has fiction which fails to resolve, in the interest of mass appeal, helped create our bifurcated reality?

everyone believes their own version of the world, and it’s killing us. meanwhile, artists still act like this is an important, subversive act in their work; that failing to say anything is empowering, or provocative, and maybe it is in small doses. but when the dominant form of entertainment is one which refuses to state its values, for fear of alienating the audience, I don’t think it’s very healthy.

on the other hand, the creators of Dark THINK they did this, just because of the ending. but the series hammers its nihilist, deterministic philosophy SO. HARD. throughout, that thinking you’ve created a cleverly-ambiguous story is just… delusional?

Friese: We are big believers in ambivalence. We don't think there's only one answer to a thing. That relates to everything. It's both hopeful and ominous at the same time. In other [projects] we've done before, we don't like to end on a dot. We put a dot, wait a little, and then we put a question mark at the end. It's just a nice nuance with which to end.

Odar: It's really up to the audience to answer it. I have an answer, but it's very personal. You might have an answer, and it's very personal. That's the beauty of storytelling. You will have something very personal toward the story. It's the same with Blade Runner, and how there are still people thinking Harrison Ford is not a replicant; where I'm thinking, "How can you think he's not a replicant?" That's the beauty of that story, that there's a question mark.

I want: the mechanics of a story to remain largely unexplained — the technology, the magic, the maneuvers. Don’t explain every little moment. But I honestly want artists to say what they believe, even if it’s infuriating. because then we can assess its effectiveness, and its merit, without having to dance forever in the ambiguous zone of perpetual commerce.

Dark makes its philosophy clear, and I hate it. But I hate it even more that they think they were being nuanced, and that everybody’s talking about THE PLOT rather than going; “So, what you made was unbearable and empty. After such a compelling start, how did this happen?”

you can leave the particulars ambiguous, but I believe narratives should land in a place of meaning, not meaningless ambivalence. And almost every prominent genre creator operates in the inverse mode: they overexplain the mechanisms, til all the fun is drained from them, and then wants to leave us asking questions about “what really happened” or “what did it all mean?”

It is my crystallizing belief that this mode arises from large-scale commodification. But it’s not the only way!

And yet, as violently as Dark bludgeons the viewer with explanations, people are still going, “Wait WHAAAAAT?” So, maybe, you DO have to suck the life out of the useful ambiguity, while leaving the husk of ambiguity at the end so that no matter what, someone can decide they liked your bullshit waste of time because it’s “up to the viewer to interpret”

get! fucked!!!