“Tales I Tell Myself” Vol.15
I love Stranger Things!
1st June 2022
“I love Stranger Things!”
But for entirely different reasons than you
As a kid of the 1980’s I am almost legally obliged to love the uber popular Netflix show “Stranger Things”. Now into its fourth season (and a fifth and final season signed, sealed and to be delivered in a near televisual future), I’ve loved the show from the very beginning six years ago and being as I am mid-way through season four I thought it time to put digital pen to digital parchment and tell you why I so adore this horror/science fiction hybrid. But two words of warning before we proceed (1) Please don’t expect a treatise on the goings on in the American town of Hawkins, Indiana or any kind of in depth analysis and (2) Please be assured there will be next to zero in the way of spoilers. Both of these points actually coalesce as spoilers are lazy and the show itself, like any form of artistic endeavour, is open to a cavalcade of interpretations.
If you haven’t seen “Stranger Things” yet, here’s my brief dissection for you:
Set in the mid 1980’s but with narrative flashbacks to the late 1970’s, a gifted child is turned Manchurian Candidate by a secretive Government programme dealing in the paranormal, whereby their nefarious tampering with human nature results in a splitting of the time/fabric of our reality, creating an existential alternative Matrix named the “Upside Down”. One reality bleeds into the other as the lives of the shiny, happy teenagers of a small American town are juxtaposed with the gothic, bloody horror of a nightmare alternate reality and only a lovingly regarded “Superhero” in the form of a young numbered girl from the Government’s hideous experiments can save the day.
Oh, and in season four they really ratchet up the conspiratorially minded with Russians and allusions to Satanism!
Hooray!
We could take the limited time here to marvel at the performances alone, with Winona Ryder and David Harbour taking both the top billed roles as well as simply never being better despite their respective lengthy and illustrious acting careers. During the four seasons so far a host of adult acting talent has come and maybe gone, including Paul Reiser (Aliens) as part of the Government’s secretive ghoulish experimentation team, Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings) an awkwardly funny boyfriend to Winona Ryder’s central Matriarchal character and particularly so Matthew Modine (Full Metal Jacket) a central strand to the obnoxious goings on at the Government “research facility”. Pleasingly, American comedian Brett Gelman comes to the fore in season four as the customary conspiracy theorist and local investigator and a certain Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street) returns gloriously to our bloodied horror screens.
But the plaudits really lay at the feet of the youngest and constantly recurring character portrayals headed by Millie Bobby Brown as the numbered character “Eleven” or the rather more societal pleasing “Jane Hopper”. From child science project to mid-teen Superhero, Brown is incredible and aided by a host of similarly youthful aged characters. Gaten Matarazzo is a personal favourite with his portrayal of youthful angst and desire to fit in whilst not fitting in, and this can also be applied across the board to his schoolfriends portrayed so well by Finn Wolfhard (in love with the Superhero), Noah Schnapp (son of the series Matriarch), Sadie Sink (another favourite character) and in love with Caleb McLaughlin’s innocent and wide eyed smile magnificence he imbues into his character, before the age gap between young teen and adult is bridged by a trio in and out of a youthful love triangle in the shape of Joe Keery (school cool kid), Natalia Dyer (school achiever) and Charlie Heaton (school outcast and outsider).
“Stranger Things” is soaked in the 1980’s and so much so that no doubt a huge amount of the set dressings and props are missed in the barrage and homages present all over the screen to the time period. Soaked really is the word and it’s to the series creators The Duffer Brothers credit that such attention to detail is presented on screen. Similarly so the musical choices as I could wax lyrical and at length with the multitude of brilliant music choices to compliment the time period. The songs that immediately spring to mind are from Madonna, The Police, The Clash and, as reminisced so beautifully this morning with my beautiful teenage son and absolute target market for this show, “Never Ending Story” by the man who stole every young teenage girls heart in the 1980’s, Limahl. This season alone (and only halfway through) has seen the Twitter story of its time trending with Kate Bush and her wonderful song “Running Up That Hill” and more personally pleasing for your humble narrator, “Pass The Dutchie” by Musical Youth.
And so we conclude with why my love for this show grows stronger with every season. Season 4 hence far has seen the re-emergence of everyone’s favourite childhood nightmare provider, Freddy Krueger, in the shape of iconic actor Robert Englund, as well as huge homages to the horror creation of the 1980’s in the show’s continuing demon from the “Upside Down”. I’m reminded so much of the third film in the series “Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors”, but I also see flashes of “Teen Wolf” and especially “American Beauty” in the opening episode of the season. Throw in allusions to “Harry Potter” and the central character that mustn’t be named, some “Walking Dead” and any horror film you wish to name whereby the young heroes are attacked in their dreams or dream states, and you’ll still be nowhere near the copious amounts of homages and dedications throughout the season(s).
But being the conspiratorially minded contrarian, I always return to the dirty secret and through line of the entire show: Government meddling and deadly interference with mother nature. They are not all present here but pick any number of previously titled “conspiracy theories” linked to Government or Establishment methods of experimentation (Milgram Experiment/Stanford Prison Experiment/Manchurian Candidates/Secret drug experiments, etc) and here you have a large group of individually numbered children being trained in the paranormal whilst obedient to an Authority figure. You have the absolute tunnel vision desire for results that push the children to catastrophic results, and all under the nose of a local populace far too wrapped up in their own lives to see what’s in plain sight in front of them or, preferring to ignore the ugly truth. I have long postulated that we live in an electrical Matrix that confines us all ala “The Truman Show” and whilst this sounds outlandish, it’s not as mind bending as quantum physics literally disproving our entire existence and living within a world that many have said is simply “observational error”. Such nonsense can wait, but I adore the parallels here with a Matrix underworld/Upside Down. Add in a Superhero (singular) to save the world and we have allusions to the very film itself, “The Matrix”, and then, as if us of a conspiratorial mind didn’t have enough to be getting on with, they throw in Russians (that ever present Red Menace our entire lives and now writ large every day) and Satanism!
Or it’s just a wonderfully created homage and love letter to the 1980’s of big hair, shoulder pads, tape cassette recorders and CB Radios, whilst bathed in fantastic musical choices from the era and wrapped in a riddle within an enigma. Either way, “Stranger Things” never disappoints, this particular season is very adult orientated and the horror quotient has been ratcheted up and almost as pleasingly so as the vast quantities of what was once mere pesky conspiracy theory.
“I love Stranger Things!” can be found between pages 330 and 336, as well as a lucky 16th chapter in Act 3 of my March 2024 self-published book “Tales I Tell Myself”.
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
"11" seems reminiscent of some of my superhero characters- but mine wear uniforms and she doesn't.