Totally Tubular Thinger Strangs Spectacular!

Hi all, and welcome back to So Desensitized! I took a little break, as you may have noticed, to get myself back together after the Spooktacular took a bit out of me. I figure I might take this opportunity, as a certain horror property is getting a lot of mainstream attention right now, to discuss the show on everyone’s lips right now: beloved eighties nostalgia horror Stranger Things. The final season comes out a little less than a week from now, and, since I haven’t yet written a post only about this show, except for my post about nostalgia and horror, I figured now was as good a time as any. So, without further ado, let’s get on our way to Hawkins, Indiana, 1983-1986.

It took me a good while to get around to watching Stranger Things, partly because I was seven when it first came out, and partly because the more I gushing I hear about a thing, the less likely I am to watch it. Did I hear about nothing but the season four finale the summer before eighth grade? Yes. Did that delay my viewing of it by almost a year out of sheer stubbornness? Also yes. But I digress. I did eventually watch it, and, in a truly unfortunate turn of events, loved it. Because it does live up to the hype. But there are a lot of contributing factors to its popularity that don’t all have to do with how well-written and executed it is, that have kept the hype alive over the three year delay between seasons four and five.

First, the first season of Stranger Things served as a sort of herald for the current horror renaissance. The fact that an original sci-fi horror show set in the eighties immediately became such a smash hit that even now, almost a decade later, it’s still the most anticipated TV release of the year. It is now worth mentioning that it came out during a certain election year, the aftermath of which could be considered the proper beginning of this horror renaissance. It showed that, not only could TV do horror, it could do it well, and make it popular. I’m willing to bet that, just like we point to Psycho and The Exorcist and Halloween as the beginnings of the eighties and nineties’ golden age of horror, forty to fifty years from now, people who are doing that same kind of media analysis about this time will point to Stranger Things. It made horror popular again. It brought fear back to the public eye, just in time for a period of time where people were going to need safe ways to interact with what scared them outside of real time news and current events. Horror booms have begun like this since World War One, and will continue to do so until we’re out of things to be scared of. As good as Stranger Things is - and it’s very good - I really don’t believe it would have taken off as hard and fast as it did if not for the election that happened four months after its release. 

Hard times like the ones that bring in horror booms also create waves of - you guessed it - nostalgia. Even if the eighties weren’t that great because of, oh, everything, it’s still easier to pretend like they were. They were simpler, more quiet, kids were more curious, adults were more around, etc., etc. The generation creating and producing movies and shows is essentially the deciding factor in what said shows and movies will be nostalgic for. And, for the Duffer brothers, it was the eighties. The cassettes, the VHS, video rental stores, big old megamalls with neon lights and fountains and bowling-alley carpets, and, of course, Dungeons and Dragons. 

One of the big sells of Stranger Things was the D&D part of it. The demogorgon was from D&D, and then, as the show went on, more and more D&D villains, characters, and elements were introduced. Vecna himself is even a character from an eighties campaign, with a spin put on him for the show’s specific plot with Eleven and the Hawkins Lab. The thing that Strangers Things did that sets it apart from the absolute tsunami of nostalgia that followed on its heels is it pulled from very specific moments of the eighties. It used the satanic panic and the simultaneous fear and love of D&D, the invention of the megamall, that time your potential stepdad got a digital camera he was obsessed with, New Coke, etc. It didn’t just go ‘man, weren’t the eighties great?’, either. With each of these things came the negative effect of them as well. A lot of stores are shown going out of business with the opening of the Starcourt Mall. New Coke sparks controversy. D&D is seen as the workings of the devil when really, it’s just a math-based fantasy game. Digital cameras really are that cool. Stranger Things pulls largely from Cold War paranoia of the time as well, with the Russians in the mall in Season 3, and, oh, the entire thing being about the government taking advantage of a small community to build a giant facility where they experiment on children. Stranger Things isn’t reminiscent of eighties horror by aesthetic alone. It’s reminiscent of eighties horror because it pulls on widespread cultural fears from when it’s set, as well as the current moment.

The thing about good horror, as is so often discussed on this blog, is that it connects with the audiences’ fears, and, as such, those of the general public at the time of their release. And this is a large part of why classic horror becomes relevant again at the same time as horror renaissances. Think about the current horror renaissance because that’s easy. Not only has there been new horror coming out in spades, but classics are seeing more people start watching them because the same kinds of things that happened twenty, forty, even fifty years ago are happening again. The increased popularity of movies like Jaws and Alien coincides so nicely with their major anniversaries because, historically, the same kinds of things happen, with slight variation, around every two decades or so. Time is a flat circle, the more things change the more they stay the same, etc. etc. If you’re looking at those movies and going ‘wow, it’s so convenient that Texas Chain Saw is turning fifty just as more people are watching it’, it’s not just convenient. It’s indicative of current cultural fears having circled back to being the same or similar to how they were in 1974. Similarly, the fact that people are starting to be nostalgic for movies like The Lost Boys, indicates that something is currently happening to remind them of when The Lost Boys is set. Looking at Halloween and wondering why it’s suddenly gotten so popular again is like looking at Poltergeist, in this digital age, and wondering the same. Everything is reminiscent of something else, because everything has happened before, and horror movies were made subconsciously about it then, too. And Stranger Things is the perfect example of all of it.

A show made specifically to make the viewers nostalgic for a different time that pulls on widespread cultural fears then that line up almost perfectly with current widespread cultural fears because nothing really changes? That came out four months before one of the scariest elections in recent memory, that led to a whole ongoing stretch of time marked by fear and paranoia that, consequently, led to a giant surge in the popularity, creation, and consumption of horror media and a whole bunch of people wishing for a time that was, well, just not the one they were living in? Add to that an all-star cast of actors including the goth queen of the nineties and a bunch of young rising stars that fit their beautifully written roles perfectly and it’s no wonder Stranger Things has persisted so much that, nearly a decade later and three years after the last season, its finale is the most anticipated TV event in the last half decade, with brand collabs that pull heavily on the nostalgia aspect, as well as the legacy built by the characters and worldbuilding. Of course, there are people who want to know why others still care after three years, and the obligatory jokes about how old the kids are now and what they’re doing in high school, but a majority of people are just excited to see that cast light up their screens one last time. And that’s a pretty damn insane impact for a original sci-fi horror show based in D&D with only thirty four episodes aired so far, and eight more on the way.

So, is Stranger Things worth all the hype? Well, from a writing standpoint it is. From an acting standpoint it is. From the production and design aspects as well. And from the media and horror history aspect that we so love here at So Desensitized? It delivers in spades. The Duffer brothers may not have purposefully put all of that on it, but neither did Wes Craven when he made A Nightmare on Elm Street, or Don Mancini when he made Child’s Play. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but horror is always, without exception, indicative of widespread cultural fears of the time when it is made, no matter when it’s set, and how the creators interact with those fears. Stranger Things isn’t just a popular horror show. It’s built a community around itself, brought horror back to the public just when it was needed most, and showed that horror could really be something again.

It’s worth it, all of it. Do we, any of us, have the kind of time to watch the whole season’s worth of episodes that are over an hour long? No, of course not, have you seen the economy? But we’re going to watch it anyway, because we have seen the economy, and everything else too, and seeing Hawkins, Indiana deal with all of it on a larger, more dramatized scale for one last adventure with these characters we’ve come to love is something we need. Just like the eighties needed A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing, to help them interact with these big, unreachable fears, we need Stranger Things. So I, for one, am looking forward to this last adventure. My box of Demogorgon Crunch cereal from the Aldi is ready, right next to the box of Kleenex. I’ll be in Hawkins on Wednesday, and I hope to see you all there.

Thanks for reading, all! I hope all that critical theory doesn’t take away from your genuine enjoyment of this spectacular show when it comes out. Or maybe it’ll increase it, who knows? Either way, I’ll be back to more regular posting soon, with some wintry horror approaching and maybe a little Christmas cheer, too! Happy reading, stay spooky, and don’t let people tell you you can’t like things because they’re too popular! 🎧📼🔪🩸