The sins of the government have always been a happy hunting ground for movies and TV shows. Into this landscape enters Amazon’s new science-fiction anthology Tales from the Loop , based on Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag’s book of the same name. The narrative is set in Mercer, Ohio, where a government-controlled research laboratory (the ‘Loop’) is in charge of the Eclipse, a possibly alien sphere that impacts the town’s inhabitants in various ways. The show stars Jonathan Pryce, Rebecca Hall and Paul Schneider, among others.
The book Tales from the Loop was originally published in 2014 in Swedish. Its creator, the 36-year-old Stålenhag, has earned both popular and critical acclaim in recent years for his distinctive artwork that blends rural Swedish landscapes from the ’70s and ’80s with Swedish motifs (people driving a Saab, for example) and Hollywood-inspired dystopian science-fiction elements, such as gigantic futuristic machinery. Since 2014, Stålenhag has compiled his work, framed a loose, shared-universe narrative around them and released them in three art-heavy books; the first of these was Tales from the Loop , and the most recent was 2018’s The Electric State , the screen rights for which have already been bought by the Russo Brothers (makers of four Marvel movies including Avengers: Endgame ).
What gives Stålenhag’s work its disorienting quality? It’s more than just the juxtaposition of the ordinary with the unprecedented. Some clues can be found in the bits of text with which he builds framing narratives for his books. Take this passage from The Electric State : “I found the owner of the sex robot in a derelict trailer on the other side of the compound. He was toothless and bearded, and gasped for breath beneath his neurocaster... A tube in his arm snaked around an IV stand to a huge tank in the ceiling that had once been full of something yellow and gooey. The old man was completely incapacitated, and it was impossible to say how long he had been there.”
In a similarly bleak passage towards the beginning of the book, the narrator finds a pair of pink panties by the highway. What is going on in these passages, emotionally? For starters, the connection between trauma and increased libido has long been well documented in books and movies — the sexual impulse can be a healthy or an unhealthy reaction. Take the opening monologue of the 1997 film Gummo , set in an Ohio town ravaged by a tornado. The narrator, an adolescent boy, says, “Dogs died. Cats died. (...) I saw a girl flying through the air and I looked up her skirt.” The sex robot and the panties, in the middle of a ravaged Stålenhag landscape, therefore, make complete sense when you think about it.
Eye on design
On Twitter, Stålenhag has discussed his influences quite candidly over the years. A couple of names pop up repeatedly — Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie, two of the most influential designers/ illustrators Hollywood has ever seen. Mead (1933-2019), who began his career at Ford Motors in the ’60s, went on to work on marquee science-fiction films such as Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Blade Runner , Aliens and, more recently, Blade Runner 2049 . McQuarrie (1929-2012) designed several iconic characters from Star Wars , including its arch-villain, Darth Vader, and the robots R2-D2 and C-3PO. McQuarrie also, notably, designed the alien ships in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind .
Stålenhag has picked up — and assimilated into his own style — elements from both Mead and McQuarrie’s works. For example, his frequent use of gouache is a nod to McQuarrie’s gouache concept art from the ’80s. It’s also useful to remember that gouache’s opacity lends itself well to outdoor paintings. JMW Turner’s gouache paintings could summon the sleepy inertness of a rural landscape ( Italian Landscape with Bridge and Tower ), as well as the innate turbulence of a maritime disaster ( Calais Pier ); the thing about Stålenhag is that he can deploy both these modes in the same painting. Not all of his pre- Loop works achieve this satisfactorily. But when it does come together, it really is spectacular.
The novel-in-stories model
For the most part, the Amazon show Tales from the Loop (developed by Nathaniel Halpern, who also wrote the superhero show Legion ) does a great job of capturing the emotional texture of Stålenhag’s work. It helps that the show follows the novel-in-stories format — every episode in the show works as a standalone, while also moving the overarching Loop narrative forward.
My favourite is an episode called Stasis , directed by Dearbhla Walsh, who also worked on the brilliant Fargo ’s third season. The narrative follows two teen lovers who discover a device that freezes time...for everyone else. The season finale, directed by Jodie Foster, is also well executed.
In a 2013 interview to The Verge , Stålenhag had said, “The only difference between the world of my art and our world is that... ever since the early 20th century, attitudes and budgets were much more in favour of science and technology.”
This phenomenon, when allowed a free run sans temperance, becomes ‘scientism’, the (ironically) quasi-religious belief that science alone holds the key to solving all the problems in the world. It’s a good example of all that Stålenhag’s work cautions against.