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.
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