Yes, the second season of Stranger Things is officially called Stranger Things 2, as if it is a sequel rather than a continuation of a cohesive story. In this day and age, when serialized storytelling is the norm, and we have a lot of big-screen films that feel more like episodes of an ongoing narrative than self-contained plots, the line between sequels and continuations is blurry.
Spoilers Ahead:
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Rewatching Stranger Things Season One
Partially in anticipation of the new season coming out later this month, and also out of a desire to revisit the show, I watched the first (and only for the next week and a half I guess) season of Stranger Things.
The show kind of came out of nowhere last year, dropping on Netflix with little build-up but then caught on like wildfire. Why was it so popular? And did it deserve it?
Well, first off, let's talk about importance as a series. Stranger Things is absolutely a throwback - it's set in 1983 and is meant to evoke the tone and feel of movies and other fiction coming out of that era, particularly, I would say, the works of Stephen Spielberg, Stephen King, and John Carpenter.
The Duffer Brothers, who created the series and directed I believe every episode, were born in 1984, which I think is significant. As someone born in 1986, I have a similar connection to the 1980s - we were quite young during the actual decade, but the pop culture that arose within the decade certainly shaped a lot of what we were exposed to growing up in the 90s. So while I might not have been aware of President Reagan while he was in office, the decade's sort of cultural gestalt was the foundation upon which I built the rest of my understanding of culture that came after (to give an example, it wasn't until fairly recently that I really understood that Dana Carvey's Church Lady character was directly a parody of the then-recent ascent of the Religious Right. For me, growing up, there was always a politically powerful group of fundamentalists in the US.)
Anyway, as something as a nostalgia piece, or an attempt (and a successful one, I'd say) to engage with the cultural moment of one's birth, the show does risk being solely referential, not really contributing anything new to the culture of the 2010s other than a wistful look back at an earlier era. The question, then, is whether Stranger Things really brings anything new to the table. If you time-traveled back to the 80s and showed someone this, would they see something different and unique from the other stuff they had at the time? (Other than the 2010 visual effects, the serialized television format, and shockingly well-done age makeup on Winona Ryder, who was of course just becoming - or about to become - a famous teen actor.)
I'm not sure I can really claim that the hypothetical 1980s person would find something unique here. On the other hand, that could be my jaded self ignoring what we have here. Deconstruction is not always a unique move, but I think that given the masterful imitation of the 1980s aesthetic (the woodsy suburb of Hawkins, Indiana, seems perfect for a story like this,) there are some attitudes that have shifted.
I really think the portrayal of Joyce Byers, the mother of the missing kid Will, is fascinating from a feminist perspective. Joyce is confronted with incredible (as in literally not believable) evidence that her son is alive, speaking to her through electric lights in her house. It would be one thing if Joyce was portrayed as tough-as-nails and that anyone who thinks she's just going crazy is purely motivated by a sexist belief that all women are emotionally unstable. But the thing is, Joyce is emotionally unstable. That doesn't mean she's wrong. And in fact, Joyce fights through her anxieties in order to do some practical and resourceful things, like creating the alphabet board on her wall so that Will can communicate more clearly with her. Her voice may waver and she might feel like she's at wit's end, but even while dealing with that, she holds on to a truth that is not just a matter of faith, but a rational response to the evidence with which she has been presented.
Another character I find really interesting is Steve, Nancy's popular (in that sense of how the "cool kids" in a High School can have a clique of only like four people and somehow claim supremacy) new boyfriend. We get many, many signs that Steve is an asshole, and in a lot of ways he is. But while you would often see such a character become more overtly abusive and then get killed by a monster in a Stephen King novel (for the record, I like Stephen King, but I'm going with his most stereotypical tropes here) to free Nancy up for quiet but kind Jonathan, in this case we see Steve make real efforts to make up for his behavior, even helping to fight off the monster in the end. In fact, one of the most classic "bully" moments for him is actually not totally unjustified. When he finds out that Jonathan was taking pictures of his house the night Nancy slept with him, including a revealing one of her, he destroys the pictures and breaks the camera to punish Jonathan for what was, actually, a pretty serious invasion of privacy. Does he do it in a seriously douchey way? Yes. But it's not totally unjustified.
But novelty is not everything, and I think that what Stranger Things lacks in innovation (and I'm open to arguments that it is, in fact, innovative in ways I haven't noticed) it makes up in quality.
Child actors are a tough bet, but Stranger Things manages to have a fantastic cast, with Millie Bobby Brown stealing the show as Eleven, the girl with psychic powers who is desperately trying to make sense of the new world she has escaped into.
But what the show manages to do is give just about every character something interesting to do and gets a great performance out of the actor. There are a couple exceptions (Mike and Nancy's mom feels like she was meant to be a bigger part) but over all, it's a great ensemble. And in fact, it's hard to pick out a particular protagonist, but the show does not suffer from this.
What we have instead is a group of people all falling into this mystery in their own ways, which makes the finale so exciting as we have all the plot threads tying together right as things plunge fully into the dark world of the Upside Down.
One other note is that the 1980s setting is absolutely pervasive in the feel of the show, but doesn't tend to call attention to itself. In fact, that's a big part of why I think the show feels authentic - you don't see movies today constantly call attention to the fact that they've been made in this era. Every decade takes maybe another full decade to figure out what it was like (hell, the 90s are only just starting to coalesce into something people can identify,) and Stranger Things manages to create a background setting that feels familiar and normal, even though it's a version of normal that's 30 years old.
I'm super excited to see season two. Tonally and thematically I'm not too worried, though given how well season one fits together as a single story, I do think the Duffer Brothers had a pretty huge challenge in creating a story for the next season. I guess we'll find out how they did in about ten days.
The show kind of came out of nowhere last year, dropping on Netflix with little build-up but then caught on like wildfire. Why was it so popular? And did it deserve it?
Well, first off, let's talk about importance as a series. Stranger Things is absolutely a throwback - it's set in 1983 and is meant to evoke the tone and feel of movies and other fiction coming out of that era, particularly, I would say, the works of Stephen Spielberg, Stephen King, and John Carpenter.
The Duffer Brothers, who created the series and directed I believe every episode, were born in 1984, which I think is significant. As someone born in 1986, I have a similar connection to the 1980s - we were quite young during the actual decade, but the pop culture that arose within the decade certainly shaped a lot of what we were exposed to growing up in the 90s. So while I might not have been aware of President Reagan while he was in office, the decade's sort of cultural gestalt was the foundation upon which I built the rest of my understanding of culture that came after (to give an example, it wasn't until fairly recently that I really understood that Dana Carvey's Church Lady character was directly a parody of the then-recent ascent of the Religious Right. For me, growing up, there was always a politically powerful group of fundamentalists in the US.)
Anyway, as something as a nostalgia piece, or an attempt (and a successful one, I'd say) to engage with the cultural moment of one's birth, the show does risk being solely referential, not really contributing anything new to the culture of the 2010s other than a wistful look back at an earlier era. The question, then, is whether Stranger Things really brings anything new to the table. If you time-traveled back to the 80s and showed someone this, would they see something different and unique from the other stuff they had at the time? (Other than the 2010 visual effects, the serialized television format, and shockingly well-done age makeup on Winona Ryder, who was of course just becoming - or about to become - a famous teen actor.)
I'm not sure I can really claim that the hypothetical 1980s person would find something unique here. On the other hand, that could be my jaded self ignoring what we have here. Deconstruction is not always a unique move, but I think that given the masterful imitation of the 1980s aesthetic (the woodsy suburb of Hawkins, Indiana, seems perfect for a story like this,) there are some attitudes that have shifted.
I really think the portrayal of Joyce Byers, the mother of the missing kid Will, is fascinating from a feminist perspective. Joyce is confronted with incredible (as in literally not believable) evidence that her son is alive, speaking to her through electric lights in her house. It would be one thing if Joyce was portrayed as tough-as-nails and that anyone who thinks she's just going crazy is purely motivated by a sexist belief that all women are emotionally unstable. But the thing is, Joyce is emotionally unstable. That doesn't mean she's wrong. And in fact, Joyce fights through her anxieties in order to do some practical and resourceful things, like creating the alphabet board on her wall so that Will can communicate more clearly with her. Her voice may waver and she might feel like she's at wit's end, but even while dealing with that, she holds on to a truth that is not just a matter of faith, but a rational response to the evidence with which she has been presented.
Another character I find really interesting is Steve, Nancy's popular (in that sense of how the "cool kids" in a High School can have a clique of only like four people and somehow claim supremacy) new boyfriend. We get many, many signs that Steve is an asshole, and in a lot of ways he is. But while you would often see such a character become more overtly abusive and then get killed by a monster in a Stephen King novel (for the record, I like Stephen King, but I'm going with his most stereotypical tropes here) to free Nancy up for quiet but kind Jonathan, in this case we see Steve make real efforts to make up for his behavior, even helping to fight off the monster in the end. In fact, one of the most classic "bully" moments for him is actually not totally unjustified. When he finds out that Jonathan was taking pictures of his house the night Nancy slept with him, including a revealing one of her, he destroys the pictures and breaks the camera to punish Jonathan for what was, actually, a pretty serious invasion of privacy. Does he do it in a seriously douchey way? Yes. But it's not totally unjustified.
But novelty is not everything, and I think that what Stranger Things lacks in innovation (and I'm open to arguments that it is, in fact, innovative in ways I haven't noticed) it makes up in quality.
Child actors are a tough bet, but Stranger Things manages to have a fantastic cast, with Millie Bobby Brown stealing the show as Eleven, the girl with psychic powers who is desperately trying to make sense of the new world she has escaped into.
But what the show manages to do is give just about every character something interesting to do and gets a great performance out of the actor. There are a couple exceptions (Mike and Nancy's mom feels like she was meant to be a bigger part) but over all, it's a great ensemble. And in fact, it's hard to pick out a particular protagonist, but the show does not suffer from this.
What we have instead is a group of people all falling into this mystery in their own ways, which makes the finale so exciting as we have all the plot threads tying together right as things plunge fully into the dark world of the Upside Down.
One other note is that the 1980s setting is absolutely pervasive in the feel of the show, but doesn't tend to call attention to itself. In fact, that's a big part of why I think the show feels authentic - you don't see movies today constantly call attention to the fact that they've been made in this era. Every decade takes maybe another full decade to figure out what it was like (hell, the 90s are only just starting to coalesce into something people can identify,) and Stranger Things manages to create a background setting that feels familiar and normal, even though it's a version of normal that's 30 years old.
I'm super excited to see season two. Tonally and thematically I'm not too worried, though given how well season one fits together as a single story, I do think the Duffer Brothers had a pretty huge challenge in creating a story for the next season. I guess we'll find out how they did in about ten days.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner is one of those movies that I was never totally crazy about. I liked it the first time I saw it, but there was something about it's uber-80s vision of the future that never really clicked with me. While a lot of 80s pop culture holds a warm place in my heart (the original Star Wars was in the 70s, but Empire and Jedi were 80s,) I've always held a slight disdain for the general 80s aesthetic - the synthetic, the over-manicured excess, the audible hollowness in much of the music. Yeah, I was born then, but I really felt more at home in the grungy, warmer 90s (I guess the 90s also held the "Xtreme" aesthetic, but I think that was later in the decade.) (I realize we could get into a whole series of posts about comparing the aesthetic of one decade or another, as if they had only one.)
Anyway, Blade Runner was a Film Noir by way of that 80s aesthetic. It replaced the sort of muted jazz with synth and created an utterly miserable (and oddly rain-soaked) Los Angeles where its protagonist's job was essentially finding and murdering undesirables.
Blade Runner 2049 certainly continues with these ideas, but I think there are a lot of new ideas about the real world that get floated - like the way that abusive and oppressive systems coerce the oppressed into complicity.
The sequel does some world building to fill out the gap between the original and itself, suggesting that after Tyrell's death, there was a revolution by replicants, leaving nearly all of them wiped out, along with a blackout on digital data. Eventually, the Wallace corporation bought out Tyrell and created a new line of obedient replicants. And the protagonist of this film, sometimes called K (the first letter in his serial number) or Joe, is a replicant who is also a Blade Runner.
One of the most popular fan theories for the original movie was that Deckard was actually a replicant himself. This movie more or less buries that idea, but it kind of meets people halfway by confirming early on that Ryan Gosling's K is one. His search for identity and meaning is the through line of the film.
I don't really want to go too much into the details here, but K's life and his travails in this story really hammer home the horrific dystopia that Blade Runner 2049 imagines. It's a bleak movie, but in a kind of Children of Men-like way, makes standing up to that bleakness the act of heroes.
And though this is obviously not a direct adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story (though I'm given to understand even the original movie deviated significantly from the Dick story,) it does play with a major theme Dick was interested in, namely how you can know what you think you know.
Anyway, Blade Runner was a Film Noir by way of that 80s aesthetic. It replaced the sort of muted jazz with synth and created an utterly miserable (and oddly rain-soaked) Los Angeles where its protagonist's job was essentially finding and murdering undesirables.
Blade Runner 2049 certainly continues with these ideas, but I think there are a lot of new ideas about the real world that get floated - like the way that abusive and oppressive systems coerce the oppressed into complicity.
The sequel does some world building to fill out the gap between the original and itself, suggesting that after Tyrell's death, there was a revolution by replicants, leaving nearly all of them wiped out, along with a blackout on digital data. Eventually, the Wallace corporation bought out Tyrell and created a new line of obedient replicants. And the protagonist of this film, sometimes called K (the first letter in his serial number) or Joe, is a replicant who is also a Blade Runner.
One of the most popular fan theories for the original movie was that Deckard was actually a replicant himself. This movie more or less buries that idea, but it kind of meets people halfway by confirming early on that Ryan Gosling's K is one. His search for identity and meaning is the through line of the film.
I don't really want to go too much into the details here, but K's life and his travails in this story really hammer home the horrific dystopia that Blade Runner 2049 imagines. It's a bleak movie, but in a kind of Children of Men-like way, makes standing up to that bleakness the act of heroes.
And though this is obviously not a direct adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story (though I'm given to understand even the original movie deviated significantly from the Dick story,) it does play with a major theme Dick was interested in, namely how you can know what you think you know.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Star Trek Discovery
For the first time since the early 00s, we have a new Star Trek... TV?... show. One of the barriers to entry here is that CBS is counting on this show to carry their new streaming service as we see the world pioneered by Netflix fragmenting into a mess that will probably wind up eating itself up to the detriment of viewers until someone comes up with a new solution.
Ahem.
But the show:
This sounds like an advertising slogan, but this is very much Star Trek like you've never seen before. And that is going to probably generate mixed reactions.
There are two big differences in the way that Discovery works compared with other Star Trek shows. First of all, it is darker. Now, it's true that Deep Space Nine took us into some dark territories - introducing Section 31 and having Sisko tacitly order an assassination (or at least not do anything about it after it is done) - so you could argue that this isn't entirely unique. But Discovery has a sense of desperation and also mystery that we haven't really seen in Star Trek before.
That tone of mystery is tied closely to the other big change: this is a show with one clear protagonist. While the captains of the earlier shows (remember that Sisko gets promoted sometime in the middle of DS9) were always kind of at the center of their casts, the typical form was to give each of the major characters plenty of focus and never really make any declarative moves about who we should be looking at the most. This is not true of Discovery, where Michael Burnam is absolutely the lens through which we see the show.
And that allows for mystery, because after a two-part pilot in which she is court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison (though you've got to imagine the Federation has parole for good behavior, even in extreme cases,) Michael's prison-transport is rescued by the Discovery, which is a brand-new Federation ship doing some very mysterious things.
We get a bunch of odd moments as she's led aboard, such as crew members with black badges (in contrast, I think, with the gold, red, and blue designations that we've seen on other shows.) We also get a "Black Alert" while Michael is going to bed on her first night on the ship.
Even the technobabble is, in this case, meant to be confusing. What are they doing on Discovery? What is all the secrecy for?
We meet Captain Gabriel Lorca, who even jokes about how the lighting in his ready room (lowered due to an injury to his eyes) lends him an air of mystery. That mystery persists as he seems to be vetting Michael for a position on his crew, even though she's supposed to be going to jail.
Lorca eventually convinces Michael that they are working on research to bring a swift end to the war with the Klingons - one that she more or less started in the pilot - and that this largely takes the form of things with nonviolent applications - that he is furthering the mission of Starfleet.
But it becomes very clear by the end of the episode that something very different is going on, and that at best, Lorca is some Section 31 agent or at least someone in that vein. It's also highly possible that he's a deranged madman - the kind of character who is usually an evil admiral in the other shows. But this time, he's the captain of the ship on which this show will take place!
The first three episodes I think really function as the entryway into the show and establish the premise. It's not flawless - Michael is shoehorned in as Spock's foster-sister, which would raise some serious Mary Sue alerts (I believe the original Mary Sue was, in fact, from a piece of Star Trek fanfic) except that Sonequa Martin-Green balances her nose-to-the-grindstone Vulcan calm with a deep human drive to act when it is necessary. We have a really interesting situation where we'll have a principled outlaw working on a ship commanded by a captain who seems to be violating the central tenets of his position.
Ahem.
But the show:
This sounds like an advertising slogan, but this is very much Star Trek like you've never seen before. And that is going to probably generate mixed reactions.
There are two big differences in the way that Discovery works compared with other Star Trek shows. First of all, it is darker. Now, it's true that Deep Space Nine took us into some dark territories - introducing Section 31 and having Sisko tacitly order an assassination (or at least not do anything about it after it is done) - so you could argue that this isn't entirely unique. But Discovery has a sense of desperation and also mystery that we haven't really seen in Star Trek before.
That tone of mystery is tied closely to the other big change: this is a show with one clear protagonist. While the captains of the earlier shows (remember that Sisko gets promoted sometime in the middle of DS9) were always kind of at the center of their casts, the typical form was to give each of the major characters plenty of focus and never really make any declarative moves about who we should be looking at the most. This is not true of Discovery, where Michael Burnam is absolutely the lens through which we see the show.
And that allows for mystery, because after a two-part pilot in which she is court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison (though you've got to imagine the Federation has parole for good behavior, even in extreme cases,) Michael's prison-transport is rescued by the Discovery, which is a brand-new Federation ship doing some very mysterious things.
We get a bunch of odd moments as she's led aboard, such as crew members with black badges (in contrast, I think, with the gold, red, and blue designations that we've seen on other shows.) We also get a "Black Alert" while Michael is going to bed on her first night on the ship.
Even the technobabble is, in this case, meant to be confusing. What are they doing on Discovery? What is all the secrecy for?
We meet Captain Gabriel Lorca, who even jokes about how the lighting in his ready room (lowered due to an injury to his eyes) lends him an air of mystery. That mystery persists as he seems to be vetting Michael for a position on his crew, even though she's supposed to be going to jail.
Lorca eventually convinces Michael that they are working on research to bring a swift end to the war with the Klingons - one that she more or less started in the pilot - and that this largely takes the form of things with nonviolent applications - that he is furthering the mission of Starfleet.
But it becomes very clear by the end of the episode that something very different is going on, and that at best, Lorca is some Section 31 agent or at least someone in that vein. It's also highly possible that he's a deranged madman - the kind of character who is usually an evil admiral in the other shows. But this time, he's the captain of the ship on which this show will take place!
The first three episodes I think really function as the entryway into the show and establish the premise. It's not flawless - Michael is shoehorned in as Spock's foster-sister, which would raise some serious Mary Sue alerts (I believe the original Mary Sue was, in fact, from a piece of Star Trek fanfic) except that Sonequa Martin-Green balances her nose-to-the-grindstone Vulcan calm with a deep human drive to act when it is necessary. We have a really interesting situation where we'll have a principled outlaw working on a ship commanded by a captain who seems to be violating the central tenets of his position.
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