hit claymation series called Celebrity Deathmatch in which
mock-ups of celebrities took each other on in the wrestling ring and
fought, well, to the death. The pilot episode aired at the same time
as the Super Bowl halftime show in 1998.

In recent years, MTV hasn't had the same track record in animation.
Other networks and streaming services have become home to even bolder
cartoons intended for older audiences.

But MTV Entertainment president Chris McCarthy says you shouldn't
count MTV out just yet. McCarthy -- who is also Chief Creative Officer
for Unscripted Entertainment and Adult Animation at Paramount+ -- says
MTV is developing new animated ideas as well as rebooting a few old
favorites.

"Animation has been critical to the MTV brand from its inception, "
says McCarthy.

Among the shows coming back are Beavis and Butt-Head (its second
reboot for the record) as well as a series reimagining Daria 
character Jodie as a Gen Z college grad entering the workforce.

"We think the animation and its rebirth is just the beginning of a
next great chapter of this legacy," says McCarthy.

Correction July 30, 2021

A previous version of this story misspelled the name of the Daria
character who will be in spinoff. Her name is Jodie, not Jody.

  * Aeon Flux
  * Daria
  * Beavis and Butthead
  * animation
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