Contains spoilers for Volume I of Stranger Things 4.
One of the things that the first three seasons of Stranger Things did well was to capture the feelings of being a kid in the United States of America during the 1980s. Yes, they got the music and references right (mostly) but all of these are in service to the feelings, meant to evoke both feelings of nostalgia for people old enough to have originally experienced those feelings and to package those feelings and export them to millions of people who did not experience them first hand.
It a conscious construction by the Duffer Brothers with a very specific aim.
Despite the known forming the fabric of Hawkins and the stories centered there, it was still a series that managed to do something different, interesting, with its storytelling. Series 1-3 did such a good job at this particular brand of storytelling that when It Parts I and II (2017, 2019) came out, it felt like a copy of a copy that wasn't particularly done well. It seemed less than, less rich, less detailed, less invested. Part of this I think is due to the distance of adaptation. The novel came out in 1986, the mini0series in 1990, so they both were very much a reflection of their moment. Yet in the almost thirty years between novel/original adaptation and these remakes, it's a fine line to walk between capturing what it felt like to grow up like this, what made up our daily lives, and have it feel authentic and having to both acknowledge and be critical of all that made up that time.
The further Stranger Things gets into their seasons, the more the illusion of nostalgia frays at the edges, revealing what many knew from the start.
Like Ready Player One, the nostalgia of Stranger Things is only representative of a very small sliver of the population- predominantly white, middle class, men. They cover a range, the Wheelers are clearly the most well off of the bunch, with the Byers clearly at the lower end. The Hendersons are closer to the Wheelers than the Byers, as are the Sinclairs. Mike, Dustin, and Lucas are clearly products of these environments. Mrs. Karen Wheeler is a stay at home mom, as apparently is Sue Sinclair. Claudia Henderson is the outlier here, no husband (and no explanation or story for his absence), does not appear to work, yet their home, while more modest than the Wheelers and Sinclairs, certainly does not appear to be wanting. The socio-economic state of these families is important because it is what allows the boys to have leisure time, to spend ten hours a day playing a campaign in the basement, to have the bikes they travel across town on in their adventures.
The nostalgia of the show is one that centers predominantly white, cis, men. Lucas is often sidelined, as is Max, with both excused in the show as part of the "Party" not communicating. Yet the audience knows more about the Wheelers and the Byers and even Claudia Henderson than the Sinclairs. The audience gets more background information, more scenes set in her house, than Lucas' despite her not being added until season three. Will's queerness can be read as the reason for his absence in most of season one, and the issues with not believing, not centering, his story in season two. Possibly the most mediocre white dude on the planet, Bob in season two, is built up as a superhero, a geek who got the girl and works at Radio Shack and apparently knows how to hack, because all mediocre white men can, must be genetic. White men in Stranger Things are always going ot be fine. Hopper is drunk all the time, late, not doing his job, yet he floats through seasons one, two, and three, with no consequence. In fact he's rewarded with a daughter to replace the one he lost, and a potential love interest in Joyce. Jonathan spends most of season four stoned but is somehow able to rally to organize escape from trained government killers and figure out the government secrets they needed.
The women in the show are barely more than stereotypical, barely described sketches.
Karen Wheeler is unhappy in her marriage and contemplates having an affair with the pool boy. Claudia Henderson spends her time in a lounger stroking her cat, who she is obsessed with. We get nothing from Sue Sinclair other than her husband tells her she's always right in the most condescending manner possible.
Nancy Wheeler is defined in the first season by how much she likes Steve Harrington, the "King" with the hair. The majority of her conversations with Barb center on getting Steve to like her. She sleeps with him with apparently no lead up or explanation, apparently one wasn't needed, and later feels intense guilt that she wasn'tlistening to Barb, didn't help, didn't realize she was gone. #JusticeForBarb became a joke with fans on the show, but it's just another example of killing a female character for a plot point. Nancy checks most of the boxes of a "Final Girl" and like them she is used to fight the bogeyman, proving herself to be an excellent shot, good in a crisis, but she's never allowed to grow past, heal, deal with, the trauma that comes to define her. She is not allowed to have a life- her relationship with Steve falls apart, she loses her internship, she chooses Jonathan not so much because they're a good fit but because they have "shared trauma." The latest season has her running the school newspaper and planning to attend Emerson after graduation, but she's once again abandoned the first to serve the purpose of what the men require. I don't have high hopes for Emerson working out either.
Max is a mini-"Final Girl" defined only by her trauma, making her a target of Vecna who has to be saved by the men, and whose trauma is not addressed, because it's only useful to a certain point in the plot- to bring Lucas back to the Party. She lives in a trailer park because the plot required a witness to the first Vecna murder. Max is a doll taken off the shelf when she can be useful to the boys' story and when that is done to be their date to the dance. Then...nothing. No growth, no story of their own, just stasis until the boys' narrative requires her. In season three she is needed because Eleven has to be paired off with someone, so she can later return to Mike.
Joyce Byers is presented as a mess from the beginning. The inference is clearly that a single, divorced mother, is clearly incapable of functioning. She can't find her keys, she always looks a bit sloppy, she clearly depends on her eldest son to function, as she is presented as incapable. The only times the audience sees her functioning is briefly when her ex-husband Lonnie Byers shows up and then later with boring-ass Bob (is being boring a superpower?). Some will argue Joyce does have growth- she is able to oversee Will's recovery, move the family out of Hawkins, fly to Alaska to negotiate a hostage exchange, and survive the Russian winter forest. But these are plot points she's accomplished, they are not growth. Steve grows by learning to care. Lucas grows by relearning the value of his friends. Mike learns to value platonic as well as romantic love. Dustin grows in confidence, learning to trust himself, guide others. Will's queerness places him in a bit of stasis, he clearly grows up, but he still seems unable to express himself, fight for himself. Joyce does not grow as a character. Nancy does not grow as a character, in fact the latest season is regressing her to season one.
Dustin's girlfriend Suzie is literally just a stereotype- the geeky girl who can hack. And she apparently lives in a Mormon house where racist cosplay is the usual. She bookends season three, but is absent from the narrative, having inspired confidence in Dustin she serves no other tangible purpose. In season four her only purpose is to help the "Party" find Eleven, so she can save the world, and they can all return to normal.
Robin Buckley should prompt every audience member to ask, have the creators ever actually met a woman? Talked to her? She's "quirky" and "weird" and "sassy," speaks four languages (if you count pig Latin), and can translate Russian government codes. She's gay, but only talks about it, so like Will's invisible queerness, poses no threat to the group, the majority. The above facts, plus she's in band, is all we know about her. We don't need to know anything else about her, she's amusing and funny, and makes a good sidekick, and the audience doesn't need to know anything else. Which reemphasizes the thread that runs all through the show, like so much other media, that the audience does not need fully fleshed out women characters. Their portrayals don't need depth, they don't need journeys, or lives, because that is not what the story is about.
The argument made by the presentation of these women is that there are very narrow parameters for being defined as a woman, that the majority of these parametrs involved serving a specific purpose, to support the narratives of the men. You can be an unhappy housewife, a lonely, crazy cat lady, or a basket case single, divorced mom. If you're under thirty these are the paths you're on, and even before you get there your current purpose is only to serve the narratives of the boys.
The "Final Girl" trope is present in seasons one through three.
Eleven is no different in many ways from the rest of the women. She has no meaning on her own. She is a deconstructed "Final Girl" defined by trauma, serving the specific purpose of defeating the bogeyman, but ultimately has her power taken from her, by Hopper, by the Mind Flayer, then Dr. Brenner (again). She is shown as too dangerous to live in the real world by the end of season one, a focused weapon in season two, does not know who she is if she's not Mike's girlfriend in season three, and broken, unable to live and succeed in the real world (again) in season four. She has the trauma of losing her mother, being experiemented on, pitted against other powered children, ostracized from society first to keep her "safe" then because she does not know how to operate like a "normal" girl. She is only useful because of her powers, the very things that she thinks make her a monster. The boys think she's a superhero, until/unless she points the powers at them, like when she throws Lucas across the abandoned vehicle lot in season one. She's only accepted once she uses her powers to beat up the bullies and save the boys.
Eleven serves the plots of the men. She is a daughter and lab rat for Dr. Brenner, a replacement daughter for Hopper, a love interest for Mike. When she is first introduced she is a presented as a genderless lab rat, her shaved head and hospital gown, her purpose, as an experiment, her defining characteristic. This is very much evocative of the 1980s which featured young kids with powers that were experimented on, used or groomed as weapons. Anna to the Infinite Power (1983), Firestarter (1984), D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) are all variations of this plot. Season four takes away all the agency Eleven gained (which frankly was not much) but it's okay because it's "necessary" for the fate of the world. It's okay if young women are tortured, controlled by men, imprisoned, as long as it serves a greater good.
While season two hinted at the larger project of Hawkings National Laboratory with the back story of Terry Ives, Eleven/Jane's mother, and Kali/#4, season four shows the full scope of the project. Through flashbacks, used as part of Eleven's superpower reconditioning, the audience learns that Dr. Brenner's project consists of many children, ranging in ages from what look like 4 or 5 year olds up to older teens. The larger group makes sense given how large the Hawkins National Laboratory campus is, it never made sense that just a couple of kids were the focus.
Using children as experiments, from Anna to D.A.R.Y.L. to Max from Dark Angel (2000-2002) and the numerous children who are trained to be killers in the Hitman video game series, as well as the 2007 movie and the 2015 follow up, continues to be a popular trope. But it's disturbing. It's horrific to think that it's okay to torture children, raise them ostracized, traumatize them, as long as it serves a greater good, as long as their serving a larger purpose.
Stranger Things 4 premiered 27 May 2022, days after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. They posted the following card before the first episode of the first season despite the graphic flashbacks throughout the episodes and an incredibly graphic, extended set of scenes in episode seven. And this card is vague. It does not tell you that the "opening scene" which some might find "distressing" involves showing the bodies of these children, scattered throughout Hawkins Lab, dead, lying in large pools of blood.
"The Friendly Orderly" is a white, blond haired, blue-eyed man. His rant, his explanation, his justification, to Eleven of why he is right, justified, righteous, is disturbing but not new. Not surprising. It's familiar. We've heard it before. Women hear it a lot.
"The Lukiškes Prison was constructed in the early 20th century and housed both criminals and political prisoners alike. Following the Nazi occupation of Lithuania in 1941, the GEstapo and Lithuanian Saugumas used the prison as a holding cell for Jewish people picked up from the Vilna Ghetto. Most of htese prisoners were eventually executed in the Ponary massacre."
I'm thinking of all the people that had to approve of the tattooed numbers, filming in a Nazi prison, making that prison a themed place to stay, of all the people who signed off on all this, thought it was a good idea, saw absolutely no problem with this.
Despite replicating sexist, misogynistic tropes, privileging white, cis men's nostalgia to the exclusion of all else, the idea of the Upside Down, the monsters, the production design, was different when it premiered. There is an alternative universe where queer, women, creators of color, are given the chance to revisit this time period and tell stories of growing up and fighting monsters in a way that was different and cool and creative.
The control of the creators, the familiar framing of male creators as "auteurs" meant that was never going to happen. But still, the new and interesting parts were there, even if they were buried in the same tropes, rehashing, awfulness. But even this small creative contribution is undone in Volume I of Stranger Things 4. The opening episodes are boring. They're not new. They're not interesting. There is a point at which the dial of homage and nostalgia is just repetition and copying.
I admit that I always disagreed with categorizing Stranger Things as horror. Fantasy, yes, science fiction, sometimes, but while there are horror elements, I always read it more Gothic than horror. But Volume I, it's like they ran out of ideas and ran down a checklist of what horror should be: serial killer Victor Creel in an asylum? Check. Haunted house? Check. Is it always fun to see Robert Englund even if he looks like a combination of Oedipus and your grandfather? Of course. Is he cheaply used? Absolutely. Was that visit to see Creel in the asylum not even a subtle rip off of Silence of the Lambs? Also yes.
Taken by itself the plot of Stranger Things 4 is just uninspired and not entertaining. No harm done as so many like to say to excuse awful, unnnecessary representation.
But if you accept that the foundation of the show is misogyny and sexism and exclusion, if you add to that the anti-Semitism, the acceptance and normalization of children as sacrifice, then add to that the "wink wink, nod nod" idea that bad guys aren't always bad guys, not if they were treated badly, or were misunderstood, or were funny or charming serial killers like Freddy Kruger and Hannibal Lecter, then the show as a whole is not about nostalgia, or innocence, and the consequences of the story, the choices, the narrative's focus DOES matter.
Put all the pieces together and it is very clear what kind of story Stranger Things wants to tell. It's a misogyntistic story. An anti-Semitic story. It's a narrative that hedges and hides Will's queerness. Silences Barb's feminist reminders to Nancy that this isn't who she is. It's a story that is "deeply saddened" by dead children, but they're serving the greater story, the art, and that's very important. In fact, if something is in the service of the art of white men, that pretty much overrides everything else.
Is Stranger Things also a story about friendship, and the families you make, and surviving, and celebrating the underdog, the nerd? Yes. But in 2022 I do not know if that is enough to make up for all of the above. I think this is the danger of the nostalgia of Stranger Things, we want to recapture the feelings of our youth, we want to believe there were simpler, better times, despite the proliferation of Reagan lawn signs that literally point the way to how we got here. We, and by we I mean white people, I mean Generation X, would like to believe that the apocalypses of our youth can be defeated- whether that's the Terminator, or Joshua, or Russians. In a world gone mad, it's be nice to think that a dedicated group can save the world. For some people a comforting narrative that ignores the truth to construct a fantasy is exactly what they want. I think the cost is too much. I think it has always been too much. I think the price some people have to pay over and over again has never been a good trade off for entertainment.
But it is because white men insisted that their story mattered, to the often violent exclusion of all others, it is because they are the ones with all the power, that the world is currently hostile to anyone not them. Where their vote does not count. Where they do not have control over their bodies. Where they are not safe at church, the grocery store, getting their nails done, going to school, saying no to a man.
That is the danger of Stranger Things' nostalgia, that there is no ill effect to always centering white men's stories, that their stories always deserve to be listened to. That the price of enjoying our Ghostbuster references, and Kate Bush, and arcade games, and summer afternoons riding out bikes, is that we have to agree to ignore the violence, the trauma, the marginalization, the erasure of all the OTHER stories in order to enjoy that small bit. The nostalgia of the series requires the audience to accept a single, narrow truth and ignore or be ignorant of, the wider narrative which cannot exist in the same world as the "Party."
Nostalgia always holds the potential of danger, to glorify a moment, to erase others, in service of a specific narrative. If that narrative is a rose-colored one about summers of your youth, maybe that's okay. If it's a narrative that props up, encourages, gives space to misogyny, violence, trauma, and anti-Semitism, that's not a nostalgia we need. That nostalgia is dangerous, it damages, it does harm.
And ultimately, as with so much media marked "problematic" instead of misogynistic, racist, wrong, it comes down to is whether or not your entertainment worth that price. It's a personal choice. It will have no effect. Studios will not stop giving money to white men creators who tell these stories. Audiences will not stop paying money to be entertained at the expense of women. Fans of a particular demographic will continue to watch, to love, to attack all that dare to criticize, analyze. And the cycle goes on and on.
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