aeon flux kicks butt

Peter, you've likely already discussed a lot of this if I searched archives, but probably not in quite the way I'll ask it. I'm curious about how you think about "meaning" in some specific works of yours. Let's use War.

I just re-watched it. On the surface, I get that it's in part a subversion of action movie tropes (including a direct Indiana Jones reference/"subversion"). We always see the ridiculous action hero getting absurdly lucky, but here we're forced to switch protagonists a bunch of times as we get to something closer to the reality of randomness. This was addressed to some extent in Season 1, I think.

On this viewing I missed the significance of the blood/oil puddle.

What I'm more curious about is whether you feel there is something deeper to War than "this is an entertaining short that pokes fun at the absurdity of many action films" (I hope you don't take this as a slight, as I like it a lot either way).

Relating this question back to my comments about Oshii's GITS movie, every meaning you get from AF-War is conveyed solely through context. There is no exposition, there isn't any speech. There is, nonetheless, a "text".
Any point, any meaning, any emotion, any theme either political or philosophical that you can derive, you do so by your own act of observation and deduction. It occurs in the viewer's mind. You own it.

If you see the oil puddle at the end and think: "the escaping couple are going to slip and fall, then die, just like all the other heroes whose efforts were pointless." Why is your mind having that thought? Your'e just looking at an innocuous image of a puddle of oil.
This is what I mean by the power of the "loaded image".

You may go on to think "heroism in war is manufactured", or "retaliatory violence is futile" or "---", etc. For me, it's more important that the viewer finds himself in the act of seeing a meaning or just wanting to see a meaning in the film's imagery.

Describing which army is fighting which other army and the reasons for the war would only be a meaningless distraction. If the film conveyed information that the soldiers in black are fighting to defend their land from an invading force intent on seizing their resources, a portion of viewers will seize upon that information and derive the moral "message" from those fictional, arbitrary details. Doing so misses the point. Even if such information was included to provide "backstory", an artist has no authority to enlighten the viewer in that way.

I recently showed the old AF shorts to a filmmaker friend who'd never seen them. He brought up the shot of the tooth landing in the empty bottle. Why that shot?
I explained to him that my reasoning behind that choice went something like this: I needed for the blonde warrior (Varsh) to dispatch the guards easily to enter the underground compound. I did not have the time, money, energy or desire to show another gun battle. I also wanted to convey Varsh's supreme prowess in the use of his weapon. By showing the tooth of his victim after being shot, flying into the bottle and dwelling on it rattling and settling inside, I could perhaps evoke all of that in a way that would be more engaging of the viewer's attention than if we just witnessed yet another scene of guys shooting each other. Very important too, is the fact that the camera anticipates the event by focusing on the empty bottle before the tooth comes flying in. This is an omniscient camera, and conveys the inevitability of the victim's death.

"What I'm more curious about is whether you feel there is something deeper to War than "this is an entertaining short that pokes fun at the absurdity of many action films""

The question makes me wonder also. What kind of answer might satisfy?
If you are asking if there is some special insight to be gained through a process of interpretation of the episode- my answer is that you may find some such, but no, it is not my intention for the viewer to seek it.

http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/sontag-againstinterpretation.html

The goal for me, is to deliver to the viewer a singular experience. More importantly, to put the viewer in a lasting state of having had a singular experience.

You are of course correct with the implication of your question, "what kind of answer might satisfy?" It's strange that I even asked the question, because this isn't something I generally concern myself with anymore. Looking for "deeper meaning" in terms of "does this work give you some trite advice about how to live your life better?" is very high school English, and that was sort of what I was asking (for reasons that escape me now).

That being said, if I do want to think of War as having some "deeper" significance, I could point out that your subversion of action tropes speaks to the ridiculous, impossible ideas that Americans hold about lone badass heroes saving the day, and that those ideas that Americans (and others) have can actually lead to pretty severe consequences. So by subverting them in a way that's engaging and entertaining, you're doing good for the world.

(This was not in my head when I wrote the original question.)

Do you tend to support reasoning like this about art, about yours in particular? Is this what you're talking about when you say you want to the viewer to find themself in the act of seeing a meaning? (Re-reading your first reply, it seems so.)

To me the tooth scene highlights the fact that action movies are (often) made up of ridiculous, contrived coincidences. I didn't think of the other possible philosophical implications.

Though I suspect it's best if the "message" of War is kept ambiguous on some level. It's the sort of work that raises questions more than gives answers. The way the lead character is killed off in a jump cut, for instance, again highlighting how much manipulation is baked in to the average action movie. That doesn't impart a moral message, but if it counters a form of subliminal conditioning (which I think it does) maybe we can come up with alternative messages.

(Also, I found it amusing how the first episode of Elfen Lied tipped its hat to War in a big way.)

"Do you tend to support reasoning like this about art, about yours in particular? Is this what you're talking about when you say you want to the viewer to find themself in the act of seeing a meaning? "

When I first considered becoming an artist in earnest while in high school, I was determined to make work that mattered, that carried an important "message" for the public. I thought I would use my skills to help enlighten other people. (I was also driven by a religious motive to proselytize).
It became clear to me quickly that the claim to have this ability, on the part of an artist, is a sham.
The best that an artist can hope to do is to demonstrate relationships that occur within the scope of a creative work.

That is as opposed to demonstrating any truths that relate the work to the external world. Those can only be contrivances. Those are arbitrary and can serve a didactic goal in service of completely divergent world views. They have no claim to being true or authoritative.

An artist however can rightly get the viewer to become aware of structures and patterns of meaning within the work that trigger novel trains of thought. That is not trivial and I am satisfied with that.