Category Archives: Prompt 7

Prompt 7

Finding closure in shot/countershot

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(Note: It isn’t Group C’s week to post or comment—I just got carried away.)

When asked to reflect on the serial form of Dark, I thought immediately of the series of episodes that makes up a season, and the seasons that make up a TV show (Odar and Friese). But while looking back at episode 1, I realized there’s another type of serialization that links film to manga: serial images.

Manga marks the transitions between panels with space, using the gutter; film transitions between shots through time, without pause. I think this distinction affords manga a more involved reader, who is invited to make comparisons and pace their interpretation as meaning allows. Watching film is a more passive experience, as reading goes, and so tends to rely on tacit suggestion to lead viewers toward connections and conclusions.

Either way, both forms speak the same language of closure—the act of putting pieces together into a whole, or moving from observation (observing the pieces) into perception (perceiving the whole).

There are two moments in the first episode that speak to nuclear energy as the backdrop to Dark, as Martina discusses in her post below. In the first example (approx. 7:36–7:50), we see Jonas bike to a stop light, look at the nuclear plant in the distance, look at a “vermisst” (missing) sign for Erik Obendorf, and leave the frame:

A first reading would probably consider this simply an excuse to give new information to viewers. The scene sets place and time for the show: Winden, a town with a nuclear power plant, and 2019, the year local boys begin to mysteriously disappear. And what else do we do at a stoplight, anyway, besides observe our surroundings absentmindedly?

On closer reading, though, we recognize that a connection is being made between the nuclear plant and the missing boy. Once the shot/countershot sequence becomes clear, we see that the camera is centering Jonas as the subject in the scene. The camera appears to be tracing his thoughts, and we, as subjects ourselves, are meant to follow. We are meant to position ourselves in the scene, looking at nuclear energy first, and only then at the mysterious goings-on, and to look at these data up-close and in real time.

And then, well, we leave the frame and continue on our way.

The second example follows a similar pattern (approx. 35:40–36:04). The camera follows Jonas as he looks at the nuclear power plant in the distance:

Long shot
Medium close-up
POV shot
Close-up
Medium shot

The nuclear plant is cast as an omen for what’s about the unfold: Mikkel’s disappearance, followed by the many events in the future (with effects on the past) and in the past (with effects on the future) that compose the show’s plot. More explicitly, we associate nuclear energy with the “Achtung” sign, translated to attention in the subtitles but also of course meaning danger. Nuclear energy calls for our attention because there is imminent (radioactive) danger.

What’s most interesting about this scene, for me, is the way the camera lingers for a moment after Jonas has walked out of the frame, as if signaling to us behind his back. Here, unlike in the first example, we can’t tell whether Jonas notices the sign. We’re left wondering how much he knows, or how great a sense of foreboding he feels, and at the same time are reminded of the advantage we have, able to watch and draw connections from a distance—and, as viewers, stop and replay time.

Prompt 7

Temporality at the heart, nuclear history as a backdrop

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Temporality is a central, maybe the central concern in Dark. A fundamental concept within the series is the theory that history repeats itself in a 33-year cycle and that “the distinction between past, present and future is nothing but an illusion.” In addition to this, Dark builds on an intricately woven web of secrets, mystical predictions, and intrigue. The serialized form makes it possible to unveil mysteries and to draw connections across different time lines. In this vein, the serialization and the non-linear uncovering of mysteries by means of an inherently linear medium, namely the order of scenes being intricately planned out, also mirrors a central outcome of the season: The realization that the mysteries that open up in earlier installments of the series are not explained by what is revealed later but rather the interventions that seem intent to change the course of events are actually what set said events in motion.

Nuclear power is merely a factor and a backdrop for different points in history but not a sinister cause of events. The nuclear power plant in Winden in particular, and Germany’s history with nuclear power in general are mostly a looming presence throughout the series and a mysterious threat that does not become a reality until the very end. While there were shady things going on at the power plant, some radioactivity was released, and the viewer is led to believe that the rips in time are somehow linked to the sinister things going on at the power plants, the radioactivity of the reactor and the work there are not what causes the rips in time and what causes the events of the series in any of its timelines[1]. The actions and activities of people determine the events and set events in motion, while the power plant is just a mysterious backdrop, during the first season because it spite of some shady things going on, the reactor was mostly stable and under control. After the creation of a worm hole in 2019 (and 1953), it can be assumed that the reactor was no longer stable and caused a major fall out, which changes the “future” of Germany after nuclear power when Jonas wakes up. The consequences of the worm hole likely caused an event in the reactor that may go beyond the scope of Chernobyl or Fukushima and determined Germany’s nuclear future but this is not what the first season addresses.

To return to the main concern, the connection between temporality and serialization: What the series presents and discusses as predeterminism, fate, or destiny, turns out to be a series of self-fulfilling or reverse engineered causalities. Jonas, trying to destroy the rip in time by leaving his 2019-self in the power-chamber, actually creates the rip in time that could be called the beginning, namely him touching Egon through the worm hole and waking up dreaming about him, a scene that happens in episode 1 and 10. Ulrich, trying to save Mikkel by killing Helge, actually put him in the chamber that eventually turned him into Noah’s puppet. Ulrich also feels that Egon Tiedemann is biased against him and even thinks he is the antichrist, when in reality, Egon thinks that because Ulrich was accused of murdering Erik and Yasin in 1953.

Although the nuclear reactor does not trigger the events, the series nevertheless discusses the effects of nuclear power on health and society. In 2019, very few people in Winden actively work at the power plant but as several characters in different time lines, particularly Bernd Doppler in 1986 discuss, the livelihood of the whole town still depends on the power plant. In 1986, the effects of Chernobyl are felt and discussed in the news and they affect the power plant as well. They make people feel unsure about nuclear power. But more than that, at this time, Charlotte is already documenting mysterious spots on bird carcasses that are later attributed to a mutation caused by radiation so there must be a cause irrespective of and prior to Chernobyl to cause such mutations. We may believe this was caused by the Winden reactor. Another possible mutation could be the fact that Elizabeth is deaf in a family where deafness is not hereditary, as is another child her age in this small town. Regina Tiedemann is diagnosed with cancer, which, as an individual case, cannot be attributed to the existence of nuclear power, but in the suggestive and elusive context of the series, we cannot help but wonder if proximity to radioactive materials may have had its effect on her.

 

[1] In 1953, investors are planning to build the first power plant and praise the future with nuclear power. In episode 6, one investor threatens others directly not to interfere with the power plant and spews conspiracy theories. This enhances the impression that the power plant is a central, sinister factor in the course of events, a conclusion that is not yet born out by evidence. 1986 revolves around the fall out in Chernobyl but also mentions a minor release of radioactivity a the Winden plant. In 2019, the worm hole and the disruption it caused, likely results in a major nuclear event that changes Germany’s nuclear future.

Prompt 7

The Question Isn’t How, It’s When

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As we’ve discussed, nuclear disaster results in strange entanglements of time and place. From the deep time of radioactive decay to the affinity between Fukushima and Chernobyl, there is a simultaneity and a deferral that are held in close contact within the structure of nuclear futures. We live in contact with multiple time scales. Fears around radioactive waste and climate change bring it into sharper focus but, deeptime is in the rocks around us, the sun, systems of erosion and deposition, fossil fuels, the list continuing ad naseaum.  In Haraway’s reframing that “we are compost, not posthuman” there echoes the fact that our bodies are always already part of the process of earth-making (55). That is, caught up in the process of decay—the deferral of which haunts us.

I want to think about deferral and serialization together as terms that are reflected in the form and content of the two works we recently encountered: Dark and Ichi-F. Both works demonstrate in strange ways what is can be called thick time. Astrida Neimanis and Rachel Loewen Walker in their essay titled, “Weathering: Climate Change and the “Thick Time” of Transcorporeality”, explain thick time as being “a transcorporeal stretching between present, future, and past” that helps us “to reimagine our bodies as archives of climate and as making future climates possible” (1). Thinking in thick time is, as David Farrier suggests in his new book, Anthropocene Poetics, the “capacity to put multiple temporalities and scales within a single frame, to ‘thicken’ the present with an awareness of the other times and places” (9).

To describe the ways in which thick time is a function of deferral and serialization in these two works, I want to turn to comics theorist Scott McCloud.  McCloud describes the formal elements of narrative time in comics as operating in such a way that “Each panel of a comic shows a single moment in time. And between those frozen moments–between the panels–our minds fill in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion” (94). But time in comics is also described through the unfolding of sound-as-text in a single panel. The instantaneous and singleness of the moment of sound can’t be taken as coinciding with the image beside it . “Just as pictures and the intervals between them create the illusion of time through closure, words introduce time by representing that which can only exist in time–sound” (95).  Closure is  “The phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole”  (63). How we rely on incomplete information to construct semantically meaningful wholes. Like glimpsing only half of a soda can and recognizing the whole label.  This can help us think of serialization and deferment in that we are presented a splintered text that resists telling a full story until assembled into a coherent whole. However, the whole still has the formal elements of time that complicate and make messy the ways that plot unfold (mirroring/affinities in Dark, the quotidian in Ichi-F). The way that both simultaneity and motion are layered within and between the static images of a panel are a perfect visual model for understanding thick time.

Ichi-F exemplifies this in depicting the process of donning clothing for clean up. Each garment is represented in fine detail along with the process of putting it on. The mask cleaning process, the taping of the wrists of the sleeves, the booties, dosimeters, along with the specifics of where to find each and how to carry and operate them. Something as quotidian as dressing is shown to be part of a larger, more intimate relationship with radioactive deep time, thickening it. The process is drawn out from panel to panel, showing each step and urging the reader to assemble all the parts of dressing into a coherent whole. All of this points to larger moments of deferral that happen in comics—that is,  the way in which content is produced through serialization. Ichi-F was, afterall, originally published in three installments before being translated and resold as one volume in the English edition.

Dark operates differently from other forms of serialized content since it lives on Netflix. As a place so entangled with the concept of binge watching, serialization takes on a different meaning here. Serialization, I would argue, is a function of content over time. However, Netflix complicates that relationship in how it releases shows and encourages viewing habits. These habits we could argue are the by-products of consumer driven content creation. The ease of making and the result of on-demand content created in the age of platform capitalism.

But Dark also confuses the unfolding of plot usual to the serial with the ability to view it in all at once (if one were to follow the ethos of Netflix, as the writer has, or almost has). I want to suggest that because content about nuclear futurity echoes the formal aspects of time in comics, that we can read Dark in a similar fashion. The viewer is invited from the very beginning to give up on the assumption of time’s linearity. The narrator at the beginning most explicitly establishes a sense of thick time when they state that the distinction between “past, present, and future is an illusion” (Dark ep 1). In the same way that closure makes for continuity in comics, we can read closure in serialized media as well, both in content and form.

 

Farrier, David. Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifices Zones, and Extinction, Minnesota UP, 2019.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The invisible Art. Harper Collins, 1993.

Neimanis, Astrida and Rachel Loewen Walker, “Weathering: Climate Change and the “Thick Time” of Transcorporeality, Hypatia vol. 29, no. 3 (Summer 2014), pp. 558-575.

Prompt 7

How to win friends and shuffle off this mortal coil

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On the left this week was a very tempting queering of time and relationships that might be well suited to Ensor’s Spinster Ecology. However, my Geiger counter was ticking more toward the right, so I decided to work with Haraway’s ideas of trouble and making kin. Our viewing for the week, Dark is a sci-fi/suspense thriller set in the sleepy German town of Winden, translating as ‘to wind or coil’. Such a word calls to mind a spring or ball of wire, or perhaps a snake ready to strike. In Winden, a troubled history seems to be coiling back around and repeating itself, and few can grasp why or how.

In each time period depicted, the disappearances of these children have the effect of troubling what seemed otherwise a peaceful town. Haraway points early to the curious origins of the word ‘trouble’ in the French language, meaning to “’stir up, ‘to make cloudy,’’ to disturb.”’ The opening episode of Dark would have us believe that this is what has happened in Winden, that the sleepy town is only abruptly transformed. Such as assessment does not hold up after further viewing, and Dark demands (as does Haraway) that we stay with the trouble. Plotlines slowly uncoil and show us there is no simple solution to the crisis facing Winden, and that there was no time in which Winden stood without this trouble. Haraway similarly troubles our understanding of ecology, saying “staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings” (1).  Throughout the first season of Dark, Jonas and a handful of other figures come to partially understand the prickly, tangled web of events and people in which they live. The adult Jonas refuses to let his younger self return Mikkel to the future, and later refuses to release the younger Jonas from a bunker, in part because he understands that these actions have more far-reaching consequences than initially assumed.

The apparent peace and quiet of Winden mask the pain and grief of nearly a century of disappearances and murder, and many of our plotlines hinge on our characters’ ability, or lack thereof, to respond to this pain. The unresolved grief for his lost brother leads Ulrich Nielsen to attempt the murder of Helge Doppler as a child in 1953, in hopes that he might alter the future and bring back his brother. His belief in time and these events as linear entities renders him unable to recognize the possible intricacy and fragility of the pasts and futures he may create.

Thinking tentacularly in order to look at the roots of these catastrophes, we might recognize a fatal flaw in the inability of Winden to properly grieve, or according to Haraway, to grieve together. She asserts “Grief is a path to understanding entangled shared living and dying; human beings must grieve with, because we are in and of this fabric of undoing” (39). When the bodies of two young boys are found near the groundbreaking of the new nuclear plant, a cynical Bernd Doppler claims that the murders were likely the work of the coal industry. Within hours, Doppler’s son goes missing (nearly killed by Ulrich Nielsen) and his tune changes. Doppler asks the police chief to find his son at any cost, even the cost of the power plant. We are constantly faced with characters unable to empathize with those outside their own small spheres, and the pain of these losses persists. In Haraway’s terms, we recognize this shared grief in particular and emotion in general as characteristic of networks of kin. She makes the case that we need to reach outside of our nuclear family to craft new connections with unlikely people, that we might build communities from these connections.

We are led to believe that Bernd Doppler does not understand this notion. He leads a life of luxury lobbying for the nuclear industry, and his sympathy is aroused only when his family is on the line. When the troubled dust settles, he remains unchanged. He decides eventually to store excess radioactive materials in the cave system under his own town, jeopardizing both his children and neighbors. As we see later, this quiet act of violence circles back around and enables a series of troubling events in Winden. Change in Dark doesn’t come from tragedy, but from the ability to collectively and effectively grieve tragedy.

Such a process of productive healing is evidenced in the few moments of genuine togetherness in this season of Dark. Jonas returns from the past having learned that Mikkel Nielsen is actually his father. He embraces his mother, saying “I believe Dad loved you very much.” This is one of the few moments of genuine growth and healing among characters, and it comes because Jonas recognizes Mikkel as his kin, and the love that exists despite this strange pairing. The connection may be frustrating to him, but he can empathize with the love that Micky carried for his wife. These moments of genuine healing and production occur when people recognize the complex connections they share, and disaster results when they fail to recognize the same.

Haraway’s notion of kin is far-reaching and finds interesting results in Dark. As she says, “Ancestors turn out to be very interesting strangers; kin are unfamiliar (outside what we thought was family or gens), uncanny, haunting, active” (103). Perhaps Haraway was not envisioning meeting your future self on the other side of a door, but Dark creates an environment that coils back in on itself. Our various time travelers must thus recognize their kin in their own time, as well as past and future. They must work with these kin to win the victories they can and grieve the losses they must, or else expect more tragedy.

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.

Odar, Baran bo, and Jantje Friese. Dark, Season 1, episode 1-8, Netflix, 2017.