Tales From The Loop – A Postmodern Poetry In Search of Beauty In The Bleak

The 2020 Sci-fi drama TV series, written and developed by Nathaniel Halpern, is a meditation on human experience associated with life, the arrow of time, death, and melancholia. The eight-episode series follows the interconnected lives of residents in the fictional town called Mercer in Ohio, USA. Based on the visual aesthetics of the art book of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, the stories of Tales From The Loop revolves around strange phenomenons in and around Mercer and her residents, presumably caused by the existence of a mysterious object called the Eclipse preserved in an underground research facility the locals call the Loop.

Throughout the series, we come across bizarre phenomenons caused by abandoned technological artifacts, presumably outcomes of the experiments with the Eclipse. Russ, who heads the Loop, tells us in the beginning that the purpose of the Loop is to unlock the mysteries of the universe. However, gradually we realize that the series is not here to give us some grand answers about some grand mysteries. Instead, amid the fantastic scientific and technological possibilities to attain magic and amid the inexplicable mysteries of the universe, the series reminds us about the equal inexplicability and absurdity of human condition. Although interconnected but not in sequential order, each episode spans parallelly to meditate on our search for a sense of belonging, our solitude, our desire to freeze the moments we treasure, our incapacity to avoid losing loved ones, and our ability to empathize with our enemy.

Allusions and Motifs:

Although the series is extremely rich in allusions, motifs, and objects/situations symbolizing ideas or emotions or even trajectories of the narrative, I found it overwhelming to identify them all in the first view. Still, of all that I noticed are –

The contradiction of the name “Alma” – The first episode named “Loop” tells us about how one day Loretta, then a little girl in school, lost her mother, whom she used to call by her name “Alma” and not “Mother.” While returning from school, she found that Alma has vanished with the whole house, and there’s a strange looking black rock lying where her home used to be. The young Loretta then realizes that she has somehow been transported into the future when she meets Cole, another kid of similar age. Loretta tells Cole that she’s upset that Alma has left her and that she would never abandon her children. To this Cole tells her that his mother is also never available for him. As the events unfold Loretta meets the adult version of herself and having realized that Cole is their son she informs the adult Loretta how Cole feels abandoned by her, and reminded her that this is something she vowed not to do as a child. The adult Loretta realizes this and mends her ways to bridge her disconnect with her son. Consider the theme here: a mother abandons a child. In other words, a mother denying the child the motherly nourishment. When I heard the name “Alma” first, it reminded me of the phrase “Alma Mater.” Which in Latin means “Nourishing Mother.” Alma doesn’t want Loretta to call her a mother. Because she didn’t want to take on the role of a mother, the role is her namesake, “Alma,” meaning nourishment.

The character “Gaddis” symbolizes the one whose differences the society is yet to accept – In the Tale, Gaddis works as security personnel at the Loop and lives alone, immersed in his interest in ornithology and his love for music. One day he discovers a tractor in the nearby field. In the tractor, he finds a picture of a guy playing piano and falls into a spell of desiring him. Here we are introduced to the Gaddis’ sexual identity. As much as the town of Mercer is progressive for the 80s (considering the state is Ohio), we hear at a dinner conversation that although homosexuality is not a matter of taboo or exclusion, it’s yet to find its equal footing on the social ground with heteronormative needs. In the next episode, we come to know that Russ, the head of the Loop, made a humanoid robot and tried to include them in society; however, the alienating look of a mechanical man caused the community to deny the robot the inclusion deserved. Fearing that the community has the potential to hurt what they don't understand, Russ sends the robot in exile to an isolated island and spreads a rumor of monsters to demotivate people to go to the island. The robot strangely looked like Gaddis.

The mechanical hand of George – Loretta’s husband and Russ’s son George has a robotic left arm. In the episode “Enemy,” we come to know about the history of George. When he was an adolescent, his friends convinced him be a part of an adventure to find what's in the forbidden island. Upon reaching the shore they friends abandoned him and leave with the boat. Stranded in the island he tried to search for the monster that he heard lives in the jungle. His first encounter with the mysterious monster sent him fleeing to the beach but there he was bitten by a snake in his left hand, he confronted the monster that night amid the rain. he was the first-one that Russ sent in exile. In confrontation, George charged the robot with an electric baton, and the robot lost his left arm. Later the next day George was rescued, and his left arm, which the snake bit, was amputated. George also grew up facing the marginal pressure of isolation and exclusion since a robot arm replaced his amputated arm. He had to face skepticism from other kids if he was human at all. Later George goes back to the island to meet the monster from his childhood. In this encounter, instead of a fight, he offered his left hand to him. A Hand or hands are vital symbolic objects throughout the history of literature and psychology. In Orwell's Animal Farm, the animals collaborated against their human overlords and as a matter of identity they united under the idea that all living creatures who use legs and hands for propulsion are united. They argued that legs are the means of propulsion, but if freed from propulsion, hands are the means of manipulation. The humans are different from the rest of the tree of life is through our use of hands. Our ability to free the hands entirely from the act of propulsion helped us to master the art of manipulating our surroundings. Alien hand syndrome, on the other hand (no pun intended,) symbolizes the bipolarities within our sense of self. These intersubjective and psychological allusions build the symbolic context for exchanging hands between George and the first one.

The frozen river, the arrow of time – In the last episode, “Home,” Cole learns that the guy he knows as his brother Jacob is his friend who switched bodies with Jacob but didn’t want to return to his own body. Having known that Jacob has turned into a robot, he finds him in the woods and reunites. In the woods, they cross a frozen stream signifying that they crossed the territory of a closed time-like loop. An ice breaker robot attacks Cole. Jacob fights the robot and kills it. Injured Jacob (robot) collapses and dies. After setting a barial ritual by circling the robot body of Jacob with pine cones, Cole returns to the Loop to find Loretta. While crossing the same river, he realizes that the stream is now alive, transporting him to the future where Loretta is old and suffering melancholic life as all her loved ones have left her. Historically a river, a stream has always symbolized the passage of time and presenting the frozen river as a bubble where time stood still.

The Eclipse and the pine cone – The Eclipse is a spherical object with protruding edges somewhat similar to the pine cone. Alma breaks a protruding edge from the Eclipse for her experiment. Cole collects the pine cones. After Cole’s disappearance into the time bubble of the frozen stream with Jacob’s robot, aging Loretta breaks a protruding edge from a pine cone in Cole’s collection. She immediately puts the piece back to the pine cone.

The fictional town “Mercer” – The word “mercer” means a dealer of textiles of the finest fabrics, like silk or velvet. Mercer is intricately woven in the fabric of space-time. Is there any more delicate fabric available than the fabric of space-time?

Aside from the themes on human conditions, this series borrows heavily from the phantasmagorical visual aesthetics of Simon Stålenhag. The juxtaposition of massive, out-of-the-world mechanical, technological structure surrounded by the everyday lives of ordinary people and daily chores creates a sense of disarray, a sense of alienation not necessarily a part of dystopia. Coupled with beautiful background music from Philip Glass and warm pastel shades, Tales From The Loop gives the bleakness of human alienation a surreal dimension. This bleakness comes with a gift: one that evokes human lives to appreciate the magic and the beauty of temporality.