Sunday, August 2, 2020

A Dark Guide to Germany, season 3

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And for the final season of Netflix' Dark, I'll continue writing about stuff that seems to be typically German or somehow noteworthy in that context. 

Episode 1

Chairs - The black wooden chairs that people sit on in the school hall (where the parent evenings and the theater take place) are the exact fucking chairs that we have in our school as well. Yes, they are as uncomfortable as they look. Every inch.  
Doors - It's unclear to me how Jonas manages to enter the Nielsen home not once but twice in this episode. Same goes for the three/one unknown person entering the Tiedemann home in 1986. In Germany, front doors are always locked. You can only open them with a key (the don't have doorhandles on the outside, only on the inside). This random entering of other people's homes is a trope I know from several Amerian series (Smallville being an especially egregious example), but in Germany, this makes no sense at all. 
The forest path - The path everyone takes through the Winden Forest is extremely creepy, and seeing Martha cycling through it on a foggy November night, I can assure you that while cycling is absolutely something young adults do - cars not being as widespread among highschool students as in the US - this damn forest path would give me quite a lot of pause. So please don't assume this is somehow normal. I have a healthy fear of dark forests. 
The bunker - Aside from looking extremely uncomfortable, the bunker as a meeting place for Magnus and his girlfriend to have sex also makes no sense because bunkers are cold and wet, being just concrete and all that. If you've ever been in one of those WWII-holdovers, you'd know. When topless Magnus eases himself against the bunker wall, I shiver. 

Episode 2 

The wake. The wake in the Nielsen house that's held for Mads, when Tronte's wife Jannah rips him a new one for sleeping with Claudia Tiedemann and now investing more energy in her disappearance than that of her son, is something I haven't experienced yet. I know the tradition of having this eating and drinking at home from American movies, and it might just be a local thing, but my experiences with burials is that the eating after - the morbidly named "Leichenschmaus" (literally "corpse feast") - is done at a restaurant, not at home. This way, no one brings anything. But again, might be regional. 
Street width. The streets of Winden, especially the one leading to the power plant and the one through the woods, are very wide, allowing the lonely cars traversing it to dramatically stop and turn without endangering the practically non-existent traffic (there really aren't many cars in Winden for some reason). Usually, streets are much narrower in Germany, and you couldn't turn on them without reversing at least once or twice, which means you can't u-turn usually because you'd cross into the opposite traffic lane, and unless you're on the road at night, that would be a short trip. 
Der Kanzler kommt - In 1987, there are posters at the bus stop announcing a campaign visit of German chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1987, there was an election for the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, and since the Bundestag then elects the new chancellor, that is pretty important. In the event, incumbent Kohl (from the conservative CDU) handily beat his challenger Jochen Vogel (from the progressive SPD), while the Greens retained their representation in parliament that they had won in 1983, solidifying the change of the German party system from three to four parties. 
Bundeswehr - The soldiers providing disaster relief in 2020 and sealing off the power plant after the apocalypse are from the German army, the Bundeswehr, which is identifiable by the Iron Cross on the light tank recognizable in the frame to the right and the uniforms. Usually, the army does not provide disaster relief armed (the constitution allowing only unarmed disaster relief in supporting roles, no police authority), whereas in this episode, they clearly take over police capabilities, which so shortly after the apocalypse seem to me a creative liberty by the producers that mainly helps to explain the access to hardware that the 2053 timeline has. 

Episode 3

Schülerausweis - Among the effects that dead Mads Nielsen has on his body in the alternate timeline there is a student identification paper. While German citizens are obliged to have an ID card on their persons at age 16, Mads clearly was too young for this rule. However, German students get student identification from their schools to prove that they are actually students, which is important for subsidies in entrance fees, public transportion and the like. It's highly unlikely that anyone carries those around as they are rarely needed (only for purchasing occasions), so Mads having it on his person is very convenient to have identifying documents on camera, but not exactly realistic. 

Episode 4

Abortion - While abortion obviously was illegal in 1954, its status in Germany remains somewhat ambivalent. While on paper, Germany has a rather restrictive abortion law - much more so than the US, in fact - in practice, it's much more liberal than it appears. In the 1970s, feminism fought a fight for liberalization, demanding abolition of §218 (criminalizing abortion) of the penal code, but the Supreme Court and conservative opposition threw a monkey wrench into proceesings and let to a curious half-state. Abortion is officially illegal, but it is not prosecuted. So, women can get abortions, paid by the insurance, but performing the act is in theory illegal. If that isn't weird enough for you, doctors are forbidden by §219 of the penal code to inform about the procedure, which means women have to actually seek out doctors and ask whether or not they perform the operation. Plus, it's mandatory to get counseling. That is bad, but on the other hand, it's widely available and paid for by the mandatory insurance, so women have to prostrate themselves and jump through painful hoops, but they're not precluded in the way many states in the US do. It's weird, and in the last one or two years, the issue has once again gained steam, and it's not unlikely that when - if - the long conservative reign of Angela Merkel and her party finally ends, the progressive forces will take another swing at it.  

Episode 5

Cigar dispenser. In 1987, aside from the poster announcing Helmut Kohl's visit, you can see a cigarette dispenser mounted on the bus stop. You threw in the coins and got a pack of cigarettes. It's very manual, with gears and levers, and was robust because these things were subject to vandalism and theft very often. Similar machines were around for chewing gum. The latter were considered extremely unhygienic when I was growing up, so I never got one. Cigarette dispensers were only updated something like 10 years ago when the legal age was changed from 16 to 18. The machines were then upgraded to only work if you could prove your age (finally!), which works either with a credit card, your driver's licence or your passport, all of which the machine can read.

Episode 6

Pennies. The pennies that Helge and Mads have are the smallest denomination of the old German currency, the Deutsche Mark. 100 Pfennige were one Mark. Introduced in 1948 (famously sparking the Berlin Blockade), the Deutsche Mark was strongly associated with the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle"), the recovery after World War II. In 1993, the European states signed treaties that, among founding the European Union, also demanded the introduction of a common European currency. In 1999, this new currency, called the Euro, was introduced for transactions (I remember my bank receipts from that time showing both currencies, which was always weird) and in 2002 as hard currency. The Deutsche Mark was put out of circulation, but today, there are still several billion Deutsche Marks in the hands of the general populace, most likely in chaches in the residences of old people. Therefore, the Pfennig is a another clear sign of the past, and its minting date of 1986 serves as a proof of the earliest possible date that the time travellers could hail from.

Episode 7

Bus fare. In many German cities, the bus driver is where you pay your bus fare. You can see that with the bus driver asking young Charlotte whether she wants to get in; he's sitting boxed in the whole cashier thing. This way, the driver also acts as the person controlling you. You can only get in in front and have to either buy a ticket or show you have one. Since this is municipally organized, there can be other models; in Tübingen, the city I studied in, they had ticket machines in the buses and (very unregularily) did manual controls. These days, most bus providers offer apps to purchase tickets, but you still have to show these to the bus driver. Usually, bus fares aren't that expensive (around 2-3 Euro) since buses cover short distances. Longer distances are done by tram, tube and train at a similar price point.

Episode 8

Ehe für alle (same sex marriage). In the closing shots we see Peter being officially together with his boyfriend for a change, which is nice and also reflects a very rapid change in German society that mirrors the one in the US. Criminalized until 1969, completely legal only since 1994 (!), homosexuality was long viewed as a mental illness and closely associated with pedophelia. In 2006, the "eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft" (officially sanctioned life partnership) was introduced, allowing same-sex couples some but not all rights of spouses. Conservative chancellor Angela Merkel, in power since 2005, long blocked any effort at fully legalizing same-sex marriage which in the 2010s garnered around 70% in public polls. In 2017, the SPD wanted to add same-sex marriage to its campaign platform, and Merkel, always with a fine nose for losing topics, quickly allowed a free vote in the Bundestag, where the measure passed on a 2:1 margin. Now, only minor discriminations in adoption law remain. Aside from the right-wing extremist party Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) no party is opposed to the issue anymore, and the public has practically completely accepted it, with Christopher Street Day rapidly becoming a general holiday with loads of heterosexuals partying and marching allong the LGTBQ+ crowd.

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