Tales from the Loop
Tales from the Loop is, originally, a beautiful book by the Swedish author, Simon Stålenhag. It focuses heavily on the depiction of particular images to drive the narrative and leaves most of the interpretation up to the reader. We will select a small number of those images for analysis and appreciation here. Tales from the loop follows an alternate time line where Sweden constructs the world’s first fusion reaction between 1954 and 1968.
1. A touchingly cultural parallel
Hemglass is a real Swedish company that owns and operates these particular ice cream trucks. This yields a relatively modern day parallel that evokes many things beyond the image like, for instance, the sound of the ice cream truck. There is also something that is not culturally universal about this art, but that is very intentionally done here. The color palette and looks on the dinosaurs faces give a feeling of menace to the viewer, however, this sort of scene is the heart of Swedish humor. One of the reasons I’ve included this is to demonstrate though Sweden and America are so strikingly similar in so many ways, even the interpretation of an image like this can be very fraught.
2. The Fusion Reactors
3. A Bird and a Skeleton?
