[Trigger warning for mention of suicide]
Hello dreamers! This week I have a very exciting dream for you all. The dream comes from Netflix’s show “Dark,” a new favorite series of mine. Dark is a mind-bending, existential examination of a German town where multiple young people have gone missing over a 33-year span of time. At the heart of the town are the people whose lives are meticulously interwoven, with all of their stories pointing toward a mysterious nuclear power plant. The story bends time (literally) and operates on a plurality of levels worth examining.
The dream we’ll be examining takes place in season 1 episode 2 (very few SPOILERS here except for the first two episodes, if you want to watch the show). I am only five episodes into the series, so I know almost as little as you guys do! To give some backstory, one of the central teenage characters of “Dark,” Jonas, lost his father to suicide in the first episode of the series. His father left behind unusual drawings of spirals resembling vortexes or wormholes in the room where he took his own life. Onto the dream!
Jonas’s Dream about the Man Drenched in Darkness
Jonas “wakes up” and sits up gasping for air, his mouth agape. He looks around wildly in the dim, barely-there light, but his movements slow when he feels something wet slipping down his ear. He feels his ear and finds black liquid—blood, oil, or ink?—running down the side of his face. He goes to his mirror on closet door on the other side of the room and looks at himself in it. He hears his name, distorted and quiet… quiet but everywhere all at once. He opens the door to move the mirror and see behind him and he sees a man (who looks like his father) covered in the same liquid that came out of his ear.
Jonas wakes up gasping, again.
The Analysis
One of the most important things about this show that I keep in mind when I am analyzing it is that it functions on a complex literal and symbolic level. In one of the episodes, Franziska and Magnus (two of the other teenagers in the show) are sitting in Franziska’s literature class (Magnus wasn’t actually supposed to be in the class) and the teacher speaks about symbolism. My radar goes off when art or media incorporates dialogue about symbolism, because I know it means that there is going to be symbolism to watch out for.
Jonas’s dark leakage, distorted name, and vision of his father drenched in dark liquid indeed harbor symbols. The most clear symbol, to me, is that of ink. “Dark” is about time travel. Ink is associated with permanence, something that time travel actively works to undo. This dream asserts that no matter how one turns back the clock, certain things are permanent. Jonas’s father’s suicide is permanent, for example. That is why his father is seen covered in ink.
Perhaps something that Jonas has heard is permanent too, like his name, or more profoundly, his identity. No matter how anybody jumps through time, Jonas will not be able to change who he is. Jonas may feel remorse over the ways he contributed to his father’s death, even if he isn’t to blame, but no matter how he tries to undo those mistakes, he won’t be able to change who he is.
It is also possible that the show is having Jonas’s father visit him in his dreams as a portent of the past coming “back ” (or forward) into the present in future episodes. As time begins to unspool, characters may begin to appear in the wrong time, and the past may begin to exist in the present, or the present may exist in the past.
Through Jonas’s dream about the man drenched in darkness, “Dark” unloads heavy symbolism about permanence and possible portents of time wonkiness. Stay loose and dream lucid!