Investigating Stranger Things: Upside Down in the World of Mainstream Cult Entertainment 3030663132, 9783030663131

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Investigating Stranger Things Upside Down in the World of Mainstream Cult Entertainment Edited by Tracey Mollet · Lindsey Scott

Investigating Stranger Things

Tracey Mollet · Lindsey Scott Editors

Investigating Stranger Things Upside Down in the World of Mainstream Cult Entertainment

Editors Tracey Mollet School of Media and Communication University of Leeds Leeds, UK

Lindsey Scott School of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Suffolk Ipswich, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-66313-1 ISBN 978-3-030-66314-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: RyanJLane Cover design by eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The original version of the book was revised: Final corrections have been updated. The correction to the book is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_13

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank everyone at Palgrave for their time and understanding during this project. We would like to thank the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds and the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Suffolk for providing support for each of us as we navigated the challenges of editing our first book. We would especially like to thank Alison Peirse and Simon Popple for their invaluable feedback on this monograph’s proposal. Thanks also to our wonderful students on COMM1890 Screen Narrative at the University of Leeds and the first cohort on the Stranger Things: Young Adult Fiction module at the University of Suffolk, especially those who came to classes in ST hoodies and T-shirts! Finally, we would like to thank our incredible contributors for continuing to work with us during the challenges of Covid-19. Many of these chapters began as papers at the “Investigating Stranger Things ” conference at the University of Leeds in 2018, but much of the writing was completed during the upheavals of the pandemic. We are so grateful to all of you for staying with us through to completion. The power of Eleven? Absolutely. First and foremost, I would like to thank my co-editor, Tracey Mollet, for inviting me to join her on this project. Tracey, thank you for all your hard work and for making this journey so much fun. It was an absolute pleasure working with you. I would also like to thank my family and friends, especially my parents, Jim and Jean, for their continued love and support, and my sister, Joanna, for everything we shared in the eighties and continue to vii

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share—including Stranger Things ! Finally, I would like to sincerely thank my partner, Richard Davis, for always listening to me, supporting me, and making me laugh. I’ll say it here, one last time. It’s coming! —Lindsey Scott Firstly, I have to thank my excellent co-editor, Lindsey Scott, for being an absolute dream to work with. Lins, I could not have done this without you. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, but through it all, our passion for this show has kept us powering through. It’s been flippin’ brilliant! I also want to thank the Duffer Brothers for making a show that I love with every fibre of my being. I will never tire of its wonderful characters, beautiful aesthetic and incredible soundtrack. Lastly, I want to thank my family and friends for their ongoing support in a very challenging year, but my biggest thanks go to my amazing husband, Neil. Not only are you a fantastic sounding board for my thoughts and ideas on Stranger Things but you have been a pillar of strength this year, supporting me through the stress of not one, but two books (and a house move) during a pandemic. I don’t know what I’d do without you. —Tracey Mollet

Contents

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Stranger Things in a Familiar Land: Mainstream Cult Entertainment in the Age of Netflix Tracey Mollet and Lindsey Scott

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Part I Texts 2

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‘There’s More to Life Than Stupid Boys’: the (Re)Gendering of Cult Teen Drama in Stranger Things 3 Tracey Mollet Tween Terror in the Upside Down: Children, Cult Horror and Stranger Things Lindsey Scott Flirting with the Final Girl: Stranger Things and the Inconsistent Representation of Female Empowerment Karen Sturgeon-Dodsworth ‘Something is Coming …’: the Screenwriter as Dungeon Master of Stranger Things Clem Bastow

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CONTENTS

Part II 6

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‘What Happens to Us in the Future?’: Stranger Things 3 Goes Back to the Future (1985) Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

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Stranger Networks: Ancillary Threats, Cult Nostalgia and Technological Invasions Kerry Dodd

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A Nightmare on Maple Street: Family Dynamics and Suburban Horror in Stranger Things Rose Butler

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Returning Home: Set Design and Visual Storytelling in the Cult World of Stranger Things Jane Barnwell

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Part III 10

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Contexts

Receptions

From 1980s Intertextualities to (Un)Faithful ‘Inter-Textualities’: Stranger Things and Audience-Created Relations Between Media Texts Matt Hills Neverending Story: How Transmedia Narratives Generate Cults Isabel Linton Sponsored Things: Audiences and the Commodification of the Past in Stranger Things Antonella Mascio

Correction to: Investigating Stranger Things Tracey Mollet and Lindsey Scott Index

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Notes on Contributors

Jane Barnwell is Senior Lecturer in Moving Image at the University of Westminster, UK. Her artist films have received commissions from The Unicorn Theatre, The Women’s Library, The Place, Battersea Arts Centre, Chisenhale Gallery, TAP and the Truman Brewery. Her publications include Production Design: Architects of the Screen (Columbia UP, 2004), The Fundamentals of Film Making (AVA, 2008), Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and TV (Bloomsbury, 2017). She is currently working on her next monograph on the design of the home on screen (Palgrave, 2021). Clem Bastow is a screenwriter, cultural critic and tutor in Screenwriting at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a Ph.D. candidate at RMIT, where her work focuses on the intersection between Autistic experience and screenwriting practice in the Hollywood action genre. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Saturday Paper and has written about film and television for edited collections including ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Copyfight (NewSouth Publishing, 2015). Rose Butler is an Associate Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Her wider research interests are in genre film and television and she has written on American Horror Story, Game of Thrones, and Stranger Things. Her recent work has appeared in Horror

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Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear (Routledge, 2017) and Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series (McFarland, 2018). Kerry Dodd completed his Ph.D. at Lancaster University, UK, where he is an Associate Lecturer and Acting Head Editor for Fantastika Journal. His thesis, ‘The Archaeological Weird: Excavating the Non-human,’ examines the intersection between archaeology and Weird fiction to explore the cultural production of the artefact encounter and how archaeological framings can offer a re-conceptualisation of object ontology through the Weird. His research spans the fields of science fiction, cosmic horror, cyberpunk, the Gothic, and glitch aesthetics. Matt Hills is Professor of Media and Film at the University of Huddersfield, UK, and co-Director of the Centre for Participatory Culture based there. He is the author of six monographs beginning with Fan Cultures (2002) and including The Pleasures of Horror (2005) and Triumph of a Time Lord (2010). He has also edited and co-edited essay collections, the most recent of which is Transatlantic Television Drama (Oxford University Press, 2019). Isabel Linton is a Ph.D. Candidate at Bangor University in the school of Languages, Literatures, Linguistics and Media, and is conducting practice-based research in Transmedia storytelling. Her other research interests include screenwriting, paratexts, and game studies, and she has taught modules on creative writing, film, and game design. Linton was on the organising committee for the MeCCSA PGN 2019 conference and has also published work on Vigilant Audiences. Antonella Mascio is Associate Professor at Bologna University, Italy, in the Department of Political and Social Sciences. Her research interests are in TV series and audiences, with particular attention to online discussion spaces (forums and online social networks). She has published many articles in scientific journals and books. Her more recent works are Fashion Convergence with Junji Tsuchiya (ZMJ, 2015), Virtuali Comunità (Guerini e Associati, 2008), Visioni di moda (Franco Angeli, 2008) and Fashion Games (Franco Angeli, 2012). Tracey Mollet is a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the author of Cartoons in Hard Times: The Animated Shorts of Disney and Warner Brothers in Depression and War

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1932–1945 (2017) and A Cultural History of the Disney Fairy Tale: Once Upon an American Dream (2020). She has published widely on American popular culture, including several articles and chapters on Stranger Things, intertextuality, nostalgia, and geek masculinity. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She is a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2019). She has published widely on socio-cultural history, subjectivity and postmodernism in film studies, American studies, horror studies, and popular culture. She is currently writing a monograph on the ‘long 1980s’ onscreen. Lindsey Scott is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Suffolk, UK, where she teaches adaptation studies, children’s literature, and gothic horror in young adult fiction. Her work has appeared in edited collections and journals including Literature/Film Quarterly, Cinephile and Shakespeare Survey. She is currently writing on horror in children’s literature and popular culture. Karen Sturgeon-Dodsworth is a part-time lecturer in English Studies at Northumbria University, UK.

CHAPTER 1

Stranger Things in a Familiar Land: Mainstream Cult Entertainment in the Age of Netflix Tracey Mollet and Lindsey Scott

The Duffer Brothers’ Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–) is one of the biggest shows in the world at the time of writing. Centred around the adventures of a group of tweenagers fighting monsters in their small suburban town, the show has attracted substantial critical acclaim for its postmodern nostalgic ‘Steven Spielberg meets Stephen King storytelling’ (Bishop et al. 2017) and spawned comic books, video games, clothing lines, and even theme park attractions (Sollosi 2018). Critical and scholarly works on Stranger Things have focused primarily on the show’s deployment of nostalgia (Wetmore et al. 2018; Baker et al. 2019; Pallister 2019). Set in the 1980s, the series lovingly recreates the decade’s

T. Mollet (B) School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. Scott School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_1

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aesthetic for a streaming service that ‘fuels and is fuelled by audience desire for nostalgic content’ (Pallister 2019, 1). However, while many Generation X viewers will be of an age to remember the political, cultural and technological landmarks the show references, such as Reagan’s presidency, landline telephones, walkie talkies and VCRs, equally, much of the show’s audience are Millennials and Generation Z, growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s. Other fans, as several essays within this collection attest, are as young as the show’s tween protagonists. This broad appeal across generational cohorts is part of the show’s phenomenal success and illuminates the importance of reading the present social, cultural, political and media climate in our critical investigations of Stranger Things. In recent years, scholars have come to terms with the substantial impact of streaming on television’s form, structure and fan cultures (Dunleavy 2017; Jenner 2018; Hills et al. 2019; Johnson 2019; Lobato 2019). While each of these works agrees that platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and premium channels such as HBO use serial dramas like Stranger Things to strengthen their brands, what is less clear is the ways in which this new era of television is affecting our understanding of cult media narratives. Netflix, in particular, utilises ‘binge watching’ as the dominant narrative format (Brunsdon 2010; McCormick 2016; Jenner 2018), attracting what Baker has termed the ‘intensely engaged binge viewer’ (2017, 35). Such viewing practice was traditionally associated with the cult fan audiences of the 1990s, who bought their favourite shows on VCR or DVD in order to facilitate binge re-watching with minimal interruption, engaging with their favourite programmes in a ‘more user and time intensive way’ (Marshall 2009, 41). These fans also engaged with cult texts through the purchase of merchandise and by connecting with one another through fan communities (Johnson 2010; Hills 2010). Such immersion within cult narratives also draws parallels with other highly prominent features of the current popular media landscape. For example, it is surely no coincidence that Stranger Things ’ popularity runs parallel with the astronomical mainstream success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - a transmedial geekdom of science fiction and fantasy storytelling that includes films, comic books, television programmes and an extensive array of merchandise (Flanagan et al. 2016; Salter and Blodgett 2017; Mollet 2019). As Robson (2010) has argued, this is the now mainstream world of cult media. It is at the epicentre of Stranger Things ’ intertextual network and will therefore be the focus of this collection.

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From Margins to Mainstream: Quality and Cult Television Over the last decade, media scholars have acknowledged the ways in which cult fans ‘have become one niche market amongst others to be surveyed, understood, and catered for’ in the contemporary television marketplace (Hills 2010, 69). In the 1990s, cult television and quality television developed concurrently, as networks began to move away from a mass viewership and towards a well-educated, affluent audience that advertisers were keen to ‘pay the highest rates to address’ (Jancovich and Lyons 2003, 3). Initially, cult television was linked to the fantastical genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror - known collectively as ‘telefantasy’ - and epitomised in texts such as Twin Peaks (1990–1991), The X Files (1993–2002) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). Discerning fans of these series could position themselves outside of the mainstream, as their shows’ narrative depth and complexity demanded a level of textual attentiveness to understand and appreciate the storylines and hyperdiegeses (Hills 2002). Networks began to recognise the value and appeal of the audience that such narratives attracted and abandoned so-called cult genres, seeking to ‘produce programmes whose cult status is linked to quality’ (Brown 2010, 157). Fox and ABC were quick to capitalise on this new ‘mainstream cult’ audience with hugely successful shows such as 24 (2001–2010), Lost (2004–2010) and Heroes (2006–2010). These series attracted both a mass audience and had a ‘narrow appeal to cult viewers who were willing to invest the effort into the decoding process’ (Mittell 2015, 53). Often transgeneric (Stein 2005) in nature, they created broader appeal in terms of the generational and gendered make-up of the audience while drawing on ‘discourses of authorship, sophistication, and quirkiness’ traditionally linked to telefantasy cult TV (Hills 2010, 73). This shift in the televisual landscape coincided with the rise of the ‘cult blockbuster’ (Hills 2010, 71) in twenty-first-century film and academic discussions on so-called cinematic television (McCabe and Akass 2007; Mills 2013). Cult film became more mainstream with blockbuster series such as Harry Potter (2001–2011), The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) being ‘based on source materials that have already developed cult followings’ (Mathijs and Sexton 2011, 217). As the demand for cult/quality TV drama also increased, audiences became willing to pay an additional fee to watch a different kind of show with

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an ‘enhanced visual style’ (Nelson 2007, 11). Such a remit was quickly taken up by HBO, who sought to re-characterise the televisual experience through its dedication to producing quality television with ‘ensemble casting, mobile camera work, densely packed visual fields, accelerated pace and narrative velocity’ (Cardwell 2007, 24). Shows such as The Sopranos (1999–2007), Six Feet Under (2001–2005), The Wire (2002– 2008) and Boardwalk Empire (2010–2014) looked to cinema for their aesthetic and narrative inspirations and flaunted their ability to show more risqué and explicit content than shows on broadcast networks. Indeed, Trisha Dunleavy (2017) has drawn attention to the fact that many of the most successful television shows of the twenty-first century have been produced on non-broadcast networks, such as Breaking Bad (2008–2013) and Game of Thrones (2011–2019). These shows, airing on AMC and HBO respectively, borrow heavily from the realm of cult media but are equally recognisable as quality, ‘cinematic’ television, with their combined narrative depth, ensemble casts, location shooting, subversive characters, and, in the case of Game of Thrones , supernatural elements. With Game of Thrones alone averaging forty-four million viewers per episode for its final season (Pallotta 2019), these shows attracted immense audience numbers, proving their appeal beyond a niche cult fandom. Taking such examples as a basis for comparison, Stranger Things is easily classifiable as a work of mainstream cult. While it is an original story, the show is built upon a heavy intertextual foundation of well-known 1970s and 1980s movies and TV shows (Mathijs and Sexton 2019). In this way, Stranger Things actively blurs the lines between film and television and offers considerable scope for observing how the aesthetic, narrative and audience qualities of the televisual text are evolving in the second decade of the twenty-first century, where, as Jenner contends, ‘the understanding of clearly differentiated media forms becomes obsolete’ (2016, 269).

Stranger Things: The Netflix Effect Stranger Things was rejected by 20–30 networks before being accepted by Netflix (Dunleavy 2017), a platform which, as many scholars have underlined, positions itself in opposition to mainstream television through its nonlinear format (Lotz 2017, 2; Wayne 2018, 726). Netflix began online streaming in 2007 and gradually moved into original content creation with award-winning series such as Orange is the New Black (2013–2019)

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and House of Cards (2013–2018) and the revived cult comedy, Arrested Development (2003–2019). Netflix seems a natural home for the cult television series, as the company’s CEO confirms that the platform ‘aims to produce series that are not already on television, or would be difficult to put on television’ (Sarandos cited in Landau 2016, 15). This gives the narratives the ‘offbeat’ or ‘edgy’ qualities one would associate with cult texts. In this way, Netflix puts itself in direct competition with subscription channels such as HBO, but sets itself apart through the kind of viewing experience offered to its audiences. It encourages customers ‘to think of its products as best experienced in their overall epic duration’, as ‘one grand, expansive […] experience’ (Baker 2017, 40–44). With this, the platform offers viewers more autonomy over content and satisfies their desire for a ‘pure’ text that is ‘distinctly not part of the television flow’ (Jenner 2016, 266). While it is true that Netflix narratives actively promote immersive binge viewing as the ‘correct’ way for audiences to engage with their shows (McCormick 2016), Stranger Things is an excellent example of the sheer extremity of popular media engagement. More than eight-hundred-thousand viewers watched the third series’ eight-hour content in a single day (Porter 2019). Stranger Things thus demonstrates how such cult, quality shows are transforming audience viewing habits, inviting us to question the role of these streaming platforms in the contemporary entertainment experience. While Jenner claims that the move of platforms such as Amazon Prime and Netflix into original content production signals a move away from the television set and perhaps an age of television that could be labelled as ‘TV IV’ (2018), Johnson argues that these changes can be better understood as ‘a period in which the TV is transformed into an internet connected device that carries […] its associations with viewing linear television schedules and newer associations with on demand content’ (2019, 17). However, Johnson’s focus on the recentralisation of the television in an experience of Netflix does not adequately serve Stranger Things ’ central premise and characterisation. The Duffer Brothers described the first series as an ‘eight hour summer movie’ (Ross Duffer, cited in Chaney 2016), one that draws heavily from film for its inspiration and invites binge watchers to indulge in an epic eight or nine-hour cinematic viewing experience. In this way, as Biesen observes, shows such as Stranger Things ‘shift conventional modes of television to look more like cinema in a home viewing environment’ (2019, 48). And yet, Stranger Things is not a cult film. Furthermore, it labels its episodes as chapters, showing its relationship to literature as opposed

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to television (McCormick 2016; Wildermuth 2019). This blurring of media boundaries is accompanied by a freer delineation in terms of the show’s audiences. Although often considered a cult show for adults, Stranger Things features teenagers and focuses most intensely on the lives and experiences of its tween protagonists, thus attracting audiences across a diverse range of age groups and devising its narrative strategies accordingly to manage differing viewer expectations. While the contemporaneous development of quality and cult television generated a common ‘narrative complexity’ (Mittell 2015, 3), Stranger Things feels oddly regressive in its relative abandonment of complicated storytelling (Siranni 2019). It also frequently uses flashbacks to remind viewers of important moments in its plotting, a technique that is rarely utilised in postmodern television, as many cult television shows such as Game of Thrones simply demand that audiences pay attention to the show to fully comprehend its complex narrative structure. Such developments suggest that the series works consciously to move beyond a niche adult market, attracting and securing the attention of younger audiences as the next generation of Netflix subscribers. Despite its apparent simplicity, Stranger Things still contains the narrative depth and complexity one would expect from a cult television series. It exhibits an inherent awareness of the way in which its platform of release opens the show to the extensive analysis expected from a cult fandom (Dunleavy 2017). Netflix’s interface actively encourages audiences to engage with its texts in this way, demanding that viewers ‘watch it again’ to gain further understandings of its narrative, facilitating the repeat viewing one would expect of a TV show that had the potential to ‘become’ cult (Klinger 2010). However, from the airing of its first series, Stranger Things was already characterised as a cult hit. This did not happen over a substantial time period or through repetition (Hills 2004; Mathijs and Sexton 2011), but almost instantly. Its avid visual fandom was facilitated by the ease with which fans could communicate online and the way in which Netflix ‘cuts through modern popular culture’s dense clutter’ (Barker and Wiatrowski 2017, 2). It litters its narrative and associated paratexts with intertextual references for Easter-egg hunting by its binge-watching followers (Mollet 2019). This is the complex process through which the show activates its nostalgia—one which has since been used in other Netflix originals such as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020). It provides, as Tiffee and Filoteo observe, ‘a sentimental orientation external to the text for the audience to engage performatively’

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(2020, 337), as is often expected with cult fandoms. Stranger Things ’ references to 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s cult film and television serve to awaken previously formed fandoms of these source texts. Yet, as many have observed, the show’s original central storyline and updated gender and racial politics attract new audiences (Wetmore 2018; Stephan 2019). Therefore, Stranger Things is a fine example of how cult texts are facilitated by the contemporary age of television, in which notions of medium specificity and audience engagement are fundamentally transformed.

Investigating Stranger Things The essays within this collection explore Stranger Things ’ narrative, nostalgia, transmediality and fandoms. It has been structured to consider the different ways in which the show challenges and confirms our preconceived notions of a cult text by examining the series’ textual features, contextual criticisms and forms of audience engagement. The first section, based upon texts, examines the show’s exploration of cult characters, genres and narratives. In general, scholars are in agreement as to the key textual characteristics of cult narratives in television and film. Cult narratives are usually (but not always) situated within the genres of fantasy, horror and science fiction, with all of their aesthetic preconditions (Hills 2002, 2004; Mathijs and Mendik 2008; Abbott 2010). Indeed, the genre of cult teen drama, which became popular around the turn of the twenty-first century, was often transgeneric in nature (Ross and Stein 2008), with the text’s teen lead juggling the world of magic and monsters with their journey into adolescence (Moseley 2001; Freedman 2003; Battis 2011). These texts also often revolve around subversive or complex characters (Mathijs and Sexton, 2011) and place typical people in atypical situations (Kinkade and Katovich 1992), giving the narrative ‘offbeat qualities’ (Haslop 2019). Stranger Things unquestionably meets this textual criteria, as the narrative contains elements of horror, science fiction, fantasy, tween and teen drama (Mollet 2019) and places its leads in the middle of the Spielberg-inspired ‘suburban fantastic’ (McFadzean 2019, 3). Tracey Mollet’s opening chapter, ‘“There’s More to Life Than Stupid Boys”: the Re(Gendering) of Cult Teen Drama in Stranger Things 3’, locates the series within this important subgenre to examine how its third season challenges traditional gendered structures operating within teen television narratives. Focusing on the relationships between its young

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protagonists, Mollet argues that the series redefines teen girl subjectivity and adolescent masculinity, breaking away from the conservative tendencies of twenty-first-century teen texts and decentralising heteronormativity through its sensitive handling of queer adolescence. Lindsey Scott’s chapter, ‘Tween Terror in the Upside Down: Children, Cult Horror and Stranger Things ’, continues this exploration of youth culture in cult genres, examining the relationship between Stranger Things ’ tween protagonists and the show’s horror content. Investigating the show’s reception as a cult/adult text and its garnering of a tween audience, Scott argues that the series expands the parameters of youth horror in the age of streaming platforms while deconstructing the image of the monstrous child often found in pedophobic cult horror texts. In ‘Flirting with the Final Girl: Stranger Things and the Inconsistent Representation of Female Empowerment’, Karen Sturgeon-Dodsworth extends the discussion of horror conventions to consider Carol Clover’s renowned concept of the Final Girl and its various incarnations in Stranger Things. Focusing her reading of the show’s female characters on the liminalities that shape and define gender representation in the series, Sturgeon-Dodsworth challenges critical interpretations of Stranger Things as reinscribing traditional, passive femininities, arguing instead that the characters’ complexities, aligned with cult horror’s subversive potential, allow for a more distinctive reworking of female empowerment. In the final chapter of this section, ‘“Something is Coming...”: the Screenwriter as Dungeon Master of Stranger Things ’, Clem Bastow shifts the collection’s examination of texts to explore the tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, demonstrating how this intertext furthers the show’s cult appeal and its hyper-postmodern approach to serial storytelling. Bastow’s close examination of the series reveals how Dungeons & Dragons serves the ‘eight-hour-movie’ structure of Stranger Things, initiating viewers as campaign members and repositioning Netflix’s promoted practice of binge-viewing as ‘dungeon crawl’. The second section of the book centres its analyses on contexts, focusing on how Stranger Things critiques and explores social, cultural and political contexts, both in the 1980s and the twenty-first century. Cult texts, from Eco’s original study of Casablanca (1995) to Back to the Future’s (1985) throwback to the 1950s (Mathijs and Mendik 2008), often have a ‘nostalgic appeal’ (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, ix) and yearn for an idealised past. Nostalgia and the power of home have even been the focus of contemporary quality television dramas. Niemeyer

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and Wentz (2014, 132) have noted, for example, that Game of Thrones fosters a desire within its characters to return home - and yet, much like the often rose-tinted gaze of nostalgia, this return is shown to be impossible. The Walking Dead (2010–) shows humans fighting for their right to have a place to belong following the zombie apocalypse, while Homeland (2011–2020) interrogates what the home and homeland can truly mean and what must be sacrificed in order to preserve it. But nostalgia often highlights more about the context of our nostalgic reflection than of the supposed ‘golden age’ we are looking back to (Davis 1979; Hamilton et al. 2014). While much of the current scholarship on Stranger Things has focused on its handling of nostalgia (Butler 2017; Richardson and Romero 2018; Siranni 2019; Baker et al. 2019; Hassler-Forest 2020), what has been less clear from this work has been the implications of this nostalgia in the current media environment. What is of particular interest for Stranger Things is the way that the texts of the 1980s have a cultural resonance for the contemporary media audience (Wetmore 2018). Klinger notes that while audiences are ‘now in a position to be informed of the political aspects of the 1980s, they prefer to remember the less political aspects of these years’ with the past serving as an ‘antidote to social complexity’ (2006, 178). For Lizardi, this process is fraught with negative consequences, as ‘a past defined by surface media texts is a past commodified and uncritical’ (2015, 18). Such a window into history serves the dominant forces within the media industry, who ‘see financial gain in making reimagined content available’ (2017, 4). However, there is nothing uncritical about the phenomenon of nostalgia. Smith reminds us that, on the contrary, it is an ‘ideologically charged construct’ (2000, 515). Scholars look upon nostalgia as a ‘basis for renewal’ and restoration (Pickering and Keightley 2006; Boym 2001) or even as a way to ‘rewrite history’ in a more ‘user friendly way’ (Kalinina 2016, 10). Cult media scholars have also drawn attention to the ways in which nostalgic texts question traditional structures of authority, reflect the strains of society (Kinkade and Katovich 1992) and expose cultural sensitivities (Mathijs and Mendik 2008, 9). In her chapter, ‘“What Happens to Us in the Future?”: Stranger Things 3 Goes Back to the Future (1985)’, Sorcha Ní Fhlainn examines the intertextual relationship between Stranger Things and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future to show how the series’ nostalgia is rooted in a deep desire for change in the current climate of instability and uncertainty. For Fhlainn, references to the 1980s go beyond homage and

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playful humour, as the series initiates a return to a decade that apparently never ended, exposing the cultural and political legacy which continues to be felt through the trappings of contemporary neoliberalism. Kerry Dodd’s chapter, ‘Stranger Networks: Ancillary Threats, Cult Nostalgia and Technological Invasions’, also challenges the notion of returning to an idealised past, arguing that the show’s recognisably contemporary concerns are centred upon current anxieties over network interaction. Reading the ‘absent presence’ of the Upside Down as a parallel for contemporary interactions with networked systems, Dodd explores the aestheticisation of error in Stranger Things to reveal how cultural citation forms an integral part of addressing the problematic visualisation of interconnectivity. Moving from technological connectivity to problematic connections within the family, Rose Butler’s chapter, ‘A Nightmare on Maple Street: Family Dynamics and Suburban Horror in Stranger Things ’ explores how the series’ intertextual links to transgressive cult texts expose suburban Americana as a place of fear, masquerading beneath a pleasant façade. Centring her analysis on Wes Craven’s horror films and the conservative values championed by Reaganite politics, Butler demonstrates how Stranger Things critiques the traditional nuclear family unit in the 1980s which traps adolescents and breeds repression, trauma and violence. In the section’s final chapter, ‘Returning Home: Set Design and Visual Storytelling in the Cult World of Stranger Things ’, Jane Barnwell relocates family, belonging, and a nostalgic longing for ‘home’ in cult texts to a practical examination of the set design of Stranger Things. Focusing specifically on the Byers home, Barnwell combines the work of cultural criticism with the production designer’s Visual Concept, revealing how fluidity and malleable borders in this family environment reflect an ability to manipulate and transgress arbitrary boundaries of social convention. As there are currently no substantial studies of Stranger Things ’ audiences in existing scholarship, the third and final section of the collection explores the show’s extensive fan base and its practices. Most scholars of cult media agree that texts are classified as ‘cult’ at the site of consumption (Jancovich et al. 2003), making their site of reception of particular importance. Cult texts spawn paratexts to increase audience engagement across media platforms (Abbott 2010; Gray 2010). They incite discussion online (Hills 2004) and provoke audiences to write fan fiction, create videos and debate the nature of the canon narrative (Sandvoss 2005). Such fan behaviour underlines the fact that cult media texts cater to ‘intensive,

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interpretative audience practices’ (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, xvi). However, we have entered a new era of quality television (McCabe and Akass 2007; Nelson 2007) and narrative complexity (Mittell 2015, 3) where audience behaviour previously associated solely with cult fandom has become more commonplace. Netflix not only markets shows such as Stranger Things as ‘must watch and must complete’ events (Baker 2017, 31), but, as Johnson has observed, the streaming platform ‘works hard to construct a sense of immediacy around its content’ (2019, 125). In and of itself, this helps to ‘create the rarity and exclusivity’ that Jancovich and Hunt claim is central to cult television status (2004, 31). This has especially been the case for Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 3, which were both set during and released to ‘coincide with US national holidays and weekends’ (Jenner 2018, 119). Its audiences gathered online, using hashtags and gifs, ‘[transcending] physical boundaries’ and ‘[watching] TV together’ (Grandinetti 2017, 17). This is further evidence of the mainstreaming of cult audience practices. Matt Hills’ chapter, ‘From 1980s Intertextualities to (Un)faithful ‘Inter-Textualities’: Stranger Things and Audience-Created Relations Between Media Texts’, moves away from critical work on Stranger Things ’ intertextuality to explore what Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott term ‘inter-textuality’ (1987), focusing on the textual connections formed and articulated by audiences. By addressing ‘audience-createdrelationalities’ (ACR) between Stranger Things and other media, Hills prioritises fans’ communal repositionings of the show, evidencing how viewers’ ‘unfaithful’ readings can often evade brand reinforcement. Isabel Linton’s chapter, ‘Neverending Story: How Transmedia Narratives Generate Cults’, investigates fan engagement across a broad range of the series’ transmedial narratives, including ‘classic’ paratexts, cast featurettes, ‘commercial’ paratexts and fan-generated content. By exploring the show’s expansive paratextual elements, Linton demonstrates how the never-ending story of Stranger Things closes the gap between awaited seasons, strengthening a sense of community for the series’ online fans. Finally, Antonella Mascio’s chapter, ‘Sponsored Things: Audiences and the Commodification of the Past in Stranger Things ’, opens up discussions of fan practices to consider how the show’s nostalgia aesthetics have initiated a significant revival of pop texts, fashion and music from the 1980s. As Mascio’s own audience research attests, Stranger Things ’ commodification of the past attracts fans across generational cohorts, creating endless marketing opportunities as the show’s third season

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expands its brand partnerships and nostalgia is configured as a historically embedded consumer cultural phenomenon. As a branded Netflix Original with built-in cult potential and an extraordinary following across the world, Stranger Things is a highly significant case study for analysing the texts, contexts and reception sites of contemporary mainstream cult media, and for examining the ways in which such forms of entertainment content are served by the new age of television.

Works Cited Abbott, Stacey. Ed. 2010. The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. Arrested Development. 2003–. United States: Fox & Netflix. Back to the Future. 1985. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. United States: Universal. Barker, Cory, and Myc Wiatrowski. Eds. 2017. The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery and Instant Access. Jefferson: McFarland. Baker, Djoymi. 2017. ‘Terms of Excess: Binge-Viewing as Epic Viewing in the Netflix Era.’ In The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery and Instant Access, edited by Cory Barker and Myc Wiatrowski, 31– 54. Jefferson: McFarland. Baker, Lucy, Amanda Howell, and Rebecca Kumar. Eds. 2019. ‘Beyond Nostalgia: Discomfort and Difference in Stranger Things ’. Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/ vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. Battis, Jes. Ed. 2011. Supernatural Youth: The Rise of the Teen Hero in Literature and Popular Culture. Lanham: Lexington. Biesen, Sheri Chinen. 2019. ‘Binge Watching the Past: Netflix’s Changing Cinematic Nostalgia from Classic Films to Long Form Original Programmes.’ In Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand, edited by Kathryn Pallister, 41–56. Lanham: Lexington Books. Bishop, Bryan, Megan Farokhmanesh, Chaim Gartenberg, and Thu Ong. 2017. ‘Question Club: Is Stranger Things Season 2 a Worthy Sequel to the Original?’ The Verge. 31 October. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/ 10/31/16575414/stranger-things-season-2-duffer-brothers-netflix. Accessed 16 October 2020. Boardwalk Empire. 2010–2014. United States: HBO. Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Breaking Bad. 2008–2013. United States: AMC. Brown, Simon. 2010. ‘Cult Channels: Showtime, FX, and Cult TV.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 155–162. London: I.B. Tauris.

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Brunsdon, Charlotte. 2010. ‘Bingeing on Box-Sets: The National and the Digital in Television Crime Drama.’ In Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context, edited by Jostein Gripsrud, 63–75. London: Routledge. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 1997–2003. United States: WB & UPN. Butler, Rose. 2017. ‘“Welcome to the Upside Down”: Nostalgia and Cultural Fears in Stranger Things.’ In Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear, edited by Kimberly Jackson and Linda Belau, 187–201. London: Routledge. Cardwell, Sarah. 2007. ‘Is Quality Television Any Good? Generic Distinctions, Evaluations and the Troubling Matter of Critical Judgement.’ In Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, 19–34. London: I.B. Tauris. Casablanca. 1942. Directed by Michael Curtiz. United States: Warner Brothers. Chaney, Jen. 2016. ‘Stranger Things ’ Duffer Brothers on ‘80s Cinema, Fighting Over Kid Actors, and How They Cast Winona Ryder.’ Vulture. 15 July. Available at: https://www.vulture.com/2016/07/stranger-things-duffer-brotherswinona-ryder-kid-actors.html. Accessed 16 October 2020. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. 2018–2020. United States: Netflix. Davis, Fred. 1979. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. New York: Free Press. Dunleavy, Tricia. 2017. Complex Serial Drama and Multi-Platform Television. London: Taylor and Francis. Flanagan, Martin, Andy Livingstone, and Mike McKenny. Eds. 2016. The Marvel Studios Phenomenon: Inside a Transmedia Universe. New York: Bloomsbury. Freedman, Eric. 2003. ‘Television, Horror and Everyday Life in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’ In The Contemporary Television Series, edited by Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon, 159–180. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Game of Thrones. 2011–2019. United States: HBO. Grandinetti, Justin. 2017. ‘From Primetime to Anytime: Streaming Video, Temporality and the Future of Communal Television.’ In The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media: Digital Delivery and Instant Access, edited by Cory Barker and Myc Wiatrowski, 11–30. Jefferson: McFarland. Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Television Entertainment. London: Routledge. Gwenllian-Jones, Sara, and Roberta Pearson. Eds. 2004. Cult Television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hamilton, Kathy, Sarah Edwards, Faye Hammill, Beverly Wagner, and Juliette Wilson. 2014. ‘Nostalgia in the Twenty-First Century.’ Consumption Markets and Culture 17 (2): 101–104. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One. Directed by David Yates. United States: Warner Brothers.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two. Directed by David Yates. United States: Warner Brothers. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Directed by David Yates. United States: Warner Brothers. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Directed by David Yates. United States: Warner Brothers. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. 2001. Directed by Chris Columbus. United States: Warner Brothers. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. 2002. Directed by Chris Columbus. United States: Warner Brothers. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. 2004. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. United States: Warner Brothers. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 2005. Directed by Mike Newell. United States: Warner Brothers. Haslop, Craig. 2019. ‘“Do You Wanna Come with Me?”: The Role of the Star Image as Brand for the Commodification of Cult in Mainstream Telefantasy.’ Celebrity Studies 12 (1): 36–50. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2020. ‘“When You Get There, You Will Already Be There”: Stranger Things, Twin Peaks and the Nostalgia Industry.’ Science Fiction Film and Television 13 (2): 175–197. Heroes. 2006–2010. United States: NBC. Hills, Matt. 2010. ‘Mainstream Cult.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 67–73. London: I.B. Tauris. Hills, Matt. 2004. ‘Defining Cult TV: Texts, Inter-Texts and Fan Audiences.’ In The Television Studies Reader, edited by Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill, 509–523. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt, Michele Hilmes, and Roberta Pearson. Eds. 2019. Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs and Fans. New York: Oxford University Press. The Hobbit. 2012–2014. Directed by Peter Jackson. United States: New Line Cinema. Homeland. 2011–2020. United States: Showtime. House of Cards. 2013–2018. United States: Netflix. Jancovich, Marc, and James Lyons. Eds. 2003. Quality Popular Television. London: BFI. Jancovich, Marc, and Nathan Hunt. 2004. ‘The Mainstream, Distinction and Cult TV.’ In Cult Television, edited by Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Roberta Pearson, 27–44. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jenner, Mareike. 2018. Netflix and the Reinvention of Television. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Jenner, Mareike. 2016. ‘Is This TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and Binge-Watching.’ New Media and Society 18 (2): 257–283. Johnson, Cathy. 2010. ‘Cult TV and the Television Industry.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 135–147. London: I. B. Tauris. Johnson, Cathy. 2019. Online TV . London: Routledge. Kalinina, Ekatarina. 2016. ‘What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Media and Nostalgia?’ Medien & Zeit, 31 (4): 6–15. Kinkade, Patrick, and Michael Katovich. 1992. ‘Toward a Sociology of Cult Films.’ The Sociology Quarterly 33 (2): 191–209. Klinger, Barbara. 2006. Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies and the Home. Berkeley: University of California Press. Klinger, Barbara. 2010. ‘Becoming Cult: The Big Lebowski: Replay Culture and Male Fans.’ Screen 51 (1): 1–20. Landau, Neil. 2016. TV Outside the Box: Trailblazing in the Digital Television Revolution. New York: Focal Press. Lizardi, Ryan. 2015. Mediated Nostalgia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media. Lanham: Lexington. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: New York University Press. The Lord of the Rings. 2001–2003. Directed by Peter Jackson. United States: New Line Cinema. Lost. 2004–2010. United States: ABC. Lotz, Amanda D. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet Distributed Television. Ann Arbor: Maize Books. Marshall, P. David. 2009. ‘Screens: Television’s Dispersed Broadcast.’ In Television Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era, edited by Graeme Turner and Jinner Tay, 41–50. London: Routledge. Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. Eds. 2019. The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema. London: Routledge. Mathijs, Ernest, and Xavier Mendik. Eds. 2008. The Cult Film Reader. Maidenhead: Open University Press. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Eds. 2007. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I. B. Tauris. McCormick, Casey. 2016. ‘“Forward Is the Battle Cry”: Binge-Viewing Netflix’s House of Cards.’ In The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, edited by Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey, 101–116. New York: Bloomsbury. McDonald, Kevin, and Daniel Smith-Rowsey. Eds. 2016. The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

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McFadzean, Angus. 2019. Suburban Fantastic Cinema: Growing Up in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Wallflower. Mills, Brett. 2013. ‘What Does It Mean to Call Television Cinematic?’ In Television Aesthetics and Style, edited by Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock, 57–66. New York: Bloomsbury. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Mollet, Tracey. 2019. ‘Looking Through the Upside Down: HyperPostmodernism and Trans- Mediality in Stranger Things.’ Journal of Popular Television 7 (1): 57–77. Moseley, Rachel. 2001. ‘Teen Drama.’ In The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber, 38–42. London: BFI Publishing. Niemeyer, Katherina, and Daniela Wentz. 2014. ‘Nostalgia Is Not What It Used To Be: Serial Nostalgia and Nostalgic Television Series.’ In Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future, edited by Katharina Niemeyer, 129–138. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nelson, Robin. 2007. State of Play: Contemporary ‘High End’ TV Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Orange is the New Black. 2013–2019. United States: Netflix. Pallister, Kathryn. Ed. 2019. Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand. Lanham: Lexington Books. Pallotta, Frank. 2019. ‘Game of Thrones Finale Sets New Viewership Record.’ CNN Business. 20 May. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/ 20/media/game-of-thrones-finale-ratings/index.html. Accessed 16 October 2020. Pickering, Michael, and Emily Keightley. 2006. ‘The Modalities of Nostalgia’. Current Sociology 54 (6): 919–941. Porter, Rick. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3 Sets Netflix Viewing Record for Series.’ Hollywood Reporter. 16 October. Available at: https://www.hollywoodrep orter.com/live-feed/stranger-things-sets-netflix-viewing-record-series-124 8225. Accessed 16 October 2020. Richardson, Todd, and Troy Romero. 2018. ‘Familiar Things: Stranger Things, Adolescence and Nostalgia.’ PsyArt 22: 95–104. Robson, Hillary. 2010. ‘Television and the Cult Audience: A Primer.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 209–220. London: I.B. Tauris. Ross, Sharon Marie, and Louisa Ellen Stein. Eds. 2008. Teen Television: Essays on Programming and Fandom. Jefferson: McFarland. Sandvoss, Cornel. 2005. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. Cambridge: Polity Press. Salter, Anastasia, and Bridget Blodgett. 2017. Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Siranni, Joseph M. 2019. ‘Nostalgic Things: Stranger Things and the Pervasiveness of Nostalgic Television.’ In Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand, edited by Kathryn Pallister, 185–202. Lanham: Lexington Books. Six Feet Under. 2001–2005. United States: HBO. Smith, Kimberly K. 2000. ‘Mere Nostalgia: Notes on a Progressive Paratheory.’ Rhetoric and Public Affairs 3 (4): 505–527. Sollosi, Mary. 2018. ‘How Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights Brought Stranger Things to Life.’ Entertainment Weekly. 15 September. Available at: https://ew.com/tv/2018/09/15/universal-studios-halloween-horror-nig hts-stranger-things-maze/. Accessed 16 October 2020. The Sopranos. 1999–2007. United States: HBO. Stein, Louisa. 2005. ‘“They Cavort, You Decide”: Transgenericism, Queerness, and Fan Interpretation in Teen TV.’ The Spectator 25 (1): 11–22. Stephan, Matthias, 2019. ‘Branding Netflix with Nostalgia: Totemic Nostalgia, Adaptation and the Postmodern Turn’. In Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand, edited by Kathryn Pallister, 25–40. Lanham: Lexington Books. Stranger Things. 2016–. United States: Netflix. Tiffee, Sean, and Janie Filoteo. 2020. ‘Yearning for Yesteryear: Nostalgia and the Politics of Sentimentality in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.’ Journal of Popular Culture 53 (2): 327–347. Twin Peaks. 1990–1991. United States: ABC. The Walking Dead. 2010–. United States: AMC. Wayne, Michael L. 2018. ‘Netflix, Amazon and Branded Television Content.’ Media, Culture and Society 40 (5): 725–741. Wildermuth, Rebecca. 2019. ‘Trauma and Nostalgia: Youth and the Darkness of Quality in Stranger Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. The Wire. 2002–2008. United States: HBO. Wetmore, Kevin J. Ed. 2018. Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series. Jefferson: McFarland. The X Files. 1993–2002. United States: Fox.

PART I

Texts

CHAPTER 2

‘There’s More to Life Than Stupid Boys’: the (Re)Gendering of Cult Teen Drama in Stranger Things 3 Tracey Mollet

With its focus on school, fighting monsters, teenage superpowers and the fantastical, Stranger Things sits firmly within the subgenre of cult teenage drama, having much in common with television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Roswell (1999–2002) and recent hits Riverdale (2016–) and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018– 2020). As Moseley has argued, ‘Many of these shows deal with questions of difference [and] otherness […] using supernatural power as a motif through which to explore these concerns’ (2001, 43). Furthermore, like many teenage dramas, and as evidenced by Antonella Mascio’s chapter in this collection, Stranger Things targets far beyond the teen market, as its intertwining narrative layers facilitate multiple identification points for audiences (Freedman 2003). Indeed, the show includes three generational cohorts in its ensemble of characters: the foregrounded tween

T. Mollet (B) School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_2

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friendship group; the teenagers in attendance at Hawkins High School and the show’s adults, fronted by surrogate parents Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and Jim Hopper (David Harbour). In the current academic scholarship on the textual features of Stranger Things, much attention has been paid to the show’s nostalgic characterisation of the boys’ homo-social friendship group (Li 2019; Mollet 2019a; McDaniel 2019); its representation of women (Hudson 2019) and the dynamics of the teenage contingent in the narrative (Butler 2018). In keeping with the social conservatism of its 1980s source texts and the underlying conservative tendencies of twenty-first-century teen texts such as The O.C. (2003–2007) and Gossip Girl (2007–2012), some scholars have argued that Stranger Things also follows suit. Heather Freeman highlights Stranger Things ’ embrace of a ‘hetero-patriarchal narrative paradigm’ and its rejection of queer readings (2019, 91), while Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols derides the show for its troubling treatment of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) as a blank slate for the largely male construction of teen female identity (2019). In this chapter, however, it will be argued that Stranger Things 3 poses a challenge to the traditional gendered structure of teen television narratives. Firstly, the show’s latest series deconstructs the central teen romance between Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven, allowing both characters to rethink, update and correct the dynamic of their relationship. Secondly, Stranger Things 3 celebrates Eleven’s friendship with fellow teenage girl Max (Sadie Sink), facilitating the construction of her own identity, independent of male influence. Thirdly, Stranger Things 3 emphasises its need to redefine the boundaries of adolescent masculinity, which plays out through the relationship between science nerd, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and former high school jock, Steve Harrington (Joe Keery). Lastly, through the characters of Will (Noah Schnapp) and Robin (Maya Hawke), the series sensitively handles the transformation of peer dynamics in queer adolescence and challenges the hetero-normativity of tween and teen texts.

The Gendering of Cult Teen Television Scholars are generally in agreement as to some of the primary textual features of teen narratives. They draw attention to the ages of the central characters; their settings in and around the high school in American suburbia; their tendency to ‘favour outsiders and underdogs’ and

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importantly their featuring of a prominent heterosexual romance narrative (Davis and Dickinson 2004; Kaveney 2006; Hentges 2006; Driscoll 2011). Due to their focus on the isolation and exile their protagonists feel from so-called normal adolescent life, teen texts are often easily aligned with the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres. Angus McFadzean asserts that this alignment usually takes place through the synchronisation of the teen’s ‘personal dilemma with the intrusion of a fantastic event’ (2019, 1). Of course, this tendency towards generic mixing also places such texts firmly within the paradigm of cult television (Ross and Stein 2008; Mollet 2019b). As Matt Hills reminds us, knowledge of the fantastic often binds the characters of these narratives together, facilitating intense peer relationships as the teenagers protect each other from supernatural threats (2004). These texts also draw significant attention to their own self-reflexivity and awareness through extensive intertextual referencing, authorship and nostalgia (Birchall 2004; Wee 2008). In doing so, they stake their claim to being classified as ‘quality television’ (Hills 2004; García-M˜ unoz and Fedele 2011), constructing a ‘bond with viewers regulated by their possession of the “correct popular cultural capital”’ (Woods 2013, 22). It is also of note, however, that such texts are often heavily gendered and socially conservative in their portrayal of adolescence. Sarah Hentges has affirmed that teen narratives often portray girls as ‘eye candy and as competition for the guys, as property, or territory to be conquered’ (2006, 12). This is certainly the case in cult teen narratives such as Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), where leading males Dawson and Pacey frequently vied for the affections of the show’s leading lady, Joey. Love triangles also perpetuate in supernatural teen-based narratives such as Twilight (2008–2012) and The Hunger Games (2012–2015) (Driscoll 2011; Mollet 2019b). This also often causes significant conflict between the female characters (e.g. Serena and Blair’s feuds over Dan in Gossip Girl , Brooke and Peyton’s ongoing competition for Lucas in One Tree Hill (2003–2012), and Veronica and Betty’s mutual feelings for Archie in Riverdale). Such narrative traits severely limit any feminist leanings or positive female representation in these television programmes. The girls in these narratives seem to exist only between the boys, limiting any independent character journeys by largely tying their arcs solely to romantic conclusions. This focus on heterosexual pairings also impacts the general presentation of masculinity and queerness in teen texts. In the 1980s teen film (as

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nostalgised in Stranger Things ), hyper-masculinity is upheld as an ideal, and it is often the popular football players that win the day, and the hearts of the film’s leading ladies. This heavy focus on hetero-normativity also often prohibits the scope of queer representation in teen television. Queer characters have become more visible since the 1990s: for example, Jack McPhee in Dawson’s Creek; Willow Rosenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Eric Van der Woodsen in Gossip Girl (Moorman 2011). More recently, teen series of the past few years have attempted to foreground their queer characters and their relationships. This is most obviously seen through the characters of Eric Effiong and Adam Groff in Sex Education (2019) and Cheryl Blossom and Toni Topaz in Riverdale. In general, representations are usually positive as, despite the overall conservative nature of teen texts, they display an openness towards same-sex tendencies (Wee 2008). However, queer storylines are often secondary to a show’s central narrative concerns. As Glyn Davis highlights, ‘only certain types of queer get represented and only certain issues are addressed’ (2004, 130), which often sidesteps a nuanced handling of a queer adolescent journey. It is also of note from the examples cited above that homosexual narrative inclusion in teen texts is generally male. This shows an acknowledgement and understanding that such texts tend to be consumed by heterosexual women (Davis 2004). I have previously noted that it is limiting to consider that the first two seasons of Stranger Things blindly follow the ‘wish fulfilment’ of their hegemonic male-dominated source texts (Mollet 2019a) but this is particularly the case for Stranger Things 3, which, as I will argue in this chapter, produces a far more nuanced, inclusive, twenty-first-century outlook on adolescence.

‘Am I Your Pet?’: Mileven, Elmax and the Limits of Heterosexual Coupling The relationship between Mike and Eleven (affectionately named Mileven by the show’s cult following) has been a dominant feature of Stranger Things ’ narrative since its first season. Undoubtedly, the show’s primary heterosexual romance, the characters meet and develop a mutual attraction when Eleven hides from the ‘bad men’ of Hawkins Laboratory in Mike’s basement. As I have argued elsewhere, Mike attempts to assuage Eleven’s feelings of isolation by giving her the normal name of ‘El’ and explaining terms such as ‘friend’ and ‘promise’ so she can interact and

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understand him, and his friends Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin as they look for Will (Mollet 2019b). Other scholars have criticised their relationship, noting that much like the heteronormativity of other teen texts, Eleven exists only as a love interest for Mike (Clavin and Kuryloski 2019; Gackstetter Nichols 2019; McFadzean 2019). It is true that Mike largely shapes Eleven’s character and understanding of the world in the show’s first season. Eleven copies Mike’s vocabulary extensively; she seeks his approval as being ‘pretty’ and he introduces her to the largely heterosexual teen practice of the ‘prom’ (the Snow Ball), which is ‘an important part of coming of age for many young women’ in teen texts (Bernstein 1997; Best 2004, 195). Furthermore, her existence as love interest for the show’s nerdy male protagonist taps into the show’s nostalgic John Hughes inspired 1980s legacy which allows nerds to ‘attain liberation through falling in love’ (Shary 2002, 32). Their separation, emotional reunion and slow dance at the Snow Ball in Stranger Things 2 also highlights the centrality of the Mileven relationship dynamic to the show’s narrative (Mollet 2019b). Indeed, their relationship continues to be important in Stranger Things 3, as the young couple confess their feelings have progressed to love. However, the show’s treatment of the Mileven relationship shifts significantly during the latest season, Stranger Things 3, in several significant ways. Jowett notes that cult teen shows featuring independent female protagonists often ‘problematise traditional romance’ (2010, 110). This is certainly the case when considering Eleven’s arc in the show’s third season. During the first episode of Stranger Things 3, Mike and Eleven are shown to be inseparable, constantly making out in Eleven’s bedroom, often making Mike late for prior social engagements with his friends. In this episode, the pair lie to the rest of their friendship group in order to be alone together. Mike and Eleven’s excluding behaviour is derided by the other teenagers when they leave: DUSTIN: Curfew at 4 pm? LUCAS: They’re lying. WILL: It’s been like this all summer. MAX: It’s romantic. WILL: It’s gross. DUSTIN: It’s bullshit […] I’ve just got home (original emphasis). (“Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?”)

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As the show’s narrative sympathy in previous seasons was with all of the teen boys, and Eleven, this significantly transforms the dynamic and narrative outlook for the show’s central heterosexual couple, characterising their romance as perhaps too engrossing and time-consuming for both Mike and Eleven, at the expense of their relationship with their friends. It is important to note that teen texts rarely facilitate critique of their romances, except in the case of overprotective parents. Eleven’s romance with Mike attracts the severe criticism of her adoptive father, Hopper, who seeks to split them up, allowing the rehearsal of the ‘prohibitive father’ narrative (Shary 2002; Keating 2005) evident in the 1980s teen movies such as Dirty Dancing (1987) and the 1990s films such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Hopper scares Mike into retreating from his relationship with Eleven, eventually leading to their split. While this narrative is not unusual, it prompts Eleven into seeking out a friendship with Max. In Stranger Things 2, Eleven was shown to be incredibly jealous of Max’s interactions with Mike (“Chapter Three: The Pollywog”), underlining the show’s apparent derision of amicable relationships between girls, showing them to exist only between men (Sedgwick 1985). This dynamic is completely transformed in Stranger Things 3 when the two become firm friends. Max, too, highlights the troubling exclusive dynamic of Eleven’s relationship with Mike, angrily confronting his overprotection of Eleven as possessiveness, exclaiming, ‘What is she? Your little pet?’ to which Eleven quips, ‘Yeah, am I your pet?’ before promptly breaking up with him (“Chapter Two: The Mall Rats”). What is more, Stranger Things 3 celebrates Eleven’s independence from Mike through the exploration of her friendship with Max (dubbed Elmax by the show’s fanbase). This is primarily noted during a shopping sequence in “Chapter Two: The Mall Rats” where the pair try on a variety of different outfits and looks together. Makeover and shopping montage sequences are very common within teen texts, especially as a ‘rite of passage’ for a female adolescent journey (Bernstein 1997; Driscoll 2011). Indeed, as Jenny Bavidge notes, with reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, teen texts often link ‘exemplary female adolescence with ideals of beauty and consumption’ (2004, 46). However, these are usually undertaken with the aim of impressing a boy, for example Tai Fraser in Clueless (1994) wants to attract the attention of Elton, and Sam in A Cinderella Story (2004) dons a princess gown to meet her mystery prince, Austin. However, in Stranger Things 3, Max declares, ‘There’s

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more to life than stupid boys, you know’ before taking El to the mall to go shopping. What is of note here is the show’s insistence on Eleven seeking out her own identity, separate from the men in her life. The narrative acknowledges that Eleven’s worldview and opinion of herself had largely been shaped by Mike and Hopper, and seeks to rectify this: ELEVEN: How do I know what I like? (original emphasis) MAX: You just try things on till you find something that feels like you. Not Hopper, not Mike. You. (original emphasis) (“Chapter Two: The Mall Rats”)

Melanie Kennedy acknowledges that many cult tween texts seek out identities for their female protagonists through their insistence on the adoption of a commodified tween girlhood (2019). What is interesting here, however, is that while the girls do go shopping together, the outfits that Eleven picks are relatively gender neutral. She does not select any girly dresses of the type she was encouraged to wear by the boys to disguise herself as a ‘normal girl’ in Stranger Things, or indeed the dress she wears for the Snow Ball in Stranger Things 2. The girls are shown to have a fulfilling and productive friendship outside of the company of the boys. As the narrative unravels, and superhero Eleven faces significant challenges in fighting the Mind Flayer and the Flayed throughout the season, the narrative insists on Eleven seeking support from both Max and Mike, stressing that she should not just rely on her boyfriend for emotional fulfilment. What is perhaps more significant here, however, is the show’s transformation of its own nostalgic cultural space through the foregrounding of Eleven and Max’s friendship. The trans-medial geekdom through which the show’s cult references operate is primarily male orientated (Hollows 2003; Salter and Blodgett 2017). From its explicit references to the adolescent male groupings in Stand by Me (1985) and The Goonies (1985), the boys’ collection of Marvel comics, their exclusive Dungeons & Dragons sessions in Mike’s basement and their trips to the arcade in Stranger Things 2, the show celebrates an explicitly male teenage experience. Max’s entry into the Party transforms the boys’ views on their own culture as she beats their top score on Dig Dug and challenges their assumptions that she would be scared of bullies by donning a Mike Myers costume on Halloween, terrifying them in the process. In Stranger Things

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3, Max shows a recognition of the male exclusivity of the geek space, by reading Wonder Woman with Eleven, exclaiming, ‘You see, this is why you can’t hang out with Mike all the time’ (“Chapter Four: The Sauna Test”). In his breakup from Eleven, Mike, too, is forced to rethink his approach to their relationship, evidencing its complete deconstruction. He fights with Max over Eleven’s usage of her powers, worried that she is pushing her own limits too far, wanting to protect her from further harming herself. However, Eleven simply insists that he trust that she knows her own abilities and Mike is later shown to recognise the overbearing nature of his affection. He confesses, ‘I wanted you all to myself and now I realise how unfair that is, and selfish, and I’m sorry’ (“Chapter Seven: The Bite”). This is an unusual narrative trope for a teen text, as Timothy Shary confirms that ‘rarely does a screen teen in love wrestle with the notion of self-fulfilment’ (2002, 214). Here it is important to note that both Mike and Eleven reflect on the nature of their dynamic before reuniting, showing a reflexivity and self-awareness of the shortcomings of their relationship. While each of these tropes is common to a teen text, and indeed, are rife in series such as Dawson’s Creek and Gossip Girl , what is different here is that there is no love triangle. In teen texts, heroines often pit their male love interests alongside one another as a part of the show’s melodramatic discourse, questioning their potential romantic fulfilment with each partner. Stranger Things omits this common narrative trope, placing its focus on the individuals’ happiness inside of the show’s central romantic relationship. While it is true that Mike and Eleven do reunite at the end of Stranger Things 3, the nature of their dynamic is completely transformed. Eleven’s identity as a young teenage girl is shown to be enhanced by her friendship with Max and the restoration of a healthy heterosexual relationship with boyfriend, Mike. Mike’s transformation into a more sensitive, acceptable love interest for Eleven is also reflective of a more general shift in Stranger Things 3’s treatment of male adolescence which plays out in the dynamic between two of the show’s most popular characters.

‘Have You Ever Actually Won a Fight?’: Dustin, Steve, and the Challenge to Hypermasculinity The partnership between Dustin Henderson and Steve Harrington has gained a cult following on the internet following their narrative pairing in

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Stranger Things 2 (Lockett 2017; Flood 2017)—a dynamic that continues in Stranger Things 3. Their close friendship is of interest to a discussion of cult teen television for a number of reasons. Firstly, Steve’s character challenges the traditional archetypes present in cult teen texts by using audience knowledge of these texts to flout narrative expectations. Secondly, the way in which Steve seeks to learn from Dustin (and not the other way around) ensures that the central tweens and teens of Stranger Things do not undergo the transformative journey common to many cult teen narratives. Timothy Shary notes that male nerds in youth narratives are frequently made to change as part of their adolescent journeys (2002). This has also been the case in more recent male-fronted superhero movies such as Captain America (2011) and Peter Parker in Spiderman: Homecoming (2017), where ‘wimpy, geeky men are abruptly transformed into traditional icons of hyper-masculine power’ (Salter and Blodgett 2017, 9). There is often an insistence on transformation and on hegemonic masculinity as the ideal state of male adolescence. In keeping with the John Hughes cinematic paradigm from which Stranger Things takes its inspiration, Steve Harrington’s character formation in the show’s first season is easily identifiable as the ‘popular jock’. He is set apart from the show’s central narrative sympathies as main character, Lucas, calls Steve a ‘douchebag’ before we even meet him. When Mike’s sister Nancy (Natalia Dyer) begins to date him, her friend Barb (Shannon Purser) is concerned for the way her friend is changing through socialising with the toxic in-crowd (Bolte 2008). Steve is popular, good looking, plays sports and has a reputation for being a ‘womaniser’, flirting with his similarity to Tom Cruise’s character, Joel Goodsen, in Risky Business (1983). Nancy even remarks that he is a ‘cliché’, showing the self-reflexivity of the show and its awareness of its teen movie antecedents. These narratives seek to confirm the ‘low morality of young men’ in teen films (Shary 2005) but also the desirability of the high school jock as a romantic partner (see, for example, Pretty in Pink, 1986). In Stranger Things 2, Steve also briefly seems to represent the hegemonic order of the 1980s as he considers getting a job with his Dad in Hawkins to remain close to Nancy, seeking out ‘benefits and all that other adult stuff’ (“Chapter One: Mad Max”). Here, he briefly endorses the social conservatism of the nuclear family structure that the show vehemently critiques (Smith 2018; Franklin 2018; Mollet 2019b). However, Stranger Things refuses to classify Steve as the dumb jock and in doing so, shows its distance from other cult teen texts and their

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frequent privileging of hyper-masculine traits. Butler (2018) observes that Steve’s unlikely friendship with Dustin and his caretaking of the tween boys and Max in Season Two demonstrates the show’s willingness to place the former jock into a ‘refreshingly domestic role’ (78). The narrative also insists that Steve become a more sensitive and focused character by pitting him against Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 3’s human antagonist, Billy (Dacre Montgomery) who seeks to replace ‘King Steve’ as the coolest male at Hawkins High (Li 2019). In Stranger Things 2, Billy goads Steve on the basketball court, jibing, ‘I heard you used to run this school, and then you turned bitch’ (“Chapter Three: The Pollywog”, original emphasis). Steve’s lack of hyper-masculine prowess is revealed on a number of occasions throughout the show’s first two seasons, confirming its willingness to flout the narrative expectations of the high school jock. He confesses to Dustin that he takes a great deal of care over perfecting his hair, revealing himself to be a twenty-first-century ‘metrosexual’ male (Williams 2018). However, this is most evident in Steve’s defeat in not one, but two fist fights against love rival, Jonathan Byers and Billy. While it is true that Steve advises Dustin on how to navigate his relationship with girls through an assertion of confident heterosexuality, his advice is shown to be unsuccessful, as Dustin is largely laughed at by popular girls at the Snow Ball and fails to secure a dancing partner from within his own peer group. Stranger Things 3’s configuration of Steve’s personality and his relationship with Dustin further confirms Steve’s growing distance from his stereotyped role in cult teen narratives. Steve is introduced to the narrative in Stranger Things 3 through his job at the ice cream parlour, Scoops Ahoy. He is required to wear a sailor uniform which, to his dismay, severely impedes his ability to attract the opposite sex. Dustin manages to get him on board with helping to translate his intercepted Russian transmission with the promise of transforming him into a ‘true American hero’, allowing him to ‘have all the ladies [you] want’ (“Chapter Two: The Mall Rats”). While it could be argued that this simply shows further endorsement of hyper-masculine and insensitive behaviour when it comes to women, Dustin is quick to check what he perceives to be Steve’s outdated views, when he rejects Robin as a potential romantic partner because she’s ‘in band’: DUSTIN : Now that you’re out of high school, which means you’re technically an adult, don’t you think it’s time you move on from primitive constructs such as popularity?

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STEVE: Oh primitive constructs? That some stupid shit you learned at Camp Know … Nothing? DUSTIN : Camp Know Where actually. And no, it’s shit I learned from life. Instead of dating somebody you think’s gonna make you cooler, why not date somebody you actually enjoy being around? Like me and Suzie? (“Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”)

Here, Stranger Things actively seeks to critique the falsities of the high school setting, and therefore the cinematic and televisual foundations of Steve’s character stereotype, complicating its relationship to other cult teen narratives. This is further confirmed by Steve’s character arc throughout the third season. Teaming up with Robin and Lucas’ sister, Erica (Priah Ferguson), Steve becomes ‘head’ of a new surrogate family. While the surrogate family itself is not unusual for a teen text (see WojcikAndrews 2000; Mollet 2019b), Stranger Things 3’s mixture of tweens and teens is a little more unusual for contemporary cult teen television narratives which tend to feature social groups of the same age. Here, Erica is ten, Dustin around thirteen, Robin around seventeen and Steve has already finished high school, confirming his role as the oldest ‘wisest’ male of the contingent. While, to Dustin’s wild congratulations, Steve eventually manages to win a fight against a Russian soldier, he is captured and drugged and has to be rescued by Dustin. Finding the responsibility of minding Steve to be very stressful, Dustin confesses, ‘I’m never having kids!’ (“Chapter Seven: The Bite”) and is even called ‘Dad’ by Steve himself. This constitutes a further role reversal from Stranger Things 2 where Steve was shown to take on the job of minding the kids. Here, Dustin and Erica take charge, saving their older teenage friends from the hands of the Russians, and sensibly hiding them in plain sight at the movies while Dustin calls for help. It is Dustin’s knowledge of computer systems and signals that facilitates their escape from the Russian base underneath Starcourt Mall, further elevating geek knowledge (and therefore geekdom) as the epitome of heroism in the show. Stranger Things 3 also abandons the love triangle between Nancy, Steve and Jonathan, reducing the opportunities for Steve to display his masculine prowess in front of a girl in order to secure a romantic conclusion for his character.

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‘I’m Not Gonna Fall in Love’: The Complications of Queerness in Hawkins Stranger Things has provoked extensive academic discussions on the subject of queerness. Robin Buckley comes out as gay in Stranger Things 3; Eleven’s boyish looks in the show’s first season have provoked queer readings of her character (Clavin and Kuryloski 2019) and in general, the boys of Stranger Things do not conform to hegemonic forms of masculinity (Berns et al. 2018; Mollet 2019a). Most prominent, however, have been the examinations of Will Byers’ character as asexual or queer. In the show’s very first episode, Joyce shares that Will’s father Lonnie suspected that his son was gay. The season’s bullies also refer to him as a ‘queer’ and a ‘fairy’, and Will is the target of the show’s supernatural threat in the first two seasons. Roach argues that the situation of Will within ‘repeated images of doors and confined spaces can be read […] as a metaphor for closeting’ (2018, 137). Indeed, Will’s apparent banishment from society (and banishment to the Upside Down) could be seen as indicative of the exclusion faced by those carrying the HIV virus in the 1980s. Teen television narratives, while stressing the importance of acceptance of queer adolescents among peers (Wee 2008), often emphasise the barriers of understanding between parents and their teens, drawing attention to their isolation. For example, Jack McPhee’s homosexuality causes a deep rift between him and his father in Dawson’s Creek and Eric Van Der Woodsen in Gossip Girl is institutionalised by his mother for his struggles with his queer identity. Stranger Things on the other hand goes to great lengths to stress that Will is loved, accepted and appreciated by his friends, and his family. In a number of conversations with Will about his ‘otherness’, Jonathan embraces his brother’s ‘freak’ status, comparing his difference to that of David Bowie, who as Roach underlines, is a ‘queer cultural icon who subverts both gender norms and binary notions of sexuality’ (2018, 137). Furthermore, while Will is positioned as different from the other boys in their friendship group, the show consistently emphasises that he is not alone. Joyce is relentless in her determination to save her son from the Upside Down and the Demogorgon in Season One of the show and is the person that he is closest to when he shares his possession by the Mind Flayer monster in Season Two. Will is saved from the monster’s clutches by the ‘reaffirmation of love and kinship’ common to many teen texts (Brown 2017, 12). With regard to Stranger Things 2, Freeman claims

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that through Will’s character, the show demonstrates a willingness to ‘play with the tropes of masculinity while maintaining the status quo’ (2019, 96). Indeed, Will’s close friendship with Mike, explored in Season Two during Eleven’s absence, has generated queer readings among the show’s fan base, but is disrupted by Mike’s romantic reunion with Eleven. The show’s enforcement of heteronormativity is particularly evident during the Snow Ball scene at the end of Stranger Things 2, which sees each of the boys paired off with girls, regardless of any queer suggestion. However, I would argue that this is significantly overturned in Stranger Things 3. Davis (2004) argues that queer concerns are often sidelined in teen narratives, however Stranger Things 3 foregrounds Will’s struggle with his journey into adolescence. While friends Mike, Lucas and Dustin all have girlfriends, Will is left single and alone, desperately attempting to cling to the safe confines of the boys’ homo-social friendship group. Will’s difference and isolation here is presented not in terms of an explicit homosexual preference, but in his reluctance and fear to transition into the next stage of his adolescence by considering intimate relationships with other teenagers. When Joyce confronts his disgusted reaction to a lipstick mark left on Jonathan’s cheek by Nancy, she remarks, ‘I don’t think you’ll think it’s gross when you fall in love’, to which Will replies, ‘I’m not gonna fall in love’, suggesting a potentially asexual mindset (“Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?”). Throughout the season, while Mike and Lucas are more concerned with the status of their relationships with Eleven and Max, Will is desperate to retreat to playing games in Mike’s basement. In “Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”, sick of his friends’ moping around after their girlfriends, Will declares a day free of girls, dressing up in his ‘Will the Wise’ costume from their D&D adventures, however the boys lightly tease their friend’s dramatic tendencies. Will quickly becomes upset and the boys immediately rally to repair their friendship, but attempt to acknowledge the way in which their group has been transformed: WILL: You’re destroying everything and for what? So you can swap spit with some stupid girl? MIKE: El’s not stupid. It’s not my fault that you don’t like girls […] I’m not trying to be a jerk, okay? But we’re not kids anymore. I mean, what did you think, really? That we were never gonna get girlfriends? We were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?

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WILL: Yeah, I guess I did. I really did. (“Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”)

While Will’s reaction to Mike’s suggestion of his queerness is loaded, the exchange is framed in terms of Will’s nostalgia for the boys’ former closeness and an upset with how this has been transformed with sexual maturity. Much like the narrative’s change in the portrayal of Mike and Eleven’s relationship, the show stresses the importance of the boys’ friendship central to many cult teen texts. However, Stranger Things 3 does not insist upon a relational stagnancy between the boys or indeed, the exclusion of its implied queer male. Alone, but quickly joined by his friends, Will sobs over pictures of the four boys from Stranger Things and Stranger Things 2. The audience is invited to join in his memories, and therefore identify with him, as flashback sequences are used to enforce the self-referential nostalgia of the moment. Will then proceeds to destroy his childhood fort Castle Byers: the site of his ‘closeting’ in the first two seasons. Indeed, he finds that his experiences with the Mind Flayer and the Upside Down allow him to reintegrate into the group dynamic. Furthermore, at the season’s close, Will gives away his Dungeons and Dragons board game set, underlining that while he doesn’t mind giving away his own connection to childhood, the strong homosocial bonds between them will remain. In this way, the exclusion Will feels is acknowledged by his friends, confronted and then sensitively reintegrated into the boys’ friendship group. A different approach is taken through the character of Robin Buckley. From the show’s first episode, Robin is set up as a potential love interest for the character of Steve Harrington. After watching the two of them interact, Dustin quickly remarks that Robin is ‘perfect’ for Steve and Stranger Things 3 even teases their eventual union through the inclusion of a moment where the pair accidentally hold hands. This is a sequence common to teen texts when suggesting a potential heterosexual pairing and is even shown done with Stranger Things ’ couples Nancy and Jonathan and Max and Lucas. Robin is characterised as intelligent, witty and beautiful, all traits of the heterosexual love interests of teen males in teen texts such as Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and One Tree Hill . She is even part of the marginalised geekdom revered by the show, branded by her membership in the school band and her fluency in languages (Bernstein 1997). Stranger Things 3 further sets the stage for their romance by allowing the

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pair to share an intimate moment, where Robin confesses that she was ‘obsessed’ with Steve during high school, sharing that she just wanted to be recognised by the popular crowd. Here, Stranger Things exploits the audience’s knowledge of the traits of teen narratives. It suggests its own following of a ‘transformation through romance’ narrative for outsider, Robin, and even insists upon Steve’s confession of feelings for her, before facilitating a ‘coming out’ storyline. As Steve is incredibly accepting of Robin’s sexuality despite his spurned romantic advances, Stranger Things 3 completely overturns audience expectations of their relationship, transforming the nature of its teenagers’ dynamic and the text itself. This seeks to correct the assumption of heterosexual attraction in every boy-girl relationship within the cult teen text. While Freeman (2019) notes that Stranger Things suppresses its queer representation through its quick restoration of heterosexual storylines, in Stranger Things 3, this argument no longer holds true. Homosexuality was often entirely absent or side-lined from 1980s teen texts such as Stand by Me or The Goonies and in the entire John Hughes 1980s canon of films, not one character is openly gay. Due to Stranger Things ’ nostalgic leanings, this absence is to be expected in its narrative, but the show plays with audience expectations of teen texts, and in particular, 1980s teen texts, in order to facilitate an inclusive and contemporary representation of queerness.

‘I Found Someone Better for Me’: Stranger Things and the Reconfiguration of Adolescent Hegemony García-M˜ unoz and Fedele (2011) note that personal acceptance is a key theme in US cult teen narratives. Across genres, from fantasy horror texts like Buffy, to musicals such as High School Musical , to melodramas like One Tree Hill , the high school teen text is always quick to emphasise the ‘togetherness’ of the show’s central protagonists and the importance of a ‘liberal humanist’ attitude towards difference (Wee 2008; Brown 2017; Mollet 2019a). However, this often comes with a reaffirmation of social conservatism and the hegemonic order (Woods 2013). Primary scholarly works on cult teen dramas are quick to note that these texts are largely written by adults who seek to create narratives with an ‘adult agenda’ (Davis and Dickinson 2004, 3; Ross and Stein 2008). This means that these shows are often accompanied by a widespread endorsement and visibility of heterosexual romance (often exacerbated through the inclusion

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of love triangles), a reverence of hegemonic masculinity and a side-lining of queerness. While Stranger Things ’ first two seasons do include some of these traits, Stranger Things 3 actively seeks to transform the nature of central tween and teen relationships in the show in order to distance itself from both the 1980s source texts it seeks to nostalgise and its 1990s teen television antecedents. Feasey (2008) notes that teen texts often underline that ‘it is within the couple, with the one regular partner that happiness can be found’ (47). However, Mike and Eleven’s idyllic, exclusive heterosexual tween relationship is deconstructed and portrayed as isolating and unhealthy as they move into their teenage years. While the pair are reunited at the end of the show, they each have a different outlook on their relationship and are shown to appreciate same-sex friendships on an equal footing to their own romance. Equally important is the show’s reconfiguration of masculinity. In the 1980s teen text, Steve Harrington’s jock character would easily have secured the affections of Nancy Wheeler. However, Steve is shown to be lacking in masculine prowess, and loses the girl he loves to Jonathan Byers. There is also no further suggestion of romance in this love triangle, which is shut down entirely in Stranger Things 3 (evidenced through complete narrative separation between Steve, Jonathan and Nancy), again demonstrating the show’s distance from other cult teen texts. On the contrary, Steve falls for someone else, who, he admits is ‘better for [me]’, despite the fact that Robin does not return his affections. This is shown by the continuation of their close friendship even after Robin has ‘come out’, underlining that Steve is happy and at ease with the new dynamic of their relationship. In overturning narrative expectations of heterosexual romance with Robin and Steve, Stranger Things posits that the high school jock does not always need to end up with the girl, even if he has come to display the much revered emotional sensitivity of the male protagonist in cult teen television (Banks 2004) or decides to reject the maligned popular crowd and endorse the inclusivity of geekdom celebrated within the show (Mollet 2019a). Stranger Things 3 also insists on narrative progression for Will, while acknowledging the difficulties of his journey into adolescence. While he struggles with alienation to the romantic feelings towards girls experienced by his friends (suggestive of asexuality or homosexuality), by the fourth episode, Will is integrated back into the friendship group. He is also highly valued for his insights into the Mind Flayer and the Upside

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Down, suggesting his struggles have given rise to an inner strength. At the series’ close, he shows a willingness to move on into the next stage of his teenage years while understanding that his friendship with the boys will remain in tact, albeit slightly transformed by sexual maturity. Stranger Things 3 thus distances itself from both the 1980s heteronormative conservatism of its nostalgia and the melodramatic heterosexually dominated discourse of the 1990s cult teen text, epitomised by wordy series such as Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It ensures that each of its teenage characters is in happy and inclusive friendships and relationships, even if these are different dynamics than those featured in other teen dramas. However, much like these texts, the way in which Stranger Things demonstrates a hyper-awareness of the tropes of these kinds of shows still allows for its inclusion within the paradigm of the cult teen drama, but perhaps suggests ways in which their character archetypes and narrative traits can be revised and updated for the twenty-first-century audience.

Works Cited Banks, M. J. 2004. ‘A Boy for All Planets: Roswell, Smallville, and the Teen Male Melodrama.’ In Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity, edited by Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson, 17–28. London: British Film Institute. Bavidge, Jenny. 2004. ‘Chosen Ones: Reading the Contemporary Teen Heroine.’ In Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity, edited by Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson, 41–53. London: British Film Institute. Bernstein. Jonathan. 1997. Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teen Movies. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Berns, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni, Canela Ailén Rodriguez Fontao, and Mariana S. Zárate. 2018. ‘The Monstrous Queer Child: Mobbing, Bullying and Bad Parenting in the 1980s.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore, Jr., 146–155. Jefferson: McFarland. Best, Amy L. 2004. ‘Girls, Schooling and the Discourse of Self Change: Negotiating Meanings at the High School Prom.’ In All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity, edited by Anita Harris, 195–205. New York: Routledge. Birchall, Clare. 2004. ‘Feels Like Home: Dawson’s Creek, Nostalgia and the Young Adult Viewer.’ In Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity, edited by Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson, 176–190. London: British Film Institute. Bolte, Carolyn. 2008. ‘Normal Is the Watchword: Exiling Cultural Anxieties and Redefining Desire from the Margins.’ In Watching Teen TV: Essays in

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Programming and Fandom, edited by Sharon M. Ross and Louisa E. Stein, 93–113. London: McFarland. Brown, N. 2017. The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation, Narrative. New York: Wallflower Press. Butler, Rose. 2018. ‘The Eaten for Breakfast Club: Teenage Nightmares in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore Jr., 72–83. Jefferson: McFarland. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 1997–2003. United States: The WB, UPN. Captain America: The First Avenger. 2011. Directed by Joe Johnston. United States: Marvel Studios. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. 2018–2020. United States: Netflix. A Cinderella Story. 2004. Directed by Mark Rosman. United States: Warner Brothers Pictures. Clueless. 1994. Directed by Amy Hecklering. United States: Paramount Pictures. Clavin, Keith, and Lauren J. Kuryloski. 2019. ‘Queering the Clock: Narrative Time and Genderfluidity in Stranger Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. Davis, Glyn, and Kay Dickinson. Eds. 2004. Teen TV: Genre, Consumption, Identity. London: British Film Institute. Davis, Glyn. 2004. ‘“Saying It Out Loud”: Revealing Television’s Queer Teens.’ In Teen TV: Genre, Consumption, Identity, edited by Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson, 127–140. London: British Film Institute. Driscoll, Catherine. 2011. Teen Film: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Berg. Feasey, Rebecca. 2008. Masculinity and Popular Television. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Flood, Alex. 2017. ‘Stranger Things 2: Why We Need a Steve-Dustin Spin Off Series.’ NME. Available at: https://www.nme.com/blogs/stranger-thi ngs-steve-dustin-spin-off-2154666 Accessed 25 August 2020. Franklin, Anthony David. 2018. ‘Half Lives of the Nuclear Family: Representations of the Mid-Century American Family in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore, Jr., 174–182. Jefferson: McFarland. Freedman, Eric. 2003. ‘Television, Horror and Everyday Life in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. In The Contemporary Television Series, edited by Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon, 159–180. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Freeman, Heather. 2019. ‘Shifting Nostalgic Boundaries: Archetypes and Queer Representation in Stranger Things, GLOW and One Day at a Time.’ In Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand, edited by Kathryn Pallister, 91– 108. London: Lexington.

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Gackstetter Nichols, Elizabeth. 2019. ‘Weirdo Barbie and Punk-Rock Daddy’s Girl: Ambiguity, Gendered Identity and Appearance of Eleven in Stranger Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. García-M˜ unoz, Núria, and Maddalena Fedele. 2011. ‘Television Fiction Series Targeted at Young Audience: Plots and Conflicts Portrayed in a Teen Series.’ Comunicar 19 (37): 133–140. The Goonies. 1985. Directed by Richard Donner. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Gossip Girl. 2007–2012. United States: CW. Hentges, Sarah. 2006. Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film. Jefferson: McFarland. High School Musical. 2006. Directed by Kenny Ortega. United States: Disney Channel. Hills, Matt. 2004. ‘Defining Cult TV.’ In The TV Studies Reader, edited by Robert Clyde Allen and Annette Hill, 509–523. London: Routledge. Hollows, Joanne. 2003. ‘The Masculinity of Cult.’ In Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Tastes, edited by Marc Jancovich, Antonio Lázaro Reboll, Julian Stringer, and Andy Willis, 35–53. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hudson, Kathleen. 2019. ‘“Something from Your Life, Something That Angers You…”: Female Rage and Redemption in Netflix’s Stranger Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-jou rnal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. The Hunger Games. 2012. Directed by Gary Ross. United States: Lionsgate. Jowett, Lorna. 2010. ‘Representation: Exploring Issues of Sex, Gender and Race in Cult Television.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 107–113. London: I.B. Tauris. Kaveney, Roz. 2006. Teen Dreams: Reading Teen Film and Television from Heathers to Veronica Mars. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Keating, Nicole M. 2005. ‘Mamma’s Boy: Counting on Ghosts, Sending Smoke Signals and Finding Surrogate Fathers in Contemporary Film.’ In Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth, edited by Murray Pomerance and Frances Gateward, 246–263. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Kennedy, Melanie. 2019. Tweenhood: Femininity and Celebrity in Tween Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Li, Amy S. 2019. ‘Reconstructing the ‘80s Man: Nostalgic Masculinities in Stranger Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020.

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Lockett, Dee. 2017. ‘In Praise of Steve and Dustin’s Unlikely Stranger Things Friendship.’ Vulture. Available at: https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/str anger-things-2-steve-dustin-bromance.html. Accessed 25 August 2020. McDaniel, Jamie. 2019. ‘Growing Up in the Upside Down: Youth Horror and Diversity in Stranger Things.’ In The Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television, edited by Casie Hermansson and Janet Zapernick, 204–222. London: Palgrave. McFadzean, Angus. 2019. Suburban Fantastic Cinema: Growing Up in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Wallflower. Mollet, Tracey. 2019a. ‘Demogorgons, Death Stars and Difference: Masculinity and Geek Culture in Stranger Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. Mollet, Tracey. 2019b. ‘Looking Through the Upside Down: HyperPostmodernism and Trans-Mediality in Stranger Things.’ Journal of Popular Television 7 (1): 57–77. Moorman, Jennifer. 2011. ‘“Kinda Gay”: Queer Cult Fandom and Willow’s (Bi) Sexuality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’ In Supernatural Youth: The Rise of the Teen Hero in Literature and Popular Culture, edited by Jes Battis, 102–115. Lanham: Lexington. Moseley, Rachel. 2001. ‘The Teen Series.’ In The Television Genre Book, edited by Glen Creeber, 41–43. London: British Film Institute. The O.C.. 2003–2007. United States: Fox. One Tree Hill. 2003–2012. United States: The WB, UPN, CW. Pretty in Pink. 1986. Directed by Howard Deutch. United States: Paramount Pictures. Risky Business. 1983. Directed by Paul Brickman. United States: Warner Brothers Pictures. Riverdale. 2017–. United States: CW. Roach, Emily E. 2018. ‘AIDS, Homophobia, and the Monstrous Upside Down: The Queer Subtext of Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore, Jr., 135–145. Jefferson: McFarland. Ross, Sharon. M., and Louisa E. Stein. Eds. 2008. Watching Teen TV: Essays in Programming and Fandom. Jefferson: McFarland. Roswell. 1999–2002. United States: The WB. Salter, Anastasia, and Bridgett Blodgett. 2017. Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling and Identity Policing. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sedgewick, Eve. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Homosexual Desire. New York: Columbia University Press. Sex Education. 2019–. United Kingdom: Netflix.

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Shary, Timothy. 2002. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Shary, Timothy. 2005. Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen. London: Wallflower. Smith, Lacey N. 2018. ‘“A Nice Home at the End of the cul-de-sac”: Hawkins as Infected Postmodern Suburbia.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore, Jr., 205–214. Jefferson: McFarland. Spiderman: Homecoming. 2017. Directed by Jon Watts. United States: Marvel Studios. Stand by Me. 1986. Directed by Rob Reiner. United States: Columbia Pictures. Twilight. 2008. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. United States: Summit Entertainment. Wee, Valerie. 2008. ‘Teen Television and the WB Television Network.’ In Watching Teen TV: Essays in Programming and Fandom, edited by Sharon M. Ross and Louisa E. Stein, 43–60. Jefferson: McFarland. Wetmore Jr., Kevin J. Ed. 2018. Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series. Jefferson: McFarland. Williams, Alex. 2018. ‘Metrosexuals Were Just Straight Men Who Loved SelfCare, Right?’ The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/ 2018/06/15/style/metrosexuals.html. Accessed 25 August 2020. Wojcik-Andrews, Ian. 2000. Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. New York: Garland Publishing. Woods, Faye. 2013. ‘Teen TV Meets T4: Assimilating The O.C. into British Youth Television.’ Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 8 (1): 14–35.

CHAPTER 3

Tween Terror in the Upside Down: Children, Cult Horror and Stranger Things Lindsey Scott

In a review published by the New Statesman the day after the release of Stranger Things 3, Emily Bootle proposes that ‘Stranger Things should have ended after season one’ (2019). Generating her own nostalgia for what the ‘mysterious tribute to early eighties sci-fi’ used to be, she argues: ‘the child actors had earnest naivety, the monster was a terrifying surprise […] It had all the makings of a cult classic’ (ibid.). This reverence for Stranger Things ’ cultish opening season deploys several features cited by critics to define cult texts: the importance of nostalgia; the genre of telefantasy; and the sense of distinction and exclusivity that ‘gives value to a cult text’ (Jancovich and Hunt 2004, 28). As Matt Hills explains: ‘There is something “special”, something at least a little bit “underground” or even transgressive about cult media […] What this frequently amounts to is a sense that “cult” television isn’t for everybody; only suitably intelligent, discerning audiences “get it”’ (2010, 67). Bootle, like many other Stranger Things critics, identifies nostalgia as the show’s most valuable

L. Scott (B) School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_3

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property and combines this with a lauding of its child actors: ‘It had a distinctive star in Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven with her shaved head, bloody nose and endearing obsession with Eggos. (A goodie with a haunting edge, she made an excellent Halloween costume.)’ Here, then, Bootle makes two further notions apparent in her preference for Stranger Things ’ opening season as cult: that the show’s distinctiveness is closely linked to its child protagonists; and its exclusivity depends upon drawing a dividing line between child and adult, where the intelligent, discerning adult is the text’s ideal viewer/consumer and the earnest, naïve child is its ideal object/commodity. Despite each instalment of Stranger Things centring on a group of tweenagers,1 most reviewers and critics have regarded the Netflix original series as ‘not suitable for younger viewers’ since its first season (Fullerton 2019). Textual features appearing to target the adult viewer/fan most exclusively are nostalgia for the 1980s; mature themes and content deemed inappropriate for younger viewers; and a sustained aesthetic and intertextual engagement with horror. Like the many gateways to the Upside Down, these aspects suggest a boundary that shouldn’t be breached by child fans, and yet, Stranger Things remains permeable to a young audience, establishing various textual entry points which, as I will argue here, have been left open since the show’s inception. These entry points are worthy of further scrutiny, not least because the majority of critics writing about Stranger Things prefer to evaluate its content according to the knowledge, tastes and interests of adults, often neglecting to mention the show’s multi-generational appeal as an important factor in its phenomenal success. Bootle, for instance, champions what originally made Stranger Things popular with adults when she describes season three’s focus on ‘the pleasure and pain of adolescence’ as filtered through ‘a heavy mist of nostalgia, not only for the era it references – but for itself, and the times gone by within the world of our characters’ (2019). In other words, by becoming self-referential, Stranger Things 3 utilises its tweens’ growing pains not to engage fans of a similar age group, but to create a form of hyper-nostalgia for its childhood self, as well as for the era when many adults watching the show were children. After season three, Bootle laments that Stranger Things ‘can hardly be considered “cult”’ anymore—it’s ‘a fully mainstream, big-budget Netflix binge-watch that has inspired countless brand collaborations’ (2019). But what may also lie in the Upside Down of this observation is an understanding that Stranger Things cannot easily be considered ‘adult’

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anymore. As a work of mainstream cult, the series attracts a niche, ‘discerning’ adult market while bidding for a multi-generational audience of adults, teens and tweens, regardless of the show’s proffered maturity ratings. The contemporary tweens sought by Netflix are, as Sidneyeve Matrix notes, ‘voracious television viewers’ (2014, 123). Watching hours of on-demand content every day and promptly posting on social media to review their favourite shows, they are the present advertisers and future spending power for global streaming platforms such as Netflix, making their expectations for digital media production, distribution and consumption a serious priority. Netflix doesn’t release statistics about demographic content use, but online evidence reveals how young viewers frequently watch adult shows to ‘satisfy their intellectual curiosity, for the sexually mature content, and to enjoy the high production values’ (ibid., 130). Stranger Things, as a show that deliberately asserts and refutes its own ‘adult’ label, provides an ideal site for exploring how Netflix accommodates such viewing practices through the design of its original content. This chapter will explore Stranger Things ’ cult/adult label against the show’s multi-generational appeal, arguing that its intertextuality, reflexivity and transgenericism (Stein 2005) not only attract both young and adult fans but redefine the boundaries of youth/adult horror in the age of streaming platforms. In Season One, the show’s dual targeting of young and adult viewers creates positive agentic characters for young fans while inviting ‘knowing’ adults to reassess the monstrous roles children often play in cult horror texts. In Stranger Things 2, the horror trope of the possessed child is reconfigured through the show’s use of family melodrama, which centralises the child’s individuality and mutually empowering child-adult relationships. In Stranger Things 3, young and adult fans become embroiled in the show’s extensive brand and product advertising, while capitalism’s sinister grip is explored self-consciously through Hawkins’ residents turning into The Flayed. For those seeking to legitimise the show’s ‘decidedly adult’ label (Alston 2016), Stranger Things may be viewed as a type of crossover text which begins by targeting a core demographic and ‘illegitimately’ becomes absorbed by another. However, this chapter proposes that the show makes a deliberate and successful bid for its multiple fan groups, positioning its more positive reimaginings of the child in horror for the consumption of a mass audience within the digital ‘warehouse’ environment (Zündel 2019, 20), Netflix.2

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Opening the Gate: Children, Horror and Mainstream Cult Through its countless references to pop media culture from the 1980s and beyond, Stranger Things invites Generation X and Millennials to participate in the ‘intellectual game controlled by citational aesthetics’ (Degli-Esposti 1998, 6), generating nostalgia for a lost decade within its adult fan community by providing a ‘true pleasure of recognition’ (ibid.) which has elevated the show’s status as a cult television narrative. Central to this cultural nostalgia is a recreation of all things child-oriented in the eighties. From BMX bikes to walkie-talkies, He-Man toys, and Dungeons & Dragons, the show features a plethora of children’s pop culture from the decade, woven together seamlessly through the intertextual fabric of that most iconic children’s comfort blanket in 1980s cinema: Steven Spielberg.3 The show’s dedication to recreating the 1980s aesthetic suggests that the kids of Stranger Things are not built around any contemporary notions of childhood. Instead, they are characters based on the reconstructed memories, artefacts and cultural touchstones of a recent period in America’s history, which holds special significance for many adults watching in the present. As such, the show’s focus on childhood through the ‘distorting’ lens of nostalgia has garnered some criticism. Filipa Antunes, for example, argues that Stranger Things ‘has nothing to say to or about children today’ and ‘breaks the golden rule of 1980s entertainment by not explicitly targeting young audiences’ (original emphasis, 2017a). Within the parameters of such a reading, the child protagonists of Stranger Things serve as little more than avatars for the show’s adult fans, enhancing their sense of immersion within the nostalgic binge-viewing experience, which can be enjoyed from the dual vantage point of the adult/child self.4 Although it may suit many adult fans to read childhood in Stranger Things as responding solely to the wants and needs of adults, such readings threaten to perform further acts of erasure, for Stranger Things has indeed garnered a youth audience. A quick scroll through social media feeds and reviews on sites such as Common Sense Media reveals how many children across the tween demographic (typically aged 8–14) are rating the series and often reflecting in meaningful ways on how it speaks to their own lives and interests.5 The Duffer Brothers clearly had this younger audience in mind when they first created the series. As Ross Duffer explains: ‘It doesn’t matter if you were raised in the eighties or not,

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you can connect with these characters. There are kids, teens and adults in this, so there’s someone for everyone to relate to’ (cited in Grow 2016). The Duffer Brothers carried out over 1,000 auditions for their young protagonists, careful preparations which evidently ensured that the characters feel as ‘real’ and engaging to children watching the show as adults. But like the many openings that mark the territory of the Upside Down, cult media requires a careful ‘policing of the boundaries’ (Jancovich and Hunt 2004, 28). Reinforcing the show’s cult/adult label positions these younger fans as the ‘inauthentic outsiders’ (ibid.) who don’t ‘get’ the series because they weren’t around in the eighties and cannot experience its nostalgia or appreciate its intertextual references in the same way that many adults do.6 Such practices permit the show’s ‘authentic’ adult fans to legitimately claim the avatar bodies they perceive as rightfully theirs, along with the constructed world of the 1980s they inhabit. Discussing processes of Othering in relation to mainstream cult, Matt Hills postulates that ‘as long as “cult” status still retains a range of totemic “Others”, it may, after all, be possible for “cult” and “mainstream” labels to (uneasily) co-exist’ (2010, 68). The child, whose identity is often constructed as passive, naïve, and impressionable, serves as a principle Other for the cult fan’s identity as active, intelligent, and antimainstream, lingering uncomfortably at the margins of cult discourse. For cult specialist Danny Peary, cult films are children: ‘abandoned orphans in a hostile world, cherished, protected, and enthusiastically championed by segments of the movie audience’ (2014). This echoes Timothy Corrigan’s suggestion that all cult films are ‘adopted children’ (1991, 26), a metaphor which vocalises the cult fan’s position as active and dominant while silently assuming the child’s position as passive and powerless. Such positions relate to wider concerns about mainstream media effects on an imagined passive viewer, which cult fans, through their own subversive practices, can apparently circumvent. As Jason Mittell explains: ‘Many imagine watching television to be a passive activity by default, and that people learn how to be more active and discerning only with maturity’ (2010, 386). However, as Mittell’s research goes on to testify, studies on children as viewers suggest they ‘practice more direct engagement, active negotiation, and cognitive discernment than typically assumed’ (ibid.). Mittell’s work is useful for demonstrating how assumptions about children’s passivity and their susceptibility to media messaging need to be carefully re-examined in the context of mainstream cult, for while resistance and non-conformity are prized behaviours of cult fans, such

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behaviours in children are often perceived as a threat to adult authority and something to be discouraged. As if to reassure cult fans encountering a sense of unease about their own acts of border crossing in watching a series about a group of kids, Stranger Things grounds itself firmly within the generic landscape of horror, with each new season promising to be more frightening than the last through its explicit use of horror conventions and iconography (see, for example, Karen Sturgeon-Dodsworth’s chapter on the Final Girl trope below). The terms ‘cult’ and ‘horror’, particularly when used together, can render a text exclusively adult. Horror ‘tends to be associated with kinds of knowledge and forms of experience regarded by many as unsuitable for children’ (Brennan et al. 2001, 2), and concerns over its damaging effects on young, impressionable minds persist in a variety of contexts. Cult, similarly, is ‘taken from a pool of movies your mama told you not to watch’ (Briggs et al. 2008), often linked with exploitation cinema, taboo topics, and the phenomenon of the ‘midnight movie’. As Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton argue in their discussion of cult horror cinema, ‘cult and horror are almost synonymous’ in a number of contexts, their conflation in film dating back to the 1920s and denoting an era in horror cinema that has ‘become a cult in itself […] the mid 1970s to the late 1980s’ (2011, 194–195). With its first season set in the midst of this period and allusions to classic films such as John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and George Romero’s zombie trilogy (1968–1985) appearing in each episode, Stranger Things situates itself at the heart of cult horror on multiple levels, carrying over for many adult fans its associations of ‘explicit violence, fear, and bodily mutilation’ (ibid.). For such viewers, this intertextual approach solidifies the show’s purportedly ‘adult’ landscape and closes the gate on younger fans by demanding a certain level of maturity from audiences. However, unlike many of its 18-rated intertexts, Stranger Things resides at the upper end of the tween demographic in terms of its prescribed viewing suitability. The series borrows from family adventure and ‘coming of age’ films as widely as from the realms of cult horror, while its central concepts can be found in texts targeting children as well as adults. Portals to other dimensions, for example, have been a staple of children’s literature and culture since Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which Stranger Things also references. Beneath its nostalgic appeal, the series reveals a contemporary interest in youth horror’s capacity ‘to grow, and

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grow rapidly, in the new millennia’ (McCort 2016, 9). Rather than being decidedly adult, then, Stranger Things advances the ‘clashing, intersecting and hybridising’ of child and adult cultures in the twenty-first century (Falconer 2009, 3), a process which has surely been accelerated through the various freedoms of streaming platforms such as Netflix, where ‘inventiveness unfettered by rules of broadcast programming’ (Cabral Martins 2019, 82) serves both mass/niche and young/adult audiences. The show received a TV-14 certification in the US and a 12/15 for episodes in the UK, but the suitability of these classifications has been rejected by many child fans and widely debated by adults on advice sites. The ‘Parents’ Guide for Stranger Things ’ on the Internet Movie Database notes the increase in frightening content in Season Two: ‘the setting turns from PG-13 moderately frightening to more intense […] Young viewers (and some adults) may find it shocking to the point of nightmareinducing’. Responding to this alert, some viewers proposed that an R rating (adult guidance for anyone under the age of 17) might be more appropriate. One viewer commented: ‘It’s much scarier and darker than the first season, and unlike the 1980s movies it’s based on, it’s more terrifying. The most unsettling parts involve the boy Will being possessed […] It is similar to how scary The Exorcist is’.7 Here, a 1970s X-rated cult horror film about a possessed child, which courted widespread controversy on its release and in the years that followed, serves as the go-to intertext for determining the show’s horror content and its unsuitability for children. The comparison is telling, as it reveals how powerfully intertextual readings (and, indeed, ‘inter-textual’ readings, as discussed by Matt Hills in his chapter below) can shape viewer responses. More importantly for the work of this chapter, it reveals the controversial role of the child in cult horror texts, which Stranger Things self-consciously reconfigures through its active nostalgia, by initiating ‘the critical effect of play’ (Brooker and Brooker 1997, 7) with horror conventions.

‘Something’s Coming’: The (Monstrous) Child in Stranger Things Set in 1983, Stranger Things ’ first season lands in the high period of cult horror cinema, where children, following the likes of Regan in The Exorcist (1973) and Damien in The Omen (1976), became ‘mainstay villains’ in a genre ‘produced and consumed largely behind their backs’ (Lennard 2014, 1). In the same year, America, staunch protector of

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the nuclear family, was exposed as a child-hating nation. Letty Cottin Pogrebin coined the term ‘pedophobia’ to argue that behind the façade of child-loving Americans was ‘a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive towards its children’, with adults fearing ‘children who are independent, quirky, free-thinking, nonconformist, idiosyncratic, superior, or critical of adults’ (1983, 42, original emphasis). Pogrebin detected an insidious pedophobia in films such as The Exorcist , which suggest that ‘although they appear small and innocent, children cannot be trusted. Beneath their child disguises, they are monsters’ (47). Stranger Things draws on the decade’s depictions of monstrous children, only to deconstruct these images through the show’s transgenericism and a dual targeting of young and adult audiences. In defining this term, Louisa Stein refers to ‘generically mixed media texts which cannot easily be separated into their component generic parts’ and ‘mesh generic discourse’ to produce the overall meaning of the text (2005, 12). Within such generic intermeshing, images of monstrous children are deliberately overturned, their surfaces appearing only to be cast off by the same independent, quirky, freethinking, and nonconformist children championed by Pogrebin in her indictment of America’s pedophobia. In line with cult horror’s reflexivity, Stranger Things self-consciously alludes to the cultural construction of the child as monstrous. In “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”, a scientist runs down an underground corridor, trying to escape from an unseen assailant. Following the victim’s wordless (and noticeably non-gory) death, a cut takes the viewer to the exterior of the Wheeler house and Mike’s (Finn Wolfhard) voiceover: ‘Something’s coming, something hungry for blood’. At first, the juxtaposition implies a sinister connection between the child’s gameplay and the scientist’s mysterious death, as an interior shot reveals Mike and his friends playing Dungeons & Dragons in the Wheeler basement. The association recalls 1980s cult horror films such as Child’s Play (1988), where adult fear of child agency ‘extends even to the demonization of the child’s culture’, illustrating ‘the terror of childish imaginations unbounded by the prescriptions of adult authority’ (Lennard 2014, 2). In Stranger Things, however, the juxtaposition empowers the child’s imagination, as Mike’s D&D narration fills the gap left behind by a speechless adult to align the viewer’s engagement with the child’s point of view. The boys’ gameplay, recalling child-adventure films such as E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and The Goonies (1985), is presented positively in the context of horror, as the editing, camera movement and sound in the Wheeler basement

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serve to validate rather than vilify their heightened emotions. The threat of a Demogorgon also becomes the season’s entire plot, and such metatextual ties between the show’s diegesis and the boys’ knowledge, acquired through imaginative play, position children as the creative force behind Stranger Things (see Clem Bastow’s chapter on the screenwriter as Dungeon Master below). They also resist cult horror’s tendency to demonise the child and children’s culture, opting instead to expose the games adults often play with children in an adult-only horror arena. Child monsters, Dominic Lennard argues, are ‘all eyes […] braced by a self-disciplined silence’, and through their watchful gaze, they ‘aggravate us with the smugly passive-aggressive suggestion that they might have something on us’ (2014, 2). Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), to borrow Lennard’s phrase, certainly has something on us as she watches others through her wide eyes, her telekinetic powers threatening lethal consequences with a twitch of the head, followed by an ‘accident’ and a nosebleed. These implications are promptly overturned by Eleven’s character, her combined power and vulnerability, and the close relationships she forms with her friends. Allusions to child monsters intersect with references to Spielberg’s E.T., positioning Eleven as the benign outsider who befriends Mike and hides from a dangerous enemy inside his house. They also adopt the conventions of youth horror, where a sympathetic child/teen Other features for audience identification (Pulliam 2014, 12). These images culminate in Eleven’s misguided assumption that she is ‘the monster’ because she opened the Gate (“Chapter Six: The Monster”), but any viewer, child or adult, can see that Eleven is no monster. Operating beyond the stereotypical silent child terror, she frequently ‘speaks’ her private thoughts to the viewer through a series of flashbacks.8 As her traumatic memories of Hawkins Lab invite audience sympathy, they also ‘rupture’ the narrative flow in ways that mimic her psychic abilities, positioning her both inside and outside the text with the other children in terms of implied diegetic control. To reinforce the reassessment of Eleven’s role as child monster, the Duffer Brothers cast the other children in the role of horror spectator, a defamiliarising process which invites knowing adults to re-evaluate their positions as spectators of cult horror films. At the end of the first episode, Mike, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) find Eleven hiding in the woods. As they shine their torches on her, their beams of light mimic that of a cinema projector, illuminating Eleven centre-screen and leaving the boys concealed in voyeuristic darkness.

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Soaked and shivering, Eleven displays her discomfort with being objectified, while the boys, their faces coming into focus via a slow and intense camera zoom, are exposed as attentive spectators. The exchange of near point-of-view shots suggests that Eleven can see them, too, a strategy which affects the power balance, since the viewer has already witnessed what can happen under Eleven’s watchful gaze.9 For a time, the boys buy into the stereotypes found in horror films which would cast Eleven as the child monster. In “Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street”, Eleven is labelled a ‘psycho’ and a ‘freak’ by members of the party: ‘like Michael Myers’, says Dustin; ‘I wouldn’t want her in my house’, says Lucas. Internalising the cultural values of these films, they ‘read’ the often silent Eleven by labelling her as the demonic child murderer who would kill a sibling if she was permitted to stay in the house. But the children soon learn that their assumptions based on the typically gendered perspectives found in cult horror films are false. Recognising these distortions enables them to see Eleven more clearly as they begin to develop meaningful friendships with her.10 The horror film is ‘a compelling site for examining conflict and contradiction in the relationship between children and adults’ and ‘we flinch at the idea of children being permitted to freely see them’ (Lennard 2014, 4). But as the conversations of Stranger Things repeatedly prove, these children have watched horror films and are learning to negotiate their meanings in the same active and discerning ways described by critics who refute the passivity of child spectators. In the show’s first episode, Joyce (Winona Ryder) buys her twelve-year-old son tickets to see Poltergeist (1982), another Spielberg-produced film developed at the same time as E.T. with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) director, Tobe Hooper. At first, Joyce doesn’t want Will (Noah Schnapp) to see the film, but then she changes her mind, so long as he doesn’t have nightmares like he did the last time. Will says he doesn’t get scared like that anymore, but his conviction, shown in a flashback, is framed by Joyce’s present anxiety over her missing son. Such moments of textual conflict serve as a metacommentary on shifting boundaries regarding children watching horror, both now and in the 1980s. Antunes, discussing violence and horror in Spielberg’s Poltergeist and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), describes the 1980s as ‘a period of transformation in social and cultural perceptions in which PG-13 surfaced as the marker of new boundaries for childhood as well as the horror genre’ (2017b, 28). Stranger Things, now

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garnering its own child audience, addresses these issues directly and, like its PG-13 intertexts, suggests new possibilities for the genre in terms of twenty-first-century viewing practices. The deliberate positioning of child protagonists as horror spectators invites adults to re-evaluate their spectatorial role and the role of the child in cult horror. However, it also reminds these adults of the horror films they watched as children and subtly validates the child’s participation in watching contemporary horror shows like Stranger Things.

Body Horror and Family Melodrama: The Possessed Child in Stranger Things 2 Addressing child and adult fans through hybridised discourses, Stranger Things reconfigures cult horror’s tendency towards pedophobic narrative outcomes, replacing child subordination and annihilation with a positive investment in family, relationships and peer friendships. Through the story of Will’s possession by the Mind Flayer, Stranger Things 2 invites a deeper assessment of the cultural forces which shape and construct child subjectivities. Will, often interpreted as asexual or queer in critical readings of the series (see Tracey Mollet’s chapter above), is slowly taken over by the Shadow Monster which invades his body and begins to implant unknown thoughts and images inside his head. In “Chapter Four: Will the Wise”, he describes this process to Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce: ‘I don’t have to think, I just know things now, things I never did before […] It’s like old memories in the back of my head, only, they’re not my memories’ (original emphasis). Significantly, Will names these invading thoughts ‘now memories’, their influence connected to the past as much as the present. Through this description, the Mind Flayer symbolises oppressive ideologies operating in the present, infiltrating the lives of the next generation by ‘growing, spreading, killing’ (“Chapter Four: Will the Wise”). To show these ‘now memories’, Will doesn’t use words: he draws. In 1980s cult films such as Paperhouse (1988), children’s drawings create terrifying other worlds that unleash child-hating parents. However, Will’s talent and love of drawing provides a valuable sign of his individuality, as well as a vital clue for those adults capable of working with him to locate the real monster masquerading under the guise of the child. In cult horror, the trope of the possessed child exposes adult fears regarding children’s power as a threat to adult authority. As Pogrebin reflects, ‘we love children only when they are under control ’ (1983,

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42, original emphasis). Situating pedophobia firmly within the oppressive structures of patriarchy and the New Right, she argues that men in particular require child subordination: ‘When gender, race, and class comforts fail, children are the last order of necessary inferiors’ (43). Unlike its horror intertexts, which focus on the child as object of horror and frequently leave the causes of this evil undefined, Stranger Things remains clear about the patriarchal forces shaping and controlling children, often using the trope of possession to reveal that what lies ‘within’, threatening to devour the child and those around it, is instilled most powerfully through the actions of corrupt father figures. Cult monsters ‘threaten the disintegration of the human body through anthropophagy – the act of being devoured by another’ (Mathijs and Sexton 2011, 199). The Upside Down, a malignant force representing a stifling, oppressive adulthood (Butler 2017, 196), devours children such as Will through its carnivorous creatures. But its monstrous equivalents in the ordinary world, ‘Papa’ Dr Brenner (Matthew Modine) and the ‘bad men’ connected with Hawkins Lab, are the real child devourers, responsible for opening the Gate that causes Will and Barb’s (Shannon Purser) disappearances and abducting children like Eleven and Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) to turn them into biological weapons. In Stranger Things 2, narratives about children’s minds and bodies being colonised by monstrous entities result in fierce battles against such invasions to protect and restore the integrity of the child. Rather than this struggle occurring through the lens of horror, with the resulting annihilation of the monstrous child or the restoration of its mute subservience, the show merges discourses to prioritise positive relationships between children and adults typically found in family melodrama. Although many of the show’s adults align with their horror counterparts as absent, neglectful, or abusive towards their children, Stranger Things also redefines adult-child relationships through positive figures such as Joyce and Hopper. Here, the load is always shared, with characters across generational groups uniting to battle against the enemy. Children repeatedly display their knowledge, intelligence and resourcefulness, while parents situated outside the ‘traditional’ nuclear family fight and remind their children that they are not alone (see Rose Butler’s chapter on family dynamics below). Nowhere is this sense of togetherness more apparent than in Season Two, where a team effort is required to communicate with Will during his possession by the Mind Flayer. We see the adults, teens and tweens working side by side to disguise the shed, covering its walls

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with cardboard and tape and relying on each other in a game of relay to decipher Will’s coded message about closing the Gate (“Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer”). These sequences reinforce inclusivity, as children and adults both play their part in rescuing Will and securing the Byers home against the enemy. Significantly, Will’s colonisation by the Mind Flayer and the fight for his freedom are combined with Eleven’s journey towards discovering she is Jane. Slowly, the viewer is encouraged to recognise the similarities between the treatment of Eleven by her two surrogate fathers, Dr Brenner and Hopper, one being an explicit form of patriarchal control driven by a desire for power, the other operating more implicitly under the label of paternal care: ‘I protect and I feed and I teach’ (“Chapter Four: Will the Wise”). Eleven remains isolated at Hopper’s cabin as she was isolated in Hawkins Lab. Her past and her birth origin remain hidden from her, as Hopper chooses to tell her that her mother is ‘gone’, educating her, Prospero-like, in ways that comply with his own needs and rules (“Chapter Three: The Pollywog”). The adult viewer, along with Hopper, is invited to perceive that what is often described as being in the child’s best interests can also be deeply flawed. Equally important is the space the series creates for Eleven’s anger, a form of agency and rebellion which disrupts the hierarchies in adult/child, male/female binaries, as this Miranda literally throws Prospero’s book back at him with the power of her mind (“Chapter Four: Will the Wise”). The viewer, both child and adult, is invited to sympathise with the emotions of these characters. Only by discovering her past can Eleven begin to construct an identity for herself, and only by letting go of his fear can Hopper begin to see Eleven not as a replacement for his lost daughter but as an individual in her own right. As a result, their intense argument in the cabin and their later reconciliation as they set out to close the Gate as equals (“Chapter Nine: The Gate”) are two of the show’s most powerful and touching moments. In Stranger Things 2, closing the Gate on monsters also means opening the door to mutually empowering child-adult relationships.

Childish Adults and Tweenish Teens: The Neoliberal Horrors of Stranger Things 3 With the gateway to the Upside Down closed, Stranger Things 3 opens further textual entry points for the show’s tween fans, prioritising their roles as consumers with ‘more personal power, more money, influence and

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attention than any other generation before them’ (Lindstrom and Seybold 2003, 1). The show’s overt product placement and brand collaborations invite Gen-X and Millennials to indulge in ‘serious mid-80s stylings’ and ‘channel [their] inner Stranger Things child’ (Westbrook 2019), but they also target tweens through desirable items such as Eleven’s jumpsuit, Dustin’s ‘Camp Know Where’ T-shirt, and the endless toys, accessories and merchandising now widely available for the show’s fans (see Antonella Mascio’s chapter on Stranger Things commodities below). Subsequently, Stranger Things 3 seems to reconfigure its horror landscape more substantially for a younger audience. Dustin and Suzie’s NeverEnding Story duet, more in tune with Disney’s High School Musical trilogy (2006–2008) and TV series Glee (2009–2015) than Wolfgang Petersen’s film (1984), occurs in the middle of a monster chase and aligns the series with recent hit franchises starring teens but targeting the crucial tween demographic. Several horror elements also occur through series flashbacks and are merged with a notable increase in the show’s comedy, ‘diluting’ the impact of horror through repetition and tonal shifts which are often associated with children’s horror television (Abbott and Jowett 2013, 30). Most notably, the series extends its focus on the emotional lives of its young protagonists, leaving some reviewers calling it not an 1980s sci-fi/horror tribute but ‘Stranger Things: The Soap Opera’, a ‘frustrating’, ‘disparate’ and ‘boring’ viewing experience (Heritage 2019). However, with the Gate closed, horror spreads like a disease across Hawkins in more dangerous and insidious forms. The town’s inhabitants slowly become ‘The Flayed’, hosts and servants of the Mind Flayer with a self-sacrificing desire ‘to build’ (“Chapter Two: The Mall Rats”). Set and released on Independence Day, the season features the new Starcourt Mall - a shopping development which flaunts the growth of 1980s consumer capitalism as the town’s small businesses run dry - and deliberately moves closer to critiquing America’s contemporary state of crisis. The characters are no longer trying to escape from the horrors of a parallel universe: instead, Hawkins has become the Upside Down, and its human inhabitants are literally turning into monsters. With a corrupt mayor championing American capitalism (Cary Elwes), a flayed Editor in Chief at the Hawkins Post (Michael Park), and a misogynistic Trump-lookalike terrorising its female employees (Jake Busey), the show appears more deeply connected to present nightmares than in previous seasons. Uncoincidentally, this shift coincides with references to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1985), a cult horror film whose zombies

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are widely recognised as ‘products of a symbolically cannibalistic, capitalist society’ (Williams 2016, 156). The tweens’ act of disobedience in sneaking into watch this film preview (“Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?”) is rewarded in the same way as their D&D gameplay, as it enables them to ‘preview’ the show’s diegetic content and prepare for the dangers ahead. Adults watching the series are invited, in reverse, to preview the real-life horrors which grew out of the eighties. Capitalism, the world’s undefeated monster, continues to hold us all in its sinister grip: Stranger Things 3 manages its criticisms of this devouring force against its own inevitable position as flayed subject of twenty-first-century neoliberal culture. An anxiety which haunts the series’ characters alongside the inevitable pull towards consumer capitalism is the difficulty of ‘growing up’. Will, donning his wizard robes for a game of D&D, is met with embarrassed looks from Lucas and Mike who are busy with their new relationships with Max and Eleven (“Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”). Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) struggle in their roles as newspaper interns, as Jonathan remains in the dark room of his school days while Nancy, bullied by her male superiors, feels like ‘a kid who has no idea what she’s doing’ (“Chapter Four: The Sauna Test”). Steve (Joe Keery) and his new work colleague Robin (Maya Hawke) dress like children in their sailor outfits at Scoops Ahoy and remain in these costumes for most of the season. Meanwhile, the shopping mall is the new playground for Erica (Priah Ferguson), a ten-year-old advocate of 1980s capitalism who demands free ice-cream at every hour while comfortably navigating the building’s ventilation shafts in her My Little Pony backpack. Adults, too, are infected by this ‘growing’ sense of unease. Mrs Wheeler and her friends sunbathe at Hawkins swimming pool with the other partying kids, checking their hair and makeup as ‘bad-boy’ teenager Billy (Dacre Montgomery) arrives for his shift as a lifeguard (“Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?”). Hopper and Joyce are scolded for their constant bickering, repeatedly called ‘children’ by Murray (Bret Gelman) as they struggle to admit their feelings for one another. Alexei (Alec Utgoff) watches cartoons and demands just the right flavour of Slurpee during his stint as a hostage, until at the 4 July fair, surrounded by applauding kids, he wins a cuddly toy and is killed by the Russian hitman, Grigori (Andrey Ivchenko) (“Chapter Seven: The Bite”). At Hawkins’ Steel Works, the Mind Flayer returns through Billy and his ‘partner’,

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Heather, possessed teen terrors who have now become the show’s biggest human threat. Once again, Stranger Things 3 remains highly self-reflexive in these narratives, communicating adult anxieties over shifting adult/child boundaries that affect the show’s commodities. The Stranger Things children don’t look or sound like they used to. The liminal phase they have entered provokes discomfort in many adult fans for the very reason that it cannot easily be defined or contained. The nostalgic longing of reviewers such as Bootle for the child’s ‘earnest naivety’ confirms this sense of discomfort: childhood innocence, the myth adults often rely on and real children inevitably problematise, exists so that the child may ‘more perfectly fulfil the symbolic demands we make upon it’ (Jenkins 1998, 1). Set against the show’s nostalgia, the rapid growth of the series’ young stars threatens to open up a deeper wound, creating a fuller sense of loss, because what could apparently be reclaimed is now being exposed as an impossibility: the avatar bodies are changing. Such changes create a gateway to another dimension, a rupture in time and space which critics such as Antunes had hoped for all along: contemporary childhood. However, in upfronting the difficulties of ‘growing up’ through shifting states of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, Stranger Things invites a deeper assessment of these categories in relation to neoliberal culture and America’s current state of crisis. The show appears to ask: what does it mean to be an adult in the Upside Down of contemporary America? How does one define ‘coming of age’ or adulthood under the cruelties and destructive leadership of Donald Trump? The show suggests a way through for its characters, as Hopper’s letter to Eleven provides a hopeful closing message, not about children maturing in order to become the ‘right’ kind of adult, but about everyone learning to embrace change in order to move forward (“Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”). However, the effect is somewhat jarring when set against the vice-like grip of contemporary neoliberal culture. Consumers have the freedom ‘to be whatever you want, to act whatever age you feel’, but this illusion of choice and freedom, as Rachel Falconer observes, can induce ‘a sense of vertigo’ which renders individuals ‘unable to act at all’ (2009, 36). Unsurprisingly, this state of paralysis finds its ideal expression through the medium of horror in Stranger Things.

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Playing in the Dressing up Box The Duffer Brothers’ approach to Stranger Things has been criticised as childlike. They are, according to Ryan Gilbey, ‘like kids playing in the dressing up box’ with ‘nothing original of their own to add to the atmosphere of extended homage’ (2017). In many ways, the show’s dedication to replicating the 1980s aesthetic has served as a kind of paradoxical doom, for it has become the focus of many critical discussions and led some reviewers to speculate that nothing noteworthy lies beneath the glossy surface. However, as many scholars writing about the series have already demonstrated, Stranger Things is ‘more directly engaged with cultural anxieties, prevalent both then and now, than it is given credit for’ (Butler 2018, 72). In an era of convergence culture and TV IV where industry, apparatus, and medium boundaries are rapidly dissolving and becoming redefined, Stranger Things renegotiates the boundaries of contemporary horror for both young and adult audiences, its intertextuality and transgenericism often dismantling the hierarchies operating in adult/child and cult/mainstream binaries for a show that offers multigenerational appeal. Its self-reflexivity also highlights ‘the ambiguity of Western boundaries around the status of childhood’, where tween exists in ‘an indeterminate place’ between childhood and adolescence (MacDonald 2017, 19) but also serves as ‘the ideal subject of neoliberalism’ (Kennedy 2019, 11). We kid ourselves by pretending Stranger Things is a show made exclusively for adults, but such choices may reflect deeper uncertainties about what it means to ‘grow up’ in the contemporary age and enact change against our own debilitating state of crisis.

Notes 1. The age range of the ‘tween’ demographic varies depending on who is using the term and in what context, but a general consensus occurs around 8–12, with some marketers leaning just outside of these parameters. In the Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Volume 1 (2007), Jeffrey Jensen Arnett writes: ‘The exact origin of the word tween is disputed, but it generally refers to youth between the ages of 8 and 12 (although some marketers identify the demographic as extending to age 14)’ (835). As the pre-teen protagonists of Stranger Things are all around the age of twelve in Season One (beginning in November 1983) and thirteen or fourteen in Season Three (ending in July 1985), the term can be applied to these characters across the series to date.

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2. My purpose here is not to suggest that Stranger Things is suitable viewing for all tweens, or to try and explain how individual children are watching and responding to the show. Rather, my analysis comes from an understanding that both adults and children are watching Stranger Things, with the aim of exploring how the show’s bid for multiple fan groups reconfigures the cult/mainstream binary and the child’s role in cult horror texts. 3. The influence of Spielberg in Stranger Things has been widely discussed by fans and scholars. Of particular note for this chapter is Jacopo Della Quercia’s essay ‘Spielberg Things: The Nostalgic Heart of Stranger Things ’, which explores how the show is ‘just as nostalgic about eighties childhood as it is eighties horror’ (2018, 112). 4. The opportunity for viewers to experience different generational viewpoints simultaneously is built into the show’s narrative. As Ana Cabral Martins explains: ‘The episodes are not thought of as individual units […] but as a purposefully slow building up of the narrative along three demographic lines: the adults, the teenagers, and the kids, who all converge in the latter part of the season’ (2019, 89). 5. For these and other child or parent reviews, visit https://www.common sensemedia.org/node/5405541/user-reviews/child. The tween-turnedteen actors of Stranger Things have also become global superstars with huge followings on Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. If adults needed any further proof of who is following them, the official videos of the Stranger Things 3 World Tour, posted on the show’s YouTube channel, speak directly to a tween market. 6. Serving as further evidence of the textually possessive nature of the ‘authentic’ cult fan, the practice of identifying inauthentic outsiders has even been extended towards the Duffer Brothers. In an interview for Vulture, Jen Chaney introduces Matt and Ross Duffer as ‘men who came of age primarily in the early 1990s’ but ‘fell in love with storytelling by consuming movies and books released in the ’80s either before they were born or when they were barely out of diapers’ (2016). Such infantilising remarks suggest that the authentic fan of Stranger Things wasn’t just around in the 1980s: they were old enough to appreciate the culture of the decade. 7. For these and other reviews, see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4574 334/parentalguide. 8. This device, although not exclusive to Eleven’s character, is heavily dominated by her experiences in Season One and repeated by the Duffer Brothers in Season Two to develop her character arc. 9. For critics such as Gackstetter Nichols (2019), this sequence might appear as further evidence of the male construction of female identity in Stranger

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Things. However, I argue that a more complex interrogation of the typically adolescent male gaze in cult horror is available here. 10. In later episodes, such images from cult horror are appropriated more freely by the show’s female characters. In Season Two’s “Trick or Treat, Freak”, Eleven frightens Hopper as she appears dressed in a white sheet with cut eyeholes like Michael Myers, but she only wishes to disguise herself in the hope of seeing Mike. In the same episode, Max scares the boys wearing a Michael Myers costume complete with mask, kitchen knife and boiler suit, but from this moment on, she befriends them, accepting their invitation to go trick-or-treating and eventually becoming a trusted member of their party.

Works Cited Abbott, Stacey, and Lorna Jowett. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Alston, Joshua. 2016. ‘Netflix’s Sci-Fi Throwback Stranger Things Is Yesterday’s Summer Blockbuster Today.’ AV Club, July 13. Available at: https://tv.avclub.com/netflix-s-sci-fi-throwback-stranger-things-is-yes terday-1798188321. Accessed 29 August 2020. Antunes, Filipa. 2017a. ‘Childhood and (the Limits of) Nostalgia in Stranger Things.’ H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, October 23. Available at: https://networks.h-net.org/node/2602/discussions/186846/childh ood-and-limits-nostalgia-stranger-things. Accessed 29 August 2020. Antunes, Filipa. 2017b. ‘Rethinking PG-13: Ratings and the Boundaries of Childhood and Horror.’ Journal of Film and Video 69 (1): 27–43. Bootle, Emily. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3 Deals with the Pleasure and Pain of Adolescence.’ New Statesman, July 5. Available at: https://www.newsta tesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2019/07/stranger-things-season-3-netflix-ele ven-mike-romance-adolescence-review. Accessed 29 August 2020. Brennan, Geraldine, Kevin McCarron, and Kimberly Reynolds. 2001. Frightening Fiction. London and New York: Continuum. Briggs, Joe Bob, J. Hoberman, Damien Love, Tim Lucas, Danny Peary, Jeffrey Sconce, and Peter Stanfield. 2008. ‘Cult Cinema: A Critical Symposium.’ Cineaste 34 (1): 43–50. Brooker, Peter, and Will Brooker. 1997. ‘Introduction.’ In Postmodern AfterImages: A Reader in Film, Television and Video, edited by Peter Brooker and Will Brooker, 1–20. London: Arnold. Butler, Rose. 2017. ‘“Welcome to the Upside Down”: Nostalgia and Cultural Fears in Stranger Things.’ In Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear, edited by Linda Belau and Kimberly Jackson, 187–201. London and New York: Routledge.

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Butler, Rose. 2018. ‘The Eaten for Breakfast Club: Teenage Nightmares in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore, Jr., 72–83. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Cabral Martins, Ana. 2019. ‘Netflix and TV-as-Film: A Case Study of Stranger Things and The OA.’ In Netflix at the Nexus: Content, Practice, and Production in the Age of Streaming Television, edited by Theo Plothe and Amber M. Buck, 81–96. New York: Peter Lang. Chaney, Jen. 2016. ‘Stranger Things ’ Duffer Brothers on ’80s Cinema, Fighting Over Kid Actors, and How They Cast Winona Ryder.’ Vulture, July 15. Available at: https://www.vulture.com/2016/07/stranger-things-duffer-brotherswinona-ryder-kid-actors.html. Accessed 29 August 2020. Child’s Play. 1988. Directed by Tom Holland. Film. United States: United Artists. Corrigan, Timothy. 1991. ‘Film and the Culture of Cult.’ In The Cult Film Experience: Beyond All Reason, edited by J. P. Telotte, 26–37. Austin: University of Texas Press. Cottin Pogrebin, Letty. 1983. Family Politics: Love and Power on an Intimate Frontier. New York: McGraw-Hill. Dawn of the Dead. 1978. Directed by George A. Romero. Film. United States: Laurel Group. Day of the Dead. 1985. Directed by George A. Romero. Film. United States: Laurel Entertainment. Degli-Esposti, Cristina. 1998. ‘Introduction: Postmodernism(s).’ In Postmodernism in the Cinema, edited by Cristina Degli-Esposti, 3–18. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. Della Quercia, Jacopo. 2018. ‘Spielberg Things: The Nostalgic Heart of Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., 112–125. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. 1982. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. The Exorcist. 1973. Directed by William Friedkin. Film. United States: Hoya Productions. Falconer, Rachel. 2009. The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children’s Fiction and Its Readership. London and New York: Routledge. Fullerton, Huw. 2019. ‘Is Stranger Things 3 Scary?’ Radio Times, July 4. Available at: https://www.radiotimes.com/news/on-demand/2019-07-04/is-str anger-things-3-scary/. Accessed 29 August 2020. Gackstetter Nichols, Elizabeth. 2019. ‘Weirdo Barbie and Punk-Rock Daddy’s Girl: Ambiguity, Gendered Identity and Appearance of Eleven in Stranger

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Things.’ Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media: 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 29 August 2020. Gilbey, Ryan. 2017. ‘Stranger Things and It Share the Same Shallow Nostalgia.’ New Statesman, September 13. Available at: https://www.newstatesman. com/culture/film/2017/09/stranger-things-and-it-share-same-shallow-nos talgia. Accessed 29 August 2020. Glee. 2009–2015. Television. United States: Fox. The Goonies. 1985. Directed by Richard Donner. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Grow, Kory. 2016. ‘Stranger Things: How Two Brothers Created Summer’s Biggest TV Hit.’ Rolling Stone, August 3. Available at: https://www.rollingst one.com/tv/tv-features/stranger-things-how-two-brothers-created-summersbiggest-tv-hit-105527/. Accessed 29 August 2020. Heritage, Stuart. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3: A Flawless Finale – But What a Slog to Get There.’ The Guardian, July 9. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/09/stranger-things-3-flawless-finale-but-whata-slog-to-get-there. Accessed 29 August 2020. High School Musical. 2006. Directed by Kenny Ortega. Film. United States: Disney Channel. Hills, Matt. 2010. ‘Mainstream Cult.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 67–73. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Jancovich, Mark, and Nathan Hunt. 2004. ‘The Mainstream, Distinction, and Cult TV.’ In Cult Television, edited by Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Roberta E. Pearson, 27–44. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Jenkins, Henry. 1998. ‘Introduction: Childhood Innocence and Other Modern Myths.’ In The Children’s Culture Reader, edited by Henry Jenkins, 1–37. London and New York: New York University Press. Jensen Arnett, Jeffrey. Ed. 2007. Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media, vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: Sage. The Indiana Jones entry needs to come after the Hills, Matt entry. 1984. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Kennedy, Melanie. 2019. Tweenhood: Femininity and Celebrity in Tween Popular Culture. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Lennard, Dominic. 2014. Bad Seeds and Holy Terrors: The Child Villains of Horror Film. New York: State University of New York Press. Lindstrom, Martin, and Patricia B. Seybold. 2003. Brainchild: Remarkable Insights into the Minds of Today’s Global Kids and Their Relationships with Brands. London and Sterling: Kogan Page. MacDonald, Fiona. 2017. Childhood and Tween Girl Culture: Family, Media and Locality. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. London: Blackwell.

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Matrix, Sidneyeve. 2014. ‘The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Media Trends.’ Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 6 (1). Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270665559_ The_Netflix_Effect_Teens_Binge_Watching_and_On-Demand_Digital_M edia_Trends. Accessed 29 August 2020. McCort, Jessica R. 2016. ‘Introduction’. In Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture, edited by Jessica R. McCort, 3–36. Jackson, MS: Mississippi University Press. Mittell, Jason. 2010. Television and American Culture. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. The NeverEnding Story. 1984. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Film. United States: Warner Brothers. A Nightmare on Elm Street. 1985. Directed by Wes Craven. Film. United States: New Line Cinema. Night of the Living Dead. 1968. Directed by George A. Romero. Film. United States: Image Ten. The Omen. 1976. Directed by Richard Donner. Film. United States/United Kingdom: Mace Neufeld Productions. Paperhouse. 1988. Directed by Bernard Rose. Film. United Kingdom: Working Title Films. Peary, Danny. 2014. Cult Horror Movies: Discover the 33 Best Scary, Suspenseful, Gory, and Monstrous Cinema Classics. New York: Workman Publishing. Poltergeist. 1982. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Film. United States: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer Entertainment. Pulliam, June. 2014. Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power in Young Adult Horror Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Stein, Louisa. 2005. ‘“They Cavort, You Decide”: Transgenericism, Queerness, and Fan Interpretation in Teen TV.’ The Spectator 25 (1): 11–22. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Film. United States: Vortex. The Thing. 1982. Directed by John Carpenter. Film. United States: Universal Pictures. Westbrook, Caroline. 2019. ‘Where Can You Buy Eleven’s Yellow Top from Stranger Things Season 3?’ Metro, July 7. Available at: https://metro.co.uk/ 2019/07/07/where-can-you-buy-elevens-yellow-top-from-stranger-thingsseason-3-10128292/. Accessed 29 August 2020. Williams, Tony. 2016. Larry Cohen: The Radical Allegories of an Independent Filmmaker. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Zündel, Jana. 2019. ‘TV IV’s New Audience: Netflix’s Business Model and Model Spectators.’ In Netflix at the Nexus: Content, Practice, and Production in the Age of Streaming Television, edited by Theo Plothe and Amber M. Buck, 13–28. New York: Peter Lang.

CHAPTER 4

Flirting with the Final Girl: Stranger Things and the Inconsistent Representation of Female Empowerment Karen Sturgeon-Dodsworth

Presenting its diegetic world as a site of persistent upheaval, Stranger Things adopts the willingness to destabilise archetypes and challenge hegemonic norms that characterises so many of its formative intertexts, figuring the small American town of Hawkins as a locus of change where place and identity are in constant flux. Drawing on cult horror referents that repeatedly engage with the possibilities of ontological instability, the Duffer Brothers fashion equivalent scenarios, staging moments of change in environment and roles to produce concomitant shifts in power, agency, and gendered identity. If films such as Videodrome (1983), Altered States (1980), Poltergeist (1982) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) inform the adjacent, alternate, ‘Upside-Down’ reality at the heart of Stranger Things ’ narrative disequilibrium, they also reveal a common interest in inversion, subversion and the defiance of singular, monolithic conceptions of reality. Allusions to The Thing (1982) and Invasion of the

K. Sturgeon-Dodsworth (B) Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_4

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Body Snatchers (1956 and 1978) not only form part of the playful, transmedial postmodern referentiality critics often cite as one of the show’s primary pleasures for audiences (Wetmore 2018; Mollet 2019b); they simultaneously suggest a shared concern with identity confusion, a determination to explore those moments of terrible rupture when inner states and external appearances fail to correspond. In much the same way but of greater significance to this study - references to cult classics such as Halloween (1978), Carrie (1976), Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) not only mark the Duffer Brothers’ committed cultism but also signal a desire to extend the challenges to entrenched gender norms apparent in those intertexts, maintaining their exploration of multiple femininities, furthering their analysis of marked shifts in gender identity, gauging the impact and sustainability of such change. With such committedly destabilising influences, it is little wonder that Stranger Things emerges as a text where vacillation is promoted from action to theme, where liminality generates the horror genre’s requisite anxiogenic state of unease together with a range of politically meaningful ambiguities, and where gendered identity appears perpetually contested. Horror is no stranger to representations of gendered struggle, nor gender in flux. The genre’s repertoire of recurring elements is populated with interrogations of traditional gender norms, its narratives systematically reconceptualising gender identity. Many horror texts install psychological and corporeal mutability as a central facet of character and theme, each diegesis constituting a textual space within which to consider what happens when men and women push at the accepted boundaries of their gender and question the limitations of their identity.1 With cult horror, this provocative resistance to absolutes can be extended to the nature and responses of its spectators. Indeed, any overly simplistic notion of a core audience of adolescent male fans watching horror texts in order to derive sadistic pleasure from women’s suffering has been problematised by recent studies that consider the manifold uses and gratifications of horror for women. Erin Harrington, in her exploration of gynaehorror, sees the genre’s ‘ontological playfulness’ as informing complex (often contradictory) representations of women, capable of circumventing gendered hierarchies and placing emphasis on ‘the lived, embodied and subjective experience of women’ (2018, 5–6). Such readings open up a wider variety of spectatorial pleasures for diverse audiences, undermining the idea of the horror genre offering nothing but a conservative, regressive, phallocentric discourse that women can only enjoy as an act of masochistic

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surrender. June Pulliam underlines the value of narratives that present young adult females ‘who must fight against cultural and institutional expectations which would deprive them of agency’ (2014, 12), outlining the manner in which these characters offer ‘the possibility for resistance to these seemingly untraceable institutional forces that oppress girls’ (15). These studies introduce additional layers of complexity to readings of the genre, reinforcing the idea that cult horror texts not only defy straightforward categorisation across frameworks of representation, narrative and spectatorship, but also present that resistance to simplistic codification as an ideologically significant method. This chapter argues that Stranger Things constitutes a particularly complex example of gendered take on struggle, proposing that the show arrives at a genuinely progressive ideological stance through its handling of the contestations and contradictions that arise through horror’s disruptive method and its ongoing ability to problematise fixed categories. Negotiating concerns over compromised, superficial or contingent representation, the chapter will assert that Stranger Things ’ highly mutable characters reveal how the assumption, rejection and reformulation of some of horror’s most archetypal roles - victim, hysteric, monster, protector, survivor, saviour - can suggest new ways of performing masculinity and femininity, interrogating established hegemonic forms in the process, coming to constitute a form of détournement that sees its cult antecedent’s counter-hegemonic energies encoded in an otherwise overtly mainstream entertainment. As the title of this chapter suggests, this study will focus principally on female characters and especially on Carol Clover’s concept of the Final Girl, but, in doing so, it will attempt to reveal some of the ways in which the femininities of Stranger Things significantly alter the masculinities that desire or encounter them. Furthermore, in the light of the vexed liminalities that characterise gender representation in the Duffer Brothers’ work, this analysis will address the shifting significance and ideological cogency of the show’s femininities, ultimately asserting that the inconsistency, ambiguity and malleability at work here are bound up with a progressive intent akin to that seen in genuinely radical cult horror texts of the past.

The Final Girl Problem A useful place to begin any exploration of the female characters in Stranger Things is with the critically divisive notion of the Final Girl. The trope, theorised by Carol Clover in her seminal work Her Body,

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Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film (1987), refers to those resourceful, agentive female characters who assume a bold centrality in the narratives of a significant number of horror genre films in the late 1970s and beyond, including many of the cult movies that directly inform the Duffer Brothers’ intertextual project. Overcoming monstrous forces of narrative disequilibrium, these figures exhibit admirable strength, undergoing varying degrees of transformative self-realisation as they endure, survive and ultimately defeat their foes. Alongside her autonomy, the Final Girl’s status as a meaningful feminist figure rests on the trope’s ability to offer a significantly more positive point of identification than that offered by the historically insistent female victim, with fulfilling alignment increased by the Final Girl’s power to render the male hero ‘supernumerary by her sturdy defense’ (Clover 1987, 84). With her victory comes pre-eminence and a seemingly straightforwardly progressive disruption of the established patriarchal order, with the ‘male rescuer […] dismissably marginal or dispensed with altogether’ (84). However, as Katarzyna Paszkiewicz notes, significant misgivings now cluster around Clover’s ideas, calling into question the Final Girl’s progressive character and asking whether or not, in her traumatised endurance, she does not in actual fact become the victimised object rather than the subject of the narrative (2017, 1). Scrutiny of the trope’s tendency to ‘stand-in for male desires, [offering] a subject for a man to identify with’ (1) has also problematised any uncomplicated relationship between the Final Girl and female spectatorial empowerment. Moreover, those who critique Clover’s conception of the Final Girl raise concerns regarding, variously, the limited range of texts addressed in her studies of the slasher subgenre (Staiger 2015); a perceived overemphasis on female survivors to the exclusion of those male figures who occupy an equivalent role (Maron 2015); a failure to address Final Girl characters ‘who exhibit traditionally coded feminine traits’ (Paszkiewicz 2017, 3); and an oversimplification in supposing the primary audience for slasher films to be male (Nowell 2011).2 That such concerns exist should come as no surprise: Clover herself urges caution when reading the trope as progressive, raising concerns that the ‘loosening of the categories’ (1987, 86) she sees in the masculinised female’s strength might mean that what we are witnessing when we view the Final Girl’s performance is, in fact, a deeply compromised femininity. In short, Clover’s ideas and methodology are problematic, as the character’s facility to rupture established gender norms is questionable,

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while the ambiguities that coalesce around her can be read as compromising rather than disruptive. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the trope continues to offer an extremely valuable theoretical position through which to examine reworkings of the agentive female figure in horror genre texts. Consequently, while Clover’s definition of the Final Girl will be further problematised and interrogated in this chapter, her central arguments will be seen as a useful point of return, a means by which the progressive energies of contemporary texts might be gauged and, more specifically, a lens through which to view the tangled and distinctive reworking of the Final Girl trope in Stranger Things.

Final Girls in Stranger Things In Her Body, Himself , Clover establishes some useful first principles. She extols the virtues of the Final Girl, describing her as ‘intelligent, watchful, level-headed’, ‘the one character of any stature’ and ‘by any measure the […] hero’ (1987, 79). In terms of the formulation of strong, independent and agentive young women striving to ensure positive narrative equilibrium, Stranger Things could be seen at a glance as a highly progressive text, not least because the show presents audiences with a multitude of female characters of just the ‘stature’ Clover suggests. The oxymoron evident in a text presenting numerous figures who simultaneously occupy that ‘finality’ seems to point to irreconcilable contradiction, but it does not invalidate the label; each character, read on her own terms, can lay claim to fulfilling the functions and attributes of the trope. Sharing the Final Girl’s characteristic ‘apartness from other girls’ (80), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer), Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), and the similarly single-minded figures of Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink), Erica Sinclair (Priah Ferguson) and Robin Buckley (Maya Hawke), frequently occupy distinct narrative threads, speaking to a pluralism of progressive representations as they enact strong female roles, inhabiting identities defined by a willingness to confront monsters and defy victimhood. Meanwhile, strong women such as Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) and even, on occasion, Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono), also constitute assertive forces in the narrative. Joyce, in particular, demonstrates indomitable, confrontational qualities that resonate with Winona Ryder’s star persona (primarily developed in the late 1980s films Beetlejuice and Heathers , texts which have their own well-established cult

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followings) while also making her a rare older incarnation of the agentive female hero in horror. In Stranger Things, one of the most appealing aspects of this characterisation is that the Final Girl’s strength takes many forms. In Season One, Eleven uses her power to destroy the Demogorgon, while in Season Two, she seals the portal and successfully ‘frees herself’ from the constraints Hopper (David Harbour) imposes on her, just as she had to escape the entrapment and control enacted by Dr Brenner/Papa (Matthew Modine) in Season One. In Season Two, Max overcomes her alphamale stepbrother, Billy (Dacre Montgomery), succeeding where Steve (Joe Keery) failed as she towers over him, spiked baseball bat in hand, ready to emasculate him should he step out of line, slamming the weapon down in between his legs (“Chapter Nine: The Gate”).3 Across all three seasons, Joyce displays an unwavering - and in Season One, often solitary - commitment to rescuing her son, Will (Noah Schnapp), despite the various obstacles she encounters. Meanwhile, Nancy emerges from bookish fragility to become a warrior, exceeding the potency of her male companion, with her pointed appropriation of the gun in both Season One and Season Two serving as a neat synecdoche of that character arc. However, in the light of critical misgivings regarding the expediency of the Final Girl, and despite evidence of the considerable strengths exhibited by the show’s female characters, it could be argued that the representations of women in Stranger Things remain significantly compromised. Joyce’s overt hysteria, the perfunctorily violent death of Barbara Holland (Shannon Purser), the suspenseful and sadistically brutal assault on Heather Holloway (Francesca Reale), Nancy’s incipient sexuality and status as an object of desire for Steve and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Eleven’s interest in being perceived as ‘pretty’ all appear to undermine their important character strengths. Meanwhile, the presentation of Eleven, Max and Robin as characters who possess suitably androgynous names (immediately signalling their status as potential ‘Final Girls’) also threatens to undermine a positive interpretation of their formulation. Introduced in a manner that codes them as male, these characters often appear to conform to the horror genre’s troubling tendency to construct a surrogate for the male viewer. In Season One, the shavenheaded Eleven is initially mistaken for a boy; in Season Two, Max, prior to her first appearance onscreen, is assumed to be male on the basis of her success in that traditionally male hangout, the arcade; in Season Three, Robin appears in a boyish sailor suit, twinned with Steve. The

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process points to a distinctly problematic character-defining masculinisation. Meanwhile, Season Three’s foregrounding of romance narratives and the associated definition of many of the show’s women through their relationship with men or boys could undermine the sense of a more progressive representational strategy at work here. This in turn adds to the impression of inconsistency, contradiction and expediency, implying a need for validation in more conventional, traditional and passive contexts. Certainly, when read in these terms, Stranger Things would seem to conform to many of the most troubling aspects of popular culture’s representation of young femininity, reinforcing the reservations of those critics who see the agentive Final Girl’s power as contingent, temporary and bound up with processes of objectification, masculinisation and curtailment that bolster conservative patriarchal discourse. As Martin Fradley argues, even as many contemporary horror texts offer images and narratives of strength and self-realisation, postfeminist media culture frequently acknowledges and reasserts ‘the depressingly limited parameters of young women’s role[s] […] at the same time as it violently reinscribes those parameters’ (2013, 204). Subsequently, quoting Yvonne Tasker’s argument that popular culture is ‘deeply invested in conventional modes of femininity’ (2011, 68), Fradley voices associated concerns surrounding an undercurrent of regressive ideology lurking beneath the superficially progressive textual surface that could easily be levelled at Stranger Things. However, I would argue that this critique, and indeed any analysis that solely takes for its evidence those incidences of more traditional representation in the show, robs Stranger Things of much of its complexity and ignores its genuinely distinctive reworking of female empowerment. It is the way those ‘conventional modes of femininity’ intersect with more markedly unconventional conceptions of gender identity that makes this a text capable of pushing against limited parameters. Reappraising Stranger Things in this way facilitates a new way of reading the combination of overtly feminine behaviour and strength. It becomes clear that the Duffer Brothers systematically construct their female characters as figures built around what we might call a duality of purpose - a duality of being and a bifurcated femininity that moves beyond Clover’s suggestion that the Final Girl ‘alternates between registers’ (1987, 86). Indeed, Stranger Things can be seen to conspicuously valorise archetypal femininities as facets of a desirable persona rather than simply, reductively viewing femininity as the weaker role in an ongoing gendered oscillation. A series of marked juxtapositions recur throughout

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all three seasons that clearly reveal this duality. In particular, Season Two’s “Chapter Three: The Pollywog” sees two moments of this kind occur in short order. First, Eleven is presented as a figure relegated to the domestic space. Incarcerated and alone in Hopper’s shack, she is depicted as a form of Cinderella character, sweeping floors while others enjoy their freedom. The representation seems to undermine any sense of power and agency she might have, stripping her of the potency she had asserted as the sacrificial Final Girl hero who slays the Demogorgon at the resolution of Season One. However, this curtailment is in itself temporary: after tiring of her domestic duties, Eleven actively frees herself and storms from the cabin. Instead of the static camera work used to present the scenes of domestic stasis, the camera now tracks backwards in hurried retreat as she, glaring, strides towards us, accompanied by a parallel non-diegetic music track - propulsive heavy rock connoting new certainty and drive. Crosscuts between Hopper laying down the rules for her in the past and her breaking them in the present reinforce this juxtaposition, telling us that she has been one kind of girl and now intends to become another. Similarly, later in the same chapter, we watch Joyce sitting on a bench with Bob (Sean Astin), eating the sandwich he has brought her, exchanging sweet nothings about the development of their relationship. The two-shot framing and high-key lighting encode the scene’s romance aesthetic before, in an instant, the tenor of the sequence changes. Joyce learns that Bob’s video camera contains footage of Will being bullied. ‘I’ll kill them’, she says, to which Bob responds, ‘that’s what I love about you, you punch back’. The message is clear: these girls and women conform to a number of archetypal feminine characteristics but will not be exclusively defined in those terms. Instead, as these scenes demonstrate, the place these women adopt in the heterosexual matrix is not fixed but contested via their duality. They are able to perform traditionally feminine parts but never fall victim to the gendered subordination those roles would normally have them inhabit. They remain autonomous and agentive, free from or resistant to the binds that would tie them to subservient roles and relationships. Importantly, though, this reconceptualisation of the strong, independent Final Girl goes further: no longer does she have to be a purely masculinised or consistently androgynous figure; nor does she have to be established in opposition to the sexualised female character so often punished for her promiscuity. Here, Paszkiewicz’s rebuke that Clover’s theory neglects to consider Final Girls who exhibit ‘traditionally

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coded feminine traits’ stands, but her notion that this coding necessarily undercuts the strength Clover sees in the trope does not. Both the significance and unexpectedness of this development cannot be overstated. In the past, theorists have stressed that, in real terms, the Final Girl is feminine in her dread and anxiety only, before, in her assumption of power, finding herself masculinised to the point of seeing all femininity and femaleness undermined. In Her Body, Himself , Clover, despite previously arguing for the innate progressiveness of the trope, proposes that the figure is in actuality ‘a congenial double for the adolescent male’ (1987, 82), asserting that in truth the discourse is wholly masculine, and females figure in it only insofar as they ‘read’ some aspect of male experience (83). In Men, Women, and Chain Saws, Clover reinforces her point, asserting that the Final Girl is ‘not fully feminine – not, in any case, feminine in the ways of her friends. Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls’ (1992, 40). But Eleven, Nancy, Joyce and Max are not just ‘apparently’ female; instead, they maintain a persona that consistently references a codifiable femininity even at their moments of greatest agency and power.4 A particularly strong example of this idea can be found in Season One’s “Chapter Seven: The Bathtub”. The central characters are gathered in the school sports hall, with Eleven submerged in the paddling pool that will serve as a sensory deprivation tank and facilitate her entry into the Upside Down. As the scene progresses, the three female characters are presented as those most questing, agentive and strong: Eleven enters the darkness to search for Will and Barb, fully aware of the threat she faces; Joyce prompts and furthers the search for her missing son; Nancy does the same for Barb. The power of three is evident in the composition or ‘blocking’ of shots that present them as a unified, triangulated force. Meanwhile, the male characters assume secondary roles as these three female characters demonstrate the Final Girl’s willingness to challenge monstrosity, no matter what the personal cost. Notably, this moment is underwritten not by a masculinisation of these figures, but by a raft of overtly feminine signifiers. Eleven, shorn of her blonde wig but still wearing the pink dress she has worn to ‘fit in’ at school, mixes bravery with compassion. On finding Will she reassures him, her empathy and concern evident even as she embodies the strength of the hero, kneeling beside the prone and weakened boy in a protective manner. Low angles, her eye line high in the frame, and compositions that place her central within the shot all reinforce that strength. Nevertheless, as the image of Will disintegrates, her distress is clear. As she starts screaming and returns to consciousness, Joyce cradles

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Eleven’s head, stroking her hair and praising her actions. Her strength stabilises Eleven, melding elements of maternality with a commitment to rescuing her son at whatever cost. ‘Tell him we’re coming. Tell him Mom is coming’, she says, before reassuring Eleven with the words ‘I got you. I got you honey. You did good’.5 Nancy, too, exhibits great concern and support, but never instead of a single-minded focus on heroic action, only as well as that drive. Moments later, Joyce and Nancy make the transition from nurturing women into the ultimate agentive force, adopting fierce personas that nevertheless remain rooted in and prompted by their love and care for others. In rhyming dialogue scenes between Joyce and Hopper and then Nancy and Jonathan, this is made abundantly clear: HOPPER: Hey, get back inside. JOYCE: Are you insane? HOPPER: If something happens to me and I don’t make it back … JOYCE: I’ll go, you stay. Are you kidding me? He’s my son, Hop. My son. I’m going. (“Chapter Seven: The Bathtub”)

Joyce’s ability to halt the clichéd male hero’s self-sacrificing statement is telling, as is the way her closing line blends bravery with a maternal imperative. A cut to Nancy with Jonathan shows Nancy asserting the need to carry out their monster-killing plan: NANCY: We have to go back to the station. JONATHAN: NANCY: We can’t just sit here and let it get them too, we can’t. JONATHAN: You still wanna try it out? NANCY I wanna finish what we started. I want to kill it. (“Chapter Seven: The Bathtub”)

We witness Jonathan, like Hopper, acquiesce. Overall, then, in this scene, Will is presented as a male damsel in distress, powerless in his castle, while a host of female knights plot rescue and vengeance. When questing heroes enter the Upside Down and rescue Will, Joyce, as a mother, will be one of them. When similarly heroic figures battle the Demogorgon, Nancy, armed with a revolver, will rescue Jonathan from its clutches, acting all the while out of emotional attachment to Barb. The characterisation resonates with Isabel Pinedo’s argument that ‘if a woman cannot be aggressive and still be a woman,

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then female agency is a pipe dream. But if the surviving female can be aggressive and be really a woman, then she subverts this binary notion of gender that buttresses male dominance’ (1997, 83). Moreover, in such textual moments the reformulation we witness in Stranger Things counteracts Sue Thornham’s fear (and Clover’s notion) that the Final Girl serves as the aforementioned ‘stand-in’ for the adolescent male spectator, thus facilitating a process designed to perpetuate dominant, heroic forms of narrative that ‘produce the subject as male’ (2012, 12). Instead, in making the agency and the femininity of female characters overt and synchronous, the show achieves what has traditionally evaded women in horror texts, delivering what Thornham sees as optimal representation, woman ‘being the subject of [the narrative’s] actions’, acting in ways that ‘transgress […] dominant narrative codes’, and not simply seeing a change in the gender of a still masculinised hero (2012, 12).

Final Girls Remixed In order to fully proclaim this reformulated Final Girl’s right to be ‘really a woman’ and genuinely potent, Stranger Things takes further steps. Firstly, female sexuality is reclaimed through Nancy’s character as she melds desirability and power. Instead of the traditional formulation where, as Linda Williams puts it, ‘the expression of women’s desires is directly proportional to the violence perpetrated against [them]’ (1982, 34), Nancy’s desirousness is not figured as grounds for punishment. Williams’ concern that horror texts merely permit ‘the expression of women’s sexual potency and desire […] only to punish her for this very act, only to demonstrate how monstrous female desire can be’ (34) is assuaged by the fact that here Nancy is neither judged nor punished for her desire. Instead, she is permitted to be desirous, desirable and potent in the sexual arena without diminishing any potency outside those terms of reference. The shift is both marked and hugely significant, constituting a meaningful deviation from many of the show’s structuring antecedents. As Rose Butler notes, ‘unlike earlier incarnations of the Final Girl character […] Nancy is not perpetuating conservative ideals. She has two sexual partners […] is vocal in her disdain for her parents’ lifestyle […] and fights monsters while her ex-boyfriend looks after her little brother’ (2018, 80). This reconfiguration of the trope becomes even more apparent if we consider Nancy’s evolution in the light of the fate of Barbara Holland. While Barb’s eradication and Nancy’s empowerment might initially lead

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to accusations of Stranger Things reflecting a type of mainstream feminism which, instead of being progressive and radical, prioritises young, pretty, white, mediagenic women and marginalises the needs and experiences of others, it can be argued that the transference of Final Girl responsibilities from archetypal ‘good girl’ Barb to the altogether more mutable, category-resistant Nancy is entirely necessary to the show’s reinforcement of its overtly feminist political imperatives. In a direct reversal of the conservative ideology asserted in many Final Girl narratives, Barb is doomed precisely because she is reticent, demure and reluctant to transgress entrenched notions of how a ‘good girl’ is expected to behave. Nancy, meanwhile, is willing to move beyond the constraints of propriety, being receptive to an evolution that offers the basis for her ongoing survival and success.6 Stranger Things stages this moment of rupture in Season One’s “Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street” as Nancy and Barb discuss the wisdom of entering Steve Harrington’s house. Barb warns Nancy of Steve’s intentions while Nancy, symbolically stripping away the demure clothing in which she left the house and exposing a new bra bought just for the occasion, proposes that Barb act as a form of ‘guardian’ protecting her honour. In the past, this scenario would offer a means of endorsing Barb’s caution and her innate conservatism while objectifying and then punishing Nancy on the grounds of her ‘transgression’. Instead, the trope is reconfigured. Nancy maintains her character arc of growing strength and potency and the narrative logic of the conservative Final Girl ‘cautionary tale’ is inverted as an ideological shift towards an affirmation of active resistance to constraining roles occurs. Moreover, Stranger Things ’ endorsement of this strong femininity is then expressed through how attractive that femininity is to men and boys. In an interesting inversion of the highly problematic objectification of the female subject in horror, here, to be desired by men or boys whilst being overtly androgynous, or appreciably departing from aspects of stereotypical femininity, turns that desire into a reification of the Final Girls’ enactments of assertive, single-minded girlhood.7 Secondly, in Eleven especially, vulnerability frequently coexists with power. In her triumphant return to Hawkins at the close of Season Two’s “Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer”, she slays the Demodogs before stepping into the Byers’ home with slicked-back hair and a new punk look. Slow motion emphasises her authority, while reaction shots of the assembled protagonists briefly position them as passive onlookers

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marvelling at the dramatic arrival of the active hero. Pertinently, though, as the reaction is recontextualised as Mike’s subjective response and Eleven is re-presented from his point of view, she becomes, simultaneously, the lost love, the little girl, and a clearly solitary and vulnerable figure. Once again, like so many of the women in Stranger Things, she can be both, simultaneously inhabiting power and vulnerability. That Eleven has recently returned from her time with Kali is also pertinent here. Kali, like Eleven, is a powerful Final Girl who has escaped from Brenner, but she also shows her touching vulnerability when she is reunited with her ‘sister’ (“Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister”). Interestingly, this episode wasn’t wholly embraced by the show’s fans (for a critical discussion of the episode’s reception, see Matt Hills’ chapter in this collection). However, the union of the two girls, the way they support and teach each other - Eleven, to connect with her anger; Kali, to connect with her compassion - points to the presentation of empathy as integral to strength. This offers an image of Final Girls who evolve through their dialogue with other women, rather than simply through violent encounters with monstrous (male) aggressors. Thirdly, in Joyce, we see the hysteria that Barbara Creed finds so often pathologised in the horror genre (1993, 56), fused with a heroic commitment that entirely transforms our reception of that hysteria. In Stranger Things, hysteria is entirely valid, presented as an energy that drives Joyce’s heroism.8 Hysteria progresses the narrative as she manically strings up lights or takes an axe to the living room; it becomes concomitant with a ‘supercharged’ nurturing instinct. The key sequence that reveals Joyce’s hysteria as a source of strength occurs at the outset of Season Two’s “Chapter Six: The Spy”. Here, Joyce, seated at the head of a table surrounded by male scientists, shouts down these staunchly rational men in white coats. They attempt to reason with her and placate her, but archetypal masculine rationality is refuted. Instead, the technical strategies employed in this sequence endorse the hysteric. Joyce, central in the frame, with sightlines in the mise-en-scène emphasising her visual primacy, rises to her feet and physically asserts herself over these incredulous men. In both its content and visualisation, the scene directly references that equivalent rebuke to the corporate military industrial complex that occurs in the early stages of Aliens , with Ripley, standing tall over the assembled experts and business men, emotionally and forcefully attempting to impose humane common sense as they callously blunder towards horrors. Similarly, in Stranger Things 2, a woman who melds

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assertiveness, rationality and emotionality seeks to forestall narrative disequilibrium. Winona Ryder, five feet two inches tall, is shot from a low angle that exaggerates her stature, while her stabbing finger, clenched teeth, clenched fists and impassioned dialogue add to that impression of power. A slow, incremental zoom creeps toward her as the men disappear from shot, increasingly irrelevant to the decision-making process as the camera singles out Joyce as the only real hero able to address the narrative disequilibrium. She is a figure committed, like Ripley in Aliens , to risking her own life to save a child, defying the self-serving instincts of a patriarchal culture and fusing maternality with resourcefulness and resolve. When she bangs her hands down on the table, the synchronous, hyperreal diegetic sound of that slam aurally confirms its potency. Finally, there is a further reclamation at work here, one that is inscribed in Joyce’s encounter with the assembled scientists but also made more explicit in a number of key scenes and narrative threads in Season Three. The progressive moves figured in and through the diverse female identities of Stranger Things are given greater import when associated with an overtly feminist political imperative that is not only reclaimed inside the diegetic world but also voiced and enacted there. That this politicisation of female action is in any way notable stems from a troubling depoliticisation of agency in postfeminist popular culture. Deirdre Kelly and Shauna Pomerantz identify this concern, asserting that while the heroines of many seemingly progressive contemporary texts are offered ‘various modes for expressing control, anger, and agency, these forms of power are surprisingly disconnected from any overt politics or critique of larger power structures’ (2009, 4). As such, perhaps the most remarkable progressive aspect of Stranger Things is the way it attempts to reconnect women’s agency with that critique. There is significant evidence of the cult text’s characteristic challenge to established hegemonic structures in Stranger Things. This resistance is expressed through the female characters’ willingness to confront conservative patriarchal systems of control, but it is also reinforced by the ability of those women to articulate the need for resistance. Importantly, this challenge to hegemonic power structures constitutes a marked subversion of the mainstream horror genre’s historical function. Vivian Sobchak asserts that the genre’s ‘project has been (and is) aggressively regressive and conservative’, counselling that American horror has traditionally expended its energy with the aim of ‘seeking resolution, or

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at least absolution, for a threatened patriarchy and its besieged structure of perpetuation: the bourgeois family’ (1987, 190). Interpreted in this context, the show’s pertinacious attack on entrenched structures with resistance to established patriarchal norms presented as part of the Final Girl’s necessary and justified heroic activity - becomes an act of revisionism as well as an ideologically progressive step. Once again, in this light, Stranger Things appears much closer to the spirit of its cult intertexts than its high production values would suggest. Beneath its mainstream gloss lie the substantive challenges to traditional societal structures, the paradox and the highly democratic, empowering interpretability that Kinkade and Katovich (1992) identify as crucial signatures of cult media and integral aspects of the resistance to hegemonic norms featured therein. Multiple acts of overtly politicised resistance occur across the show’s first three seasons. As discussed previously, Joyce ostensibly functions outside patriarchal governance and repeatedly challenges male authority figures across legal, scientific, political and familial systems. In Stranger Things 3, she outgrows her shop job and effectively comes to function as Hopper’s partner in policing, counteracting his increasingly erratic approaches, assuming an agentive role while driving the investigation forwards. Similarly, Karen Wheeler, though not a Final Girl herself, undergoes an overtly politicised awakening, with emergent selfhood couched in terms of her growing resistance to the roles of wife, mother and homemaker and articulated through her longing to embrace a newly desirous, markedly more assertive persona.9 However, it is Nancy who constitutes the clearest example of the politicised Final Girl. Season Three’s “Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?” exemplifies how this process works. In the scene where Nancy and Jonathan drive to work at the offices of the Hawkins Post, the different standards to which men and women will be held are already apparent. Nancy, visibly flustered, urges Jonathan to drive faster, clearly distressed at the prospect of being late. Nancy proclaims, ‘I’m serious Jonathan, I can’t be late’, to which he replies, ‘you mean we can’t be late’. Her riposte is telling: ‘No, I mean I can’t be late’. Nancy immediately elaborates on her concerns, outlining the fact that she is perceived as a second-class citizen who is only good for menial domestic tasks. She asserts that they do not like or respect her and fail to see her as a living human being with a brain. On arrival at the office, her concerns are immediately validated. Prior to her entry into the inner sanctum of the conference room, the exclusively male journalists discuss

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the beauty pageant they propose to cover, describing in lurid detail one of the female contestant’s physical attributes. As Nancy arrives, the men look her up and down in a particularly lascivious way. Subsequently, Nancy’s attempts to propose an important story worthy of coverage are laughingly dismissed. The journalists mock her inability to get the food order right, never mind pursue a story, and ridicule the notion of her functioning as a real journalist. The entrenched sexism of this patriarchal structure established, Stranger Things proceeds to further demonise two of these men, Tom Holloway (Michael Park) and Bruce Lowe (Jake Busey), encoding them with the worst aspects of male hegemonic power while simultaneously reinforcing Nancy’s desire to oppose their dominance by pursuing the story and asserting her autonomy. In “Chapter Five: The Flayed”, this resistance is reformulated in horror terms. At the hospital where Nancy and Jonathan plan to pursue a lead, they are confronted with Tom and Bruce, now under the influence of the Mind Flayer, the misogynistic aspects of their character not only intact, but heightened. As these men attack the couple, the violence assumes greater significance, imbued as it is with the political dimension established earlier in the season. Jonathan (coded as ‘sensitive’ from the show’s outset and consistently opposed to hegemonic masculinity) is brutally beaten by both men and left prone and helpless on the floor. Nancy, meanwhile, after escaping Bruce’s clutches, proceeds to beat him to a pulp with a fire extinguisher. We look up at her from an extreme low angle as she prepares to dispatch him. The reverberation added to her dialogue as she commands him, through gritted teeth, to ‘go to hell’ accentuates the finality of the last blow. That this act simultaneously weakens Tom at the point where Jonathan seems most vulnerable (crosscutting having established his peril in juxtaposition to Nancy’s violent retaliation), allowing him to fight back, underlines Nancy’s dominance. In essence, what these scenes reveal is that the Duffer Brothers have constructed a narrative line in which the worst aspects of patriarchal society are first demonised, encoded as overtly monstrous, then punished and vanquished. Here then, Nancy, acting as an overtly politicised Final Girl, fulfils Kelly and Pomerantz’s hope that young female spectators can see a character’s feminism ‘not as an underground, accidental, or alternative reading, but as the preferred one: the one that screams rather than whispers’ (2009, 15).

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The Liberation of the Final Girl Stranger Things must be seen as an important contribution to the lexicon of horror and popular culture, not least because it employs and interrogates its cult horror intertexts to advance a distinctive reworking of female strengths. The women and girls that figure so prominently in the show offer representations that reclaim previously denigrated or demonised tropes of femininity, fuse them with the agency and potency of the ‘ideal’ Final Girl and present them in politicised contexts. That there are multiple examples of these multifaceted figures means that the notion of the ‘exceptional’ woman is undermined; instead, almost all of the female characters presented to us are authoritative, agentive, caring, independent and strong, generating a normalisation of that complexity and strength across story strands. In Stranger Things, female strength is ubiquitous and, in a departure from the Final Girls of the past, it is codifiably female. The long-term impact of such an approach to characterisation remains to be seen, but if, as Jane M Ussher proposes, ‘representations reflect and construct the regimes of truth within which women become “woman”’ (2006, 3) then audiences aligned with these figures may renegotiate their conceptions of femininity in response to Eleven, Kali, Nancy, Max, Robin and Joyce. Certainly, the fact that so many of these agentive figures are young offers an image of girlhood developing into a satisfyingly uncompromising womanhood. Carol Clover, despite feeling that meaningful feminist progress was compromised by the treatment of women in the horror films of the past, perhaps hoped for as much when she posited that ‘when we observe a constant change in the surface male-female configurations of a traditional story-complex, we are probably looking, however obliquely, at a deeper change in the culture’ (1992, 16). As such, Barb Holland was always doomed. Wise, sexually reluctant, virginal and somewhat masculinised, she had all the makings of that archetypal Final Girl that many contemporary critics find so problematic. But Stranger Things is a text that demonstrates how to move on, celebrating the new forms and freedoms women in the horror genre can take.

Notes 1. Carol Clover suggests that horror texts have long served this ideological function, offering an enduring means of questioning cultural attitudes towards sex and gender, often foregrounding contested states ‘in which

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

male and female are at desperate odds but in which, at the same time, masculinity and femininity are more states of mind than body’ (1992, 22). Even those who would contest Richard Nowell’s criticisms of Clover’s perceived (mis)apprehension of horror’s demographic often find fault with the narrow focus of her interest in gendered spectatorship. Isabel Cristina Pinedo bluntly asserts that Clover’s ‘concern with gender is strictly limited to male viewers’ (1997, 70). Martin Fradley critiques Clover’s assumption that ‘horror is aimed primarily at the fears and desires of the heteromasculine psyche’ (2013, 206). For further analysis of this resistance to white hegemonic masculinity, see also Mollet, Demogorgons, Death Stars and Difference, 2019. Paszkiewicz neatly summarises the issue when she notes that critics such as Isabel Pinedo and Jack Halberstam are deeply concerned that there is ‘an ongoing overemphasis on the masculinization of female characters in horror films’, which, in Pinedo’s words, risks the genre becoming inscribed with ‘a male-dominated discourse where power is coded as masculine, even when embodied in biological females’ (1997, 81–82). In these terms, Stranger Things constitutes a notable shift. Its characters do oscillate from traditionally male to traditionally female territory, but their power and potency are never compromised by their femininity. Indeed, that power is often heavily reliant on those traditional female tropes. Interestingly, the Season Two finale sees an even more extreme representation of this duality as Joyce tries to burn the evil from her son, taking on the form of retributive woman before deliriously, adoringly tending to him when the monster is exorcised from him (“Chapter Nine: The Gate”). That Stranger Things daringly reverses the outmoded logic at the heart of many of its referents is made particularly clear if we look at a comparable sequence from Halloween. Early in the narrative Carpenter stages a dialogue scene on the street outside the High School to juxtapose the forms of femininity embodied in Annie, Lynda with that of our protagonist, Laurie Strode. Throughout, Laurie’s sensible, responsible, bookish nature, her commitment to her studies rather than the school dance, her view that babysitting involves care of the young rather than an opportune moment to engage in sexual liaison are set against the sexualised lifestyles and liberated attitudes of her cheerleader friends. The subsequent violent deaths of Annie and Lynda as they indulge their desires constitutes a conservative, reactionary judgement on their sexual transgressions and a concomitant endorsement of Laurie’s virginal, cerebral, pro-social character. This endorsement can be traced from the very early stages of Season 1, as it is even clear in the scene where Mike meets Eleven for the first time. At that moment, a reaction shot close-up reveals Mike’s instant attraction, while an incremental zoom in on Eleven further connotes how drawn to her he feels, despite her overt androgyny. The instance, along with Bob’s

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adoration of Joyce and Steve’s friendship with Robin resonates with Tony Williams’ suggestion (citing the influence of Tania Modleski) that ‘textual moments involving gentle or alternative males may be more endemic of patriarchal accommodation of feminism’ (2014, 272), once again subtly shifting the paradigm. 8. For further analysis of the shifting significance of female rage, comparing that of Joyce Byers and Eleven with the anger expressed by women in Reaganite horror, see Kathleen Hudson’s ‘“Something from your life, something that angers you…”: Female Rage and Redemption in Netflix’s Stranger Things ’ in Refractory, Vol. 31, 2019. 9. Ultimately, Karen Wheeler’s decision to step back from her assignation with Billy Hargrove is particularly poignant. Rather than serving to reaffirm family values, this textual moment presents an intelligent, deeply frustrated woman enmeshed in the bourgeois family unit and encodes the situation as more saddening and destructive than the infidelity would have been. More than this, however, Karen’s inability to extricate herself from her circumstances prompts her endorsement of her daughter’s selfrealisation: her policing of Nancy’s rebellions has gradually transformed into Season Three’s heartfelt entreaty for her daughter to reject the stultifying conformity she herself is beginning to confront.

Works Cited Alien. 1979. Directed by Ridley Scott. Film. United States: Brandywine Productions. Aliens. 1986. Directed by James Cameron. Film. United States: Brandywine Productions. Altered States. 1980. Directed by Ken Russell. Film. United States: Warner Brothers. Bolton, Lucy. 2011. Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Butler, Rose. 2018. ‘The Eaten-for-Breakfast Club.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 72–84. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Carrie. 1976. Directed by Brian De Palma. Film. United States: Red Bank Films. Carroll, Noel. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. London: Routledge. Cherry, Brigid. 2002. ‘Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film.’ In Horror: The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, 169–178. London: Routledge. Cherry, Brigid. 2009. Horror. London: Routledge.

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Christensen, Kyle. 2011. ‘The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.’ Studies in Popular Culture 34 (1): 23–47. Clover, Carol. 1992. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Clover, Carol. 2002. ‘“Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”, 1987.’ In Horror: The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, 77–89. London: Routledge. Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Currie, Dawn, Deirdre Kelly, and Shauna Pomerantz. 2006. ‘‘The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth’: Girls’ Agency, Subjectivity and Empowerment.’ Journal of Youth Studies 9 (4): 419–436. Fradley, Martin. 2013. ‘“Hell Is a Teenage Girl!”: Postfeminism and Contemporary Teen Horror”.’ In Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, edited by Joel Gwyne and Nadine Muller, 204–221. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Halloween. 1978. Directed by John Carpenter. Film. United States: Compass International Pictures. Harrington, Erin. 2018. Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror. London: Routledge. Hollows, Joanne, and Rachel Moseley. Eds. 2006. Feminism in Popular Culture. Oxford: Berg. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 1956. Directed by Don Siegal. United States: Walter Wanger Productions. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. 1978. Directed by Philip Kaufman. United States: Solofilm. Kelly, Deirdre, and Shauna Pomerantz. 2009. “Mean, Wild, and Alienated: Girls and the State of Feminism in Popular Culture.” Girlhood Studies 2 (1): 1–17. Kinkade, Patrick, and Michael Katovich. 1992. ‘Toward a Sociology of Cult Films.’ The Sociology Quarterly 33 (2): 191–209. Maron, Jeremy. 2015. ‘When the Final Girl is Not a Final Girl: Reconsidering the Gender Binary in the Slasher Film.’ Off Screen, 19 (1). Available at: https:// offscreen.com/issues/view/volume-19-issue-1. Accessed 5 May 2021. Milestone, Katie, and Anneke Meyer. 2012. Gender and Popular Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Modleski, Tania. 1986. ‘The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmodern Theory.’ In Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture, edited by Tania Modleski, 155–166. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Mollet, Tracey. 2019a. ‘Demogorgons, Death Stars and Difference: Masculinity and Geek Culture in Stranger Things’. Refractory: Journal of Entertainment Media, 31. Available at: https://refractory-journal.com/vol-31-2019/. Accessed 25 August 2020. Mollet, Tracey. 2019b. ‘Looking Through the Upside Down: Hyperpostmodernism and Trans-Mediality in the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things.’ Journal of Popular Television 7 (1): 57–77. A Nightmare on Elm Street. 1985. Directed by Wes Craven. Film. United States: New Line Cinema. Nowell, Richard. 2011. Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle. London: Continuum. Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna. 2017. ‘Revisiting the Final Girl: Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards.’ Postmodern Culture 28 (1). Available at: www.pomoculture.org/2020/10/15. Accessed 7 May 2021. Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. 1997. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. New York: New York State University Press. Poltergeist. 1982. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Film. United States: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer Entertainment. Pulliam, June. 2014. Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power in Young Adult Horror Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Rieser, Klaus. 2001. ‘Masculinity and Monstrosity: Characterization and Identification in the Slasher Film.’ Men and Masculinities 3 (4): 370–392. Sobchak, Vivian. 1987. ‘Bringing it All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange.’ In American Horrors: Essays on the Modern American Horror Film, edited by Gregory A. Waller, 175–194. Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Staiger, Janet. 2015. ‘The Slasher, the Final Girl and the Anti-Denouement.’ In Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film, edited by Wickham Clayton, 213–228. London: Palgrave. Tasker, Yvonne. 1998. Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. London: Routledge. Tasker, Yvonne, and Diane Negra. Eds. 2007. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Durham: Duke University Press. Tasker, Yvonne. 2011. Soldiers’ Stories: Military Women in Cinema and Television Since World War II . Durham: Duke University Press. The Thing. 1982. Directed by John Carpenter. Film. United States: Universal Pictures. Thornham, Sue. 2012. What If I Had Been the Hero? London: BFI Publishing. Trencansky, Sarah. 2001. ‘Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror.’ Journal of Popular Film and Television 29 (2): 63–73. Ussher, Jane. 2006. Managing the Monstrous Feminine: Regulating the Reproductive Body. London: Routledge.

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Videodrome. 1983. Directed by David Cronenberg. Film. Canada: Canadian Film Development Corporation. Wetmore, Kevin. Ed. 2018. Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series. Jefferson: McFarland. Williams, Linda. 2002. ‘“When the Woman Looks”, 1983.’ In Horror: The Film Reader, edited by Mark Jancovich, 61–66, London: Routledge. Williams, Tony. 2014. Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Updated ed. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

CHAPTER 5

‘Something is Coming …’: the Screenwriter as Dungeon Master of Stranger Things Clem Bastow

Of all the nostalgic pop cultural references and Easter eggs populating the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things, the archetypal tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons is key to the series’ cult appeal. This is as clear in its narrative foregrounding as it is in the reports that the game’s popularity soared after the show’s 2016 premiere, with the game’s publisher Wizards of the Coast reporting its biggest sales in two decades in 2017 (Weiss 2018). Annual North American sales of the D&D ‘starter set’ were 126.9 k in 2014; in 2018, they hit 306.7 k (Pilon 2019); by the time of the show’s third-season premiere in 2019, a reported 40 million people had played D&D worldwide. In a masterstroke of transmedial marketing, a Stranger Things-themed D&D starter set was released in 2019, allowing players to experience Hunt for the Thessalhydra, the campaign (penned ‘by’ protagonist, Mike) that the boys are playing before Will’s disappearance and which introduces the dreaded Demogorgon. Unlike other contemporary references to D&D, such as those played for laughs in Community (2011), Stranger Things presents

C. Bastow (B) University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_5

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the game as worthy of the viewer’s time, and key to Mike and the boys’ unravelling of Hawkins’ mysteries, its textual importance evidence of the show’s broader hyper-postmodern approach to serial storytelling (Mollet 2019, 61). For those who have never played D&D, its narrative importance in Stranger Things may instil burning questions that move beyond the critical and into the existential: ‘Why are those nerds so into this game? Maybe there’s more to it than we first thought’. Or, as Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. puts it in his investigation of the game’s use in Stranger Things, ‘D&D is shorthand in pop culture for “geek”’ (2018, 63). The game’s in-show treatment adds, as D&D campaign critic Brendan Mulligan explains, ‘a lot of verisimilitude […] [but] also an element of tenderness in the inclusion of the game’ (Sjoberg 2019). Viewers either familiar with or intrigued by the game do not feel ostracised by the narrative; the boys’ love of D&D rubs off on viewers and fosters a cult sense of community as they either return to the game of their youth (ibid.) or play for the first time. There is more to the presence of D&D in the show than meets the eye, however, and viewed through a prism of its appearance in the films and TV shows Stranger Things references (such as E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, 1982), the game is the type of unpopular media whose presence on screen demands closer examination from the viewer. Those who have played (nay, adventured) know that nothing the Dungeon Master presents to them is accidental: thus, D&D in Stranger Things isn’t just nostalgic window dressing, but a crucial key to both the plot and the show’s cult appeal with fans. The first ‘box set’ edition of D&D appeared on shelves in 1974, but as Erik Mona notes in his potted history of the early years of the game, dating back to 1971, ‘the most primal form of D&D actually appeared as a fifteen-page “Fantasy Supplement” in the back of Chainmail, a medieval miniatures wargame written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren’ (2007, 25). That supplement’s nascent rules structure was expanded by Dave Arneson, who made the crucial decision for each player to represent a single character. Arneson visited Gygax after corresponding via mail, and the pair’s meeting in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in 1972 (26), has now passed into myth, much like the set-up for a D&D module. In 1973, Gygax wrote the first D&D rulebook, and in 1974, the embryonic form of the game as we know it was released to the world. Throughout all editions and expansions, its core mechanic remained the same: ‘one player acting as Dungeon Master, essentially in the role of a deity, shapes

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virtual worlds of a quasi-medieval nature’ (Lenarcic and MacKay-Scolla 2005, 65–66). The Dungeon Master (henceforth: DM) operates all ‘nonplayer characters’ and creatures, while the player characters band together as a party to explore a dungeon, adventures designed to build towards a climactic battle with a fearsome foe or monster, using a set of dice to determine their actions during encounters (Fine 1983, 7). These same player characters may team up again across numerous adventures, collectively called a campaign. Many D&D players’ campaigns have continued across years or even decades. By 1983, the year in which Stranger Things is set, there had already been numerous revisions of the game’s rules, including the second D&D Expert Set, which Mike and the boys use (Moreno 2016) to run their Hunt for the Thessalhydra campaign. In other words, Mike and his friends are no mere casual role-players - another clue to the narrative importance of D&D in Stranger Things - and indeed, backstory for the characters reveals that the four friends have been campaigning together since at least 1979 (Stranger Things Wiki, n.d.). Although debate remains as to its actual quality as a role-playing game, D&D’s cultural impact cannot be overstated, its ‘brand of fantasy’ having ‘influenced the imaginary landscape of Hollywood’ (MacKay 2001, 22) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is certainly true of Stranger Things. For example, in Eleven’s telekinetic powers, we can see echoes of psionics, ‘a source of power that originates from within a creature’s mind, allowing it to augment its physical abilities and affect the minds of other creatures’ (Wizards of the Coast 2015).1 It would be easy to view Stranger Things ’ use of D&D as at best, an engaging pop cultural reference, and at worst, a cynical ploy for merchandising opportunities. However, a closer examination of the series at textual level reveals that throughout all three existing iterations of the show, D&D remains a key narrative hallmark2 that goes deeper than mere metatextual ‘set dressing’. Wetmore’s engaging scholarship which explores how Stranger Things ’ use of the game as an ‘interpretive device’ (2018, 67) and force for good rescues the reputation of D&D from the moral panic that surrounded the game in the early 1980s has already demonstrated that the use of D&D in Stranger Things is a fruitful site for analysis and critical inquiry. This chapter will go a step further, proposing that the very nature of the D&D adventure - an exercise in interactive storytelling masterminded by the Dungeon Master over the course of a number of sessions of gameplay - is present in

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the ‘eight-hour-movie’ structure of the series, which producer Shawn Levy noted was ‘essentially another form of that Dungeons & Dragons campaign’ (McIntyre 2018, 222). This contentious notion of television ‘as’ cinema, which emerged from contemporary television criticism, will be explored in order to expand upon the hybridic narrative possibilities of ‘television’ in the era of streaming video services such as Netflix, Stranger Things ’ distributor. Addressing the show’s creators and their explicit intention to plot Stranger Things ‘like a feature film’ (ibid., 20), this chapter will apply paradigmatic feature film plot structure to the series’ ‘small-screen’ context in order to more deeply illuminate the eighthour movie format. Examining the accompanying screenplays3 and the Duffer Brothers’ and other series writers’ authorial voices through the lens of the ‘modes of presentation’ (Sternber 1997, 66), this chapter will also consider how, at a textual level, the Stranger Things screenplay pays homage to the D&D adventure and the voice of the DM. Applying notions of both screenwriting practice and tabletop role-playing gameplay (character development over time, multiple-hour play sessions over a campaign/plot) demonstrates Stranger Things ’ cult appeal with fans. Recent feature films such as J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 (2011) have played with the same nostalgic oeuvre as Stranger Things, but none have achieved the level of cult fan engagement. A feature film must remain content to pay homage to nostalgia for a certain cinematic tone, often ‘Spielbergian’,4 while the eight-hour movie format allows for a level of engagement with more explicit pop-cultural references—poetically, many of them referring to previous scenes of D&D-playing (such as those in Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial ). This chapter will argue that, from a character and plot development perspective, two hours of screen time is no match for eight hours with the screenwriter/DM as a guide, where viewers can luxuriate in the Stranger Things world and begin to unlock the mysteries of the plot. Evoking both the ‘scopophilic cinematic pleasures’ of film (Nelson 2007, 39) common to so-called quality TV (McCabe and Akass 2007) and D&D-gameplay-esque narrative, Stranger Things invites the viewer in as a silent member of the D&D campaign, fostering a cult viewing experience within which, by way of an online ‘perception check’,5 every set decoration, musical cue, pop culture reference or seemingly throwaway line can be investigated: binge-viewing, in the age of Netflix, as dungeon crawl.

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‘The Campaign Took Two weeks to Plan!’: Stranger Things as Eight-Hour Movie In order to conceptualise Stranger Things ’ plot structure as that of an ‘eight-hour movie’ rather than what we might traditionally expect of an eight-episode TV series, it is imperative to give broader context to the ongoing debate about screenwriting for the ‘small screen’.6 It has become a hallmark of both contemporary television criticism and television screenwriting to refer to so-called prestige series - those released post-2000s, during the era of ‘peak TV’, or the ‘golden age’ (Carr 2014) of television - as ‘ten-hour movies’.7 Indeed, so many creators and critics have described key works of peak TV in this manner that New York Magazine TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk was moved to decry the term as ‘one of the more tiresome, unnecessary clichés currently in vogue’ (2018). The phrase doesn’t necessarily refer to a ten-episode arc of a season of television (some series described in this manner are shorter than ten episodes, or much longer); rather, it serves as a descriptor with a dual purpose. It implies both that what we understand as ‘television’ has broadened and that the way we watch television (and, thus, the way it is written) has changed significantly. Though the notion of TV as ‘cinematic’ is not new, the ten-hour movie (in screenwriting terms) expands upon ideas of peak TV’s ‘aesthetic worth’ (Nelson 2007, 48). It’s true that we can think of the ten-hour movie as a season, over time, that has (or rather, strives for, and not always successfully) a scope that is more ‘cinematic’ than televisual; it’s rare to see network procedural drama series, for example, described as ten-hour movies. By harnessing a certain largesse in terms of production values (sprawling sets, impressive location shoots, large crowd scenes), these series attain ‘an aesthetic dimension in television that approximates the visual aesthetics of cinema’ (ibid., 43). However, ‘cinematic’ is also increasingly used to suggest a series that tells the sorts of stories that might once have been considered ‘too big’ for television, with the small screen once being the sole domain of small-scale dramas and multicam domestic comedies that never escaped beyond the boundaries of their obviously theatrical sets. Game of Thrones (2011–2019) is the inevitable example given in this context,8 and it is perhaps not surprising, although certainly amusing, that its showrunners, D. B. Weiss and David Benioff (both feature film screenwriters by trade before bringing George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire to HBO) have described the show as

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‘a 73-h movie’ (Alexander, 2017). There is a growing sense among television critics that inherent in any reference to TV being cinematic is the suggestion that episodic storytelling is somehow a lesser art. Addressing Weiss and Benioff’s comments about Game of Thrones , Pulitzer-winning TV writer Emily Nussbaum was moved to tweet that ‘it’s silly for TV makers to claim they’re really making movies. Episodic storytelling made collaboratively over time is TV’ (2017). This debate over where television ends and cinema begins (and vice versa) has become muddier as peak TV has broadened into subscription video on demand (SVOD) platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Studios and Hulu Plus. Or, as a guide to TV screenwriting format and style standards published by screenwriting organisation The Black List puts it, ‘as the way we watch television evolves, so too do the kinds of shows that can be presented within a given format’ (The Black List, n.d.). Essential to this emerging hybridity in screen media is the emerging notion of binge viewing. Though this ability to consume narrative successively has the ironic side effect, as Djoymi Baker notes, of making actual cinema ‘feel very small in temporal terms, its narrative and character development squeezed into only two to three hours running time’ (2017, 38), it is unique to the SVOD landscape. In the context of Stranger Things, the call to ‘binge’ also evokes the long haul play session of the D&D campaign. It’s more fun, and you achieve much more, when - much like the boys playing in Mike’s basement for ten hours - you set aside an entire day (or night) for your campaign; checking back in every week or so for shorter sessions means you often forget key information learned from the DM. In this way, the cult fan binge viewer becomes an adventurer on the boys’ campaign; marinating in the show over eight hours straight allows them to stay alert to crucial plot information that might drift into memory in traditional ‘weekly’ TV viewing. The drive to binge allows the cult fan to stay within the show’s hyperdiegesis for a longer period of time, compelled by its ‘endlessly deferred narrative’ (Hills 2002, 101) to solve the central mystery of the plot/campaign. Screenwriter and Hollywood Reporter columnist Marc Bernardin credits the advent of TV series specifically designed for binge-viewing with a swing towards treating writing for television as cinema in a more literal sense. Although VHS and DVD box-sets had previously allowed a viewer to consume a season or series in one sitting if they so desired, with the release of Netflix’s House of Cards in 2013, viewers were introduced to the notion of a ‘first-run episodic television content released that could

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be ingested all at once - with an entire season available at the push of a button’ (Bernardin 2018). This has presented a creative challenge for screenwriters as they write shows with binge-viewing in mind: ‘You need to have reversals and conflicts, triumphs and pitfalls, but they don’t need to be delivered as regularly as they need to in broadcast and basic cable. The narrative can pull like taffy - or can race like a Ferrari’ (ibid.). As Bernardin goes on to explain, Stranger Things ‘was often referred to as a mixture of Stephen King, John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg’ (ibid.). That Bernardin identifies Carpenter’s and Spielberg’s works as key to Stranger Things ’ appeal is no accident, but of all the shows identified as falling within the ‘ten-hour movie’ oeuvre, Stranger Things is unique, as its plot structure is not just surmised or detected by television critics or screenwriting analysts - it was literally developed and plotted as an eight-hour movie. With a background in feature filmmaking, the Duffer Brothers set out to structure Stranger Things as though they were writing a feature, breaking the narrative of the show’s eight episodes - with the search for Will its narrative ‘spine’ (McIntyre 2018, 20) - into three acts. In screenwriting terms, the three-act structure is considered paradigmatic; although various narratologists and script analysts have given it different names, it is generally accepted that each act will contain a number of key ‘plot points’, involving the protagonist(s), upon which a sense of plot causality is built that drives the action forward. Dramatic and, thus, emotional high points occur at the end of the first act, the end of the second act, and at the climax (the ‘resolution’, which follows the climax, is the true end of the third act). As script consultant Linda Aronson surmises, every theory of plot structure can be reduced to ‘the same basic storytelling problem, namely, how to keep a live audience engaged’ (2000, 151). Although this problem is not unique to feature film, that particular cinematic quality of the Stranger Things pilot script was central to its engagement with key collaborators during the show’s development. Netflix content-development executive Matt Thunnell described the screenplay’s sincerity and thematic content as ‘like a great 1980s movie’ (McIntyre 2018, 24). True to their intentions, throughout negotiations with Netflix, the Duffers and producer Shawn Levy (another feature film ‘native’ entering TV production for the first time) insisted that Stranger Things would play as an eight-hour movie. As Thunnell notes, ‘the lower episode count was important [as] stretching it over ten or thirteen episodes would’ve just diluted what was a really special,

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tight story’ (ibid.). Instead, the show’s eight-episode format can be read via its variation on the three-act structure referred to variously as ‘eightreel’ or ‘eight-sequence’. Like paradigmatic structure, the eight-sequence structure has been illuminated by various script analysts and how-to manuals, but Michael Schilf’s (2020) approach is helpful in expanding upon Stranger Things ’ eight-hour movie format. Schilf’s breakdown of the eight sequences within the three-act structure is as follows: ACT 1: SEQUENCE ONE—Status Quo & Inciting Incident SEQUENCE TWO—Predicament & Lock In ACT II: SEQUENCE SEQUENCE SEQUENCE SEQUENCE

THREE—First Obstacle & Raising the Stakes FOUR—First Culmination/Midpoint FIVE—Subplot & Rising Action SIX—Main Culmination/End of Act Two

ACT III: SEQUENCE SEVEN—New Tension & Twist SEQUENCE EIGHT—Resolution If we then apply this structure to Stranger Things, “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers” establishes the status quo of the show (life in Hawkins, the boys’ friendship) and the inciting incident (Will’s disappearance, and the boys’ resulting meeting with Eleven while searching for him) that sets the plot off on its course. “Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street” presents the predicament (Eleven reveals to the boys that Will is trapped in the Upside Down) and lock-in (Barb is also captured by the Demogorgon), and so on, until finally “Chapter Eight: The Upside Down” provides Stranger Things ’ resolution (Eleven sacrifices herself to defeat the Demogorgon, Will is rescued from the Upside Down, and life in Hawkins returns to normal). This eight-sequence structure can be applied not just to Stranger Things but to each of its sequels, and the use of that term is not merely a nod to the cinematic, but again, due to the creators’ express intention to maintain their established eight-hour movie structure. To wit, the second instalment in the series is titled Stranger Things 2 - as TV

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critic James Poniewozik puts it, upon Stranger Things 2’s premiere, ‘it’s called that, like a movie rather than a season of TV’ (2017) - and the third is Stranger Things 3, reiterating that these narratives are specifically designed as sequels to their preceding instalments, not seasons of the same series. Crucially, this movie-like structure also echoes the boys’ own ongoing D&D campaigns within the narrative, hooking the cult fan into the adventure as though they, too, are sitting in Mike’s basement.

‘It’s Right Next to You and You Don’t Even See It’: Eight-Hour Movie as D&D Adventure Recalling the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things pilot screenplay, producer Shawn Levy touches on both the feature film plotting and use of D&D as a narrative device: ‘Like a game of D&D, Stranger Things combines pre-planned ideas and inspired invention on the fly, a story that invites engaged participation from those who experience it […] Unlike other shows that lay out detailed storylines in advance and then execute them, Matt and Ross draw their narrative road map in pencil, not pen’ (McIntyre 2018, 222–223). The detailed storylines that Levy refers to are common in television screenwriting, where networks and producers are often courted by creators dangling the prospect of a deep well of potential episodes in front of them. It’s not uncommon for an entire season, sometimes more, to have been plotted at a very early stage in a television show’s life cycle, usually within a pitch ‘bible’ or document designed to entice wary executives with the promise of seemingly endless episodes to come. In the context of network television, more seasons equals more advertising time (in the case of premium cable channels, subscription dollars stand in for advertising.) SVOD providers such as Netflix, on the other hand, arguably have more room to innovate in terms of series structure, and the ‘[x]-hour movie’ format makes sense in terms of encouraging binge viewing. In an SVOD-saturated marketplace, despite the emphasis on bingeviewing, such notions of a bottomless well of potential seasons and episodes are becoming less relevant as we witness a swing back towards self-contained so-called limited series; during pitching, cable network executives reportedly clung to the idea that Stranger Things, given its youthful protagonists, might be better positioned as an ongoing (and, thus, more traditional) ‘kids series’ (Dunleavy 2017, 147). Comparing modern online RPGs to their tabletop predecessors, John Lenarcic and

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James MacKay-Scollay note the former ‘leaves the player feeling incomplete, driving them back to the keyboard for another session again and again’ (2005, 71). Similarly, episodic storytelling in a truly ‘traditional’ sense is geared towards the notion of a story engine, to wit, a theme or group of characters that provide a potentially endless source of episodes. Although D&D adventures can take considerable time to play out, they do have an expected end point: the triumph over the final ‘boss’ at the end of the dungeon crawl (or, if things go badly, the death of the entire party). In this way, the D&D adventure is structured more like a movie and, thus, Stranger Things ’ eight-hour movie structure can begin to be viewed through the prism of the D&D adventure. Levy’s use of ‘pencil, not pen’ can also be read as code for D&D game play. The 1977 Basic Set rulebook (with which, we can assume from their references to campaigns played in the past, Mike and the boys are intimately familiar) gives the prospective DM this advice: ‘Before players can take their bold characters on adventures into the misty mysterious dungeons, the Dungeon Master must sit down, pencil in hand, and map out the dungeons on graph paper’ (Zenopus Archives 2014). Also, given D&D’s emphasis on character development via ‘XP’ (experience points) over time, players fill out their character sheets in pencil in order to update their biographies, skills and belongings as the campaign progresses. In the foreword to the 1983 edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rulebook (the edition we see employed by Mike and the boys), the DM is commanded to action: ‘A campaign is limited only by the creativity of the Dungeon Master and players. There are dragons to slay, evil hordes to overcome, towns to visit - and as usual, dungeons to explore. Onward!’ (Gygax and Arneson 1983, 3). This call to arms can be detected in Stranger Things ’ plot: dragons to slay (the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer), evil hordes to overcome (Dr. Martin ‘Papa’ Brenner and the Hawkins National Laboratory), towns to visit (the show’s fictional Hawkins, Indiana) and dungeons to explore (the Upside Down). Indeed, we can apply this to each iteration of the show; for example, the dungeon in Stranger Things 2 can be read as the Mind Flayer’s network of tunnels beneath Hawkins’ pumpkin fields, while the evil horde in Stranger Things 3 is the Flayed, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers -esque facsimiles of disappeared Hawkins residents, including Billy. And, in turn, the vieweradventurer joins this call to arms, using the show’s various cult references to help them engage more deeply with the plot.

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On the page, the Duffer Brothers’ use of scene text speaks directly to the reader with an enthusiasm and knack for storytelling that are the mark of a good DM. Whether employing onomatopoeic sound cues, asides (including colloquialisms and curse words), or frowned-against exclamation marks, the Duffers and their fellow writers repeatedly defy the expected norms of screenwriting practice and recall the DM’s addressing of the players. Being a good DM, as the second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide so memorably put it, ‘calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing’ (Cook 1989, 9), qualities that are also the mark of a talented screenwriter. There is a poetic similarity between the nature of fantasy role-playing games and screenwriting practice. As Joseph P. Laycock notes of the development of fantasy RPGs in 1968, a ‘combination of mechanistic and romantic thinking’ (2015, 32) was key to games like D&D, but the same could be said of the screenplay, which is itself a mechanistic text that also touches on the romantic: the screenplay is by its very nature a hybrid, both an industrial document - a ‘blueprint’ (Sternberg 1997, 50) for a screen work yet to be made - and a literary text - ‘written to be read’ (ibid., 25). Although questions of screenplay authorship persist, as theorist Claudia Sternberg illustrated in her groundbreaking scholarship, the screenplay’s scene text (i.e. all content that isn’t character dialogue) ‘contains all the modes of presentation - description, report, comment and speech - employed in prose fiction’ (ibid., 66). Comment mode is, at least according to screenwriting manuals that warn against it, often thought to be ‘prohibited’ (Price 2013, 10) but aside from dialogue, it is perhaps the mode of presentation most likely to reveal the screenwriter’s authorial voice. This deviation from accepted screenwriting practice is considered by many to be key to a screenplay’s readability and is certainly present in the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things screenplays. Consider this scene text, from the first page of “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”:

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We are now inside the laboratory ... SLOWLY CREEPING down a long windowless corridor toward a STEEL DOOR. Fluorescent lights flicker ... a SIREN WARBLES ... And we continue to HEAR that LOW-END RUMBLE ... We DRAW CLOSER to the door ... and closer ... and ... WHOOM! THE DOOR EXPLODES OPEN. THE HINGES SHRIEKING. A SCIENTIST staggers out. Terrified. (Duffer Brothers 2015)

Moving beyond mere paratechnical comment, the use of the weconstruction draws us into the world of the show. Via the use of we, ‘the reader and writer are united into what would appear to be an abstract bond’ (Sternberg 1997, 75).9 Although not exclusive to the Stranger Things scripts, the Duffer Brothers’ use of comment mode recalls the DM’s narration of an adventure, inviting the reader (and by extension, the eventual viewer) into the mystery of the plot. Compare the aforequoted scene text with Mike’s dialogue from moments later in “Chapter One” as he serves as DM to Lucas, Dustin and Will’s players, guiding them through the dungeon as they play Hunt for the Thessalhydra: Mike looks over his shoulder. His eyes grow wide. MIKE Wait ... do Boom! BOOM! Didn’t come No. It came

you hear that? Boom! That sound ... it from the Troglodytes. from something else ...

Mike slams a LARGE TWO-HEADED MONSTER MINIATURE onto the map. MIKE (CONT'D) THE DEMOGORGON. (Duffer Brothers 2015)

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If we return to the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set rulebook (one we can assume Mike and the boys, as regular adventurers, would have consulted in depth), we discover this advice for prospective DMs: ‘Dramatize the adventure as much as possible’ (Mona 2007, 29). In other words, the Duffer Brothers’ use of we-constructions and technical and literary comment mode (‘WHOOM!’ and so on) are not just examples of engaging screenwriting, but appear to consciously evoke a good DM’s enlivening of a campaign; we see this when Will attempts to kick-start the boys’ campaign in Stranger Things 3, “Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”, meeting Mike’s unenthusiastic attack with a spirited ‘WHOOSH! You miss!’ This excerpt from Stranger Things 2, “Chapter Nine: The Gate” concerning Eleven’s final battle to close the Gate against the Mind Flayer, again locates the reader as player character, entranced by the screenwriter DM: The ARM is inches away from Eleven when… ELEVEN'S FEET SUDDENLY LIFT UP A FEW FEET THE PLATFORM. SHE'S LEVITATING. REACHING A NEW STATE OF POWER. SHE THRUSTS OUT BOTH HANDS NOW -RELEASES ONE FINAL SCREAM -AND -The arm sucks back into the Upside Down a splitsecond before -CRACKKK-RARRRRR! THE GATE CLOSES WITH A THUNDEROUS ROAR!!! (Duffer Brothers 2017)

This style and tone is carried through the various episodes as a ‘house style’. Where other writers step in for certain episodes, such as Justin Doble for “Chapter Four: The Body” in Season One, this DM-esque authorial voice remains. This emphasis on the authorial voice also suggests an answer to Roberta Pearson’s question, posed in the aftermath of

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Lost , as to whether the future of the ‘post-television era’ would lead to an ‘increased valuation of authorship […] with television seen as cinema’s equal or superior’ (2007, 256); the showrunner/screenwriter/DM commanding the cult audience. This use of ‘literary imagery […] to substantiate moods and emotions’ (Sternberg 1997, 87) reflects the manner in which the Dungeon Master weaves a tale of adventure for their fellow players. It is in this way that D&D once again reveals itself as crucial to Stranger Things ’ cult narratological appeal. Coupled with the we-convention, the authorial voice in the screenplays taps into a key aspect of D&D, something that Gary Alan Fine identified as the social world and ‘shared fantasy’ (2003, 72) of fantasy role-playing games. In the context of Stranger Things, this shared fantasy stokes the fires of cult fandom; the viewer isn’t merely another demographic point, but an active participant in solving the mysteries of the plot. Rather than a discrete ‘whodunnit?’, as might be presented by a procedural drama, or ‘monster of the week’ series like The X Files (1993– 2002) or Sleepy Hollow (2013–2017), this DM-like weaving of cult appeal also commands the viewer to investigate - perception check - the implications, narratively, of the cult references sprinkled throughout the show. This also speaks to the ‘simultaneous multitasking across various media platforms’ (Baker 2017, 34) that characterises the binge-viewing experience: the cult viewer with one eye on their TV screen and another on their phone or tablet, investigating plot clues (e.g. the lyrics of a Clash song playing on a character’s stereo, or the plot of a George A. Romero movie showing at Starcourt Mall) in their race to solve the mystery.

‘You’re Ruining Our Party!’: A Turn to Episodic Storytelling In the foreword to the Stranger Things Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set adventure book, Hunt for the Thessalhydra, we discover notes written as ‘Mike’, to himself: ‘we should be able to finish this story in one night […] but don’t rush it’ (Hasbro 2018, 2). Reading this, we may once again recall Bernardin’s comment regarding binge screenwriting: that ‘the narrative can pull like taffy - or can race like a Ferrari’ (2018). In a recap of Stranger Things 2 for Vulture, Matt Duffer explained that the growing cast of characters pushed them towards a third instalment as ‘we had more ideas than we had room for. The only good thing about that is that I think it’s hopefully going to speed up season three a little bit’ (cited in Chaney

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2017). We can assume he was referring to speeding up the process of commissioning and producing another sequel, but perhaps he was also foreshadowing a move towards more traditionally episodic storytelling in Stranger Things 3. In Stranger Things 3, Will chafes against his friends’ reluctance to ‘play D&D’ like they used to, echoing Lenarcic and Mackay-Scollay’s subtle critique of the game, which pinpoints ‘the time required to develop a character to any meaningful level [and] the difficulty in assembling the same group of people to regular multiple-hour play sessions’ (2005, 66). As the friendship group splinters (Mike is dating Eleven, Lucas is with Max, and Dustin has a long-distance girlfriend; Will, left alone, is implied to be wrestling with his sexuality), Will’s attempt to get his friends to play D&D becomes a running gag, albeit one that explodes with pathos when Mike yells at his friend, ‘We’re not kids anymore! What did you think? … That we were gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?’ and a tearful Will answers, ‘Yeah, I guess I did’ (“Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”). Will’s desperation to maintain the shared fantasy of the boys’ campaign is reflected in the show’s far busier plot, within which a truer televisual A/B/C story structure can be detected, despite the ‘eight-hour movie’ structure still being suggested by the eight ‘Chapters’ of the sequel. A/B/C stories are not subplots, as Pam Douglas’ guide to writing TV drama explains, but rather ‘independent tales, each involving distinct guest cast’ (2007, 77). When plotting A/B/C stories, the cast members that populate each story thread may change from episode to episode (i.e. in some episodes, we may see more of one character only for them to step into the narrative background of the following episode). Thus, we have Nancy and Jonathan’s investigation of the Flayed rats; Steve, Dustin and Robin (and, later, Erica) investigating the Russians at the mall; Eleven and Max’s friendship and search for Billy; and Hopper and Joyce’s fractious relationship. Reflecting the shattered nature of the boys’ D&D campaign, Mike, Will and Lucas weave their way through many of the aforementioned plots. This A/B/C structure can be detected in Stranger Things 3, in which each plot remains (more or less) separate until they are threaded together in the climactic “Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”. Television critics noted this narrative busyness upon the 2019 premiere of Stranger Things 3, some more positively than others: while Variety’s Caroline Framke observes that the sequel makes ‘much more of a case for itself than season 2 ever

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did simply by trying to be something different’ (2019), The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage called it ‘Stranger Things: The Soap Opera’ (2019). Throughout Stranger Things 3, while the hallmarks of D&D gameplay remain—dragons to slay (the Mind Flayer), evil hordes to overcome (the Flayed), towns to visit (Starcourt Mall), dungeons to explore (the Russian base beneath Starcourt)—they are more diffuse. D&D becomes hinted at, subtextual rather than textual, although as Emily L. Stephens noted, the grid motif that unites all three Stranger Things becomes most explicit in Starcourt Mall’s floor tiles, which, shot from above, makes ‘our heroes look like little figurines’ (2019), D&D miniatures, like those that Mike slammed upon the grid paper in Season One’s “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”, once again recalling the Basic Set command for the DM to ‘map out the dungeons on graph paper’ (Zenopus Archives 2014). In this way, although the sequel’s plotting may have shattered the party, the finale brings them all together in the truest evocation of a dungeon crawl’s final battle yet seen in the Stranger Things storyworld. Recalling MacKay’s assessment of the role-playing game as ‘a worldly entertainment that manufactures, through a shared social experience, otherworldly playgrounds from the images of American culture’ (2001, 156), Stranger Things employs D&D both as metatextual pop cultural reference and as a narrative device at script level, to serve a storyworld that is as familiarly nostalgic as it is fresh. This is central to the show’s cult appeal as it invites the viewer to, in effect, become an adventurer alongside Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin - repositioning the lure to binge-view as the call to adventure that begins every D&D campaign. As the viewer-adventurer watches the series unfold, they engage with its references to other works of cult cinema and TV, descending ever deeper into ‘simultaneous multitasking across various media platforms’ (Baker 2017, 34) until they, too, know the original D&D rulebooks or Steven Spielberg’s back catalogue (and so on) back to front. With Stranger Things 4 on the horizon, and the knowledge that the Duffer Brothers originally intended the show to last for four-to-five seasons (Piester 2017), it remains to be seen what adventures this campaign has left to offer. But the boys’ donation of their D&D rulebooks and figurines to Erica10 in Stranger Things 3 at the denouement of “Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt” suggests that, come ‘1986’, Stranger Things will have a new Dungeon Master. And as those of us who consider ourselves adventurers will know, with a new DM comes a whole new world to explore - and a whole new year’s worth of cult references to investigate.

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Notes 1. This ability first appeared in D&D in 1976’s Eldritch Wizardry Supplement III (Moreno 2016). 2. Indeed, so deep is the show’s marination in D&D lore that in the behindthe-scenes book that accompanies the series, the boys are introduced by way of D&D ‘player character sheets’. 3. TV scripts are typically referred to as ‘teleplays’. For clarity—and to reflect the eight-hour movie plot structure—I will use ‘screenplay’ in this chapter. 4. Although this neologism has been in common use for some time, the Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2018, defining it as ‘Of, relating to, or characteristic of the films of Steven Spielberg, esp. as having fantastical or humanist themes or a sentimental feel.’ 5. In D&D, a perception check measures a player’s awareness of their ingame surroundings, such as whether they can hear a conversation in an adjoining room, or spot anything obscured that might be relevant to the campaign. 6. I also note at the outset that the seventh episode of Stranger Things 2, “Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister”, will not be considered part of the broader season two plot structure as it exists as a stand-alone ‘bottle episode’ (Ivie 2017), that has little bearing on the episodes that follow it and can thus be excised from the breakdown of that season’s plot structure. 7. There are slight variations on a theme, depending on the actual number of episodes in a series, but ‘ten-hour movie’ has become the go-to neologism. 8. The irony, of course, is that despite their ‘cinematic’ scope, George R. R. Martin’s series of books was long considered ‘unfilmable’. On television, the breadth of storylines afforded meant A Song of Ice and Fire’s sprawling fantasy geopolitics could be explored at length. 9. Comment mode manifests differently from screenplay to screenplay, but can generally be thought of as relating to the “unfilmable”: information about characters’ inner emotional states, or the screenwriter’s use of a more expansive prose style than is usually expected within the action or “big print” of a screenplay. 10. Priah Ferguson’s 2020 promotion to regular cast (Otterson 2020) confirms Erica’s new position as a protagonist alongside Eleven, Hopper, and the boys.

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Works Cited Alexander, Julia. 2017. ‘Game of Thrones Showrunners Ignite Debate Over Whether It’s a TV Show or Movie.’ Polygon. Available at: https://www.pol ygon.com/tv/2017/3/13/14911318/game-of-thrones-tv-movie. Accessed 7 May 2021. Aronson, Linda. 2000. Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for the Screen. New South Wales: Allen & Unwin. Baker, Djoymi. 2017. ‘Terms of Excess: Binge-Viewing as Epic-Viewing in the Netflix Era.’ In The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media, Digital Delivery and Instant Access, edited by Cory Barker and Myc Wiatrowski, 31– 54. Jefferson: McFarland. Bernardin, Marc. 2018. ‘How Binge-Watching Has Changed TV Writing (Guest Column).’ The Hollywood Reporter, June 15. Available at: https://www.hol lywoodreporter.com/news/has-binge-watching-changed-tv-writing-1118988. Accessed 7 May 2021. The Black List. n.d. ‘Television Format & Style Standards.’ The Black List. Available at: https://blcklst.com/help/tv_script_standards.pdf. Accessed 2 April 2020. Carr, David. 2014. ‘Barely Keeping Up in TV’s New Golden Age.’ The New York Times. March 9. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/bus iness/media/fenced-in-by-televisions-excess-of-excellence.html. Accessed 7 May 2021. Chaney, Jen. 2017. ‘The Duffer Brothers Recap Stranger Things 2, ‘Chapter One: Mad Max’.’ Vulture. October 30. Available at: https://www.vulture. com/2017/10/the-duffer-brothers-recap-stranger-things-2-madmax.html. Accessed 7 May 2021. Cook, David. 1989. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. Lake Geneva: TSR Inc. Douglas, Pam. 2007. Writing The TV Drama Series. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions. Duffer, Matt, and Ross Duffer (credited as The Duffer Brothers). 2015. Manuscript, “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers” (ID #49218). Los Angeles: Shavelson-Webb Library, Writers Guild Foundation. Duffer, Matt, and Ross Duffer (credited as The Duffer Brothers). 2017. Manuscript, “Chapter Nine: The Gate” (ID #50995). Los Angeles: ShavelsonWebb Library, Writers Guild Foundation. Dunleavy, Trisha. 2017. Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Fine, Gary Alan. 1983. Shared Fantasy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Framke, Caroline. 2019. ‘TV Review: ‘Stranger Things’ Season 3.’ Variety. June 30. Available at: https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/stranger-thingsseason-3-review-netflix-1203256168/. Accessed 7 May 2021.

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Gygax, Gary, and Dave Arneson. 1983. Dungeons & Dragons Expert Rulebook. Lake Geneva: TSR Inc. Heritage, Stuart. 2019. ‘Stranger Things 3: A Flawless Finale – But What a Slog to Get There.’ The Guardian. July 9. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/09/stranger-things-3-flawless-finale-but-whata-slog-to-get-there. Accessed 7 May 2021. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Ivie, Devon. 2017. ‘The Duffer Brothers Defend That Divisive Stranger Things ‘Lost Sister’ Episode.’ Vulture. November 4. Available at: https://www. vulture.com/2017/11/duffer-brothers-defend-stranger-things-episode.html. Accessed 7 May 2021. Laycock, Joseph P. 2015. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic Over RolePlaying Games Says About Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. Oakland: University of California Press. Lenarcic, John, and James MacKay-Scollay. 2005. ‘Trading Card Games As a Social Learning Tool.’ Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society 3 (2): 64–76. MacKay, Daniel. 2001. The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Eds. 2007. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris. McIntyre, Gina. 2018. Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down. New York: Del Rey. Mollet, Tracey. 2019. ‘Looking Through the Upside Down: HyperPostmodernism and Trans-Mediality in the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things.’ Journal of Popular Television 7 (1): 57–77. Mona, Erik. 2007. ‘From The Basement to the Basic Set: The Early Years of Dungeons & Dragons.’ In Second Person, edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, 25–30. Cambridge: MIT Press. Moreno, Jim. 2016. ‘Stranger Things: A Dungeons & Dragons History Check.’ Geek and Sundry. July 24. Available at: https://geekandsundry.com/strangerthings-a-dungeons-dragons-history-check/. Accessed 7 May 2021. Nelson, Robin. 2007. ‘Quality TV Drama Estimations and Influences Through Time and Space.’ In Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, 38–51. London: I. B. Tauris. Otterson, Joe. 2020. ‘‘Stranger Things’ Ups Priah Ferguson to Series Regular for Season 4 (EXCLUSIVE).’ Variety. February 21. Available at: https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/stranger-things-priah-fergusonseason-4-1203509683/. Accessed 7 May 2021. Pearson, Roberta. 2007. ‘Lost in Transition: From Post-Network to PostTelevision.’ In Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond, edited by Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, 239–256. London: I. B. Tauris.

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Piester, Lauren. 2017. ‘Stranger Things Season 5? The Duffer Brothers are Trying to Decide How Long the Show Will Last.’ E! News. October 30. Available at: https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/890177/stranger-thingsseason-5-the-duffer-brothers-are-trying-to-decide-how-long-the-show-willlast. Accessed 7 May 2021. Pilon, Mary. 2019. ‘The Rise of the Professional Dungeon Master.’ Bloomberg. July 8. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/201907-08/how-to-be-a-professional-dungeons-dragons-master-hosting-games. Accessed 7 May 2021. Poniewozik, James. 2017. ‘Review: ‘Stranger Things’ Returns, More Familiar But Still Fun.’ The New York Times. October 27. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/arts/television/stranger-things2-review-netflix.html. Accessed 7 May 2021. Price, Steven. 2013. A History of the Screenplay. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan. Schilf, Michael. 2020. ‘The Eight Sequences.’ The Script Lab. January 23. Available at: https://thescriptlab.com/screenwriting/structure/the-sequence/45the-eight-sequences/. Accessed 7 May 2021. Sjoberg, Brooke. 2019. ‘How ‘Stranger Things’ Is Inspiring New Waves of Dungeons and Dragons Fans.’ Daily Dot. August 24. Available at: https:// www.dailydot.com/parsec/stranger-things-dungeons-dragons/. Accessed 4 July 2020. Stephens, Emily L. 2019. ‘In a Stirring Finale, Stranger Things Stands Up and Grows Up.’ The AV Club. July 5. Available at: https://tv.avclub.com/in-a-sti rring-finale-stranger-things-stands-up-and-gro-1836080274. Accessed 7 May 2021. Sternberg, Claudia. 1997. Written for the Screen: The American Motion Picture Screenplay As Text. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Stranger Things Wiki. n.d. ‘Dungeons & Dragons.’ Stranger Things Wiki. Available at: https://strangerthings.fandom.com/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons. Accessed 2 April 2020. VanArendonk, Kathryn. 2018. ‘GLOW Isn’t a 10-Hour Movie.’ Vulture. July 6. Available at: https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/glow-season-2-isnt-a10-hour-movie.html. Accessed 7 May 2021. Weiss, Josh. 2018. ‘Dungeons & Dragons Had Its Biggest Sales Year in 2017.’ Sy Fy Wire. March 14. Available at: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/dungeonsdragons-had-its-biggest-sales-year-in-2017. Accessed 7 May 2021. Wetmore, Jr., Kevin. J. 2018. ‘Monsters and Moral Panics: Dungeons & Dragons As a Force of Good in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 60–82. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

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Wizards of the Coast. 2015. ‘Psionics And The Mystic.’ Wizards of the Coast. Available at: https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA6_Awa kenedMysticv2.pdf. Accessed 2 April 2020. Zenopus Archives. 2014. ‘Part 41: “Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art”.’ Zenopus Archives. November 17. Available at: https://zenopusarchives.blogspot. com/2014/11/part-41-dungeon-mastering-as-fine-art.html. Accessed 7 May 2021.

PART II

Contexts

CHAPTER 6

‘What Happens to Us in the Future?’: Stranger Things 3 Goes Back to the Future (1985) Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

It Is Good to Be Back (in the 1980s) Stranger Things delights in its ability to re-enter the world of 1980s popular culture, its cult texts and cultures (games, films, fashion), in order to celebrate and critique the era’s specific iconography and cinematic qualities through the lens of cultural nostalgia, and to encourage the practice of generational recall. This celebration of all things set or culturally curated in the 1980s - via its invocation of cult films and fandoms,1 pastiche and intersections with various cult fandoms as deployed through costuming, poster art2 and its popular music soundtrack - in turn enables the viewer to engage with, and/or nostalgically recall the memories of a distinct period now wholly lost to time, but nonetheless, remaining a crucial nexus point in today’s popular culture. For its devoted audience, Stranger Things is a collective remembrance of all things lost in the past, now brought back to life simply as ‘retro’ pop culture artefacts and texts. While numerous scholarly readings of

S. Ní Fhlainn (B) Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, England, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_6

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Stranger Things posit it as a simple wish-fulfilment on the part of the series’ showrunners, the Duffer Brothers, rather, they use it to examine the need to move beyond the entrapment of a fixed past, to accommodate change in the face of adversity or new desires, and to accept and adapt to new beginnings in the grip of grief, personal disappointment and maturation (see also Lindsey Scott’s chapter in this collection). Such life lessons were widely felt in 1980s teen cinema, where growth and maturation are required to move beyond the comfort (or confinement) of fixed states and identities, or parental expectations. At first glance, the third season of Stranger Things, set in July 1985 and coinciding with the 4th of July release of Back to the Future (the summer smash hit film of that year), may be read by some as simple fan adulation by the Duffer Brothers or blatant playful humour to trace through the series with reference points to the release of classic 1980s film titles. However, I argue that the use of Back to the Future as a reference touchstone, in both subtle and overt ways, points to the emotional pain of transition and growth in the narrative arc of the series. Furthermore, rather than dismissing Back to the Future as a film that celebrates the pursuit of fixed (timeline) stability in its diegesis, I argue that the core philosophy of maturation, growth and generational change is fully embraced by Stranger Things throughout its third season. On the surface, many of the Back to the Future references appear as casual citations of the film’s script and its aesthetics, simply serving as another cultural homage to this classic 1980s adventure across time.3 Rather, Back to the Future is playfully bricolaged and inverted via fragmentary diegetic echoes throughout Stranger Things 3 to underscore its lasting and affirmative message beyond the narrative magic of time travel.4 It also inverts many of its core conventions to signal the necessity of change. Knowing and embracing the film’s cultural cachet in 1980s popular culture, Stranger Things disassembles and reassembles Back to the Future’s narrative beats as a metatextual document and feedback loop of 1980s t(w)een experiences. The series situates its multi-generational audiences with narrative skill. For its adult viewers, it indulges the notion of safe retreat to the past in an age of great instability and uncertainty, nurturing the perceived longing to recapture the clarity of hindsight afforded to this familiar past. For its protagonist kids, it provokes them to reimagine a future beyond a simple return to their parents’ nostalgic past and to push through its formula to achieve new forms of imaginative creation, for the 1980s hall of mirrors

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has become a neoliberal trap. Stranger Things 3 ultimately becomes paradoxical: only through change - by breaking away from the 1980s as a site of nostalgic return and querying on its lynchpin selling points - can it posit a future of its own making and call out to its young audience to fashion a future for themselves, free of a nostalgia not of their making. Due to the popularity of the series, one can rightly ask the question, ‘has the 1980s ever truly ended?’ It remains a period that is repeatedly returned to in order to re-evaluate, re-discover and celebrate American culture in cycles of thirty years after its conclusion. The decade feels paradoxically distant, yet ever present through a resurgence of interest in retro pop culture and renewed accessibility of its films and television programmes through streaming platforms. The cultural legacy of the decade continues to be felt - in this long 1980s - through the ongoing expression of neoliberal politics, the pursuit of outlandish celebrity culture, the 24-hr news cycle and the Trump presidency, which is itself built on the façade and self-promoted tactics of his 1980s Wall Street-styled career as a property magnate. Other texts that predate Stranger Things also directly engage with this overt practice of prolonging the decade’s reach, whether it is in the form of direct remakes/reboots or sequels (ironically, the practice of remaking and sequelising throughout the 1980s kept the studios afloat by way of franchise expansion, summer blockbusters and tent pole releases), or through explicit returns through pastiche. The marketing executives, screenwriters and directors at the helm of such recycled productions today include the kids raised on 1980s cinema: they now inform Hollywood and contemporary screen culture and overtly wish to recapture its nostalgic magic. As Ryan Lizardi observes, our perpetual replay of the 1980s past in the 2010s reinforces this ‘dominant modality [a]s a playlist mentality that archives, compiles, and treasures media important to consumers’ pasts on an individual level and encourages melancholic connections to a media-defined history’ (2014, 5). Capitalising upon such media-soaked nostalgia for formative film franchises, Hollywood has aggressively cultivated a return to iconic screen texts for financial assurance by expanding established products for pre-existing audiences. While some screen returns are reboots, others are re-imagined extensions of popular franchises. The Alien franchise (1979–1997) has been repurposed under its original director Ridley Scott, whose vision for the prequels has become a tangled odyssey of origins to explain the evolution of his beautiful yet horrifying brood. The Star Wars saga (1977–2005)

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continues apace with a new trilogy (the long-awaited episodes VII–IX)5 and The Mandalorian series (2019–). Bill and Ted return in Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) in order to secure a future of peace and harmony as inspired by their heavy metal compositions. Terminator (1984) sequels abound, also with limited impact, in the attempt to rewrite, extend and overwrite earlier, less successful instalments in its narrative universe, often pointing back to its last successful sequel in 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day as a bridging text to lay claim to narrative authenticity.6 These extended narratives all serve to encourage us to revisit established products and therefore shore up nostalgic return(s) at the multiplex - a feat that was previously achieved by the studios during the mass adoption of the sequel in the 1980s. According to David Sirota (2011), the 1980s has felt largely inescapable in the twenty-first century. This has served to elongate its resonance and underscore its importance as a nexus point in contemporary cultural discourse. The period has yet to be fully defined because, in many ways, it has not yet ended: ‘the eighties fixation in our current culture and politics may not really be a resurrection at all […] our 1980s fetish may actually be an intensification of an ethos that never actually went extinct, in part because no epochal force intervened to kill it’ (Sirota 2011, xx). The sheer prevalence of 1980s texts, its mood, cultural production and marketing values, and the recycling of its iconic styles all stand in evidence for its legacy and the rapid cycles of paradoxical replay in the digital present.

The 1980s 2.0: Recalling the Past (But Not as We Knew It) Above all else, Stranger Things delights in the mashing up of familiar styles and nods to pay homage to a cultural terrain that remains readily identifiable and confident in its audience’s fluency in 1980s culture. This replay of audience familiarity gained traction before in the 1980s (in texts that nostalgically look back to the 1950s and 1960s) and took on a ‘cultist quality in its own right expressed and fuelled in films such as Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987)’ (Mathijs and Sexton 2011, 186). Vera Dika proposes these films directly facilitated a cultural desire for ‘the fabrication of history’ (2003, 144–5), and, for Mathijs, the overt ‘cultural consumption patterns of the 1950s […] wherein audiences longing for a better future has given way to a

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yearning for a better past […]. This development nostalgia for Hollywood cultism is transformed into a consumption pattern itself’ (2007, 168). This is evident in the nostalgic return to the 1980s landscape in IT: Chapter One (2017) and Chapter Two (2019) for example, wherein the late 1950s childhoods of Stephen King’s Losers’ Club from the novel are now transplanted to an equidistant late 1980s setting in the 2017 and 2019 adaptation. Posited to be equally important as a site to contest the future history we are experiencing in the twenty-first century, the 1980s has overwritten the 1950s as a site of replay and contestation in the American imaginary. This bricolage of knowing, postmodern playfulness allows Stranger Things series writers to then hide material familiar to older members of the audience (those who directly experienced and recall its history and culture during the 1980s) to create cues and references that linger at its margins as a reward. This type of narrative is not new, as many other series (Spaced, 1999–2001, for example) delight in recycling 1980s styles and popular culture as part of its narrative pleasures.7 Its references ranged from 1970 to 1990s UK and US film and TV culture and deftly interlaced its pastiche into a relatable comedy about a motley crew of twenty-somethings in a flat share grappling with their delayed emotional maturation into adulthood. These kids of the Xennial/Star Wars generation8 of the late 1970s are now faced with the trauma of adulthood and retreat into a twenty-something haze of cinematic nostalgia and recycling of culture.9 Concluding its second series in 2001, Spaced imagined a future full of hope for its misfit band of flat share friends as they moved into an unknown future. By 2011, the future seemed distinctly less certain - the political landscape in the United States shifted wildly in wake of the 2008 financial crash, and its legacy calcified polarising ideologies between the TEA party (the Taxed Enough Already party) faction and President Obama’s attempts to readjust structural inequalities for the working poor; the moderate constituency of the Republican party was largely obliterated in the fallout. To escape the toxic and partisan 24-hr news cycle of blame and discontent that has marred much of twenty-first-century discourse, a retreat into the past (here the 1980s) is naturally familiar and safe and is directly spurred on in cycles of trauma and uncertainty. While it is a lost time, it remains tantalisingly fixed as a haven to which we could safely retreat to escape the angst of contemporary political flux, if only through cultural texts and nostalgic recall. Predating Stranger Things by six years, Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One (2011)10 is a hyper-1980s ludic

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narrative, rewarding knowledge of film dialogue, arcade games and trivia in order to complete the quest to take ownership of the Oasis - a digital haven from a lost future under the horrors of hyper-consumption and inequality, deep class segregation, and fuelled by corporate greed. While the Spielberg-helmed 2018 film features numerous instances of selfcitation (given the 1980s was the decade of Spielberg’s global ascension in popular culture),11 Cline’s novel provides a distinctly dark edge to its imagined depleted future in which 1980s culture dominates as a necessary referent to navigate the only possible escape route from a predestined lost future under neoliberal control. Knowledge of the 1980s becomes a valuable commodity for potential liberation, rather than cultural knowledge to be dismissed or devalued; the nostalgic past becomes vital in the contest to secure ownership of the Oasis and restore hope for the future (in the right hands). On the surface, this is a winning narrative and economic combination for audiences as it bridges the gap between the horrors of the present and the irrecoverable past. However, a careful renegotiation of these earlier texts is needed to make any 1980s homage series feel relevant, personal and in tune with the cultural present. In reclaiming the past for the audience of the present, unseemly elements are censored out or disposed of as necessary, wiping clean any undesirable blemishes and, borrowing Robin Wood’s phrase, ‘papering the [cultural] cracks’ (2003, 144) of 1980s prejudices and intolerance.12 Stranger Things uses the anxieties of the mid-to-late 2010s as a site to re-examine cultural anxieties and ruptures already experienced before (for the previous generation) and now finds purchase and potential hope/relief in the ability to re-enter and rewrite (and thus to right the course of) this lost 1980s past via its nostalgic return. We return to the mid-1980s as a critical juncture because its hold is still relevant to our world right now. It is only by going back to the 1980s that we are encouraged to identify the wrong course of history today, while refusing to succumb to its seductions to remain mired in the past or the belief in its fixity. The 1980s was, rather, a period of overt and complex contradictions, the tangent in time that informs much of our contemporary world and is too often mistaken for or dismissed as lacking meaning or significance. Stranger Things understands the influence of the decade and repurposes similar concerns that have resurfaced in the twenty-first century by re-appropriating and inserting these signifiers and hyper-citations in contemporary texts.13 Moreover, as with teen cultures of the 1980s (and 1950s) before, the desire to push back against the

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influence of the previous generation is evident, as the series urges the reclamation of the future anew for the next generation in its third series (as Tracey Mollet argues in her chapter for this collection). While many 1980s texts railed against the horrors of its previous generation (the horrors of Vietnam were scrutinised in particular), the push to move beyond the overt Reaganite desire for a retreat into the safe and known past of the 1950s was abhorrent to many kids of the 1980s. In effect, ‘Reagan served as a constellation of socio-political attitudes and values that could be broadly defined as “The New Right”’ (Dwyer 2011, 211) that collectively strived to overwrite the cultural scarring of the necessary disruptions and gains of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly for women and African-Americans, that threatened the status quo of conservative capitalism and neoliberal growth. This rejection of the wounds of necessary progress is rooted in a nostalgic return to a curated past ‘stable, comforting, and complimentary[,] which for Reagan’s supporters seemed more important than whether it was true or not’ (Marcus 2004, 67) - that in turn creates the halcyon image of the 1950s as a retreat back to traditional family values, the return to prosperity and security, and decidedly fixed as a distinct golden age now deemed under threat. Such a retreat into this collective fantasy of the past was dismissed by the adventurous teens of the 1980s, many of whom dreamed of financial prosperity but often contested 1950s strict roles and sexual mores. In the late 2010s, we see the replication of the Reaganite (and New Right) mantra of retreat into the past again in the guise of President Trump’s clarion call to ‘Make America Great Again’ by resurrecting a past that the younger generation wish to cast off in order to reclaim their own futures for themselves. To repeat the past is to succumb to the Upside Down, to give in to a version of the future that is drained of its vitality and consumes the next generation to sate the fantasies of the previous one. It is, of course, equally applicable to the conservative fantasies of preservation deployed by the Russian operatives in Hawkins who seek to reopen the sealed gate between our world and the Upside Down via their machine in order to restore their own glorious past - for they too find the Upside Down to be a site to contest and potentially dominate, alongside its potential to stoke up their national and political ideology. In a race to conquer this new and inhospitable third space, the Upside Down is an imprisoning shadow future to be seized and shaped in the image of the legacies and regimes of the past that consumes the hope of the future for all; the fate of the world could be sacrificed at the altar

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of warring superpowers and the preservation of earlier national myths. Reagan declared this commitment to the renewal and return of a glorified past during the 1980s campaign trail via the restoration of the myth of the American Dream, which would come to fashion the decade in his image: This country needs a new administration, with a renewed dedication to the dream of America - an administration that will give that dream new life and make America great again! Restoring and revitalizing that dream will take bold action.14

This return to the 1950s in the popular discourse of the 1980s feels perfectly in sync with the return of the 1980s in the 2010s, as ‘nostalgia thrives when the stability of personal identity is challenged by rapid social change, discontinuity, and dislocation’ (Marcus 2004, 67). In turn, Marcus (and similar critics) identifies Reagan’s deliberate inculcation of a wholesale nostalgia for a ‘pre-Sixties America [that] reasserted the desire for certitude and stability’ (67). The resurgence and renewal of the American Dream - as part of The Nostalgia Pendulum15 - are under continuous revision with every generational turn and is invoked to restore older ideologies to create a future in its image. He/she who controls the national narrative controls the past, and subsequently controls the future. At the end of Stranger Things 3, Back to the Future is explicitly cited and diegetically featured as it plays in theatres at the Starcourt Multiplex in order to reflexively point back to its original cinematic release date (July 4th weekend of 1985). Featuring direct scenes from the film, the show emphasises this tension between the call of the past and the need to actively save the future. This is a deliberate invocation of the state of the American nation in the late 2010s by acknowledging the repetition of the call of the past and securing a different future (the underlying message of Back to the Future in 1985). Scenes screened in Stranger Things emphasise this significant juncture between returning to a 1980s past that is idealised for a select few and the opportunity to change course into a vast unknown, once the parallels between Back to the Future’s cultural angst and the failed promises of the legacy of the New Right in the 1980s are understood. The precarity and uncertainty felt at the margins in early scenes in Back to the Future have informed the reality of our present under Trump: both periods have been marred by the rhetoric of national insecurity and foreign terrorism; the New Right’s desire to

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recover the nativist national agenda, with Reagan’s call to ‘Make America Great Again’ in 1980 echoed by Trump in 201616 ; post-economic crises of the preceding decades (1970s ‘stagflation’ and 2008’s financial meltdown); and the ‘performed’ presidential leadership by a former actor and self-claimed Hollywood insider (Reagan, particularly as the former President of the Screen Actors Guild)17 or reality TV stars and self-branded entrepreneurs (Trump, most ardently as the star of the NBC businessbased reality-show contest The Apprentice) who both gained national traction as political outsiders. As media personalities prior to their respective political presidencies, both Reagan and Trump bring about a distinct form of déjà vu that underpins the ‘1980s 2.0’ (a hyper-replaying of the decade’s style and memorable rhetoric, coupled with a return to some of its ur-texts and cultural signifiers), forming a feedback loop that demands the values and desires of this fixed past be restored - safely reaffirming the status quo and encouraging a national retreat into its cosy, dulling homogeneity. It all feels terribly familiar and provokes the question, what went wrong? The rhetoric of retreat into the past accentuates the desire for those who feel in a state of crisis at the cultural turn of history to retreat into a known set of rules, norms and values, but, rather, it should but rarely sharpens the appetite to start anew, to wipe the slate clean and to claim the change of the future. While Stranger Things acknowledges the mournful ‘inability to return home’ (Wetmore 2018, 3) and reinforces nostalgic emotional loss, to be imprisoned by a past only leads to the denial of an oncoming open future. Starting over is what saves the Hawkins’ kids at the end of the series, permitting narrative growth. In 1985, Richard Corliss identified this trend among the youth on screen who wished to separate themselves from their parents’ ideals and secure the future beyond their elders’ influence. Reviewing Back to the Future days in advance of opening weekend, Corliss picked up on the film’s zeitgeist as a youthful cultural revolution: The choice of year is canny, for 1955 is close to the historical moment when television, rock ‘n’ roll and kids mounted their takeover of American culture. By now, the revolution is complete. So the child of 1985 must teach his parents (the children of 1955) how to be cool, successful and loved […] After a thunderous heavy-metal riff, Marty stares at his dumbfounded audience and shrugs, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.

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But your kids are gonna love it.” You bet, Marty. You and your whole movie. Now and for 30 years to come (1985, 62–3).

Corliss identifies that children are claiming the future and the summer box office for themselves in his parallel review of The Goonies (1985), identifying it as another film that erases parental failure in its retreat into boyhood adventure, a ‘clubhouse’ narrative that shuts out adulthood (ibid., 62). Of course, Stranger Things similarly filters its narratives through 1980s popular culture and child-led subjectivity because it wishes to recapture this same nostalgic impetus of 1980s life in small town America for its key demographic (1980 and 1990s kids). It attempted to be ‘exactly’ like the movies that situated them front and centre as rightful heirs to a promising future - replete with the wish-fulfilment of the teen culture in Hughes films and a yearning for innocent childhood adventures in the guise of Spielbergian magic - all of which are, of course, memories of a period that have been carefully restored while obscuring most of its adult struggles and horrors from immediate view.

Rewriting the Past and Saving the Future We learn in the early scenes of Back to the Future that the failures of the past have come to define the disappointments of the 1980s present: lingering notions of doubt about the promise of Reaganite prosperity emerge in each of the McFly kids during their family dinner together prior to Marty’s (Michael J. Fox) time-travel adventure. Marty is lacking in confidence to send his band’s audition tape into the record company; Dave is working at Burger King, a cultural shorthand for lacking any definitive ambition or goals; and Linda, deeply insecure about her own romantic prospects, openly pines for a date. Happiness has long since evaporated from George (Crispin Glover) and Lorraine’s (Lea Thompson) marriage, with his downtrodden dreams now expressed in familial disconnection and regression, while her evident emotional pain is numbed by an ever-present bottle of vodka. The family, of modest income and all struggling with their personal sense of failure or lack of confidence, are eroded from within, as the Reagan Revolution has not translated into the self-curated assured belief of a hopeful future that was promised in restoring the 1950s dream of plenty. By referencing Zemeckis and Gale’s film in its diegesis and including select scenes in the Starcourt Mall Multiplex, the Duffer Brothers return

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to a core preoccupation of the mid-1980s in popular discourse more generally: the future feels largely erased, undone in the advent of inert terror and mired in the grip of the previous generation’s personal and collective failures, and must be secured for the next generation. As Tom Shone observed in sensing the erasure of a tangible, hopeful future in the Reaganite 1980s, these plucky entrepreneurs were determined to strive beyond past expectations of hopeless mediocrity: All around them, in movies like Working Girl, Flashdance and Top Gun, characters were chasing their dreams, making it count, starting up small ghost-busting agencies and other such eighties activities; but The Terminator and Back to the Future were the only movies whose protagonists chased their tomorrows to quite so literal a degree — time travel movie as self-improvement manual (Shone 2004, 157).

Like Back to the Future’s own visual shorthand in reimagining epochal eras in American history, the residual influence of the 1980s remains ever-present, and we fantasise about returning to those ‘single defining moment[s] in the past’ (Dywer 2011, 210) to alter personal tragedy or to prevent the inception of the neoliberal future of today. Stranger Things is not simply just about recalling the past to which we cannot return so much as it is calling out to remember the lessons of the past, to use nostalgia as a familiar roadmap to lure audiences in with its lost artefacts and veneer of gloss, only to then redirect the nostalgia beyond simple recall and into action to prevent its advancing horrors being (re)perpetuated. If Ronald Reagan is a fantasy version of the 1950s leading the charge for neoliberalism in the 1980s, Donald Trump is the nightmarish end point of its realisation left unchecked. Reagan, as the film star president of the 1980s, built his image as the grand patriarch of good American values, channelling his image through ‘homely advice’, recitation of popular film quotations and plots, and Western imagery and costume (Jeffords 1994, 4–5), while actively overwriting and disavowing the political gains and disruptions of the 1960s and 1970s at every turn (Ní Fhlainn 2010, 5–8). The Trump presidency fails in its attempt to enlarge the successful image of the 1980s yuppie by unmasking it as politically debased and vacuous, with its figurehead simply a reactionary boorish Reality TV celebrity who wallows in the eternal pursuit of retaining his fame afforded through notoriety and bad taste (note the family brand name hotels and casinos are all styled as

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tacky Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-esque curated fantasies of what wealth is supposed to look like).18 Trump is presented as an unfiltered and un-informed consciousness on Twitter with his outrageously arrogant and often unscripted, unedited outbursts, whether it be for presidential addresses and 24-hr news coverage (especially for Fox TV - which is also a product of 1980s deregulation).19 The 1980s is built on the appealing illusion of success (it matters little if this success is merely a glittering Ponzi scheme or conducted solely for the image factory of fame) - the image is king in this hall of mirrors. Consequently, post-truth and selfreinvention dominate contemporary political and cultural discourse; truth is now deemed subject to the malleability of its audience, rather than the checking of facts, or so the Trump presidency espouses. Stranger Things 3 is the first season to deviate from its annual autumn/winter period setting, relocating this series instead to July 4th weekend. This narratively is no mere coincidence nor a simple shift to incorporate one of the decade’s largest blockbuster’s opening weekend at the multiplex. Rather, this shift points to a narrative examination of the quintessential spirit of the nation: the foul leadership of the town of Hawkins under corrupt influences both foreign and domestic; the prominence of new mall culture that leads to the direct corrosion of Main Street local businesses; the corruption of town leaders like Mayor Kline (Carey Elwes); and the horrors of rampant consumerism, here literalised by a new Mind Flayer as an assemblage of absorbed bodies derived from the infected townspeople - all of these features speak to 1980s and contemporary national tensions and the fatal poisoning of public discourse under President Trump. These narrative echoes highlight the seismic importance of 1985 as the pinnacle of the epoch, a fundamental ‘tangent in the timeline’ of our understanding of the 1980s as filtered through an influential time-travel film and other classic texts that are either continually referenced or lurk at the series’ diegetic margins.20

A Steven Spielberg Childhood Despite the glossy surface in 1980s cinema more generally, there is an evident darkness surrounding childhood and youth culture in the decade’s cinema and culture. The inertia of parents, or rather their noted indifference, absence or disbelief in their children and teens when narratively present, often propels young protagonists to solve crises beyond their years, or to demonstrate capabilities and feats beyond common childhood

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expectations. This is the cultural moment of the 1980s ‘child nomads’ kids who are defined by Strauss and Howe as ‘cynical youths in a world of powerless adults, [who] learn to distrust the rules and prepare to make their own way’ (1997, 199). This redirection in the narrative mode, now charged through children and adolescents, enables new perspectives and responses to emerge from a youth that had previously been less emphasised as leading characters and protagonists. In the 1980s, teens now engage in time travel (Back to the Future, Flight of the Navigator, 1986), in order to change the past, fix the future or unlock strange new worlds; or experience encounters with aliens (E.T ., 1982, Mac and Me, 1988), battle strange intruders and monsters (The Goonies , 1985, Fright Night , 1985, The Monster Squad and The Lost Boys , 1987), or embrace their misfit status and become wise to the lies of adults (Return to Oz, 1985, Labyrinth, 1987). This brief selection among many others evidences a renewed belief in childhood as a uniquely special time, endowed with significant and renewed status though child-orientated narratives that vehemently point to the gulf of difference between the special 1980s youth and failed forms of adulthood. In essence, it does not really matter if the child is born in the 1980s but rather that their adolescence and maturation is informed by the decade’s prevailing ideology, its worldview and middle-class, sociopolitical promises. This new generation is fully open to and aware of Reaganite idealism, participant in and desiring to achieve the renewed American Dream of self-actualisation, and distinctly separate from the cynicism of the previous generation. Naturally, the Hawkins’ kids and teens embody the hopes and the horrors of the decade, at first glance broadly falling into familiar tropes and camps that are readily identifiable through popular cinema (the nerds, the jocks, the school bullies and misfits, the rebels, the princesses and those teetering on the edge of future failure), or as part of the Spielbergian child ensemble whose members in turn fully compliment the outcome of their narrative quest. Even in the decade’s most child-orientated popular films, children are put into extraordinary situations that imperil their lives, and their futures, beyond the reach of parents and the authorities. Often kids not only circumvent the law, commit crimes, steal magical objects or thwart dangerous criminals, but in so doing, become the positive focus of Reaganite exceptionalism to stare down the cynicism of the 1970s that has no place in Reagan’s new America. This generation saves the previous generation from their failures and personal tragedies, with kids affecting real change

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where their parents cannot - Back to the Future and The Goonies emphasise this in particular, through the threat of failed potential and ‘wrong’ class status, or the loss of the kids’ homes in the ‘Goon Docks’ (the poorer neighbourhood in Astoria) to make way for a new country club. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is the epitome of the magical 1980s child. She can literarily and figuratively see and sense threats to the community that others cannot fully perceive. As a special adolescent, Eleven’s status as a stranger and alien other (not of Hawkins or its cultural environs) is continually reinforced; raised in a secret laboratory, her speech is frequently made up of incomplete sentences to emphasise this disconnection from her peers. Furthermore, as a bi-locating time traveller,21 Eleven is a collage of most of the paranoias (military projects, distrust of government, surveillance) and hopes (unique abilities, second sight powers, premonition) that are commonly associated with 1980s magical adolescence. As such, Eleven is a metatextual combination of these prominent narrative tropes and becomes a narrative time traveller by witnessing and engaging with the driving emotions and events that underpin Hawkins’s repeated invasions by otherworldly monsters. Furthermore, Eleven can enter into The Void (a dark subconscious expanse) through meditation and projection and uses other people’s memories to gain insight and to guide future redirection, but cannot interfere with the fixed past. Billy’s (Season Two and Season Three’s angry dispossessed teen and half-brother to Max) repressed anger at the loss of his mother is hijacked as a site for exploitation and infection, fuelling his subjugation to the new Mind Flayer as its infected recruiter of townspeople to be consumed as the monster’s digested body parts. Much like the poisonous rhetoric in contemporary politics, the Mind Flayer feeds on negative emotion and fears to control its recruits. In “Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”, Eleven enables Billy to reject the hold of the traumatic past as a triggered memory that paralyses him in his present state of rage, finally awakening him to cast off its shackles and sacrifice himself to save the kids from the Mind Flayer. Billy’s final heroic confrontation with the Mind Flayer literalises this image of casting off the consumptive call of the past. The resealing of the gate between this world and the Upside Down - achieved by Joyce and Hopper destroying the Russians’ machine - closes off this persistent powerful infection from the Upside Down and the possibility of a horrific predestined future by fatally isolating the Mind Flayer from its power source. Once the influence of the Upside Down - the link between an imagined and stultifying

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past that eradicates the potential for change and growth in the future - is destroyed, the possibility of a new future free from the tyranny of the Upside Down can be nurtured.

‘The Future’s Gonna Change’ This same opportunity to thwart the predestined future tinged with failure and depleted opportunities informs Back to the Future. As a film that is heavily focussed on the pleasures of set-up and pay-off scenes and replication of events (across the entire trilogy), we see the transformation of what was once a certain future altered for the significant betterment of the McFly family, now liberated from the doubts of its opening scenes at its satisfying conclusion. Stranger Things 3 essentially unpacks significant features from Back to the Future and scatters some of its famous set pieces, props and familiar locations across the series’ diegesis. Its most crucial shared feature underscores the film as a citational echo, but in so doing also points to its most significant divergence. Using the trope of letters to convey messages across time (or from beyond a suggested death), Marty writes Doc a letter in 1955 warning him of his murder by terrorists in 1985: It states: ‘Dear Dr Brown, On the night that I go back in time [at 1:30am], you will be shot by terrorists. Please take whatever precautions are necessary to prevent this terrible disaster. Your friend, Marty’. While the letter is direct, short and does not express much emotion, it is filmed in a poignant style (with a slow dolly shot and layered with an emotional score cue by Alan Silvestri) over which Marty clearly agonises in remembering the event. Hopper’s letter to Eleven, discovered when he is believed to have perished, was not composed with the same urgency in mind. He wrote Eleven a letter to express the emotions he struggled to articulate with her earlier, specifically concerning her emotional maturation. The scene in the season’s final episode is remarkably touching and inverts the use of Future’s letter (which provides key information of events and warns against dire consequences that must be prevented in a fixed future) and instead favours the need to undertake discovery, to journey on boldly and to take risks into an unknown future. Marty wants to ensure a certain type of future (to restore his life and family and save Doc) but does not overtly seek betterment (thus the accidental improvement to his lifestyle is an uplifting and unintended reward rather than a product of 1980s arrogance). For Hopper, the lesson is more nuanced - you cannot ensure your future and the journey is, in itself, the

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reward: the certainty Marty tried to secure with his letter is now undone by Hopper’s admission that certainty cannot ever be achieved, and that is the true lesson for this young generation. This poignant advice from the older generation to the new thematically warns about the trappings of nostalgia - the grip of the past can be paralysing - and that this new generation must learn to claim their futures on their own terms. Hopper writes: The truth is, I’ve been stuck in one place, in a cave, you might say. A deep dark cave … and you came into my life and for the first time in a long time, I started to feel things again. I started to feel happy. But lately, I’ve been feeling distant from you. Like you’re pulling away from me or something … but I know you are getting older. Growing. Changing, and I guess if I’m being really honest, that’s what scares me. I don’t want things to change. So, I think that’s maybe why I came in here … to try and maybe … stop that change. To turn back the clock, to make things go back to how they were. But I know that’s naïve … it’s just not how life works. It’s moving, always moving, whether you like it or not. And yeah, sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s sad. And sometimes, it’s surprising. Happy. So, you know what, keep on growing up, kid. Don’t let me stop you. Make mistakes, learn from ’em, and when life hurts you, because it will, remember the hurt. The hurt is good. It means you are out of that cave. (“Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”)

This conclusion to Stranger Things 3 underscores the emotional desire of return and the necessary but unsure direction of the future in its citations, playful bricolage and nostalgic mimesis. While Future ultimately commits itself to the philosophy of life-defining moments that ripple across time that must be understood and can only be undone or altered through time travel, Stranger Things operates in a diegetic parallel by preventing the opening of terrible gateways (the Upside Down) yet does not offer any certainty for a known future, nor the looped return to past ideals. The future is now open, for this next generation to claim for themselves, to make in their image, rather than to repeat the culture of their parents. Moving beyond mere playful replication, the series uses Back to the Future to signal that the text, which was about seizing the future in the 1980s under Reagan from the cultural turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s, is now part of a past that was once so certain of a grand future at its conclusion, but now only offers the extension of a replicated past

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that is being rejected by young. Securing a return to a conservative past is a divisive schism in American politics today, and the series rejects this conservative fantasy in this season to aim for an unknown but self-attained societal future, free from the conservative chains of the past. Marty knew best in terms of interceding and ultimately changing time in the 1950s, which benefitted his future greatly in 1985, but such loops are no longer assured nor can they be guaranteed. Stranger Things 3 looks back at 1985 to celebrate its films and shift in Reaganite consumer culture, to play with its iconic style, to sanitise its unpalatable edges and to caution against blind adherence to the decade’s core principles. From exploring its opening weekend onscreen in Stranger Things 3 to its classic ‘cult’ status today (in which fans mimic the film’s style, fetishise the DeLorean as a time machine and attend numerous nostalgia-inflected events celebrating its lasting impact in popular culture), Back to the Future’s classic cult status reminds us that it simultaneously feels timeless and is a definitive product of its own time. Its capacity to articulate the anxiety of teens, to playfully recite Hollywood and cultural history, its self-assured understanding of youth alongside the generational disconnect felt between parent and child, the need to develop confidence, and to protect the enduring bonds of friendship, all speak to familiar milestones and the painful journey of growing up. While this series begins with the familiar feeling of threat and hopeful conclusion as found in Back to the Future, it also documents the emotional toll of maturation and the incremental pain of necessary change. Unlike the assurance the Back to the Future trilogy affords, the future is not set and cannot ever truly be assured. We should not yearn to restore a past that has expired - it is a site of mournful return but should not be a vision for meaningful future restitution. The future is a new horizon to secure for the next generation - it is whatever they make it.22

Notes 1. For more on Back to the Future’s intersectionality with cult fandoms and its debated status as a ‘cult’ film, see Emma Pett (2013), pp. 179–180. 2. The poster art for Stranger Things on the Netflix platform, and in subsequent promotional material, is artistically rendered in the style of poster artist Drew Struzan. Struzan’s iconic artworks include dozens of popular science fiction, fantasy and comedy titles from the 1970s to the 1990s, including the Star Wars saga and the Back to the Future trilogy. 3. The other film that gains citational prominence in this season is Terminator II: Judgement Day (Dir. James Cameron, 1991) wherein the

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4.

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Russian muscled-man spy also rides a motorcycle, is clad in leather and has a spectacular and gruelling fight with Hopper, overtly styled on Schwarzenegger’s iconic turn. Their fight in the series finale deliberately invokes Cameron’s familiar backdrop of metal railings and lethal machinery bathed in electrical sparks and flames in an overt visual citation of Terminator II ’s final battle in the steel mill. The interdimensional nature of the Upside Down does support such an opportunity to resurrect or save Hopper, which would also echo back to Back to the Future, wherein Marty’s letter to Doc provides him with the vital information to prevent his death at the hands of the Libyans in the new and improved 1985. The long-awaited continuation of the Star Wars saga was achieved through the acquisition of LucasFilm and its franchise properties in 2012 by Disney for $4 billion dollars. This was the case for Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) which positioned itself as a direct sequel from Cameron’s Terminator II: Judgement Day (1991) to overwrite other less successful and logical franchise instalments. Setting a series in the 1980s has proven to be a hook for many TV series in the late 2010s, including: The Goldbergs (2013–); The Americans (2013–2018); Everybody Hates Chris (2005–2009); That 80s Show (2002), following the narrative style of That 70s Show (1998–2006); and Glow (2017–). This cohort is occasionally referred to as ‘Xennials’, a ‘micro generation’ comprised of kids born during the release of the first Star Wars saga. These kids ‘remember life before the onslaught of technology in teen culture’. See USA Today online: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/ news/nation/2018/12/20/xennials-millennials-generation-x-microgene ration/2369230002/. Spaced also directly engaged with its contemporary moment too, featuring a direct parody of The Matrix (1999) in ‘Back’ (2.1), and eviscerating the ‘prequel’ Star Wars film The Phantom Menace (1999) in ‘Change’ (2.2). The use of Cline’s name also features in Stranger Things as the name for the corrupt Mayor Kline (Cary Elwes). It is also a doubling for Calvin Klein, the name attributed to Marty by Lorraine in 1955 after she sees his branded underwear. It is interesting to note that Cline’s novel focuses much of its ludic puzzles in the virtual reality landscape of the Oasis on early 1980s texts, whereas Spielberg’s own adaptation alters this to include more overtly popular (as opposed to cult) titles and references - including the Zemeckis Cube, which enables its user to reverse time by 60 s and the DeLorean in the drag race - from the mid-to-late part of the decade.

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12. For more on this, see Robin Wood’s critique of Lucas/Spielberg syndrome and its glossy surface in early 1980s Hollywood cinema in Wood (2003), pp. 144–167. 13. Onscreen, the characters experience 1980s popular narratives in a condensed format, eking out the series’ distinctive form of playful recall by flattening time. 14. Ronald Reagan ‘Labor Day’ speech. 1 September 1980, Jersey City. Full text: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/9-1-80. Accessed 22 June 2020. 15. For more on the cultural wave of reclaiming older cultural texts and ideas into contemporary cultures, see the sociological concept of the Social Cycle Theory, and William Strauss and Neil Howe. The Fourth Turning. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997. pp. 233–253; for a brief analysis of overt remake culture and text citation, see Patrick Metzeger’s The Nostalgia Pendulum blog: https://thepatterning.com/2017/02/13/ the-nostalgia-pendulum-a-rolling-30-year-cycle-of-pop-culture-trends/. 16. Ronald Reagan famously used this phrase during his ‘Labor Day’ speech on the campaign trail in 1980 (1 September 1980). Donald Trump reused it as his 2016 election slogan, featuring it on red hats and T-shirts. It is a phrase that has also been used by Bill Clinton in his announcement to run for the Presidency in 1991 and featured in many speeches throughout his terms in office (1993–2001), as was also the case for George H. W. Bush during his term of office (1989–1993). What is fascinating is that the rhetoric points to something wrong in the present that can be returned to or resurrected from a lost cultural past, indicating that America has succumbed to a rot or lost its values that must be restored for the sake of the nation’s future. It dovetails in with the national ideals to continuously strive to achieve a ‘more perfect union’ as written in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence (1787). 17. As the elected President of the Screen Actors Guild union for six oneyear terms (1947–1952; and 1959), Reagan had a lasting influence on the livelihoods of TV (and later film) actors by negotiating and leading a strike against Hollywood Studios to secure residual performance payments. For more on this, see Wayne Federman, ‘What Reagan Did for Hollywood’. The Atlantic. 14 November 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/entert ainment/archive/2011/11/what-reagan-did-for-hollywood/248391/. 18. This image of tacky fantasies of what wealth looks like is parodied in Back to the Future Part II (1989), when Biff Tannen alters history for his own gain. In the nightmarish revised 1985A of Tannen’s making, he is a wealthy businessman whose personal taste and casino are strikingly like the Trump brand. 19. The Fox TV Network was founded in 1986 amidst a shift in FCC policy that favoured a more market-orientated approach to new television stations.

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20. It must be noted that the inclusion of Back to the Future clips in Season Three’s “Chapter Seven: The Bite” are not, strictly, in order. Furthermore, the screen dialogue is remixed and aurally repeated to emphasise the word ‘time machine’ again before it cuts to the next sequence involving the Russian machine and the dimensional tear in reality between 1980s Hawkins and the Upside Down. 21. For the purposes of clarity, Eleven’s form of time travel is akin to occupying a parallel dimension in space (often depicted as a negative empty expanse called The Void), which offers her glimpses of people or objects in other spaces. Eleven’s presence in The Void can be occasionally sensed but rarely accessible or visible to others. Her ability to dive deep into the memories and traumas of another character in order to understand their motivations is similar to other time-travel narratives whereby the past is fixed and the events are replayed like a traumatic re-run to be understood. She has access to reading hidden events but cannot affect change in the past, only in the present time. 22. As the series only really engaged with Back to the Future, I have limited my discussion here to this film alone. However, Bob Gale’s script for Back to the Future Part III (1990) comes to the same conclusion about resisting the desire to fix time and to embrace the flow of inevitable change. At its conclusion, Doc tells us ‘your future hasn’t been written yet; no one’s has. The future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one’.

Works Cited The Apprentice. 2004–. TV. United States: NBC. Back to the Future. 1985. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. United States: Universal. Back to the Future Part II . 1989. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. United States: Universal. Corliss, Richard. 1985. ‘Cinema: This Way to the Children’s Crusade’ Time. July 1. 125 (26): pp. 62–63. Dika, Vera. 2003. Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dywer, Michael. 2011. ‘“Fixing” the Fifties: Alex P. Keaton and Marty McFly.’ In The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade, edited by Kimberly A. Moffitt and Duncan A. Campbell, 201–223. Lanham: Lexington Books. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. 1982. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Flight of the Navigator. 1986. Directed by Randal Kleiser. Film. United States: PSO Productions. Fright Night. 1985. Directed by Tom Holland. Film. United States: Vistar Films.

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The Goonies. 1985. Directed by Richard Donner. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Jeffords, Susan. 1994. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Lizardi, Ryan. 2014. Mediated Nostlagia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media. Lanham: Lexington Books. The Lost Boys. 1987. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Film. United States: Warner Brothers. Mac and Me. 1988. Directed by Stewart Raffill. Film. United States: Orion Pictures. Marcus, Daniel. 2004. Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and the Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Mathijs, Ernest. 2007. ‘“Introduction” to Cult Case Studies.’ In The Cult Film Reader, edited by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, 164–172. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Monster Squad. 1987. Directed by Fred Dekker. Film. United States: Taft Entertainment Pictures. Ní Fhlainn, Sorcha. 2010. ‘Introduction: It’s About Time.’ In The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Film, edited by Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, 1–28. Jefferson: McFarland. Pett, Emma. 2013. ‘“Hey! Hey! I’ve Seen This One, I’ve Seen This One. It’s a Classic”: Nostalgia, Repeat Viewing and Cult Performance in Back to the Future.’ Participations. 10 (1): 177–197. Shone, Tom. 2004. Blockbuster: How the Jaws and Jedi Generation Turned Hollywood into a Boom-Town. London: Scribner. Sirota, David. 2011. Back to Our Future. New York: Ballantine Books. Spaced. 1999–2001. TV. United Kingdom: Channel 4. Stranger Things 3. 2019. TV. United States: Netflix. Strauss, William, and Neil Howe. 1997. The Fourth Turning. New York: Three Rivers Press. Wetmore, Kevin J. 2018. ‘Introduction: Stranger (Things) in a Strange Land or, I love the 1980s?’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 1–5. Jefferson: McFarland. Wood, Robin. 2003. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan…and Beyond. Revised. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Stranger Networks: Ancillary Threats, Cult Nostalgia and Technological Invasions Kerry Dodd

With its electro-synthesiser heavy soundtrack, pulsating neon opening title and overt product placement, Stranger Things from its very outset capitalises on a Western cultural nostalgia for an idealised 1980s America. The show’s saturation with references to a plethora of cult media - such as Dig Dug (1982) or Back to the Future (1985) - encourages recognition within its audience through a self-conscious awareness of its tropes and cultural heritage. Several interpretations of Stranger Things attribute its mainstream appeal to a harkening back to an idyllic 1980s America, a ‘simpler time’ in which children could get lost, uncontactable and untraceable in their analogue world. As Jason Landrum explains, the show’s nostalgia ‘rests on the fantasy of there being a time in the not-so-distant past when we could get lost’ (2017, 156). Fantasy is the key identification here, as irrefutably, this is a nostalgia for a 1980s America that never was. As Myke Bartlett’s aptly titled ‘Rose coloured rear-view’ article testifies, ‘this is the 1980s as we want it to have been, right now’ (2017, 20). Thus, Stranger

K. Dodd (B) Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_7

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Things creates a ‘false history’ (Hatherley 2016), a nostalgia for a simpler time that was not so simple - where wiretapping, governmental surveillance and privacy infringement are an absent presence lurking beneath the surface. Despite Stranger Things ’ attempts to temporally return viewers to such an idealised or ‘retro’ America, its core issues remain contemporaneously recognisable. The show’s much loved opening credits, for example, are distinctly more modern than they may first appear: a hybrid of analogue and digital that is apt for a show which so embraces a fondness for a 1980s America framed through contemporary modes of cultural consumption.1 Fredric Jameson identifies such a movement as a nostalgic mode, in which a modern perspective enforces historical periodisation through the demarcation of specific cultural aesthetics. For example, error was intentionally introduced into the credits to replicate a recognisably ‘glitchy’ render (Bley Griffiths 2017). As Jameson suggests, ‘it is a present reality that has been transformed into a simulacrum by the process of wrapping, or quotation, and has thereby become not historical but historicist – an allusion to a present out of real history which might just as well be a past removed from real history’ (1991, 118). The credits thus utilise contemporary digital techniques to simulate what a modern audience would stereotypically recognise as an ‘authentic’ analogue 1980s feel. Further, the soundtrack, while indebted to John Carpenter, is more in the vein of the Synthwave genre that rose in popularity from the late 2000s to mid2010s.2 Crucially, it is the pursuit of an idealised and culturally recognised ‘look’ - one also found in the faux-damaged cover of the show’s official companion, World Turned Upside Down (2018), with its dogged corners and ‘fair’ condition sticker - that introduces the intentional replication of error: notionally glitches, static and noise become something familiar and comforting. While the show is undoubtedly built upon cult nostalgia, what is frequently unappreciated and unrecognised is the technological foundation upon which this retrospection is built. As the production of the opening credits testifies, it is this entwinement of analogue and digital that draws upon a cultural anachronistic fondness for a ‘simpler’ or more material connection that is inflected with current concerns towards network interaction. The Upside Down comes to represent a form of ‘absent presence’, something which can be felt but not always directly seen.3 Such identification offers an eerie parallel to contemporary interactions with networked systems, structures that often manifest or are consciously recognised through user disconnection. The

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emergence of the Upside Down and its invasion of the domestic sphere is felt through moments of disruption where the quotidian is usurped and systems are subverted. These instances reflect a cultural anxiety towards the security of network structures, whether this is the phone tapping of Hawkins Lab, the secret Russian facility that operates beneath Starcourt Mall or Eleven’s ability to spectrally project herself while listening to static. This form of ‘spying’ therefore chimes with contemporary panoptic anxieties, especially surrounding location-tracking or ‘listening’ devices and the wider discussions of modern privacy laws they have instigated, framed through 1980s technological anxieties of domestic invasion. This chapter explores how Stranger Things ’ nostalgia for a 1980s America, evoked as it is through a plethora of cult media homages, offers a prime platform to confront an anachronistic visualisation of technological fears and the metaphors through which these are materialised. Reading the Upside Down as a form of absent presence, I argue that the show’s aestheticisation of error encourages a fondness for glitches as a cultural signifier for system interaction that obscures their origin as disruptive artefacts of transmission processes. The chapter will examine three core examples where electronic systems adopt a distinct and metaphoric spectrality: namely, Will’s manipulation of the fairy lights and Eleven’s spectral projection in Season One; the rhizomatic tunnel network of Season Two; and finally, the doppelgänger ancillary threats of the Flayed in Season Three. Finally, this chapter will conclude with an assessment of these technological fears, arguing that contemporary digital anxieties should not be transposed upon the show’s anachronistic 1980s as a desire for ‘simpler times’; rather, it is by situating these two temporalities in dialogue that Stranger Things can assist in challenging the structures through which interconnectivity has historically been visualised.

Within the Wires: Finding Meaning in Error Throughout Stranger Things, the Upside Down haunts the suburban idyll of Hawkins as a symbol of error. It is a dark, barren and apocalyptic alternative which manifests in the ‘real’ world as moments of disruption where the status quo is brought into question. Its ‘presence’ is frequently cued by power fluctuations, static and noise - technical glitches that draw attention to the often unseen or disregarded systems that spectrally operate around a networked society. Thus, while Stranger Things is rooted in a cult nostalgia for a 1980s America, the metaphorical representation of the

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Upside Down as technical disruption cannot help but recall contemporary concerns towards such intangible ‘presences’ as the cloud, WiFi signals and GPS transmissions. It is within moments of disconnection that the presence - or lack thereof - of these structures is felt. The aestheticisation of error, where disruption becomes a visual shorthand for the presence of electronic systems rather than representing interrupted process, becomes its own form of anachronistic fondness where the show - and implicitly its audience - cannot help but attribute meaning and purpose to artefacts that would otherwise be perceived as glitches. Season One opens in media res at Hawkins Lab, where the Department of Energy’s experiment into the Upside Down manifests as a disruption that permits the intrusion of the unseen world into the ‘real’. The opening scene, in which a scientist desperately runs from an unknown threat, evokes such classic horror films as Alien (1979) where the unseen nature of the ‘domestic’ invasion amplifies the suspense (“Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”). The flickering lights that accompany this escape become a concurrent motif for the first season’s central threat, the Demogorgon - and by extension the Upside Down - where the instantiation of error draws attention to the disruption of systems designed for seamless connectivity. It is the sudden vibrancy of these networks that encourages an interrogation of their agentic status. As Steven Shaviro suggests: ‘The insidious thing about electronic networks is that they are always there, whether you pay attention to them or not. Indeed, they assume, and even require, a kind of distanced inattention’ (2003, 5). The animation of structures designed for subconscious interaction thus encourages system users to be more inquisitive towards the consequences and design of such connectivity. Moments of interference, such as the flickering lights, incorporate error as a paradigm for users to witness the system beneath the render; yet, crucially, while the original Party of Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will become sensitive to such intrusions, they frequently cannot prevent them. The protagonists’ inability to conclusively exorcise the Upside Down becomes representative of technophobic fears, where it is only the material manifestations of a network that can be confronted, suggesting that the more ‘spectral’ structures behind such ‘intrusions’ are beyond moderation. The Upside Down, consequently, is often ‘present’ but can rarely be conceptualised in an empirical manner, despite multiple characters attempting to engage with its ineffability. Its spectrality resonates with

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more modern conceptualisations of digital presence, or what Dani Cavallaro argues represents humanity’s lacunary relationship to the networks that surround us, configured by our ‘occasional ability to perceive what is not there’ and ‘our frequent failure to perceive what is ’ (2000, 84, original emphasis). Cavallaro’s identification neatly pinpoints a cultural anxiety that stems from an inability to verify the authenticity of the information we transmit and receive. This is also particularly apt for Stranger Things which depicts Hawkins Lab as constantly monitoring phone calls in the local area, as they intrude upon the privacy of such exchanges and moderate their circulation. This invasion is also embodied by the monstrous Demogorgon, who acts as a domestic invader that may fluidly cross material and immaterial boundaries. The duality between the two signifies the show’s synonymising of network connectivity as a form of monstrous intrusion, querying what - or more pertinently who - we are letting into our private spaces through such exchanges. When Will is abducted by the Demogorgon, the camera does not focus on him, but rather an overhanging light bulb, which begins to burn brighter, literally enforcing its presence (“Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”). The camera cuts to a wide shot of the Byers’ shed, which reveals Will’s disappearance and then slowly fades to black, leaving the light bulb as the only visible object in the frame. The lingering shot encourages the audience to consciously consider both the agency of the light bulb and the wider electronic system that it stands in for; in so doing, Stranger Things utilises interruption as an aesthetic shorthand to materially draw attention to systems designed for subconscious interaction. Disruption, then, becomes a key metaphor to identify the ‘presence’ of signalling processes, one which moves away from chiefly recognising the binarism of input and output to rather query what occurs between these two states. For Will’s mother, Joyce, this is represented by her anxious waiting for connection, a phone call to update her about her son’s disappearance. When she answers the phone, however, she encounters a hiss of static transmission, an error of signal processing. While her query, ‘who is this?’ is no doubt reflective of her parental concern, it also implies an anxiety towards who she is being connected with and the inability to verify such information. It is this deviation from anticipated behaviour which codifies the static with meaning that there must be some purpose to the noise that Joyce is hearing. As Mark Nunes argues, glitches open up a freedom of communication possibilities: ‘Error gives expression to the out of bounds of systematic control. When error communicates, it does so as

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noise: abject information and aberrant signal within an otherwise orderly system of communication’ (2012, 3, original emphasis). While Joyce’s tight grip around the corded phone represents its own form of technological nostalgia for a more wired and materialised connection, her realisation that Will exists on the other end of the line is a rather anthropocentric move in which all received transmissions must have a meaningful purpose. This effect is explored further in “Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”, where the diegetic inclusion of The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ (1982) is not perceived as a horrifying moment of technological animation, but rather as a comforting reassurance of personified presence. Crucially, such intertextual references to cult media are equally dependent on a nostalgic remembrance of the technological foundations upon which they are built, as the car stereo, home sound system or Walkman each become symbols of localised transmission. The encoding of meaning within this specific disruption, however, is a multi-faceted aestheticisation of error: Joyce’s projection of Will’s agentic manipulation of the network is also reflected by the Duffer Brothers’ conscious utilisation of ‘glitches’ to stage this metatextual homage. Such a moment of technological nostalgia removes the initial implications of the glitch as an instantiation of error to rather aestheticise it as a representative handle by which to engage and confront the opacity of technical systems. The presence of noise, static and glitches within Stranger Things is thus a retroactive fondness for artefacts that would initially have signified a failure of transmission. As demonstrated earlier through the mixture of analogue and digital processes used in the opening credits, the show’s own aestheticisation of error recasts what would have been interpreted as the limits of analogue representation as an intentional marker of a technological ‘look’, one retrofitted within a digital frame in the pursuit of a falsified authenticity. In Season Two’s “Chapter Three: The Pollywog”, Joyce again identifies the core antagonist by tracing the errors it leaves behind on a taped video recording. When reviewing footage of Will’s Halloween trick-or-treating, the presence of artefacts in the image is not attributed to erroneous static, but rather signals an underlying presence. When Joyce reaches out her hand to the image paused on her TV screen, she utilises specific modes of technological processing to try and materialise the season’s antagonist, the Mind Flayer. This dual-fold act of watching (as the audience are observing Joyce’s own replaying of the videotape) depends upon the recognition of a desire for error, the replication of an intentional technological aesthetic. For Peter Krapp, such

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processes become a visual reminder of the system beneath the render: ‘as our digital culture oscillates between the sovereign omnipotence of computer systems and the despairing agency panic of the user, digital tropes of perfect sound copies are abandoned in favour of error, glitches become aestheticized’ (2011, 54). As Krapp suggests, it is the disruption of technical process that not only exposes a potential fallibility of such systems, but equally becomes a unique identifier of their involvement, a form of technological footprint. The synonymising of the Mind Flayer with the act of technical disruption further entrenches the metaphoric connection between the Upside Down and network systems but, in so doing, retrospectively and anachronistically casts contemporary information anxieties within the increasing emergence of technological networks into the domestic sphere. Roberta Pearson suggests that cult television is defined by ‘the mode of reception, rather than the mode of production or textual characteristics’ (2003, 1), yet I argue that Stranger Things combines the two as its intentional glitchy render seeks a recognition in its intended audience of technical modes of viewing. Consequently, the show is not only the maturation of the homaged cult media or the referenced network interaction, but also draws attention to the act of media consumption itself and the technological environment that contemporary modes of production and reception are based upon.

Interconnected: Tracing Rhizomatic Flow The importance of remaining connected in the Information Age is driven by the insistence that all data has value, where network interaction provides more knowledge, more opportunities and, most significantly for surveillance capitalist structures, more personal identification. Yet it is the intentional and programmed ineffability of these connections that helps support the algorithmic structures upon which they are predicated, as users are encouraged to engage with information networks without considering the material consequences of such interactions. James Bridle, in particular, has drawn attention to the processes in which the obfuscation of technical processes has encouraged a ‘new dark age’: ‘we find ourselves today connected to vast repositories of knowledge, and yet we have not learned to think. In fact, the opposite is true: that which was intended to enlighten the world in practice darkens it’ (2018, 10). This very darkening suggests that such connections do not, as often believed,

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enrich our world view but rather lead to greater obfuscation, driven by what Bridle terms a ‘fundamentalist insistence on simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories and postfactual policies’ (ibid., 10–11). The inability to verify the authenticity of such data transmissions has ultimately brought its standing as a beneficial tool into question and consequently instigated a growing retroactive suspicion towards the emergence of network structures. For Stranger Things, the nostalgic return to the 1980s notionally represents a time before the integration of seemingly limitless connectivity, where children could get lost in a multiplicity of analogue worlds free from the trappings of leaving digital footprints. However, the show itself emphasises the importance of connectivity at multiple points, whether this is the Party’s walkie-talkies that permit them an unregulated freedom of expression or, on a larger scale, Dustin’s radio mast in Season Three that uncovers the Russian base below Starcourt Mall and serves as its own icon of Cold War surveillance anxieties. The network therefore becomes a form of technological tool, a fulfilment of communal-based interaction. To separate contemporary digital connectivity from such a time thus overlooks that this is a development and fulfilment of a longstanding system. As Shaviro aptly notes, ‘Every connection has its price; the one thing you can be sure of is that, sooner or later, you will have to pay. The big problem today, we are told, is how to get everybody connected, how to get everybody onto the network’ (2003, 3). Crucially, there are consequences to being interconnected. Network systems are not so much transactional exchanges but rather a flow of information, a consideration which must be engaged with in a proactive and critical manner rather than through a fondness for anachronistic projections. For Eleven, later known as ‘El’, technology becomes a tool through which she may augment her powers, as it allows her to spectrally project herself into other places. Hawkins Lab desires to harness the espionage potential of such an ability (once again echoing contemporary fears of data tracking) and, rather appropriately, it is their experimentation with her powers that opens the Gate to the Upside Down and ushers in this spectral presence. El meanwhile first reclaims this gift as a source of comfort by remaining connected to Mike in Season Two, but by Season Three she skirts ethical boundaries by invading his privacy (“Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”). While Stranger Things is firmly rooted in its nostalgic vision of the 1980s, its engagement with technological anxieties remains rooted in contemporary concerns

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towards network exchanges, where the necessity of remaining connected outweighs the need to verify the terms upon which such exchanges operate. However, although the show may return to a time ‘before’ such restrictive processes became widespread and thus reflect on their inception, such a movement offers little reflection on how to engage with their current immediacy. Meanwhile, the show itself is dependent upon forms of interconnectivity, as inevitably, each cult reference in Stranger Things aids in the construction of an intertextual network for its intended audiences. Each homage becomes another branch in a rhizomatic network that not only connects the show to a plurality of cult media, but equally emphasises the centrality of such processes to cultural experience. Networks are a core part of the diegesis of the show itself, particularly as multiple characters fashion a range of ‘tools’ to provide some form of microcosmic representation for the intangible presences that surround them. After Will’s disappearance in Season One, Joyce begins to associate power fluctuations with his spectral presence. It is revealed that Will’s movement through the doppelgänger house in the Upside Down, similar to the Demogorgon, causes fluctuations in the house’s electricity, emphasising the interconnection between these two ‘unseen’ networks. Joyce fills the house with tools to represent this ethereal flow, trailing fairy lights throughout the interior as a method to track its movements (“Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”). Her compulsive purchasing of the lights is viewed by those around her as a process of grieving for her lost child, but it is also cast as a symbol of excess she is too connected, almost ushering the technological invasion in. The pinnacle of this hyper-connectivity is realised when Joyce is led to a household cupboard and seemingly communicates with Will through a bundle of fairy lights. Joyce’s parental relief is simultaneously a moment of technological wonder, a shining example of the possibilities that interconnected living may bring. Undeniably, however, such a synonymising of human and non-human agency cannot quite escape conceptualising the network in anthropocentric terms by attributing meaning to a system that has its own definition of flow.4 Such a fluctuation of current would otherwise be viewed as an instantiation of error, a moment of disruption. For Stranger Things, however, error once again becomes aestheticised as a process through which agency is projected upon the network. This is extended further when Joyce paints the alphabet on a wall to allow Will to communicate a message to her, letter by letter. Such a motion presupposes not only an animation of the network but that it would talk in the same language as humanity. While

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such visualisations can be productively used to materially confront the ‘unseen’ structures from which technophobic fears can emerge, fundamentally, network interaction is constantly adapting and the metaphors utilised to imagine such connections must do likewise. It is crucial, therefore, that the show’s fondness for 1980s technological artefacts does not become synonymous with contemporary technophobic anxieties as each is rooted in distinct cultural responses. As Bridle notes: ‘We have always been connected – unequally, illogically, and some more than others – but entirely and inevitably. What changes in the network is that this connection is visible and undeniable. We are confronted at all times by the radical interconnectedness of things and our selves, and we must reckon with this realisation in new ways’ (2018, 5). Poignantly, Stranger Things may nostalgise technological fluctuations that would otherwise be viewed as error, but cannot quite escape articulating these presences through the same metaphors that refer to networked, shared resources as the ‘cloud’ as an attempt to visualise intangible structures in organic or ‘natural’ terms. Joyce may therefore ask Will where he is, but his response of ‘right here’ is inaccessible to her because she has yet to realise the epistemic distance between modes of representation. It is this very blindness that consequently attracts the Demogorgon, an arbiter for the unseen dangers that each user ‘willingly’ allows in. Thus, while the show may retrospectively look back with fondness to technological artefacts from the 1980s, this is a perspective coloured by contemporary definitions of network value. The network metaphors utilised by Stranger Things consequently project specific retrospective concerns of infiltration and infection upon the 1980s to materially confront the legacy of technological connectivity. In Season Two, this is visualised through the tunnel network that is revealed to exist beneath Hawkins, whose pathways seep out of the Gate and expand the Mind Flayer’s domain. This interconnected and rhizomatic system is curiously analogous to other technical formats particularly as it is frequently described by characters as being a hive-mind structure with nodes and ancillary bodies that work in tandem.5 Such an overt parallel draws lines between organic (the warren) and electronic structures, one in which the bifurcating tunnels become an apt metaphor for the system of cables, wires and power lines that seamlessly connect domestic spheres to the grid. Will even states that ‘it’s like the more he spreads, the more connected to him I feel’ (“Chapter Five: Dig Dug”). Will’s drawings of the meandering tunnel network act as a microcosmic representation through which to understand and engage with such a

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macro form. The invasive nature of the tunnels equally illuminates an anxiety towards ‘viral’ contamination that has since transformed into fears of computer viruses - an anthropocentric metaphor that seeks to materialise the processes of digital networks in biological terms. Will’s drawings likewise represent an attempt to physicalise the ineffable - a form of ‘technical’ tool or metaphor that Joyce once again sits within as she anxiously waits by the phone, its electronic duplication. Stranger Things ’ evocation of technological interconnectivity draws comparisons between the organic and digital as a contact medium through which to not only consider how the user is connected to the many, but how such processes may elucidate upon new conceptual methods to engage with its apparent ineffability.

Ancillary Control At the heart of Stranger Things ’ nostalgia lies a desire for control, a carefully moderated vision crafted from cultural references - whether this is cult media or overt product placement - that seeks to conjure a very specific idealisation of 1980s America. Regulation is also an important conceit throughout the show, as the closing of the Gate and the banishment of the Upside Down’s invaders represent a desire to reassert control over dimensional boundaries and return to a previous state of domestic normalcy. Despite the Party’s apparent victory over the Mind Flayer at the end of Season Two, its return as the principal antagonist of Season Three highlights that any semblance of control is futile and rather naïve, effectively reinforcing that such connections cannot be broken so easily. The recycling of the Mind Flayer also becomes its own form of cultural media parasitism. Stranger Things ’ continual regurgitation of its own narrative structure across each of its seasons not only represents the hyper-consumption of streaming-based shows (which frequently fail to achieve any form of satisfactory or timely narrative conclusion before cancellation), but equally crystallises the regressive nature of its nostalgia. The show’s relationship with the 1980s is more akin to an ancillary doppelgänger, but it is through this bridge between contemporary retrogression and fond remembrance that enduring metaphors of technological interaction can be confronted. After being sealed off from the Upside Down at the end of Season Two, the Mind Flayer in Stranger Things 3 plots its revenge by extending its influence throughout Hawkins. However, for the majority of the season, the confrontation with the antagonist is deferred in preference for

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its first victim, Billy, who serves as its chief avatar. Following his infection, Billy crosses momentarily into the Upside Down where he encounters his own doppelgänger, a mouthpiece for the Mind Flayer that commands him to ‘build’ (“Chapter Two: The Mall Rats”). Throughout the season, Billy abducts a range of Hawkins’ residents and presents them to the Mind Flayer, who takes control of their bodies and turns them into its agents, which the Party later term as ‘Flayed’. Like the Demodogs in Season Two, these antagonists become avatars or ancillary bodies for the network host and appear to have little agency of their own. Their status as doppelgängers allows them to continue their previous daily lives, infiltrating Hawkins and retaining their social positions. Once again, Stranger Things demonstrates its preoccupation with an anxiety of unseen threats, of the inability for users to verify the authenticity of the encounters they are experiencing. Sara Wasson cogently suggests that: ‘Doubles are a long-standing motif in Gothic, and literary criticism has traditionally interpreted doubling as symbolic of a self divided. Persuasive though these readings are, seeing the double as an echo of an original’s psyche can elide the potential social impact of the trope’ (2011, 73). While Wasson focuses on the implication of clone bodies, such a reading can be extended to the Flayed as a metaphor for the digital footprint that a person leaves when accessing virtual networks. Chiefly, the methods through which a person interacts with online systems help to build a profile of their habits and opinions - where the websites they visit, the media they consume or products they purchase can help identify their political, cultural or social values. The implication of such an ancillary representation of a person suggests that users of Information Age networks are no longer in control of their own image, that their ‘data’ is not their own. Stranger Things imitates this process too, as it aims to intentionally create a 1980s aesthetic through the replication of cultural artefacts from this period. Akin to the development of network metaphors, however, the show is dependent upon the pre-existence of the cult texts it cites and consequently should be read in response to their cultural impact rather than in conjunction. The terror of the Flayed, then, lies in the suggestion that there is no integral aspect to the ‘original’ that protects it from being effortlessly duplicated and assimilated, despite the alternate contexts in which each was formed. The Flayed’s ability to reconstitute without originality allows them to imitate, infiltrate and infect Hawkins seemingly without detection. As such, they become an apt metaphor not only of what can be learned from the networks but vitally what these systems in turn

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comprehend about its users. Likewise, this doppelgänger process offers a danger where the replicated processes of citation and hyper-referencing deconstruct the very conception of original production and queries where notions of ‘originality’ reside. The terrifying reality of the doppelgänger metaphor for Stranger Things thus lies within information, which by its nature is abstract and challenging to confront, overtaking the materiality of network connection. While the tunnel network in Season Two is more akin to the cables and wires that support the flow of transmission, the Flayed rather come to represent the actual data being exchanged through the network. Their viral profusion throughout Hawkins, then, is a development of the unseen threats discussed thus far and is visualised through the Flayed’s dark veins rising to the surface when threatened, acting as symbols of both aestheticised error and infection. The danger of perpetuating such a retrogressive personification of technology lies in the subtle technophobic tendencies that it encourages, which Daniel Dinello summarises as follows: ‘Voracious in its urge to possess and engulf, technology is a parasite that frequently undermines human integrity – invisibly infiltrating, manipulating, seizing control, and mutating its human host to support its own survival and evolution’ (2005, 247). Such a fear stems from the threat to human integrity which is mapped onto the Flayed’s bodily dissolution and re-constitution, where each human becomes an ancillary node for the greater networked purpose. Invariably, this metaphor, like the others discussed before it, is influenced by the very cult media that Stranger Things openly homages and thus reading them back into such a depiction elides a recognition of the core role they play. However, it is through a conscious engagement with classic horror or sciencefiction metaphors - where abstract methods through which humanity’s relationship with networked technology has been, and continues to be, materialised - that technophobic anxieties can be tackled.

Stranger Networks Stranger Things may chiefly produce a nostalgic image of 1980s America through its material culture and cult media references, but beneath this surface lies a technological foundation that remains modern in its articulation. As Landrum notes, we watch the show’s depiction of the 1980s and ‘become nostalgic for a time when people knew a lot less about the lives of others – and we are haunted by the world we live in now’

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(2017, 157). While it would be impossible and rather naïve not to appreciate the relevance that the show has with current technological anxieties, importantly such a reading avoids recognising that the show includes aspects of the very concerns that it is notionally avoiding. The domestic invasion of the Upside Down and its avatars - the Demogorgon, the Demodogs and the Flayed - are each articulated through technological metaphors that resonate between current understanding and 1980s inception. The show’s aestheticisation of error, where disruption is heralded as a moment of meaning or an agentic process, cannot help but falsely cast a contemporary re-designation into its own nostalgic vision. Chiefly, it is the metaphors between these two temporal periods which remain unchanged and thus support such a bridge. While technology has continued to develop, our conceptualisation of it and our relationship to these structures have failed to do so. As Bridle persuasively argues: ‘Over the last century, technological acceleration has transformed our planet, our societies, and ourselves, but it has failed to transform our understanding of these things’ (2018, 2). This is matched by the Party’s terminology for the threats they face, where designations such as the Upside Down, Demogorgon or Mind Flayer are useful metaphors to help the group materialise and come to terms with the dangers they encounter, but consequently causes them to overlook and fail to engage with these entities in their own terms. This misrecognition is strikingly visualised at the end of Stranger Things 2 and Stranger Things 3, which both conclude with attempts to shut the Upside Down out—to firm up topographical boundaries and restore the ‘simpler’ time that came before. Indeed, the maw of the Gate is depicted as a myriad of interconnected strands reminiscent of cables or wires and thus this act of closing invariably represents a desire to firm up the boundaries between the seen and unseen, to create a more emphatic distinction and control its invasive presence. Yet, this formation of boundaries is perhaps more than a little naïve, particularly given that the Upside Down continues to haunt Hawkins and will inevitably feature in upcoming seasons. Fundamentally, the insistence on its excision, rather than coming to terms with its existence, reflects a contemporary retrospective projection that seeks to nostalgically return to a more materialised connection to the ‘unseen’ networks discussed in this chapter. Stranger Things itself imitates such a process; indeed, while it openly homages a fan enthusiasm for media notionally ‘unseen’ by the mainstream, its popular appeal and reception demonstrate that it is not quite a conventional ‘cult’ text either. Rather, the show exists between

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the two, situated amid past and present, or, as Matt Hills argues: ‘Cult and mainstream are hence not always clearly or singularly opposed in these sorts of processes, and they may interpenetrate even as attempts are made to recuperate some aspect of distinction between the two’ (2010, 69). Stranger Things ’ confluence of cultural fondness and network anxiety thus becomes a platform through which cult nostalgia can mediate upon the technological concerns of the present, where depictions of interconnected presences are not retrogressively inflected with an idealised and anachronistic ‘simpler’ time, but rather illuminates how such cultural citation is integral to deconstructing the inception, development and future of how connectivity is visualised.

Notes 1. To create the opening credits, Imaginary Focus printed each letter of ‘Stranger Things’ individually onto Kodaliths - a type of photographic paper that produces high-contrast images due to it being covered in orthochromatic emulsion - using the ITC Benguiat font, which was a popular choice for the front covers of 1980s pulp paperbacks, and shot light through each letter. The results were then collated through digital animation (Bley Griffiths 2017). 2. An exploration of Stranger Things ’ engagement with Synthwave can be found in Nicholas Dark’s chapter, ‘Lost Night and Dangerous Days’ in Uncovering Stranger Things (2018, 20–28). 3. The Upside Down echoes Mark Fisher’s identification of the eerie which ‘occurs either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or if there is nothing present when there should be something’ (2016, 61). The ruins of Hawkins School then are both eerily present in a dimension where they should not belong, while simultaneously being absent of any human habitation. 4. The agency inscribed upon the house’s electrical system has several compelling interconnections with Jane Bennett’s discussion of the assemblage and the distributive agency of such networks as the Grid in Vibrant Matter (2009). 5. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari conceptualise the rhizome as a network that works through interconnections rather than through the hierarchal systems seen in roots and radicals: ‘A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’ (2001, 25).

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Works Cited Alien. 1979. Directed by Ridley Scott. United States: Brandywine Productions. Bartlett, Myke. 2017. ‘Rose-Coloured Rear-View: Stranger Things and the Lure of a False Past.’ Screen Education 85: 16–26. Bley Griffiths, Eleanor. 2017. ‘What’s the Story Behind the Nostalgic 80sStyle Stranger Things Opening Titles?’ Radio Times. October 28. Available at: https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-10-28/whats-the-storybehind-the-nostalgic-80s-style-stranger-things-opening-titles/. Accessed 17 March 2020. Bridle, James. 2018. New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. London: Verso. Cavallaro, Dani. 2000. Cyberpunk and Cyberculture. London: The Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2001. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Dinello, Daniel. 2005. Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fisher, Mark. 2016. The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater. Hatherley, Owen. 2016. The Ministry of Nostalgia. London: Verso. Hills, Matt. 2010. ‘Mainstream Cult.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 67–73. I. B. Tauris & Company. Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Krapp, Peter. 2011. Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Landrum, Jason. 2017. ‘Nostalgia, Fantasy, and Loss: Stranger Things and the Digital Gothic.’ Intertexts 21: 136–158. Nunes, Mark, Ed. 2012. Error: Glitch, Noise, and Jam in New Media Culture. London: Bloomsbury. Pearson, Roberta. 2003. ‘Kings of Infinite Space: Cult Television Characters and Narrative Possibilities.’ Scope. Available at: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ scope/issues/2003/november.aspx. Accessed 20 March 2020. Shaviro, Steven. 2003. Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stranger Things. 2016–. TV. United States: Netflix. Wasson, Sara. 2011. ‘‘A Butcher’s Shop Where the Meat Still Moved’: Gothic Doubles, Organ Harvesting and Human Cloning.’ In Gothic Science Fiction, edited by Sara Wasson and Emily Alder, 73–86. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Wetmore, Kevin J. Jr., Ed. 2018. Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series. Jefferson: McFarland.

CHAPTER 8

A Nightmare on Maple Street: Family Dynamics and Suburban Horror in Stranger Things Rose Butler

Horror in the Heartland: Hawkins, Indiana and American Suburbia Initial criticism of Stranger Things lauded the Duffer Brothers’ ‘nostalgia for the 1980s and the Spielberg way’ (Cabin 2016) as evidence that the series is little more than a wistful reminiscence of the 1980s; it is, in short, a ‘genre throwback to simpler times’ (Nussbaum 2016). Sean T. Collins describes the series as ‘lowest-common-denominator pastiche’ and posits that ‘Stranger Things ’ story of small-town terror communicates little beyond the contents of its creators’ Blu Ray collections’ (2016). The series does invite cult fans to recall the pop culture of that time fondly: posters for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) adorn bedroom walls; we listen in as Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) plays The Clash’s 1981 hit ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ to his younger brother, Will (Noah Schnapp) for the first time; Mike (Finn

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Wolfhard) proudly shows off his Kenner Millennium Falcon to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown); and Starcourt Mall is introduced in Season Three as a colourful haven of freedom for the teens of Hawkins. However, this is where Stranger Things ’ nostalgic connection to the 1980s ends. The assumption that the series is simply an exercise in rose-tinted nostalgia is ‘fundamentally at odds with its pervading themes: rampant nationalism, fiscal inequality, and stifling social conservatism’ (Butler 2018a, 198). In fact, via careful homage to several key film texts of the era, from Poltergeist (1982) and Stand By Me to Stephen King’s novel IT (1986) and its successful TV adaptation (1990), Stranger Things explores the malaise of small-town America. Much like Derry, Castle Rock, Haddonfield and Elm Street, the locale of Hawkins, Indiana, at the centre of Stranger Things depicts an American suburb in which children are not safe, the institution of the nuclear family is threatened (and threatening), and the family homestead is corrupted. Like King’s novels, the series figures several of its adult characters as monstrous threats, either as a result of their ignorance or because of their dangerous, violent behaviour.1 In its criticism of parents and figures of authority as oblivious at best, complicit at worst, Stranger Things demonstrates its connection to the conventions of a group of 1980s cult films that are particularly engaged with family dynamics and suburban small-town America: the first slasher film cycle. This cycle - which began ostensibly with Bob Clarke’s Black Christmas (1974) but gained traction upon the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) - followed in the footsteps of several family-oriented horror films released in the 1970s, from The Last House on the Left (1972) to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). In these films, Tony Williams notes that ‘typical American families encounter their monstrous counterparts, undergo (or perpetuate) brutal violence, and eventually survive with full knowledge of their kinship to their monstrous counterparts’ (2014, 11). Importantly, as Williams observes, ‘all these depictions contradict normal idealized family images’ (ibid.), a thematic concern which would continue to be central to the transgressive horror texts of the 1980s, shifting focus from allegories of the Vietnam War to anxieties centred on ‘the repression of emotions and the inherent dishonesty in American family units’ (Muir 1998, 115). This chapter will investigate Stranger Things ’ criticisms of traditional family structures by interrogating its connection to the thematic concerns of cult texts of the 1970s and 1980s. Elsewhere, I have drawn comparisons between character types in Stranger Things and the slasher film

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(Butler 2018b), but the connection goes much deeper. The series’ intertextual links to transgressive cult texts critique the traditional, conservative ideal of the patriarchal family by depicting narratives in which ‘family figures […] appear weak and ridiculous’ (Williams 2014, 186) and where ‘parents and adults are […] incapable of protecting their children’ (Roche 2014, 72). Of course, in Stranger Things, it is Hawkins’ adults that initially summon the Demogorgon, and it is the corrupt agents at Hawkins Lab that abuse Eleven’s ability to contact the creature, resulting in the opening of a Gate which allows the monster to access the human world. In a subversion of Hawkins as a safe suburban space, Stranger Things figures its small-town Americana as a place of fear, conservatism and oppression underneath a pleasant façade. In doing so, the series is most closely intertwined with the work of a director who produced some of the most transgressive and groundbreaking cult texts of the 1970s and 1980s: ‘Master of Horror’, Wes Craven. As a director, Craven ‘continually focused his films on conflicts in the family – in particular, on children whose worlds are full of grim fairytales’ (Maddrey 2004, 162). From The Last House on the Left to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), these films establish the toxicity of the nuclear family and claustrophobic suburbia while also introducing brutal violence to the all-American suburbs. Drawing upon fears of ‘a middle class of self-governing individuals’ reproducing ‘itself from one generation to the next’ (Jordan 2003, 15–16), Stranger Things joins several cult texts which combine critiques of the nuclear family and conservative values to illustrate the lasting damaging effect on America’s children, who, according to Robin Wood in his study of the American teen movie, ‘will grow up […] to be replicas of their parents’ (2003, 216) - the ultimate teenage nightmare.

Wes Craven’s Nightmares in Suburbia Many cult horror texts from the 1970s and 1980s have shaped the narrative and mise-en-scène of Stranger Things through their socio-cultural commentary and aesthetic style. While the show is indebted to the pop culture of the 1980s, much can be drawn from the series’ intertextual references from the 1970s, particularly in their depictions of family and horror. Writing in 2014, Tony Williams notes that ‘during the 1970s, an unusual event affected Hollywood’s representation of the American family. Generally revered as a positive icon of “normal” human society, the

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institution underwent severe assault’ (2014, 11). Citing a wealth of texts including The Exorcist (1973), It’s Alive (1973) and The Omen (1976), Williams attests that the films from this era are remarkable because horror is no longer an unfamiliar, external threat, but something which already exists inside (ibid.). This ideological shift was brought about during the Vietnam War. In the 1960s and 1970s, a wealth of evidence clearly documented atrocities against the Vietnamese by American soldiers. The enemy was no longer figured as ‘other’ but as one of us - in short, what if the American family itself had turned monstrous? A particular anxiety was born from the specific concern that the patriarchal familial structure was encouraging socially conditioned repression. Speaking in 1979, Wes Craven commented upon these anxieties explicitly: ‘Certain things were not mentioned. A lot of things were not spoken of or talked about. If there was an argument, it was immediately denied. If there was a feeling, it was repressed’ (cited in Williams 1980). The overarching ideological crisis suggested that the traditional American family was creating monsters out of its fathers and sons. These concerns would take hold in the films Craven made during this period, and as a result, his films have been of particular interest to scholars in their interrogation of the damaging dynamics of the family unit. As D. N. Rodowick notes, ‘the family in the horror films of the 70s has been one of the more productive and interesting areas of recent film criticism. However, it has not been the high-class, big budget fantasies that have attracted the most attention, but rather those films that situated themselves in the margins of the industry: the exploitation films’ (2004, 346). Of these 1970s cult exploitation films, Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) are most notable for their overt engagement with familial conflict and conservative structures in contemporary American suburbia. The Last House on the Left follows two families: the Collingwoods and the Stillos. After the Stillos brutally rape and murder Mari Collingwood (Sandra Peabody) and her friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham), Mari’s parents enact bloody revenge when their daughter’s murderers unwittingly enter their home. In The Hills Have Eyes , the Carters, a suburban family from Ohio, are ambushed and attacked in the Nevada desert by a family of cannibals. With their family threatened, the Carters become savages themselves. Both films begin by depicting their respective families as striking opposites, though continually blurring boundaries until the suburban family - and, by extension, the suburban home - becomes what it fears the most: monstrous.

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Following the release of The Last House on the Left , Craven’s oeuvre of deeply transgressive, violent horror films would provide detailed commentaries on their cultural moment. The Last House is a striking condemnation of the Vietnam War, bringing bloody violence into the suburban home of a middle-class family. In The Hills Have Eyes , Craven once again interrogates the American social classes by focusing on two families, ‘one representing savagery and one representing contemporary society’ (Muir 1998, 14). Like The Last House, The Hills Have Eyes establishes its two families as distinct opposites until brutal violence and monstrous behaviour blur such societal boundaries. This notion of duality and opposition features at the centre of many of Craven’s films; in a discussion of Craven’s filmography in relation to the gothic, Kendall Phillips asserts that his films ‘have consistently worried the gothic line between reality and the fantastic and utilized the emerging nocturnal world as a mechanism to strip away layers of social veneer and pretense’ (2012, 75). Such contradiction, marked by comfortable, inviting suburban homes hiding malaise and contamination, is best exemplified in A Nightmare on Elm Street , where the Old Dark House of the classic horror film is reconceptualised as tree-lined suburbia and ‘the pristine outer structure of the house conceals a dangerously rotten core’ (ibid., 83). These interests provide a valuable framework through which to interrogate Stranger Things’ connection to Craven’s films, where parents and traditional structures of authority are the catalysts for horror.

Stranger Things and the Horrors of Ronald Reagan Stranger Things engages with the themes of Craven’s films through its exploration and ultimate condemnation of the traditional nuclear family in the 1980s. As Matthew Sutton notes, America’s move towards a new kind of conservatism began in the 1970s when ‘many conservative Americans felt especially concerned about changes in the family’ (Sutton 2015, 207). Season One of Stranger Things is set during 1983, a year in which Ronald Reagan garnered significant support from the American middle classes as he raised concerns regarding the erosion of traditional family values (Jeffords 1994). From its first episode, the series figures suburbia and its homes as unsafe and is littered with references to the claustrophobic and stifling nature of these small towns. Like Haddonfield and

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Elm Street, Stranger Things initially situates Hawkins as a site of superficial suburban comfort. The set design presents manicured lawns and white picket fences, while tree-lined streets are seemingly busy with small children playing innocently with BMX bikes and walkie-talkies (for a fuller discussion of the show’s set design, see Jane Barnwell’s chapter below). However, like the fictional towns of the cult films it is so indebted to, underneath this veneer, Hawkins is a wretched presentation of suburbia, a ‘terrible place’ that ‘runs counter to the almost surreal picture of “normal” society, its residences and workplaces’ (Harper 2004, 52). As such, Hawkins is a perversion of the suburban ideal, with the show’s creators manipulating ‘assumptions about the safety and security of the suburban environment’ (Smith 2018, 215). Moreover, through its continual inclusion of seemingly innocuous suburban spaces in every series - homes, schools, grocery stores, swimming pools and the mall— Stranger Things continually invokes ‘the implicit safety of suburbia in order to turn it on its head’ (ibid.). This is most clearly visualised in the finale of Stranger Things 2, “Chapter Nine: The Gate”, where the episode closes with the Snow Ball. Inside the school hall, Mike and Eleven kiss, as do Max (Sadie Sink) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), while outside in the car park, Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour) comfort one another while sharing a cigarette. The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’ plays in the background, and the scene is strikingly nostalgic and romantic, an apparent reprieve from the trauma of earlier events. However, this doesn’t last long, as the image cuts from inside to an exterior shot of Hawkins Middle School, slowly being turned upside down. Here, then, the safety of suburbia is literally turned on its head to reveal the school’s proximity to the Mind Flayer, alive in the Upside Down and towering over Hawkins’ unassuming adolescents. The Reagan-era setting provides an ideal backdrop for Stranger Things to interrogate family dynamics and suburban malaise. Sworn in on 20 January 1981, Ronald Reagan’s presidency was marked by ‘Reaganomics’, the economic policies that defined the decade. Reagan’s 1981 Program for Economic Recovery had four major components: reduce the growth of government spending; reduce the marginal tax rates on income from both labour and capital; reduce regulation and reduce inflation by controlling the growth of the money supply (Blanchard 1987). To that end, ‘for some, the 1980s meant an era of grand prosperity, characterized by a political leader who symbolized a nostalgic 1950s view of America – patriotism, conservative family values, and conspicuous consumption’

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(Batchelor and Stoddart 2007, 3). Stranger Things astutely comments on this influx of wealth by highlighting the different home spaces occupied by specific characters and families. The Wheelers’ home is that of the typical nuclear family: a detached property at the end of a cul-de-sac, it boasts white picket fences and up-to-date luxuries. In short, as series set decorator Jess Royal notes, ‘Mike’s mom keeps a very sort of Better Homes and Gardens-conscious, aspirational, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses house’ (cited in Duffer et al. 2018, 52). However, ‘for those at the other end of the socioeconomic scale’ - as Joyce Byers’ character demonstrates ‘the decade represented a time of great despair’ (Batchelor and Stoddart 2007, 3). Separated from her husband and raising two sons alone, Joyce’s home reflects her less secure financial position. As Jess Royal notes, ‘Will’s mom is struggling to make it as a single mom and just doesn’t have the luxury of being so to the moment and house proud’ (cited in Duffer et al. 2018, 53). While the Wheeler home is a testament to 1980s trends wicker furniture, brash prints and thick carpets - Joyce’s home is sparsely furnished and dated with furniture from the 1970s, ‘a reflection of the disparity in the families’ economic circumstances’ (ibid., 57). As a result of these socio-economic juxtapositions, Reagan’s presence looms heavily over the family homes in Stranger Things. In office from 1981 to 1989, his presidency will likely provide a backdrop to the entire series as it enters into its later seasons.

The Houses That Freddy Built: Repressive Families and Monstrous Fathers Across three seasons and twenty-five episodes to date, Stranger Things has been consistently critical of traditional familial structures, highlighting the damaging and harmful effects of parental influence. In A Nightmare on Elm Street , teenagers suffer unimaginable horrors as retribution for the mob justice enacted by their parents, a narrative which John Kenneth Muir suggests foresees ‘the results of the Reagan revolution: a generation of youngsters paying for their parents’ excesses and ill-gotten wealth’ (1998, 18–19). In Stranger Things, several adult figures of Hawkins embody monstrous values and traumatise their children by either actively terrorising and abusing them through acts of aggression and displays of power - in the case of Billy (Dacre Montgomery) and his father - or via their passive ignorance of their own children’s activities and the immediate danger they find themselves in - in the case of the Wheelers. This

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is most significant in the show’s exploration of the supposed pillar of the American nuclear family: the father. The series’ examination is suggestive of the cyclical nature of the nuclear families of the 1980s, that children should take the baton from their parents and continue on the same path, adhering to the same values. Jeffords notes that this cultural dynamic would illustrate ‘the key issue for manhood in the 1980s – the relationship between fathers and sons’ (1994, 64). Much like the narrative in A Nightmare on Elm Street , in Stranger Things, the young protagonists are often victims of their parents’ actions. In Craven’s film, Nancy’s (Heather Langenkamp) mother, Marge (Ronee Blakley) admits that the neighbourhood’s parents killed Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), igniting the actions of his vengeful ghost. The teenagers’ attempts to thwart Krueger are often hindered by their parents: Marge barricades the windows in an effort to keep the killer out, not understanding that Krueger is attacking children when they’re most vulnerable, asleep in their beds at home. Nancy’s realisation that Krueger is driven by fear results in him evaporating when he attempts to attack her - ostensibly breaking the cycle established by Elm Street’s parents and this is how Craven intended the film to end (Marks and Tannenbaum 2014). Krueger’s shock return in the film’s twist ending was brought about by New Line Cinema’s executives, hoping for a sequel. Nonetheless, the film retains a strong sense of teenagers breaking free from the hold of their parents, with Heather Langenkamp calling A Nightmare on Elm Street a ‘“youth power” film’ (cited in Marks and Tannenbaum 2014). This sentiment is echoed in a much-discussed sequence from Stranger Things ’ Season One, where Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are shooting at cans in preparation for their impending battle with the Demogorgon. In a pointed criticism of her parents, Nancy ponders if their marriage was one of convenience before lamenting that ‘they bought a nice house at the end of the cul-de-sac and started their nuclear family’ (“Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat”). During the exchange, Jonathan also admits: ‘I guess [Lonnie] and my mother loved each other at some point, but I wasn’t around for that part’. Despite starting as brutally honest admissions of their home structures, the conversation soon turns to insults, with Jonathan pointedly remarking, ‘Well, I was just starting to think you were okay. I was thinking, Nancy Wheeler, she’s not just another suburban girl who thinks she’s rebelling by doing what every other suburban girl does until that phase passes and they marry some boring one-time jock who now works in sales, and they

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live out a perfectly boring little life at the end of a cul-de-sac. Exactly like their parents, who they thought were so depressing, but now, hey, they get it’. Anthony David Franklin highlights that ‘this monologue strikes at the core of the criticism surrounding the nuclear family that has been alluded at throughout the series. It directs attention to the nature of the suburban lifestyle to replicate itself despite rebellion against it’ (2018, 175). Of course, Jonathan and Nancy represent children from two familial structures that are integral to American society during the 1980s: while Nancy’s home on Maple Street is the embodiment of the nuclear family of the affluent middle classes, Jonathan’s dilapidated house on the outskirts of town is that of a broken family. His father, Lonnie, is a minor figure in the first season of Stranger Things, appearing only as an antagonistic force after Will is reported missing. Returning to Hawkins once Will’s body is seemingly recovered (“Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”), Lonnie stays at the Byers’ home until it’s revealed that he intends to sue the authorities and obtain financial compensation for Will’s death (“Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat”) causing Joyce to exclaim ‘You’re here for the money!’ and swiftly remove him from the house. For Nancy and Mike, however, their parents fluctuate between their bored but caring mother, Karen (Cara Buono), and their oblivious father, Ted (Joe Chrest). Ted is in many ways the epitome of Reagan’s father figure, and a parent similar to those present in so many of Craven’s cult texts: he provides a financial stability for his family and indulges in capitalist ideology, filling his home with the latest luxuries and modern technologies. However, he is also overtly depicted as the most emotionally unavailable of all the parents in Stranger Things in a nod to the distant, uncaring parents central to A Nightmare on Elm Street . Throughout the first three seasons, there has yet to be a sequence in which Ted takes part in a meaningful exchange with his children and he is mostly oblivious to the events which take place throughout the course of the narrative. As Blake Harper attests, ‘All he seems to want is to be left alone so he can enjoy his dinner and the evening papers in peace’ (2017). Mrs Wheeler’s dissatisfaction is made clear through the uncomfortable flirtation she shares with Billy Hargrove who joins the show at the beginning of Season Two. Initially figured as a hyper-masculine bully, Billy is immediately positioned as a ‘bad boy’ because ‘he drives a fast car, smokes, wears tight jeans that drive the ladies wild, and wears one dangly earring. He’s also a bad boy in the literal sense, because he’s abusive’

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(Paige 2019). While Billy throws punches at his classmates and terrifies his younger stepsister, Max (Sadie Sink), he is Stranger Things ’ most tragic depiction of how children are often doomed to repeat the ways of their parents. In an unequivocal swipe at the era’s concept of masculinity and aggression and ‘the conservative moment’s concentration on “family values” as a mechanism for asserting the primacy of the father/son relationship to the operation of the culture as a whole’ (Jeffords 1994, 65), it is revealed that Billy’s behaviour is a direct result of his treatment at the hands of his abusive father. In Season Two’s penultimate episode, Billy’s father aggressively berates him, calling him a ‘faggot’ before pushing him against a wall and striking him (“Chapter Eight: The Mind Flayer”). Here, Billy is revealed to be the outcome of a dysfunctional, repressive family unit at the heart of family horror film. He embodies Tony Williams’ assertion of ‘the abused victim soon becoming the victimizer […] producing generations of victims and future victimizers produced by the family’ (2015, 204). Billy is central to the narrative of Stranger Things 3 in which he is possessed by the monster after it causes him to crash his car in the season’s first episode (“Chapter One: Suzie, Do You Copy?”). Throughout the season, Billy is gradually transformed, becoming savage and cruel in a nod to the Stillos and Carters of Craven’s 1970s family horror films, whose repression spills over into surprising and grotesque acts of violence. As the monster dominates more and more of Billy’s personality, he becomes a host through which the creature is able to literally subsume its victims, a clear metaphor for conservative society. In an attempt to track Billy and stop the monster, Eleven uses the Upside Down to access his memories and find the creature’s source. In the void, Eleven finds a young Billy playing at the beach with his mother in an idyllic scene; this cuts to a shot of a slightly older Billy with his father who berates him for not being strong enough to play baseball, grabbing his arm and shouting ‘Did I raise a pussy for a son?’ (“Chapter Six: E Pluribus Unum”). The scene cuts again to Billy sitting at a dining table while his parents fight. Calling his wife ‘whore’ and ‘bitch’, Billy’s father strikes her, knocking her to the ground in front of their son. In Eleven’s next vision, it is revealed that Billy’s mother leaves her abusive husband, leaving behind her adolescent son who begins to take his anger out on other children, repeating the words that his father has used. Here, it is clear that Billy has learnt intolerance and violence from his abusive father, qualities passed down through a generation, destined to

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continue in a subversion of Reagan’s conservative social policies in which children are encouraged to follow in the footsteps of their parents. In the series’ most damning condemnation of patriarchal dominance, Billy is the embodiment of the anxieties of the family horror film, where children are punished by parents ‘as surrogate victims for their own social frustrations and inability to live up to patriarchal family values’ (Williams 2014, 14). In its final denunciation of these abusive and destructive familial structures, in the last episode of Stranger Things 3, Billy breaks the cycle and the generational horrors of his family stop with him. During a final battle sequence at Starcourt Mall, Eleven uses Billy’s memories of his childhood - and his mother - to break him free of the Mind Flayer’s control; she tearfully reminds him that ‘You were happy’ (“Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”). Returning to his senses and realising the danger that they are in, Billy ends a generational cycle of abuse and sacrifices himself for Eleven, offering himself to the show’s literal monster, while simultaneously succumbing to the trauma left behind by Stranger Things ’ metaphorical evil: the monstrous father.

Friends (and Families) Don’t Lie: Single Parents and Friendship Groups While Stranger Things explores the values of cult texts by addressing how regressive values can be passed from one generation to the next and that parents can become monsters to their children (Butler 2018b), the series does provide a glimmer of hope through the inclusion of several characters and unconventional families. This includes a number of single parents, teenagers and groups of adolescents that stick together, once again revisiting the narratives of the family horror film, wherein dysfunctional family situations provide avenues for monstrous attacks (Williams 1996, 203). In an important contrast to the monstrous father, mothers in Stranger Things are generally figured as much more sympathetic characters; here, they are an interesting subversion to the mothers of The Last House, The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street - narratives wherein the mothers are actively part of the horror. In Stranger Things, wives and mothers are shown to be shackled by the same conservative ideologies which terrify their children; moreover, they are aware of how these situations affect their children, with Joyce and Karen actively removing their kids from suburban horrors: aggressive fathers and rigid domesticity.

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Throughout the show, Joyce Byers is shown to be a struggling single mother who devotes her life to her children, abandoned some years before by the boys’ unreliable and insensitive father, Lonnie. By the finale of Stranger Things 3, Joyce has suffered the brutal loss of Bob (Sean Astin) and the apparent death of potential love interest, Hopper. With Eleven now left without a parent, she is cared for by Joyce, leaving her with not two, but three children to raise alone. In this capacity, she is joined by Hopper, who assumes the role of father to Eleven (until the end of Season Three) and who provides a safe, loving environment for her in his cabin following her suffering at Hawkins Lab. As Robin Zabiegalski observes, Joyce and Hopper are ‘the only adults who can see the world as the kids see it. The only adults who are willing to believe and accept the kids for who they are’ (2017). While Joyce and Hopper are certainly the most open and accepting parental figures in the series, Karen Wheeler’s relationship with her children, particularly Nancy, is notably more strained, and her attempts to communicate with her teenage daughter are often haughtily rebuffed. It is not until Stranger Things 3 that they appear to have a candid conversation in which Karen highlights the injustices and trappings of being a suburban housewife, encouraging her daughter to stand up for herself - and, by extension, against the monstrous patriarchy. Seemingly recognising the limitations of her own situation, Karen tells Nancy, ‘It’s not easy out there […] People are always saying that you’re not smart enough, not good enough’, as they live in a world where women are constantly told ‘you can’t’ or ‘you shouldn’t’ (“Chapter Four: The Sauna Test”). In a poignant moment between the two characters, Karen admits, ‘this world, it beats you up again and again until eventually I … most people just stop trying’. This is an explicit exchange in which Karen reveals that she wants more for Nancy than what she has settled for herself: an unsatisfying marriage and a nice house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Karen then tells Nancy that she’s ‘a fighter’ but laments that she doesn’t know where she ‘gets it from’ to which Nancy replies, first jokingly that it’s from her father, but then earnestly: ‘I get it from you’. This is a strikingly tender exchange between the two characters, and moreover, it further cements a notion of monstrous masculinity, as attributes passed from mother to child are positive. While the series attempts to figure some of its adults and parental figures as positive, Stranger Things still situates parent/child relationships with a degree of instability. As Meghan O’Keefe observes, the series offers

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‘a poignant meditation on how children can’t connect with their parents’ (2016). Hopper grieves for his young lost daughter; Eleven is traumatized by her captor/father figure, Papa, and unable to be with her biological mother; and in a much-discussed reference to Hooper’s Poltergeist , Joyce spends much of Season One desperately searching for her missing son, despite his electronic communications telling her he is ‘right here’ at home. Thus, for O’Keefe, Stranger Things is a story where ‘the real fissure our heroes have to beat isn’t between dimensions, but between generations’ (ibid.). As such, it is a continuation of the thematic concerns found at the heart of Craven’s family horror films of the 1970s and 1980s wherein Tony Williams asserts, ‘Kids have to survive not just the monster but deep psychological scars arising from dysfunctional family situations’ (2014, 239). Despite the spatial and temporally fractured connections between children and their parents, Stranger Things ultimately shows children and teenagers who bond together to escape the horrors of the oppressively conservative societies around them. In a rejection of the conservative ideology of the 1970s and 1980s - and as an extension of themes explored across Craven’s family horror films where youngsters find strength together - across its three existing seasons, Stranger Things has constantly explored ‘found families’ with its adolescents developing and forming relationships and friendships based on shared experiences and trust. The teenagers, Nancy, Jonathan and Steve (Joe Keery), ‘provide protection and guidance that the adults in their lives cannot’ (Zabiegalski 2017). This is best realised in the pairing of Steve and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) throughout Season Two and continued in Season Three with the addition of Robin (Maya Hawke) and Erica (Priah Ferguson) (for a fuller discussion of this dynamic, see Tracey Mollet’s chapter above). Eleven seeks out her biological parents in Season Two, but they are too traumatised and damaged to be the family she needs; she then seeks out her ‘sister’ Kali, another girl subjected to abuse at the hands of Brenner in Hawkins Lab. In “Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister”, Eleven finds Kali in Chicago, part of a close-knit group of punks who are intent on revenge. Once again, Eleven does not belong here and returns to Hawkins to be with the only ‘family’ she’s ever really known. When the young protagonists find themselves in peril is when these found families reveal their power. When Will becomes the embodiment of the monster in Stranger Things 2, his friends gather round to remind him who he is, several years of shared experience creating a bond which brings

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him back from the brink. In Stranger Things 3, Eleven uses her powers to subdue Billy, attempting to rid him of the Mind Flayer by reminding him of happy memories with his mother. But Billy doesn’t have the shared experiences of the others; he is isolated by his childhood trauma and gives his life to save the others, an act of sacrifice which illustrates just how damaging the toxic masculinity of conservative patriarchy can be.

Conclusion: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street At the beginning of Stranger Things ’ first episode, during a game of Dungeons & Dragons, Mike exclaims, ‘Something’s coming. Something hungry for blood. A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness. It is almost here’ (“Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”). Rather than foreshadowing the arrival of the Demogorgon which imminently attacks Will on his way home, Mike’s speech can also be read as the monster which is already in Hawkins, swallowing its children in darkness and causing lasting, traumatic damage: the conservative ideology of their parents. Indeed, the tree-lined block at the centre of the series, Maple Street, is a nod to The Twilight Zone episode ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ (1960) in which a suburban community causes its own downfall. Through its repeated rejection of traditional familial structures and specific criticism of the patriarchal figure, Stranger Things offers a striking condemnation of the social conservatism and cultural policies espoused during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Writing in 2008, Murray Pomerance highlighted the significance of the family throughout examples of cult film texts, noting that ‘the family is a cultural dream obsession to which we return and return […] and also, of course, the origin of a darkness we project outside of it’ (2008, 1–2). Through its exploration of Hawkins, Stranger Things embraces the notion central to Craven’s family horror films of the 1970s and 1980s: that horror is no longer outside of the familial unit but has now found a way inside. Craven’s films were symptomatic of an America in crisis; across The Last House on the Left , The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street , the conventional family was a breeding ground for repression, trauma and violence, where adolescents fought to avoid the ideological trappings of their parents. As a result of its rejection of traditional family structures, Stranger Things embraces a multitude of surrogate families, comprised of single

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parents and friendship groups. Steve Harrington redeems his behaviour from Season One through his continuing caring role towards the younger protagonists - particularly Dustin - in Season Two and Season Three. Joyce is a divorced mother of two but provides a loving home for her sons where she encourages their passions and is limitless in her belief that she will find her son in Season One. However, it is Jim Hopper who is the show’s most positive father figure: an embittered police chief, he is grieving the loss of his young daughter when we are introduced to his character in Season One. Hopper is defined by the death of his daughter and subsequent breakdown of his marriage, and so his dedication to solving the mystery of Will’s disappearance and then becoming a father to Eleven demonstrates the character development in an arc which explores surrogate families finding one another. In a show that takes such aim at traditional conservative ideals of the nuclear family and archaic familial structures, it is a welcome adage that the series allows its young characters some respite, and that the most loving, satisfying and healthy relationships are found in these unconventional surrogate families. While Stranger Things is heavily indebted to the cult texts and sociopolitical environment of the 1970s and 1980s, it also speaks heavily to our current moment. Of course, the Trump administration has invited numerous parallels to the 1980s, particularly for his continual emulation of Ronald Reagan in his attempt to ‘Make America Great Again’. Trump’s presidency has been marked by inequality, division and antagonism, resulting in a group of Trump supporters storming the Capitol building in Washington D.C on 6 January 2021, causing the deaths of five people. In a sombre parallel to the family horror films of the 1970s and 1980s, the USA continues to be engaged in a war with itself. Its own house is unsafe, and the horror resides within.

Note 1. Discussing King’sIT , Magistrale notes that ‘the fact that the Derry adults are unable to see […] the various manifestations It assumes […] is a sign that King wishes us to view Derry’s citizenry in league with the monster and, just as importantly, separated from their children’ (2010, 64).

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Works Cited Batchelor, Bob, and Scott Stoddart. 2007. The 1980s. Westport: Greenwood. Black Christmas. 1972. Directed by Bob Clarke. Film. Canada: Canadian Film Development Corporation. Blanchard, Oliver Jean. 1987. ‘Reaganomics.’ Economic Policy 2 (5): 15–56. Butler, Rose. 2018a. ‘“Welcome to the Upside Down”: Nostalgia and Cultural Fears in Stranger Things.’ In Horror Television in the Age of Consumption, edited by Linda Belau and Kimberly Jackson, 187–201. New York: Routledge. Butler, Rose. 2018b. ‘The Eaten-for-Breakfast Club: Teenage Nightmares in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 72–83. Jefferson: McFarland. Cabin, Chris. 2016. ‘“Stranger Things” Review: Netflix Pays Homage to the Steven Spielberg Way & the 1980s.’ Collider. July 19. Available at: https:// collider.com/stranger-things-review-netflix/. Accessed 4 August 2020. Collins, Sean T. 2016. ‘What Stranger Things Is Missing from the ‘80s Horror Genre.’ Vulture. August 23. Available at: https://www.vulture.com/2016/ 08/stranger-things-and-80s-horror.html. Accessed 4 August 2020. Duffer, Matt, Ross Duffer, and Gina McIntyre. 2018. Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down. London: Century. The Evil Dead. 1981. Directed by Sam Raimi. Film. United States: Renaissance Pictures. Franklin, Anthony David. 2018. ‘Half-Lives of the Nuclear Family: Representations of the Mid-Century American Family in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 174–182. Jefferson: McFarland. Halloween. 1978. Directed by John Carpenter. Film. United States: Compass International Pictures. Harper, Jim. 2004. Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies. Manchester: Headpress Publishing. Harper, Blake. 2017. ‘A Ranking of the Mostly Terrible Dads of ‘Stranger Things’.’ Fatherly. October 25. Available at: https://www.fatherly.com/play/ ranking-best-worst-dads-stranger-things/. Accessed 4 August 2020. Jeffords, Susan. 1994. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Jordan, Chris. 2003. Movies and the Reagan Presidency: Success and Ethics. Westport: Praeger. The Last House on the Left. Directed by Wes Craven. Film. United States: American International Pictures. Maddrey, J. 2004. Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film. Jefferson: McFarland. Magistrale, Tony. 2010. Stephen King: America’s Storyteller. Westport: Praeger.

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Marks, Craig, and Rob Tannenbaum. 2014. ‘Freddy Lives: An Oral History of A Nightmare on Elm Street.’ Vulture. Available at: https://www.vulture.com/ 2014/10/nightmare-on-elm-street-oral-history.html. Accessed 12 February 2021. Muir, J.K. 1998. Wes Craven: The Art of Horror. Jefferson: McFarland. A Nightmare on Elm Street. Directed by Wes Craven. Film. United States: New Line Cinema. Nussbaum, Emily. 2016. ‘Stranger Things and The Get Down Reviews.’ The New Yorker. August 22. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/ 2016/08/22/stranger-things-and-the-get-down-reviews. Accessed 4 August 2020. O’Keefe, Meghan. 2016. ‘“Stranger Things” Is a Scary, Sorrowful Meditation on the Generation Gap.’ Decider. July 26. Available at: https://dec ider.com/2016/07/26/stranger-things-parents-children-alternation-dimens ions/. Accessed 15 January 2021. Paige, Rachel. 2019. ‘Here’s The Stranger Things 3 Group Therapy You Need After That Jarring Billy Reveal.’ Refinery 29. July 8. Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2019/07/237232/eleven-vis ion-billy-childhood-stranger-things-season-3. Accessed 16 January 2021. Phillips, K.R. 2012. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Poltergeist. 1982. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Film. United States: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer Entertainment. Pomerance, Murray. 2008. A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home. London: Wallflower Press. Roche, D. 2014. Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s: Why Don’t They Do It Like They Used to?. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Rodowick, D.N. 2004. ‘The Economy of Violence in The Hills Have Eyes.’ In Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, edited by B.K. Grant and C. Sharrett, 346–355. Maryland: Scarecrow Press Ltd. Smith, Lacey N. 2018. ‘“A Nice Home at the End of the Cul-de-sac”: Hawkins as Infected Postmodern Suburbia.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr, 215–224. Jefferson: McFarland. Stand by Me. 1986. Directed by Rob Reiner. Film. United States: Act III Productions. Sutton, Matthew Avery. 2015. ‘Reagan, Religion and the Culture Wars of the 1980s.’ In A Companion to Ronald Reagan, edited by Andrew L. Johns, 204–220. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Directed by Tobe Hooper. Film. United States: Vortex.

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The Thing. 1982. Directed by John Carpenter. Film. United States: Universal Pictures. Williams, Tony. 1980. ‘Wes Craven: An Interview.’ Journal of Popular Film and Television 8 (3): 10–14. Williams, Tony. 2014 [1996]. Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Williams, Tony. 2015. [1996]. ‘Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror.’ In The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, edited by Barry Keith Grant, 192–208. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wood, Robin. 2003 [1986]. Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan … and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. Zabiegalski, Robin. 2017. ‘Stranger Things 2 Celebrates and Stresses the Importance of Found Family.’ The Tempest. November 14. Available at: https://thetempest.co/2017/11/14/entertainment/stranger-things2-celebrates-stresses-importance-found-family/. Accessed 15 January 2021.

CHAPTER 9

Returning Home: Set Design and Visual Storytelling in the Cult World of Stranger Things Jane Barnwell

Cult texts often have ‘a nostalgic appeal’ for audiences (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, ix), providing a site for returning viewers to an imagined, longed for or idealised ‘home’, such as the recreated landscape of the 1980s in Stranger Things. Home is also a setting where a character’s psychology can be mirrored and explored, as character and story become closely entwined in the domestic interior, a place that often undergoes transformation to signify changes taking place in the narrative arc. The Byers’ home in Stranger Things is designed as a transition space, both physically and metaphorically. Situated on the edge of the woods on the outskirts of Hawkins, it is a liminal space between the town, the forest and the Upside Down. Throughout the course of the first season, its small, simple, neutral-coloured interior transforms as Joyce becomes increasingly desperate to communicate with her son and bring him home from another

J. Barnwell (B) University of Westminster, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_9

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dimension. Although the site of struggle, pain, terror and violence, the Byers’ home is also incredibly resilient, like the family it prevails. It is in the house that traditional boundaries are broken and temporary ones created, rupturing and subverting conventional entrance and exit points. Cult texts create a strong sense of community and belonging, ideas that are frequently at the heart of Stranger Things. The quiet, small-town community of Hawkins in its everyday familiarity functions as the backdrop to the supernatural events that subsequently unfold, but at the end of Season Three, the Byers’ home is left behind, its contents packed into boxes, the empty house resonating with self-referential nostalgia for the show’s characters and its fans. This poignant departure suggests a family ready to move on, but how do these transitions reflect on the myth of home in the context of cult texts? This chapter considers the concept of home in terms of the private domestic environment, the wider sense of community and the metaphorical place of belonging that can result from the repeated viewing of a much-loved cult text. To explore these issues, I will examine the design of the Byers’ household, using the Visual Concept approach, which can usefully be applied to a production as an analytical tool for supporting a greater appreciation of the filmmaking process. Rooted in practice through a consideration of the designer’s vocabulary for visualising a story, this approach aims to offer a deeper understanding of design elements primarily through five tools: space; in and out; light; colour and set decoration. In Stranger Things, the home is proven to be a fluid space where boundaries are repeatedly broken and transgressed, with any separation between interior and exterior exploding through the design to accentuate the malleable nature of borders and frontiers. The protagonists are situated outside of mainstream culture and are able to manipulate the arbitrary boundaries of convention reflected in the design where architectural elements are transcended and space and time subverted.

Somewhere Stranger: Building a Home in Cult Television Cult television can be more or less dated from the mid-sixties on either side of the Atlantic, but when US networks shifted away from simple Nielsen ratings to a more demographic-centred approach nearly twenty years on, the role of niche audiences changed, along with the definition of a cult television text (Angelini and Booy 2010, 22). Cult TV is defined

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not by any feature shared by the texts themselves, but rather, by the ways in which they are appropriated by specific groups. As such, there is no single quality that characterises a cult text. Instead, cult texts are defined through a process in which they are positioned in opposition to the mainstream (Jancovich and Hunt 2004, 27). Cult TV audiences recognise themselves as different. The main characters of Stranger Things are outside of the mainstream, the geeky kids preferring science over sports and Dungeons & Dragons instead of baseball. Thus, the show’s protagonists are not the popular kids but the outsiders who get to triumph over the monster and mainstream culture, further enhancing the viewing pleasures of a cult audience who can feel perfectly ‘at home’ observing their penchant for endless games of D&D in the Wheeler basement. Inexhaustible revisiting and rereading of a text can be seen as a fundamental aspect of cult consumption, and this attentiveness to the text is one of the qualities that constitutes difference and forms a basis for understanding the nature of the aesthetics of cult TV (Wilcox 2010, 32). The traditional structure of TV shows enables audiences to return weekly to familiar characters, spaces and story threads, replicating the familiarity of feeling at home. As Niemeyer (2016) states, media can trigger nostalgic emotions and are formative in the aesthetics of the nostalgia world they portray and at the same time serve as a cure for the viewer’s longing for a past era (129). Now, with streaming channels and online binge watching widely available, audiences can consume several episodes in one sitting, altering the viewing context. This shift can be seen to further intensify the scrutiny and inexhaustible revisiting associated with cult fan behaviour, with each new season creating another layer of return which allows viewers to ‘revel in the development of characters and long complex narrative arcs’ (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, xvii). It can also serve to intensify the strong sense of community and belonging central to cult texts. Stranger Things makes available a community to those holding the core credentials of devotion to the show, which establishes ideas connected to home and a sense of belonging. The notion of home is featured strongly in the narrative, leading to nostalgia for a lost mythic childhood, community and United States. The term nostalgia, partially stemming from nostos (return/homecoming) in ancient Greek, refers to the epic hero who, having undergone trials and tribulations, achieves the ultimate level of heroism by successfully returning home. In Homer’s epic The Odyssey, Odysseus’ drive to return home establishes the notion of nostalgia in

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narrative. Seventeenth-century Swiss physician Johannes Hofer joined the Greek nostos with algos, meaning suffering or affliction, as a term originally used to describe the melancholy that stems from the desire to return to one’s homeland. However, nostalgia, once regarded as a disorder inhibiting the afflicted from engaging in the present, can now be considered as a more positive tool aiding well-being, with nostalgic reminiscence recruiting positive experiences from our past in order to assist us in the present (Routledge 2015, 4–6). Indeed, Clay Routledge’s research into nostalgia shows how it can be beneficial, both mentally and physically, thus reversing some of the previously considered negative effects of ‘wallowing in the past’, or the futile search for a lost ‘object’ that can never be retrieved (ibid.). Thus, the positive emotional benefits of remembering a time of belonging can help to produce well-being in the present. As cult texts tend to lean heavily on nostalgia, it is important to consider how the site of home and the journey towards it are configured at each stage of the show’s development. Stranger Things can be seen to produce a multi-layered nostalgic experience whereby the viewer may relive the 1980s and experience nostalgia for the period reproduced on screen in a variety of ways. As Ryan Twomey explains: ‘For the Duffer Brothers, unlike Milton, Virgil or Homer, nostalgia isn’t just a longing for a place you can return to […] through a clever recreation of the decade’s aesthetic, Stranger Things elicits nostalgia not for a place but for a time’ (2018, 41). Audiences can ‘return home’ through their viewing experience to a recreated past while also experiencing the benefits of a sense of belonging to a group of individuals who share their love of the show and the feeling of ‘being at home’ this produces. Much has already been made of Stranger Things ’ countless references to 1980s popular culture, including Dungeons & Dragons, Stephen King novels and films by David Lynch, Stephen Spielberg and Brian DePalma, which the show nostalgically replicates and weaves into a rich tapestry. Kevin Wetmore suggests this love of the 1980s could represent ‘a yearning for a perceived simpler time […] before cell phones and the Internet became prevalent’, which he describes as ‘manifesting a radical freedom we have lost’ (2018, 2). This loss can be recognised and reconfigured through the show where real and imagined events are interwoven in such a fashion as to highlight the imperfections of the past. In each season, the home is established as crucial to both character and narrative, as the physical and metaphysical journey to return home is fundamental to the narrative arc and the nostalgic enterprise more widely.

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Myths have been cultivated around the home as a safe and secure structure, embodying traditional family values. Signalling a yearning for community and something that never truly existed, the mythical place called home is constructed for audiences on the screen (Bronfen 2001, 50). Screen homes can appear as familiar as our own, especially those we immerse ourselves in through binge watching or return to regularly in the form of a series. In these recognisable spaces, we are reassured by the familiarity, continuing plot lines and a set of characters we know and love. A sense of belonging also comes with the knowledge of genre expectations, character and setting. We feel at home in the constructed world around us. These ideas can also be fruitfully subverted where the home is used to trap characters and function as a site of anxiety and disturbance, which is often the case during periods of social and political upheaval, or when constructs such as the American nuclear family fall under scrutiny. A number of theorists have projected spiritual space onto that of the home (Bachelard 1994; Freud 2003), whereby the domestic interior can be seen as a symbolic reflection of the human interior landscape. This resonance of the home in the personal and collective consciousness is explored and cultivated in the creation of screen homes. Screen space plays on the ways in which attics, basements and bedrooms hold different roles in our daily imaginary lives. The physical realm and abstract notions of space cannot be disconnected from our memories, dreams, fears, desires and everyday existence (Jacobs 2013, 10). Freud’s theory of the uncanny relates closely to a discussion of a home that is familiar yet ‘un-homely’ (unheimlich). The uncanny home is a familiar aspect of the gothic and horror genres, where the sense of unease created in the domestic environment can be so integral to the narrative that it becomes a character in itself. For Freud, this combination of strangeness and familiarity resonates most strongly in relation to the mother’s body, the original home, which is a ‘forgotten place’ (through repression of the trauma of childbirth) but still familiar. Such connections point to the importance of the relative locations of rooms within houses in the construction of meanings and pleasures, for example, the uterine connotations of dark enclosed spaces (Andrews et al. 2017, 8) often found in gothic texts. The private environment of the home is often a key to understanding character, where ideas can be distilled and accentuated. Personal space can mirror a character’s psychology, the interior décor reflecting interior landscape and layers of backstory. Character and story are closely entwined in

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the domestic setting, which is often the place that undergoes transformation to signify changes taking place in the narrative arc. Describing the importance of ‘getting back home’ in relation to setting, production designer Richard Sylbert argues: ‘That’s the way Mozart structured music. You always went back home […] now home and getting back home are very serious ideas […] it satisfies the mind and closes the circle’ (1989, 22). In the next section, Visual Concept Analysis1 will be used to investigate the ways in which the design of the Byers’ home in Stranger Things conveys and enhances various myths surrounding home to develop the major themes of the script.

Closing the Circle: Interpreting the Visual Concept The Visual Concept augments the narrative of a production and is usually established collaboratively by the production designer (PD) with the director through closely scrutinising the script and related research.2 This methodology works through five key ways that the script is visualised by the PD: space; in and out; light; colour and set decoration. This section will explore how story is visualised through the strategic use of these five tools, as every decision about the five elements is linked and returns to the logic of the central Visual Concept, driving the design. This approach builds on mise en scène theory in that it textually analyses the image but identifies key areas that the PD is responsible for and separates these out for further scrutiny from the larger grouping of elements implied by mise en scène. It is distinct in that it uses the five tools listed above in order to comprehend the practical and conceptual solutions the PD has employed to design problems posed by the script. The deployment of screen space is often physically and emotionally essential in order to underpin concepts of character and narrative. As Ben McCann explains, décor is never a silent shell detached from the action, as the design speaks to the audience and paraphrases the narrative’s concerns by architecturally reflecting the emotions and mental states of the individuals inhabiting them (2004, 375). Here, I extend this notion by categorising the visual metaphors that convey the Visual Concept in the production. Through my reading of the series and scrutiny of PD Chris Trujillo’s designs, I propose the Visual Concept to be based on boundaries and the borders between spaces, worlds and ideas. The Upside

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Down is presented as the nightmare to the American Dream of suburban Hawkins slowly infiltrating the town. However, it could be argued that the two are coexistent expressions of the same mythic place, both facets of the American Dream.3 The suburban environment has been identified as a ‘borderland’ space situated both physically and philosophically between the urban and the rural, while the subgenre of Suburban Gothic can be seen to focus on tensions arising from the mass suburbanisation of the United States. As Bernice Murphy states, the subgenre ‘is concerned with exploiting a closely interrelated set of binary oppositions in which the assumptions that lie at the heart of the so called Suburban Dream are inverted/subverted’ (2009, 249). As Murphy points out, the subgenre often explores the flipside of pro-suburban rhetoric of government and corporate industry. The Upside Down operates as a dark reflection of the show’s nostalgic ‘home’ of Hawkins, threatening to disrupt the dream world of national myth (Mollet 2021, 142): ‘By sifting back and forth between the two worlds, Stranger Things explores the relationship between the two versions of “home”: the darker side of the United States 1980s with its lived realities of toxic masculinity and Reagan’s military industrial complex and its nostalgic “Spielbergian” counterpart’ (Mollet 2021, 142). Thus, the contrast between the two environments enables the complexity of small-town America to be examined.

‘Something Is Going on Here’: The Small Town of Hawkins Stranger Things is set in Hawkins, a small town in Indiana where ‘nothing really happens’. This all changes when Joyce Byers’ son, Will, goes missing, sparking investigations that reveal dangerous Government experiments. The quiet town landscape in its everyday familiarity functions as the backdrop to the supernatural events that subsequently unfold. Following a game of Dungeons & Dragons, Will cycles home and is pursued by a monster (“Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”). When he arrives home, it is empty. Will is taken to the Upside Down where he manages to survive by hiding in the other world version of his den. A contrast is thus established between the reassuringly familiar small town of Hawkins and the horror of otherness signified by the Upside Down, another dimension, where a beast dwells. Hawkins, Indiana, is a classic small American town featuring a main street with the standard collection of exteriors including shops and the

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Sheriff’s office. The production was shot in Atlanta using real locations where much of the architecture fitted with the requisite 1980s period. The low-level buildings create an easy flow between the interior and exterior. The image of quiet suburbia generates nostalgia for traditional family life and a mythical past that perhaps never truly existed. According to Boym (2009), restorative nostalgia emphasises the need to rebuild the lost home but confuses the real with an imagined ideal. Hawkins is established as a typical suburban town in the tradition of a mediated ideal often called suburbia, invoking the aesthetic markers of a suburbia that is both familiar and nostalgic. According to Lacey Smith, this relies on cultural assumptions about the safety of the suburban home and wider environment, thus offering a critique of the dominant ideologies associated with suburbia and our collective cultural connection and nostalgia for the images that sustain those ideals (2018, 215). Through a mediated imaginary place that proliferates on screen rather than by the material inhabited suburbs of everyday life, the suburbia simulacrum acts as a glittering mirage that obfuscates the practical pitfalls of suburbanisation (ibid., 218). Smith suggests that Stranger Things uses the Upside Down as a way to present Hawkins as it truly is - an already infected relic of a nostalgic suburban ideal, a mirage of normality hiding a sinister and dark reality that is always present within it (ibid., 218). This is a feature of cult texts, where the myth of the universal main street is presented as a façade for the disturbing truth lurking just beneath the surface. However, the protagonists of Stranger Things do not belong to the suburban dream, they are outsiders and misfits. As Christine Muller explains: ‘By featuring threshold straddling characters challenging established networks and attitudes of authority the series champions misfits, those whose inability to meet prevailing expectations of cultural worth becomes the very resource from which empowerment through solidarity emerges’ (2018, 199). It is the kids’ outsider status that enables them to triumph in many ways during the course of the narrative, their knowledge of D&D, CB radio and other uncool geek qualities often turned on their head to create cultural capital where there was none. Their difference, therefore, becomes an ultimate strength. This links with the key characteristics of cult texts in the acceptance of individuals for who they are in an inclusive safe space that is often situated outside of the mainstream and dominant ideologies. As such, the Stranger Things kids are often more closely aligned with the natural landscape than they are with buildings that represent suburban life. For example, Will Byers’ affinity with a more

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natural environment is established through his hidden den in the woods, ‘Castle Byers’, made out of tree branches. The natural landscape is a key feature of the show, as audiences are repeatedly invited to return to exterior locations such as the woods and the quarry. The natural backdrop is contrasted with the Upside Down, which appears to be a nocturnal overgrown forest producing a sticky substance that is slowly infiltrating the town. Trees and woodland are everywhere in Hawkins, mirrored in the Upside Down by sprawling black vegetation. What begins as a beautiful setting becomes poisoned and encroached on by the other world, turning increasingly unsafe as more ruptures occur and the sense of security and normality is disrupted. This can also be read as the collapsing of the illusion of the American Dream in Hawkins to reveal the dark void at the heart of the capitalist construction. The Byers’ home is situated on the edge of the woods on the outskirts of the town, distinct and singular. The family is positioned on the margins of society spatially and socially at the fairytale threshold of the forest. The notion of home is heightened in the question of belonging that comes with outsider culture and outsider characters. The cult text welcomes the rejected and marginalised outsider into a community that doesn’t conform to societal hierarchies around wealth or social status. The protagonists of the show are all outsiders: as such, they are able to reject the ideology of the suburb and escape its clutches. As Smith observes, it is their designation as ‘freaks and outsiders’ that allows them to recognise ‘the dark underside of suburban life in Hawkins’ (2018, 222). Joyce Byers is a single parent who has a low-paid job in the town store where she works long shifts and is often away from home when the children are there alone. Outside of the social norms of suburban motherhood, she rejects the nuclear family and often refuses to be silenced. Her home reflects the reality of the family income, the cluttered space of the simple bungalow revealing a loving and warm (if chaotic) family life held together by a single working mother. Though lacking luxury, it exudes warmth created from the natural colour palette, soft furnishings and items of family life that ornament the small space. This unpretentious environment constructs a home for cult audiences through the informal clutter of a lived-in space, rather than through the formal ‘show home’ qualities of, for example, the living environment of the Wheeler family. The Byers’ home is a pivotal transition point between the two worlds of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ during the first and second season. It functions as a liminal space situated between the two environments that increasingly

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comes to reflect the danger and turmoil of the Upside Down. As Muller suggests, liminality infuses every aspect of the narrative (2018, 202), and through the course of the first season, Joyce’s small, simple, neutralcoloured bungalow transforms, as the protagonist becomes increasingly desperate to communicate with her son and bring him home. Furniture is moved around in haphazard fashion, creating a cluttered and chaotic frame bursting with brightly-coloured fairy lights (“Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”). The spatial transformation of the home reflects Joyce’s interior landscape while also radically altering for reasons connected to the narrative development. Each time Joyce watches the walls of her home shift and pulse with the danger of the Upside Down, it is suburbia itself that appears to threaten her. The home is a metaphor for her psychological state, which appears fragile as she refuses to give up on the belief that her son is alive and communicating with her from another dimension. As a transition between the two colliding environments of normal and abnormal, the Byers’ home and its design are crucial in conveying key themes that reflect the characters’ journeys, narrative and wider themes of the show.

Production Design: The Byers Home and the Visual Concept The Byers’ house is a small bungalow consisting of three bedrooms, an open-plan living room, kitchen, bathroom and hallway. The environment is constructed as a fluid space, allowing characters and camera to flow.4 Situated on the ground floor, it initially appears simple to navigate, as there are no staircases to create multiple levels or vertical hierarchy. This spatial limitation decreases the possibility of concealment by taking away the potential of anything lurking upstairs or downstairs. This also limits character space, mobility and options suggesting lower status. The family living here is caught within the claustrophobic narrow hallways of a dark and cluttered house (Boudreau 2018, 167). This space not only functions as accommodation and shelter; it is also a communication device, a trap and a portal to another dimension. All of the rooms connect on the same level through doorways off the central hallway. Corridors are used by designers to extend physically and prolong visually the transition from one place to another, thus emphasising a journey, a pause or punctuation between two locations. Details

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of distance, width and material alter our perception of where the character is travelling to and what they might find on arrival. The corridor is a liminal space, connecting one room with another, often granting access to several possible destinations leading off the central corridor. Thus, it forms part of a journey to another room, an ‘in between’ space that extends the journey and builds tension, as ‘each step advances but also delays the denouement’ (Jacobs 2013, 28). The corridor in the Byers’ home is an important aspect of the spatial geography, building suspense and extending screen time as it allows a fluid movement that adds tension and heightens fear and anxiety. The lack of interior space is contrast with the exterior expanse of grass and woodland, which promotes a sense of physical and social isolation. The family’s outsider status is echoed in their physical position in the environment. Notions of home are amplified in the womb-like den that Will finds sanctuary in during his time in the Upside Down. The den resembles the one he made in the woods near his home, ‘Castle Byers’, but its qualities are intensified in the dangerous environment he is now trapped in. The den offers Will protection and shelter in a physical sense, while comforting and sustaining him from giving up in despair. Such is the potency of the meanings attached to a child’s den in the collective imagination: a place to have fun, hide, play or retreat in times of trouble. This is private space in a way that the bedroom within the family home is not: disconnected, a little satellite of his own. Cult texts can also be seen to create a uniquely personal space where each viewer builds and customises their own world. In Season Three, Will destroys his den in anger after an argument with his friends who seem to be growing up and growing out of games like D&D in favour of girlfriends (“Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard”). This suggests that Will, too, is reluctantly transitioning from childhood by rejecting the magical innocent world that the den signifies. Windows and doorways articulate the boundary between interior and exterior worlds, traditionally connecting the two.5 Where these are positioned is one of the fundamental building blocks of a design, influencing the way in which characters enter and exit space, but also how they move between the private domestic interior and the public exterior. The Byers’ front door leads out to a covered porch that links directly with the exterior landscape. There is also a back door leading into the garden, where the shed is located. However, the apparent connection with the landscape is deliberately withheld in terms of seeing in or out of windows or doorways. The windows initially have curtains obscuring the view outside

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which is gradually added to with newspapers stuck on the glass to enable Joyce to see the artificial lights more clearly when Will communicates. This creates a physical and symbolic boundary between inside and outside where the rest of the community resides. The house, therefore, stands alone, reflecting the isolation of the family. However, it also works to heighten the connection with the woods and the other world. The usual transitions and boundaries are broken as the portal between the two worlds ruptures time and space and creates temporary doorways. For example, the monster comes through the Byers’ living room wall, creating a breach that Joyce subsequently talks to her son through (“Chapter Three: Holly, Jolly”). However, this is only temporary, and when it reseals, she attempts to break through with an axe. Joyce adapts to the new geography when she hacks through the wall where she had previously glimpsed her son. This action creates a new point of exit/entry but not into the other world as she had hoped. These bold moves indicate her willingness to transgress traditional boundaries and continue the notion that boundaries can be broken and conventional entrance and exit points do not function effectively in this environment. Thus, the Visual Concept of the design works to make the Byers’ home a transitional space between the two worlds, an in between functioning as a portal or corridor offering connection. Furthering the notion of liminal space, their home is used as a trap, where Jonathan and Nancy attempt to ensnare the monster.6 The prominent use of doorways also nods to the use of doors to frame the past as haunted in gothic texts, serving as warnings of sites of trauma to be avoided and repressed. However, rather than hide the possibility of loss, Stranger Things invites the viewer to revel in being haunted by the 1980s. Boundary crossing is positively encouraged through the production design, character actions and underpinning ideology. Thus, the cult text empowers the audience to enjoy the pleasure of revisiting a period in time that no longer exists while promoting the benefits of being situated outside of it with the positive connotations of perspective, fluidity and insight. During the third season, the importance of doorways and the navigation between interiors, exteriors and worlds continues. The Byers’ home is featured very little, and instead, the Starcourt shopping mall becomes a symbol of the consumer-driven ideology of the period, the destruction of the traditional main street and the site concealing the secret Russian base beneath the surface. When working out how to enter the base, Robin says,

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‘There’s no way in if you’re using doors.’ Air ducts replace the conventional transition points and allow the characters to infiltrate the labyrinth of tunnels that lead to where the Russians are working to open a doorway into the other world. The dualism of this design articulates the borders between nations, ideologies and the problematic distance between private and public American life. The lack of daylight in the Byers’ home echoes the absence of light in the Upside Down and contrasts with the abundant natural light in the town of Hawkins.7 Natural light is obscured from windows by newspapers, while artificial light is designed to communicate across the two dimensions, from the Upside Down to the town of Hawkins. Communication between the worlds begins in a cupboard where a ball of lights is found pulsing. Joyce discovers the fairy lights that enable coded communication with her missing son. Gradually she fills the house with brightly-coloured fairy lights to better communicate with him. These lights sparkle in the otherwise low-lit home, providing small scraps of hope and information each time they illuminate. Artificial light also comes from an increasing number of table lamps creating dramatic high contrast light and shade. This chiaroscuro reflects the building intensity of the drama. The light and shade in the home become more and more apparent, linking with the gothic tradition of shadows and their connection with the uncanny.8 Shadows of the past often haunt the present in gothic texts as a provocation to confront traumatic events. In Stranger Things, the shadows have multiple connotations - including the darker side of the American Dream, US government experiments that have resulted in the monster and the private demons of individual characters. Continuing the Visual Concept of the Byers’ home as a transition space, the fairy lights open up boundaries between the two worlds. The lights form both a connection and a barrier. What we cannot see is as important as what we can see: fantasy bridges the gap between the two. Like Lacan’s conception of the gaze, the lights activate our desire to see more while also being an obstacle to seeing all there is to see. The flickering artificial lights are also reminiscent of the flickering candles of gothic literature and horror film and are central to the overall aesthetic design of all three seasons.9 The light reflects character interior landscape, building on the aspects already established through the spatial design and furthering the notion that Joyce Byers has a fragile mental state that can be viewed as both a weakness and a strength. From a cult text point of view, this enables her to transgress conventional ways of

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thinking. The faltering light creates a sense of unease in the traditions of these genres, playing on the fear that the light may fail completely at some point and plunge the characters into darkness and danger, leaving them prey to whatever monsters or ghosts may be lurking there. As an electric life force, the light is a connection to Will, and his mother hangs on every flicker of hope. In this instance, the need for light and shade is made apparent. Without the shade or intermittent absence of light, there can be no burst of light. In other words, if the light source was continuous, it would not be possible to communicate through it in the same way. Light and shade are essential to both the filmmaking and the storytelling process. Without one, the other cannot exist. This resonates with the binaries found in Stranger Things, in particular, the opposition between Hawkins and the Upside Down. Where there is light, there is always shade. Although the Byers’ home is not a key feature in Season Three, it is significant in the final episode when empty, the windows now bathe the interior in gorgeous golden sunlight (“Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”). For example, when El lies on the floor reading the letter from Hopper, she is lit with natural light from the bedroom window that glows and intensifies the sense of the natural passage of time, tied to Hopper’s apparent death and the end of an era. This light is interesting, as it does not recall or recreate what we have seen but what we have felt, as it conjures a golden time of warmth, love and friendship between the members of this surrogate family. The colours of the Byers’ home are predominantly neutral in the first instance.10 A palette of beige and brown perpetuates with highlights of yellow that help lead us into the aesthetic world of their environment, linking back to nature, wood and the forest. This selection and combination of colours enhance the Visual Concept already established by the fundamentals of space, in and out and light. The fluorescent fairy lights add bright unnatural colour to an otherwise natural palette, transforming the home with a display of sparkling artificial colour. Will’s bedroom walls are yellow, linking him most strongly with the positive connotations of the colour and echoing the use of bright colour employed in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982) to differentiate the children’s space from the more monochrome adult space. As a child, Will is imbued with the power of magical thought, but instead of this contrasting with the other spaces, it is interwoven throughout. This suggests everyone in the

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whole household is capable of thinking outside of the narrow boundaries of convention.11 The bright yellow of sunlight, hope and childhood radiates through the Byers’ bungalow, suggesting that in spite of their problems, there is positive energy here. Yellow is featured throughout the home, in the yellow vinyl flowered dining chairs, lamps, throws, curtains and phone. The use of yellow in combination with the natural neutrals furthers the notion that the home is an extension of the woodland. This supports the Visual Concept in implying that boundaries are operating in an unconventional fashion in this space. The Byers’ home is a transitional locale that interlaces with the woods in this world and the Upside Down in the other. The house is decorated on a limited budget.12 With busy wallpaper, mismatching pieces of furniture, and old sofas covered in throws, shelving units are crammed full and there are several table lamps, creating a cosy, cluttered atmosphere. However, as the narrative of Season One progresses, the dressing becomes more chaotic. The telephone is a key action prop in bright, attention-grabbing yellow; it connects with Will and enables communication from the Upside Down, but it is burnt out, becoming charred and black to reflect the other world. Joyce purchases a replacement phone in beige, which also becomes burnt and destroyed. PD Chris Trujillo sourced the 1980s furniture and props from weekend estate sales in order to create the realistic lived-in setting he wanted. He used the same set for the real world and the Upside Down, which meant continuous redressing: ‘There was the added fun of building to accommodate the monster and a mother with an axe tearing the place apart in order to communicate with her son’ (Trujillo, cited in Ahi and Karaoghlanian 2016). Will’s bedroom wall features the iconic poster for the Spielberg film Jaws, nostalgically nodding to the period while also referencing the themes of the film. Floral and plant-based motif recur around the house, whether in small details such as floral wallpaper prints, the bold dining chairs or the clock with tendrils emanating from it. Organic building materials and furniture all refer us to the forest, to the extent that the space feels part of the forest, further enhancing the notion of the Byers’ home as an unconventional boundary between worlds. The colours introduced into the Byers’ home in the second season are the black, blue and purple of the crayon drawings Will creates that ultimately form a map of the tunnels beneath the surface of Hawkins. These dark colours infiltrate the home and occupy the interior space, reflecting the monster’s penetration and habitation of Will’s body. When

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the Byers’ home does appear in the third season, the colour palette that predominates is that of the acid neons of the Starcourt shopping mall. This takes the fairy lights of the first season to a new level, reflecting the degree to which the monster has succeeded in taking over the town.

Conclusion: Coming Full Circle We see the Byers’ home radically alter for reasons connected to the narrative development, but also working to reflect the inner turmoil of Will’s mother. The home is a metaphor for her psychological state, which appears to be fragile as she refuses to give up on the belief that her son is alive and communicating with her from another dimension. In Season One, a small, simple, neutral-coloured bungalow changes shape and colour as the protagonist becomes increasingly desperate to communicate with her son and bring him home. The spatial transformation reflects Joyce Byers’ interior landscape: as she unravels, it deteriorates. By the time they rescue Will, the house has the letters of the alphabet daubed in black paint across the wall, has been set on fire, hacked into with an axe and burst through by a visiting monster. Joyce’s destruction of her own home in an effort to find her son indicates her rejection of the confines of mainstream ideology and her symbolic lack of attachment to the domestic trappings of suburbia. The Byers’ home is not safe or secure. Instead, it is a volatile place of danger where home comforts are gradually dispensed with, leaving the shell of the vulnerable structure that remains. Will remains missing throughout the first season until the final episode when his mother and Hopper enter the Upside Down and bring him home (“Chapter Eight: The Upside Down”). Normality appears to have been resumed: when the family is reunited in a restored home, we feel reassured by the resonance of the homecoming in closing the circle of the characters’ journey. However, when Will goes to the bathroom and coughs up black matter, the room is temporarily transformed to reflect the other dimension, threatening to consume the life he has fought to return to. The notion that the Upside Down can infiltrate and bleed into the real world has been suggested in many ways throughout the series. Will’s return is nostalgic in the original sense of the term, as he has survived a heroic journey into unchartered lands where a monster lives. The narrative relies heavily on remembering a time and place with fondness. These themes are employed in several layers in Stranger Things, the

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narrative, the 1980s period and the emphasis on home in both the individual sense and the wider community and audience reception. A sense of loss is entwined in the audience’s reading of the text as something that no longer exists - the 1980s - thus cannot be physically returned to. However, the state of mind can be achieved temporarily when watching the show. Thus, Stranger Things elaborates on and enables a nostalgic return to a place in time that no longer exists and not only delivers the audience back in time but the satisfaction of seeing their hero return home from a perilous journey. This encourages a sense of belonging that ties in with the elements of the story but also the membership that comes with being part of the subcultural groups attached to a cult text. In Stranger Things, the fragile and malleable nature of boundaries is visualised through the five tools, namely space, in and out, light, colour and set decoration. The home is seen to be a fluid space where boundaries are broken and transgressed. The exterior and interior appear dislocated through the lack of views in or out of windows, reinforcing the notion that traditional boundaries don’t operate according to expectations. The Byers’ home functions as a doorway/boundary to the other world and a continuation of the natural exterior. The home is designed to convey the concept of transitional space through the in and out in particular, as the boundary between interior and exterior is challenged and exploded through the design, accentuating the malleable nature of borders and frontiers. The Byers’ home is a linking device between the two worlds, indicating the importance of home to identity and belonging. The importance of nostalgia to Will is tangible as it has enabled his return. The unconventional outsider status of the Byers enables them to transgress physical and psychological boundaries and to reinterpret and revise space to enable the rescue of Will. His return temporarily closes the circle that Sylbert refers to as signifying safety and security. The home has been rejuvenated since the chaos and the normality of everyday rituals have resumed. However, it soon becomes apparent that Will’s journey is not yet over. In the second season, the Byers’ home is again the site of trauma and the key to both environments as its design actively participates in the narrative and forms the problem-solving visual for the series by reflecting Will’s interior landscape quite literally. At the end of Season Three, their home is abandoned. This poignant departure suggests a family ready to move on and challenge the next boundary that threatens to restrict their growth as they expand outwards into the unknown, ready to find a new

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home. Stranger Things opens up a space constructed like the Byers’ home to accommodate the cult audience, a transitional place with fluid borders that works to connect nostalgia and belonging by creating a portal that we can enter whenever we choose by viewing, reviewing, thinking, talking or writing about the show. This gift gives the audience the positive tools to enable them to navigate their way home.

Notes 1. This approach, which I have termed Visual Concept Analysis, differs from mise en scène theory in two key ways. Firstly, while mise en scène theory is also concerned with the visual style of a film, its initial proponents are considered through the director as the key author of a film. In spite of more recent scholarly activity in film studies that rethink authorship and consider other sources of creativity than the director, the Cahier du cinema perspective is still relevant because it continues to impact on how film authorship is perceived by audiences and academics. Secondly, mise en scène is a key idea in film analysis but often fails to recognise the filmmaking process in general and the role of the production designer in particular in visualising the script in the first place. 2. The production designer is responsible for the overall look of a production, working in close collaboration with the director and other heads of department. A PD creates the environment and visual style for the story to take place in. As head of the art department, they oversee the realisation of their designs, creating real and imagined worlds for the screen. The Visual Concept is covered in greater depth in Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television (Barnwell 2017). 3. As Wetmore suggests, they are ‘two sides of the same coin’ (2018, 224). 4. Space is the first of the five features in the Visual Concept method of analysis. 5. The in and out: boundaries and transitions is the second of the five features in the Visual Concept method of analysis. 6. The importance of doorways can be seen in the portal of the Government base that leads directly to the Upside Down and eventually enables Joyce and Hopper to rescue Will. Continuing the centrality of doorways at the end of the second season, Eleven closes the door connecting the two worlds, symbolically separating them (“Chapter Nine: The Gate”). 7. Light is the third of the five features employed in the Visual Concept method of analysis. 8. Ghosts communicating through electricity have long been a trope of the gothic genre. Flickering lights are a consistent feature throughout Season

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One, from the initial flickering bulb signifying Will’s disappearance to the bike headlights and Mike’s carport flickering. A partially revealed object or an uncanny entity at the edge of our vision is Lacanian conception of the gaze and a definition of gothic. Colour is the fourth of the five features employed in the Visual Concept method of analysis. Author interviews with PD Jim Bissell (2016). Set decoration is the fifth of the five features employed in the Visual Concept method of analysis.

Works Cited Abbott, Stacey. Ed. 2010. The Cult TV Book. London: I.B. Tauris. Ahi, Mehruss Jon, and Armen Karaoghlanian. 2016. Interview with Chris Trujilo. Interiors. Available at: https://www.intjournal.com/interview/tag/Stranger+ Things+architecture. Accessed 7 May 2021. Andrews, Eleanor, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran Pheasant-Kelly. 2017. Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door. Oxford: Routledge. Angelini, Sergio, and Miles Booy. 2010. ‘Members Only: Cult TV from Margins to Mainstream.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 19–27. London: I.B. Tauris. Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. Barnwell, Jane. 2017. Production Design for Screen: Visual Storytelling in Film and Television. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Boym, Svetlana. 2009. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Bronfen, Elisabeth. 2001. Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Boudreau, Brenda. 2018. ‘Badass Mothers: Challenging Nostalgia.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 164–172. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. 1982. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Freud, Sigmund. 2003. ‘The Uncanny’ 1919. London: Penguin. Gwenllian-Jones, Sara, and Roberta Pearson. 2004. Cult Television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Jacobs, Steven. 2013. The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers. Jancovich, Mark, and Nathan Hunt. 2004. ‘The Mainstream, Distinction and Cult TV.’ In Cult Television, edited by Sara Gwenllian-Jones and Roberta Pearson, 27–44. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McCann, Ben. 2004. ‘A Discreet Character? Action Spaces and Architectural Specificity in French Poetic Realist Cinema.’ Screen 45 (4): 375–382.

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Mollet, Tracey. 2021. ‘“I’m going to my friends … I’m going home”: Contingent Nostalgia in Netflix’s Stranger Things.’ In Was It Yesterday?: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television, edited by Matthew Leggatt, 137–151. Albany: SUNY Press. Muller, Christine. 2018. ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? Stranger Things and the in Between.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 195–204. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Murphy, Bernice. 2009. The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. Niemeyer, Katharina, 2016. Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future. Palgrave Macmillan. Routledge, Clay. 2015. Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource. London: Routledge. Smith, Lacey N. 2018. ‘A Nice Home at the End of the Cul-de-sac: Hawkins as Infected Postmodern Suburbia.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 215–224. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Sylbert, Richard. 1989. ‘Production Designer Is His Title: Creating Realities Is His Job.’ American Film 15 (3): 22–26. Twomey, Ryan. 2018. ‘Competing Nostalgia and Popular Culture. Mad Men and Stranger Things.” In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin J. Wetmore, 39–48. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Wetmore, Kevin J. Ed. 2018. Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Wilcox, Rhonda V. 2010. ‘The Aesthetics of Cult Television.’ In The Cult TV Book, edited by Stacey Abbott, 31–40. London: I.B. Tauris.

PART III

Receptions

CHAPTER 10

From 1980s Intertextualities to (Un)Faithful ‘Inter-Textualities’: Stranger Things and Audience-Created Relations Between Media Texts Matt Hills

In this chapter, I want to reconsider what has become a critical orthodoxy with regard to Stranger Things - namely, its use of nostalgic, 1980s-focused intertextual referencing. As Jason Landrum has argued: If there is a trend in the criticism about Stranger Things that verges on a type of consensus, it is the show’s nostalgic appeal. Many think pieces on the quality of the nostalgia of Stranger Things litter the Internet, focusing mostly on questions about the show’s pop-culture signifiers. Articles by fans and critics alike typically agree that the depiction of the 1980s in Stranger Things is at the heart of its appeal (Landrum 2017, 149–150).

M. Hills (B) University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_10

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However, it is not only fans and critics who have explored the Netflix show in this manner. Academics and hybrid aca-fans have also offered up close readings of Stranger Things in terms of how its intertextual riffing on a range of pop-cultural antecedents (the 1980s works of Steven Spielberg; John Carpenter; Stephen King, etc.) can be interpreted. Yet the varied takes on Stranger Things ’ intertextuality, when grouped together as a collective response, amount only superficially to an academic ‘consensus’ in Landrum’s terms. Rather, given academia’s well-established discursive practice of emphasising the ‘novelty’ of interpretations (Bordwell 1991, 30), work on Stranger Things and intertextuality seems at times to resemble a 1980s ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ novel, where readers can decide which critical pathway to take. How, then, to break more substantively - though, of course, never entirely - with a textual focus on intertextuality seemingly embedded in the neoliberal realm of choose-your-own-interpretation? Here, I will argue that Stranger Things scholarship would benefit from switching from text-centred readings of intertextuality to audience-centred understandings of ‘inter-textuality’ (Bennett and Woollacott 1987, 44). The introduction of a slight typographical difference ushers in a very different conceptual approach, so it is a shame that inter-textuality and intertextuality are not more obviously distinguished on the page. Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott define inter-textuality as follows: We use the hyphenated form to avoid confusion with the concept of intertextuality associated with the work of Julia Kristeva. […] [W]hereas Kristeva’s concept […] refers to the system of references to other texts which can be discerned within the internal composition of a specific individual text, we intend the concept of inter-textuality to refer to the social organisation of the relations between texts within specific conditions of reading (Bennett and Woollacott 1987, 44–45).

Intertextuality operates within ‘the text’, then, but inter-textuality concerns the different texts that are placed into articulated, connective relationships by audiences, in order to activate textual meanings. In academic work, scholars exploring Stranger Things ’ intertextuality often do so within a socially-organised media/cultural studies’ ‘reading formation’ (Bennett and Woollacott 1987, 64) in which they actively link specific theories to the text. These connections are not made within the text, but instead by a particular type of academic reader.

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Inter-textuality is thus better - and certainly less confusingly - thought of as audience-created relationality (ACR) between texts. This is not a purely individualised process, but instead makes sense (i.e. creates meaning) for interpretive communities, in what Bennett and Woollacott call ‘specific conditions of reading’ (1987, 45). Where audiences follow the intertextualities given within a text, then denotative intertextuality and ACR can overlap or resemble one another. For example, official paratexts, such as the Netflix making-of book Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down (McIntyre 2018) typically draw attention to specific intertextualities, thus inviting fan audiences to focus on these textual relationships. The Duffer Brothers’ interest in emulating 1980s horror/popular culture is emphasised as a showrunner strategy in Worlds Turned Upside Down: Once they had a completed draft of the first episode in hand, the Duffer brothers assembled a ‘look book’ that would serve as a companion document […] Ross Duffer says […] ‘[w]e included pictures and stuff from the movies that had inspired us – whether it was Stand By Me, or E.T., or A Nightmare on Elm Street – and we put it all together so people could see the tone we were going for’ (McIntyre 2018, 21).

Of course, such official/promotional paratexts are designed to reinforce the brand culture of Stranger Things, disciplining fan readers by guiding them in terms of how to read the series. Arguably, however, academic readings are no less part of the ‘paratextual industries’ (Consalvo 2007, 183) surrounding TV texts than official tie-ins. They may be unauthorised, but by further participating in the validation of reference-spotting fan practices, affirmational scholarship can operate in a manner akin to what Matthew Guschwan (2012) has called ‘brandom’. Even critical readings of Stranger Things and its fandom, such as Hassler-Forest’s, still continue to centre on ‘excessive […] intertextual connections [that] are often so overbearing that the series is constantly overshadowed by its homages to past favourites, making the exercise of watching it sometimes akin to trainspotting movie references’ (2020, 183). Hassler-Forest may dismiss Stranger Things as a ‘simulacrum’ of ‘Hollywood’s Spielbergindustrial complex’ from the 1980s, when Spielberg tapped ‘into a cultural and political movement that firmly established neoliberalism both as an economic programme and as an encroaching form of subjectivity’

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(2020, 185–186). But by making this intertextual argument, HasslerForest can hardly then suggest that ‘[n]either the Upside Down nor the monsters that inhabit it have any contemporary relevance’; on his own terms, Stranger Things ’ reversionings of 1980s popular culture can potentially speak to contemporary experiences of neoliberalism. However, by shifting away from text-based analyses of intertextuality - which potentially reinforce Stranger Things ’ brand - to instead address audience-created-relationalities (ACR) between Stranger Things and other media, it is possible to explore contingent, communal repositionings of the show, and the ways in which these exceed and/or evade official meaning-making and on-brand paratextual amplification. I therefore want to focus on how various online and event audiences read Stranger Things somewhat ‘unfaithfully’, if you will, through potentially unexpected, unpredictable media texts, as well as how the series is autointerpreted through and in relation to itself, drawing more powerfully on ‘fidelity’ discourses (Burke 2015). I’ll begin with audiences’ occasionally less faithful recontextualisations of the show.

‘Playing the DLC Before the Main Quest WTF’: ACR Focusing on Netflix, Other 1980s-Referencing Texts, and Gaming Academic work on Stranger Things and Netflix emphasises how the show has found transnational ‘cult followings’ (Lobato 2019, 3), targeting US middle-class audiences alongside English language-speaking elites ‘in foreign markets’ (Lobato 2019, 157–158). Mareike Jenner reads its view of 1980s America as a depoliticised way of rendering Hollywood intertextualities more accessible to non-US audiences, with decontextualised horror/fantasy travelling well across national borders to provide a generic ‘grammar of transnationalism’ (Jenner 2018, 228). Dennis Broe, meanwhile, seemingly dismisses Stranger Things as part of a Netflix strategy to target ‘boutique’ rather than mass audiences via highly derivative content (2019, 110). In such scholarship, in varying ways, the Netflix brand acts as a source or point of industrial strategy through which Stranger Things can be inter-textually interpreted. Fan audiences, however, use Netflix to create relations between Stranger Things and other texts in a way that approximates more closely to the company’s own algorithmic recommendations (Finn 2017). That

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is, one strand of fannish ACR focuses on what other Netflix shows should be recommended to those who’ve enjoyed Stranger Things, in listicles like ‘6 Sci-Fi Shows On Netflix For Stranger Things Fans Who Already Miss The Upside Down’ (Altmann 2018) or ‘10 Best Shows Like Stranger Things on Netflix’ (Robinson 2020). Sometimes this material can be indistinguishable from paid-for promotional content from Netflix such as ‘What to watch on Netflix if you love Stranger Things ’ (Harkness 2020). Yet fannish listicles respond to Netflix’s algorithms of personalisation, seeking to communally share genre recommendations even while they remain Netflix-branded—in a manner that performs ‘a struggle for autonomy between user and system’ (Kant 2020, 56, original emphasis). David Beer has previously posed the question of what happens to audiences’ and fans’ ‘subcultural capital’, or distinctive fan knowledge, when ‘cultural knowledge now finds-us […] We might wonder where this might leave something like Sarah Thornton’s […] notion of “subcultural capital”, if these forms of knowledge can now circulate […] through algorithmic processes’ (Beer 2013, 95–96). Netflix-oriented ACR, where audiences specifically make connections between Stranger Things and other Netflix SF/horror/fantasy shows, could be interpreted as the performative algorithmisation of fan culture. After all, fans seem to mimic the operations of Netflix recommendation systems. But by making these recommendations part of agentive fan-cultural assessment, there is a partial resistance to automated recommendation systems: ‘users […] constitute the self in relation to everyday algorithmic anticipation […] negotiating the interventions of algorithmic personalization into everyday life’ (Kant 2020, 216). A further strand of ACR is less explicitly focused on Netflix, instead positing connections between Stranger Things and other genre texts which reference 1980s’ horror/fantasy. For instance, the subreddit dedicated to Stranger Things, created on 17 October 2015 and currently hosting some 581,000 members,1 includes queries such as ‘Should I watch Super 8?’, with an upvoted rating of 92% and 46 responding comments. The poster notes, ‘I’ve seen it mentioned here and other places that Super 8 hit […] the same 80s nostalgia vibe. But I’ve heard plenty of bad things about the movie […] and have never seen it. Should I watch it to fill in a bit of the gap Stranger Things has left?’ Although TV studies have paid close attention to the rise of viewers bingeing or ‘marathoning’ series (Perks 2015), it has not tended to

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consider the sense in which brief, intense periods of consuming a newlyreleased show can then lead to a shared fan experience of ‘hiatus’ or ‘gap’ how are fans to maintain their fan identity in the extended time between seasons? In this collection, Isabel Linton offers a number of ways in which this has been achieved for the Stranger Things fandom. However, exploring related texts, whether on Netflix or elsewhere, offers one intertextual or ACR discourse of fandom maintenance. Those responding to the Super 8 query on Reddit tended to directly compare it to Stranger Things, usually affirming the superiority of the Netflix series while evaluating Super 8 as overly ‘PG’ or too child-friendly in tone. Posters also offered alternative recommendations, arguing that ‘Midnight Special […] tops Super 8’, or that for an ‘80s horror vibe with a great soundtrack […] definitely watch It Follows . It scratches the itch in a different (more adult?) way than Super 8’. And given that audience-created relations between texts can often overlap with canonical intertextualities, one poster listed ‘better movies referenced in the show’ that should be watched rather than Super 8, striving to re-centre on-brand interpretations of Stranger Things ’ textual authority. Academic work such as Angus McFadzean’s Suburban Fantastic Cinema (2019) has also made connections between the likes of Midnight Special (2016), Super 8 (2011), It (2017), Summer of ’84 (2018) and Stranger Things, arguing that they can be understood as part of a cycle of ‘new “reflexive” suburban fantastic’ texts (2019, 115). Fan discourses work to valorise Stranger Things - posited alternatives are about looking for a way to ‘scratch the itch’ involved in wanting more of one’s fan object, as redditors repeatedly phrase it - but by contrast, McFadzean analyses the ‘reflexive suburban fantastic’ as a matter of pastiche. He argues that such texts ‘betray a conservative desire to produce consolidated, “classical” versions [of 1980s Spielbergian texts], rather than new risky variants’ (2019, 118; contra Dunleavy 2018, 147, who argues that Netflix took a significant risk on Stranger Things ’ child-focused yet adulttargeted narrative). For McFadzean, these reflexive iterations should be critically condemned for not being reflexive enough; their ‘narratives and mise-en-scène are hyper-commodified’ since ‘the spectator consumes as a commodity their childhood-movie nostalgia’ (ibid.; see also Pallister 2019). It is worth noting that a similar argument has, in fact, been made about Amblin productions like Back to the Future (1985). David Wittenberg suggests that this film was already highly reflexive back in the 1980s,

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blending the life of Marty McFly with an audience awareness of the career/schtick of Michael J. Fox and the ‘artistic and economic machinations’ of Zemeckis and Spielberg (2013, 190–191) (for a discussion of Back to the Future in relation to Stranger Things, see Sorcha Ní Fhlainn’s chapter above). The result is not only that Back to the Future can be seen as hyper-commodified, contra McFadzean’s binary of 1980s/reflexive fantasy texts, but that 1980s audiences were positioned as identifying with ‘the entire synthetic capitalist-marketing event’ of the movie, or what Wittenberg terms its ‘production matrix’ (2013, 191). Rather than separating 1980s’ fantastic cinema from a supposedly more ‘reflexive’ Netflix version of cinematic TV, then, we might follow fandom’s interest in drawing parallels and making connections, viewing Stranger Things as equally invested in its own ‘production matrix’ of incorporated geek culture (McCarthy 2019). Rather than simply identifying with characters and narratives, Stranger Things ’ production matrix invokes audience identifications with pop-cultural fandoms in an array of geeky forms, ranging from pop music to 1980s film/TV, role-playing games and video games (Mollet 2019). To an extent, then, fans are again following on-brand intertextualities in the show when they make connections between gaming and Stranger Things. Indeed, as Clem Bastow argues in this collection, commentaries have picked up on Dungeons & Dragons as one potential ‘key’ to interpreting the series (Driscoll 2019, 79), as well as arguing that the ‘second season introduces a shift in gaming focus’ from role-playing games to early ‘arcade […] video games’ such as DigDug and Centipede (Wetmore 2018, 65). However, redditors markedly diverge from these gaming intertextualities when critiquing the controversial episode, “Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister” from Season Two, instead drawing on audience-created relations that link the show to contemporary gamer culture. In the r/Stranger Things thread dedicated to this episode, the toprated comment (with 6.0k points) is as follows: ‘El playing the DLC before finishing the main quest wtf’. Another poster responds, ‘I hope it was a free dlc, cause that isn’t worth money’, only for the original poster to then assert, ‘well if you look at it – season 1 had 8 episodes, season 2 had 8 episodes + 1 DLC[.] I think it was okay. It felt very out of place tho but she got some extra skillpoints and XP [experience points] on the way’. The comparison to DLC (downloadable content) which modifies a purchased game, adding new levels and customisations—sometimes for free—suggests that rather than building to the season finale, “Chapter

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Seven: The Lost Sister” is viewed by these fans as excessively disconnected from ongoing plot threads, and hence as non-essential viewing. Some dissenting voices playfully repurposed the connection to ‘DLC’ by suggesting that ‘[y]ou have to do the sidequests to get the best gear before the final boss battle’. The use of contemporary gaming terminologies to interpret Stranger Things in this way may seem unexpected and unpredictable. It certainly isn’t prefigured in the text or its intertextualities, but makes sense in relation to Reddit as a space dominated by ‘geek masculinity’, as Adrienne Massanari has argued (2015, 16). Another similarly geeky textual relation set in motion in this ‘reading formation’ involves comparing “The Lost Sister” with Star Wars : The Empire Strikes Back (1980), as it is argued that ‘008 is El’s angry Yoda. El needs a mentor who will help her harness her power so she can use it without completely exhausting herself’. Given the reputation that The Empire Strikes Back has attained as a fan favourite, this inter-textual articulation is swiftly countered with the following: ‘Comparing this train wreck (pun intended) to ESB is heresy’. Additional science-fiction shorthands are used, with ‘Syfy garbage’ being another mooted point of comparison. In this case, the suggestion that ‘[t]he show suddenly became Syfy garbage for an episode’ was met with immediate approval: ‘Yes! THANK YOU! I was looking for the best way to describe that episode and you got it. It felt so generic and overdone’. Throughout these exchanges, nobody questions why ‘DLC’, The Empire Strikes Back, or ‘Syfy garbage’ might be relevant to interpreting “The Lost Sister”. Instead, these references clearly constitute a shared geek lexicon and a form of fan cultural capital or subcultural capital. Likewise, the fact that ‘DLC’ features in the top-ranked comment reinforces the sense that this is very much a communally-validated reading. As Benjamin Woo has argued in his ethnographic analysis of the social worlds of geek culture: it is not enough to demonstrate familiarity with the canon of relevant [media] texts; one must also display mastery by playing with them […] [M]aking and recognizing media references is a ubiquitous feature of social interaction within nerd cultures […] The ability to participate in the performance of intertextuality distinguishes insiders and outsiders (Woo 2018, 72).

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This Reddit ‘performance’ of intertextuality is not focused on references made in Stranger Things, though. These practices of ACR and geek referencing are not faithfully on-brand, quite literally when a flagship Netflix production is recontextualised through another rival TV channel brand as ‘Syfy garbage’, and no less evaluatively when “The Lost Sister” is denigrated as secondary or free ‘DLC’, playfully being discounted as a ‘true’ episode of season two: ‘8 episodes + 1 DLC’. In the next section, I want to consider a related but somewhat distinct game that is played in the reception of Stranger Things, as online and event audiences compare the show to itself. Such auto-readings are common within media fandoms, as knowledgeable viewers scan intratextually for details and developments. But by constructing versions of what Stranger Things supposedly is, self-referential interpretations shade into another form of audience-created relationality between texts, as fans compare new episodes or transmedia extensions of Stranger Things to the yardstick of ‘fidelity’ they have projected.

‘The Least Stranger Things Episode of Stranger Things I Have Ever Seen’: Auto-Interpretations in ACR It has been argued that scholars in adaptation studies should pay greater attention to fan discourses of faithfulness, and whether an adaptation stays ‘true’ to its original text. This is a considerable concern for cult fandoms, who bring their own set of expectations to adaptations for both big and small screens (Mathijs and Sexton 2011). For instance, Liam Burke suggests that ‘despite the risks associated with fidelity criticism, adaptation scholars should not lag behind the industry in recognising that fans and fidelity are an important determinant in shaping modern […] adaptations’ (2015, 167). Contra Burke, any academic focus on fidelity has also been described as ‘a chimera, a pipe dream that will not and cannot be achieved […] and […] fans should […] be tolerant of the inevitable differences between original and adaptation’ (Jeffries 2017, 10). Shifting from intertextualities given in the text, however, to inter-textualities constructed by readers (i.e. audience-created relations between texts) places the issue of fidelity firmly on the table, and not only for explicit adaptations. As a series returns across different seasons, then fans can seek to evaluate the ‘fidelity’ of new episodes in comparison with an established hyperdiegetic

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world. Indeed, the term ‘jumping the shark’ presupposes that a TV series can become ‘untrue to itself’ in the eyes of fans and critics. Likewise, as a series is extended transmedially then fans engage in similar practices of ‘fidelity’ evaluation. Such self-referential auto-readings of Stranger Things occur in the Reddit thread for “The Lost Sister”, alongside the playful media references characterising geek culture’s sociality (McCarthy 2019). Capturing this comparative mode perfectly, one poster even asserts: ‘[t]his is the least Stranger Things episode of stranger things that I have ever seen’. Others agreed, noting that ‘it actually felt like they were advertising a spin-off here’, and redditors drew on their industry awareness to debate whether the episode was ‘a backdoor pilot. You sneak a pilot for a show into another show to evaluate whether people would like the pilot to be turned into a full show’. Some responses on the subreddit discussed intertextualities present in the episode, focusing on the punk identities of Jane/Eleven’s new gang, and her new look, as well as viewing the ‘feel your anger’ scene as an X-Men: First Class ‘rip off’, with another comment describing “The Lost Sister” as ‘my favourite X-Men movie’. But Stranger Things is not itself markedly present in this episode in terms of self-referentiality. Although intertextual ‘Easter eggs’ can be seen as inciting contemporary fan responses (Mollet 2019, 72), the ‘text itself’ here shows little sense of anticipating auto-interpretations, especially of the highly dismissive kind represented by fan critique. Instead, official paratexts subsequently sought to respond to and minimise negative fan sentiment. The Worlds Turned Upside Down making-of book offered a post-textual acknowledgement that “The Lost Sister” had been the ‘most polarising hour in Stranger Things history’ and that ‘[n]ot everyone responded favourably to the narrative and tonal digression’ (McIntyre 2018, 182). However, dissenting audiences were implicitly chided, with a ‘TV art’ discourse being drawn on to defend how the Duffer Brothers had been ‘excited about not repeating ourselves […] about playing with format’, in Ross Duffer’s terms. At the same time, Millie Bobby Brown is reported as indicating that ‘the story let Eleven mature in ways that were vital to the character’s continued development’ (ibid.). Cult fan criticisms, and fidelity discourses, are not directly engaged with - doing so would have involved the show’s producers and actors in a conflict with fandom over who gets to determine Stranger Things ’ brand authenticity. However, by stressing innovative ‘playing with format’ and a depth-psychology of character development, the implication was that fans

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opposed to these attributes were constructing a fixed, blinkered version of Stranger Things. Unhappy fans were imagined in the manner described by Stephen Brown: ‘Whatever else they are, fans are notoriously conservative. They resist change. They inhibit innovation. They want more of the same. They not only venerate the object of their desire, they entomb it in aspic’ (Brown 2007, 190). Such an audience-created relationality, where Stranger Things is read critically against a fan-interpreted version of itself, thus has the potential to strongly separate out official brand management/showrunner strategy and online fan commentary. Far from compliantly pursuing intertextual references and Easter eggs seeded in the text, in this type of ACR, fan audiences become temporary brand critics rather than brand champions. Fidelity discourse also emerges in fans’ responses to Stranger Things ’ transmedia extensions. I’ll focus briefly on the Stranger Things production mounted by Secret Cinema in London, 2019-2020. Rather than a text to be read, this ‘immersive’ performance is better thought of as a ‘transmedia experience’ (Hills 2018). Set in season three locales, it offered fans - dressed in various 1980s fashion - the opportunity to feel as if they had visited locations from the series, such as the Starcourt Mall and Scoops Ahoy, witnessing look-a-like actors performing as the central characters. Adopting the researcher subjectivity of a ‘pursuer’ (Atkinson and Kennedy 2018, 266), i.e. a consumer of the experience, at one point I saw Eleven move a Coca Cola can across a tabletop and into her hand apparently using telekinetic powers. Presumably, it was a wire-based illusion, though even viewed from reasonably close-up, I couldn’t see how the trick was performed, and the incident occurred seemingly without the actress playing Eleven being aware of anyone watching her, i.e. it seemed wholly spontaneous, as if I’d stumbled across it by happenstance. Akin to the immersive theme park experience of Stranger Things offered as a part of the line-up for Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, fans experience a physical, multi-sensory rendering of diegetic realms at Secret Cinema. A fantasy of proximate engagement is encouraged; fans can imagine being ‘inside’ Stranger Things ’ world. Secret Cinema renditions usually conclude with a ‘finale’ (Jablonski 2019, 14) screening the relevant film, augmented by moments of performance synchronised with filmic events. Following on from the recreated world that fans have interacted with, this two-part model constitutes Secret Cinema’s characteristic way of ‘eventising’ media texts (Pett 2016). As an initial foray into transmediating a TV show, however, Stranger

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Things ’ posed a problem for the established format: watching the whole series would be impossibly time-consuming, and screening one or two episodes would only feature a fragment of the show’s narrative. Therefore, unusually, some more visible type of adaptation was called for, raising the issue of fidelity. The finale comprised of re-enactments of moments from the series, performed by actors situated around the walls of the darkened venue. Multiple versions of characters were present, allowing Eleven to be shown at one end of the space, say, and then to suddenly appear elsewhere in the guise of a different look-alike actor. Integrated with projections and visual effects, as well as sometimes suddenly appearing within the space of the crowd, the overall effect was less that of a screening accompanied by live action, and more that of a Stranger Things live theatre performance or remediation. Reviewers who were unhappy with this shift argued that the finale performance was ‘essentially Stranger Thing[s] remixed’, amounting to a strange sort of ‘cover version’ of the series (Fullerton 2019). However, a range of fan responses online - YouTube review videos and blogs (CircuitTheWorld 2020; Summer 2020; Bradbury 2019; Scaretour 2019; Sanna 2019) - all tended to refer to this aspect of the transmedia experience as focusing on ‘highlights’ from the series. Admittedly, the same concept was used in the Secret Cinema ticketbuying FAQ, which cautioned that ‘the more you know about the series the more you will get out of the experience. We recommend catching up on the highlights of the series before you attend’ (Secret Cinema 2019). But there is no reason to suppose that this FAQ, which attendees may have read briefly months before attending, or may not have read at all, has any capacity to cue or frame the ‘highlights’ discourse shared in fan reactions. Fans’ approving use of ‘highlights’ accepts the fidelity of Secret Cinema’s remediations rather than contextualising these as a problematic ‘remix’ or ‘cover’. These celebratory fan responses also articulate the Secret Cinema event with highlight shows familiar from sporting events where ‘edited highlight packages serve as representations of sport spectacles’ (Gamache 2010, 79). Viewing Secret Cinema’s finale as a matter of ‘highlights’ can thus function as an over-determined form of ACR and auto-interpretation, explaining the term’s shared use across fan videos and blogs. The phrase is positively linked to spectacle in the form of sports mega-events (e.g. highlights of the day’s Olympics or World Cup matches), but it is also culturally connected with notions of both liveness

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and mediation—highlight shows are an edited version of a recent live event, i.e. a media construction or composition which it typically makes sense to consume within a ‘zone of liveness’ (Crisell 2012, 45). If sporting highlights usually replay liveness in a mediated form, then Secret Cinema’s Stranger Things finale inverts this, of course, re-producing a media text in the form of a radically compressed set of live ‘highlights’. As such, this isn’t just an audience-created relationality between texts (Stranger Things and abbreviated ‘highlight packages’). It also articulates and holds together, rather than logically separating out, cultural categories of the live and the mediated/recorded. Although some fans found it awkward to decide what to focus on during the finale, given that performed moments switched between different areas of the venue (Summer 2020), this type of complaint has been analysed in previous studies of Secret Cinema (Pett 2016, 161), reflecting fans’ lived and momentary sense of disrupted immersion. Fans were worried about not knowing what to attend to, and hence concerned about missing out on crucial details. Discussing Secret Cinema’s performed ‘highlights’ from three seasons of Stranger Things - i.e. ‘we saw all the show’s greatest hits brought to life’—enables attendees to perform the subcultural/fan cultural capital of having been there. This form of relative exclusivity (Nikdel 2017, 117) is largely ‘retroactive’, as it involves being able to look back on one’s Secret Cinema experience and narrate it for fellow fans, exactly as YouTube reviewers do, once they feel that an anti-spoiler stance no longer needs to be observed (CircuitTheWorld 2020). This ‘retroactive subcultural capital’ (Hills 2015, 106) may also explain why fans are so worried about missing out on aspects of the transmedia experience (Pett 2016, 161) - in a curiously hybrid temporality, missing out in the moment of the finale’s liveness, or failing to discover vital elements of the re-created diegesis, means anticipating that at some future point the fan won’t be able to look back and properly perform their subcultural/exclusive witnessing. As well as liveness and mediation being articulated through the ACR of a ‘highlights’ package, so too do these ‘highlights’ articulate projected futures concerning hopedfor pasts. And this doubled temporality is, it should be noted, somewhat distinct from the discussions of nostalgia which have predominated in the scholarship surrounding Stranger Things to date. My own mention of actually seeing Eleven ‘use’ her telekinetic powers in person could be read as one such ‘highlight’ of retroactive subcultural capital, albeit hailing from the opening section of the event rather than the finale.

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Conclusion The ‘polysemy’ of popular culture was once a well-worn tenet of media studies (Fiske 1986). In the rush to elaborate ‘new’ concepts and offer ‘new’ readings of media texts, this emphasis on the polysemic sometimes appears to have been displaced in favour of more decided and decidable scholarly interpretations. For instance, Stranger Things is a conservative, reactionary mobilisation of 1980s nostalgia (McFadzean 2019, 118; Hassler-Forest 2020). Or it is a ‘scathing comment’ on 1980s anti-ecological conservatism and deregulated consumer neoliberalism themes that continue to resonate in the present day (see Butler 2018; Fahy 2019). Yet by seeming to prioritise a kind of geek identification with the entire ‘production matrix’ (Wittenberg 2013, 191; Mollet 2019) of Hollywood’s Spielbergian 1980s horror/SF productivity and associated consumer goods, alongside connotatively linking neoliberalism with eruptions of government-sponsored monstrosity, Stranger Things might liminally be a both-and text rather than an either-or construction. Moving away from attempts to culturally-politically fix the series’ meaning, I have argued that we can start to examine how academics, fans and hybrid aca-fans posit their own audience-created-relationalities between Stranger Things and other media texts. In Bennett and Woollacott’s terms, these are audience-shaped ‘inter-textualities’ rather than text-based intertextualities. Of course, we need to remember that audiences do not make connections between Stranger Things and other media in a vacuum. At least some of audiences’ articulations between pop-cultural texts may overlap with textually provided intertextualities or with those amplified in official paratexts, which generally steer audiences to make certain ‘approved’ on-brand connections. Nonetheless, I have argued that there are some initial patterns to be discerned. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Stranger Things has been connected to Netflix’s other output, with fans themselves taking on (or agentively taking back) the role of algorithmic recommendation. Scholars have also performed a version of this Netflix orientation, reading Stranger Things in relation to brand strategies of transnational cultism. Fans and academics have both linked Stranger Things to further 1980sreferencing movies/TV shows—fans again as a matter of taste mediation, and critics as a way of arguing for a discrete subgenre/cycle (McFadzean 2019). In the most surprising and ‘unfaithful’ repositioning of Stranger Things examined here, fans on Reddit linked a controversial Season Two

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episode, “Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister”, to contemporary video games, reading it through the digital-consumerist lens of ‘downloadable content’. There is no text-based intertextual prompt for this, even if it continues the series’ interest in games, moving on from Dungeons & Dragons (Driscoll 2019, 79) and 1980s arcade games (Wetmore 2018, 65) to current gamer culture. Creating such relations between pop-cultural forms demonstrates a particular ‘reading formation’ (Bennett and Woollacott 1987, 64) on Reddit, where contemporary gaming is one lingua franca used to frame audience interpretations of Stranger Things. Finally, I looked at how Netflix and event audiences at Secret Cinema used Stranger Things itself as a way of auto-reading the show. This might be thought of as intratextuality, or as a practice that is powerfully on-brand, recognising the distinctiveness of the series. However, in some cases, audiences’ deployment of a ‘fidelity’ discourse stressed how Stranger Things was read as estranged from its own presumed textual essence. “The Lost Sister” again came in for criticism, whereas Stranger Things ’ embodiment via a Secret Cinema transmedia experience was more positively evaluated, albeit not only as a re-creation of the TV text, but also as a ‘highlights’ compilation. Secret Cinema attendees thus linked the finale of this transmedia extension to the format of editeddown montages familiar from live sporting events. ‘Highlights’ packages and ‘downloadable content’ (DLC) both indicate how unexpected media can be drawn on in the audience-created relations between texts, contra academic emphases on Stranger Things ’ 1980s intertextualities.

Notes 1. Given that Reddit users may, culturally, have an expectation that they are writing purely for other redditors, I have not directly identified the posters quoted in this piece. I have, on the other hand, identified the authors/creators of sites, blogs and YouTube videos, since I would argue that these readily circulate within a cultural understanding of the public domain, and are in fact designed to attract ‘views’.

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Works Cited Altmann, Alana. 2018. ‘6 Sci-Fi Shows on Netflix for “Stranger Things” Fans Who Already Miss the Upside Down.’ Elite Daily, March 23. https://www. elitedaily.com/p/6-sci-fi-shows-on-netflix-for-stranger-things-fans-who-alr eady-miss-the-upside-down-8590559. Accessed 9 September 2020. Atkinson, Sarah, and Helen W. Kennedy. 2018. ‘Afterword.’ In Live Cinema: Cultures, Economies, Aesthetics, edited by Sarah Atkinson and Helen W. Kennedy, 265–267. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Back to the Future. 1985. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Beer, David. 2013. Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, Tony, and Janet Woollacott. 1987. Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero. London: Macmillan. Bordwell, David. 1991. Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Bradbury, Sarah. 2019. ‘Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things: An Uncanny, Immersive Delight.’ The Up Coming, December 9. https://www.theupc oming.co.uk/2019/12/09/secret-cinema-presents-stranger-things-an-unc anny-immersive-delight/. Accessed 9 September 2020. Broe, Dennis. 2019. Birth of the Binge: Serial TV and the End of Leisure. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Brown, Stephen. 2007. ‘Harry Potter and the Fandom Menace.’ In Consumer Tribes, edited by Bernard Cova, Robert V. Kozinets, and Avi Shankar, 177– 193. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Burke, Liam. 2015. The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood’s Leading Genre. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Butler, Rose. 2018. ‘Welcome to the Upside Down: Nostalgia and Cultural Fears in Stranger Things.’ In Horror Television in the Age of Consumption: Binging on Fear, edited by Linda Belau and Kimberly Jackson, 187–201. London: Routledge. CircuitTheWorld. 2020. ‘Secret Cinema’s Stranger Things: How Events Unfolded for Alessia Yeager [Inc. Spoilers].’ YouTube, January 19. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmfq8iT2ssw. Accessed 9 September 2020. Consalvo, Mia. 2007. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. Crisell, Andrew. 2012. Liveness & Recording in the Media. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Driscoll, Paul. 2019. The Silver Archive: Stranger Things—Season 1. Edinburgh: Obverse Books.

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Dunleavy, Trisha. 2018. Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. New York and London: Routledge. Fahy, Thomas. 2019. ‘The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things (2016–present)— Horror and Nostalgia.’ In Horror: A Companion, edited by Simon Bacon, 103–109. New York: Peter Lang. Finn, Ed. 2017. What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. Fiske, John. 1986. ‘Television: Polysemy and Popularity.’ Critical Studies in Mass Communication 3 (4): 391–408. Fullerton, Huw. 2019. ‘Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things Review: “Disappointing and Slightly Baffling”.’ Radio Times, November 23. https://www. radiotimes.com/news/on-demand/2019-11-23/secret-cinema-stranger-thi ngs-review/. Accessed 9 September 2020. Gamache, Ray. 2010. ‘Genealogy of the Sportscast Highlight Form: From Peep Show to Projection to Hot Processor.’ Journal of Sports Media 5 (2): 77–106. Guschwan, Matthew. 2012. ‘Fandom, Brandom and the Limits of Participatory Culture.’ Journal of Consumer Culture 12 (1): 19–40. Harkness, Jane. 2020. ‘What to Watch on Netflix If You Love Stranger Things.’ Looper, March 20. Available at: https://www.looper.com/195896/what-towatch-on-netflix-if-you-love-stranger-things/. Accessed 9 September 2020. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2020. ‘“When You Get There, You Will Already Be There”: Stranger Things, Twin Peaks and the Nostalgia Industry.’ Science Fiction Film and Television 13 (2): 175–197. Hills, Matt. 2015. ‘Cult Cinema and the “Mainstreaming” Discourse of Technological Change: Revisiting Subcultural Capital in Liquid Modernity.’ New Review of Film and Television Studies 13 (1): 100–121. Hills, Matt. 2018. ‘From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars Celebration as Crossover/Hierarchical Space.’ In Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, 213–225. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. It. 2017. Directed by Andy Muschietti. Film. United States: New Line Cinema. Jablonski, Simon. 2019. ‘Even Stranger.’ The Sunday Times: Culture, November 24, p. 14. Jeffries, Dru. 2017. Comic Book Film Style: Cinema at 24 Panels Per Second. Austin: University of Texas Press. Jenner, Mareike. 2018. Netflix & the Reinvention of Television. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kant, Tanya. 2020. Making It Personal: Algorithmic Personalization, Identity and Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Landrum, Jason. 2017. ‘Nostalgia, Fantasy, and Loss: Stranger Things and the Digital Gothic.’ Intertexts 21 (1–2): 136–158.

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Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York and London: New York University Press. Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. London: Blackwell. Massanari, Adrienne L. 2015. Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit. New York: Peter Lang. McCarthy, Kayla. 2019. ‘Remember Things: Consumerism, Nostalgia, and Geek Culture in Stranger Things.’ The Journal of Popular Culture 52 (3): 663–677. McFadzean, Angus. 2019. Suburban Fantastic Cinema: Growing Up in the Late Twentieth Century. London and New York: Wallflower Press. McIntyre, Gina. 2018. Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down. London: Century. Midnight Special. 2016. Directed by Jeff Nichols. United States: Faliro House Productions. Mollet, Tracey. 2019. ‘Looking Through the Upside Down: HyperPostmodernism and Transmediality in the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things.’ Journal of Popular Television 7 (1): 57–77. Nikdel, E. W. 2017. ‘Cult Fandom and Experiential Cinema.’ In Cult Media Re-packaged, Re-released and Restored, edited by Jonathan Wroot and Andy Willis, 105–123. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pallister, Kathryn. Ed. 2019. Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand. Lanham: Lexington Books. Perks, Lisa Glebatis. 2015. Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality. Lanham: Lexington Books. Pett, Emma. 2016. ‘“Stay Disconnected”: Eventising Star Wars for Transmedia Audiences.’ Participations 13 (1): 152–169. Robinson, Jacob. 2020. ‘10 Best Shows Like “Stranger Things” on Netflix.’ What’s on Netflix, February 12. https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/what-towatch/10-best-shows-like-stranger-things-on-netflix/. Accessed 9 September 2020. Sanna, P. 2019. ‘What Did We Think of the Stranger Things Secret Cinema? Wave to Mummy, November 24. https://www.wavetomummy.com/2019/ 11/secret-cinema-stranger-things-review.html. Accessed 9 September 2020. Scaretour. 2019. ‘Review—Stranger Things by Secret Cinema.’ https:// www.scaretour.co.uk/review---stranger-things---secret-cinema.html. Accessed 9 September 2020. Secret Cinema. 2019. ‘FAQ: Welcome to the World of Secret Cinema Presents Stranger Things.’ https://strangerthings.tickets.co.uk/faq/. Accessed 9 September 2020. Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back. 1980. Directed by George Lucas. Film. United States: Lucasfilm Ltd.

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Summer of ’84. 2018. Directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell and YoannKarl Whissell. Film. Canada: Brightlight Pictures. Summer, Gemma. 2020. ‘Stranger Things Secret Cinema Review | My Experience.’ YouTube, March 17. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2oL8W iuCJ8. Accessed 9 September 2020. Super 8. 2011. Directed by J.J. Abrams. Film. United States: Amblin Entertainment. Wetmore, Kevin. 2018. ‘Monsters and Moral Panics: Dungeons & Dragons as Force of Good in Stranger Things.’ In Uncovering Stranger Things: Essays on Eighties Nostalgia, Cynicism and Innocence in the Series, edited by Kevin Wetmore, 60–69. Jefferson: McFarland. Wittenberg, David. 2013. Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative. New York: Fordham University Press. Woo, Benjamin. 2018. Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

CHAPTER 11

Neverending Story: How Transmedia Narratives Generate Cults Isabel Linton

During the final climactic moments of Stranger Things 3, fan favourite Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) connected with his new girlfriend, Suzie (Gabriella Pizzolo), singing a duet of the title track from the 1984 cult fantasy movie The NeverEnding Story (“Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt”). The sequence blurs generic boundaries between the predominantly sci-fi narrative and the musical genre by using split screen and melodramatic close-ups of the couple while they perform. It also acknowledges the cult status of the movie itself, and of Stranger Things, by encouraging the show’s audience to join the characters in a community of song, echoing fans’ engagement with other cult musicals such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). The sequence is indicative of Stranger Things’ postmodern, transmedial appeal to its fandom, the intertextually aware cult media audience (Sandvoss 2007). Stranger Things actively engages its fans through a myriad of intertextual referencing strategies, building its hyperdiegetic storyworld (Hills 2002) through

I. Linton (B) Bangor University, Bangor, Wales, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_11

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both the canon text and through a series of transmedial paratexts which guide its fans ‘between its structures [and give them] the resources with which [they] will both interpret and discuss that world’ (Gray 2010, 1). As Mark Jancovich has underlined, cult audiences are ‘themselves brought together, and a sense of “imagined community” is produced and maintained, through the media’ (2002, 318). It is this imagined community which allows fans to achieve a sense of belonging, not just with other fans, but to forge a connection with the characters, creators and cast of any given cult media text. This chapter will explore the transmedial narratives surrounding Stranger Things, including classic paratexts, such as promos and trailers released on YouTube; cast featurettes, which are paratexts produced and starring the cast of the show; what I term ‘commercial’ paratexts, such as Stranger Things 3’s collaboration with Coca-Cola and fan-generated content, such as Twitter campaigns and fan videos. In Stranger Things, the show’s paratextual elements activate their social media channels to blur the lines between reality and the storyworld, ensuring that despite the lengthy hiatus between seasons, the story of Stranger Things is in itself, never-ending, as fans and the show’s cast and crew continue to promote and engage with the narrative. This chapter will reveal that Stranger Things activates its social media channels as a way to encourage further interaction between its fans. As the blurring of reality and fiction allows audiences to imagine and engage with another world while online, it also enables them to experience that world with other fans of the show, thus building a stronger sense of community.

Transmedial Storytelling and Paratexts Henry Jenkins states that in transmedia storytelling, ‘ideally each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story’ (2007, n.p.). Although Stranger Things has a clear central urtext in the form of the Netflix series, there are additional contributions which provide extratextual content. This differs from the transmedial world of a film such as The Matrix (1999), where ‘There is no one single source or urtext where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe’ (Jenkins 2007, n.p.). Stranger Things on Netflix is a central source of content, but paratextual components of the series form some of the most significant experiences for fans, acting both as entry points to the show’s content and increasing audience engagement.

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Gérard Genette defines paratextuality as ‘comprising those liminal devices and conventions, both within the book (peritext) and outside it (epitext), that mediate the book to the reader’ (1997, xviii, parentheses in original). More than ‘a boundary or a sealed border, the paratext is, rather, a threshold’ (1–2), which provides ‘an airlock that helps the reader pass without too much respiratory difficulty from one world to the other’ (408). Paratexts are conceived as thresholds, which holds further meaning in the narrative of Stranger Things, as the show focuses on the crossing of a threshold into another world: the Upside Down. This passing between worlds (or crossing of thresholds) also works in reverse, as Stranger Things attempts to insert its narrative into history, blurring the boundaries between the real and the fantastic. This crossing of thresholds also aids the participatory fan nature of the show. Cult television media often blends genres, featuring sprawling and widely developed storyworlds which encourage cult-like behaviour from fans who theorise and debate the nature of the canon narrative (Gray et al. 2007). As Matt Hills aptly states, ‘world theories have usually been adopted in relation to media franchises’ hyperdiegetic storyworlds and transmedia storytelling’ (2017, 860–861). Earlier cult media texts such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003) and Lost (2004–2010) engaged fans through merchandising tie ins and transmedia elements. For example, fans of Buffy could purchase the Sunnydale High School Year Book; fans of Dawson’s Creek could read characters’ summer diaries on the show’s Website; and fans of Lost could seek out extra material on the Dharma Initiative through the show’s numerous Internet-based paratexts (Brooker 2004; Pearson 2009). However, as Stranger Things is itself a Web-based text, it capitalises on the ‘everydayness’ of the Internet (Hills 2018). As Valerie Wee explains, ‘there is a perception that the new media environment allows content producers and distributors, and media users, consumers, and audiences alike to freely interact and to mutually and simultaneously participate in both the creation and the consumption of media content’ (2017, 134). Stranger Things, responding to this environment, utilises its social media channels to incite further interaction between the show’s fans. The blurring of reality and fiction also allows audiences to experience the world of the show with other online fans, building a sense of community. As Marie-Laure Ryan has argued, digital culture facilitates ‘immersive/interactive environments that allow a much more active

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participation of the experiencer’ (2013, n.p.). It is this immersive environment which aids in the creation and maintenance of cult fan communities, while an active participation from its members is both induced and maintained through a seemingly endless array of textual entry points. As Yonah Ringlestein explains, ‘part of the appeal of transmedia is how it enables consumers to perform their desire for unity – the more points of entry you engage with, the closer you are to grasping the entire story’ (Ringlestein 2013, 375). This is further boosted by the digital world and the changing nature of media consumption. Fans can now engage with a rich myriad of paratexts for their favourite shows which are scattered across their digital playground, through official paratextual content on YouTube and Twitter and fan-generated epitexts such as fanfiction, images and edits.

Classic Paratexts Many of the epitexts of Stranger Things are displayed on the Stranger Things YouTube channel. By Genette’s definition, epitexts exist outside of the book, or in this case, the urtext. Many scholars have drawn attention to the lack of extratextual features on the Netflix interface - which would usually be accessed and engaged with by cult audiences (McDonald and Smith-Rowsey 2016; Jenner 2018; Johnson 2019). However, Stranger Things utilises its YouTube channel to allow fans to access this type of content, facilitating community and discussion around its own paratexts. In many ways, the Stranger Things YouTube channel features similar content to traditional DVD special features, such as audio commentary, deleted scenes and blooper reels. These features are still of interest to fans but, as explained by Monika Mehta, ‘DVDs are in the process of being consigned to an industrial past, as bonus features now appear on YouTube’ (2017, 130). This extra content allows audiences to continue their engagement with the show between seasons, providing them with what feels like an exclusive insight into the development of the story, giving them the impression of being closer to the narrative, characters and cast. By moving the narrative away from the urtext and onto a popular social media platform, Stranger Things can be seen to reassert its position as a mainstream cult media text. It creates a sense of exclusivity through the transmedial migration of its narrative, and yet the dominance of YouTube allows this exclusive content to reach a mass audience. It can be seen, therefore, to ‘reject dominant cultural values while remaining

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safely inscribed within them’ (Mendik and Harper 2000, 19). This type of content attracts the cult fan, as by watching these paratexts, they can feel a sense of inclusivity in a community or a superiority over other viewers who are less engaged. This is also achieved through many Stranger Things paratexts and their platform of address. The first trailer for the second season of Stranger Things, for example, was originally screened at ComicCon - a well-known location for cult fandoms to gather. This in itself provided an added layer of exclusivity for fans who were present at its first showing. This exclusivity is also present in terms of the trailer’s invited interpretation. It begins with the show’s four main characters excitedly playing the video game, ‘Dragon’s Lair’, which they quickly lose, before the screen darkens and we see Will Byers (Noah Schapp), stranded alone in the arcade, flickering between the real world and the Upside Down. The tension builds through clips of the dark landscape and dramatic music before Will is abruptly returned to normality. As the Netflix logo emerges and fades, the distinctive music of Michael Jackson’s Thriller plays, showcasing clips from the upcoming season, edited specifically to sync in with Vincent Price’s commentary. This method of cutting encouraged fans to look for hidden meanings within the trailer and even post reaction videos and analyses. The trailer also further embeds the narrative of the show in the audience’s reality by including another fandoms synonymous with the 1980s, and the music video for Thriller also plays with generic conventions by merging music video with horror film, further re-affirming the ‘cultisms’ of the show. Finally, the Season Two trailer shares similarities to fan-made videos, where fans create content by editing clips from a show to popular music. While the trailer is now available on YouTube, it is not on the show’s official YouTube channel, so fans must actively seek out the new content, rather than it appearing in their subscription box. However, as Ryan observes: ‘People are willing to look for information in many documents and across multiple platforms because they are so in love with the storyworld that they cannot get enough information about it’ (2015, 4). As such, Stranger Things encourages and enables these fans by providing further content for them, regardless of where it is uploaded. A more recent promo, ‘Stranger Things 4 | From Russia with love… | Netflix’ (Stranger Things 2020a) strikes a different tone. It was uploaded directly to the Stranger Things official YouTube channel and features the Netflix logo in the corner throughout, immediately giving the video a

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clear authorial voice. The clip ends abruptly with no ending titles or reference to Stranger Things, but the connection is clear from the channel, and audiences can automatically make the connection between the character shown and the series. Showing the Netflix logo also makes it clear to fans that this is a canonical entry to the urtext. The previous season of the show ended with the death of Hopper (David Harbour), much to the devastation of fans who spoke out on Twitter using the hashtag #justiceforhopper. Cult fans elicit discourse regarding the show between each series, as ‘the hypertextuality of the Internet forces the reader/user into the active construction of the text’s boundaries’ (Sandvoss 2007, 23). Many fans discussed the idea that they did not believe the character had died and shared their emotional reaction, not only to his death but to a letter read by Eleven, purportedly written by the character. These fan reactions further facilitate the blurring of boundaries between the fictional world and the real world. The Hopper trailer also serves as an ‘intimate’ paratext (Genette 1997, 9) for fans waiting to learn the outcome of a beloved character. To a member of the public not yet engaged with the Stranger Things narrative, although they may understand some significance to the revelation - due to music, camera angle, significance of the brief video clip itself - the text itself has little meaning. Whereas ‘public’ paratexts (1997, 9), such as commercial adverts, act as an equaliser for all viewers, be they existing audiences, cult fans or new potential viewers, Stranger Things also uses the ‘private’ epitext (xviii), such as its cast featurettes, to correspond intimately with existing fans.

Cast Featurettes As the YouTube channel progressed and the stars of Stranger Things gained more popularity with fans, the channel began a series of videos of the cast on their world tour. These videos are vlog-like, presented and recorded by the actors of the show and, although professionally edited and presented, they give the viewer the impression that the cast are addressing them directly and engaging with them on an equal footing. The cast are no longer performing as their fictional selves, the characters with which fans are so invested, but are now showing their true - or perceived to be true - personalities to their fans. Sandvoss observes that fans’ interests ‘often focus on what lies behind the public façade’ (Sandvoss 2007, 22), and with social media such as YouTube and Twitter, fans no longer have to seek this information out, as it is

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given to them freely by the stars which they follow; in this case, via the official YouTube channel. Audiences can also follow many actors’ Twitter accounts, where they are able to - or are given the impression that they are able to - engage directly with the actors. The first of the vlog videos ‘Stranger Things 3 World Tour | New York City | Episode 1’ (Stranger Things 2019) reveals the element of control from the Duffer Brothers, as editing says ‘WE GAVE THEM CAMERAS’, implying that this is a verified and official account coordinated by the text’s producers. Chin and Hills state that, ‘when a television producer/auteur or an actor sets up a blog, fans flock to these sites for a chance to communicate with their favoured subcultural celebrities, seeking to attain a sense of connection with the “extraordinary”, and a degree of intimacy with the very people whose work they admire’ (2008, 258). The use of the ‘we’ personal pronoun gives the impression of an inclusive cast and crew, inviting audiences to become part of the Stranger Things ’ family. The series of videos also provides a connection between fans and the cast, as they are given an insight ‘behind the scenes’, seeing how the cast behave when they are making guest appearances on reality TV programmes to discuss the show. Cast member Sadie Sink is even featured saying ‘I feel like a vlogger’, highlighting the difference between the scripted and staged characters they play on the primary show. Gaten Matarazzo ends the first video by saying ‘I hope you guys enjoy this […] I guess you could say video diary’, addressing fans directly while also revealing the intimate view he has of the production. These videos still feature the Stranger Things and Netflix logo and branding to show the authority and validity of the videos, while also reducing the perceived distance between fans and the series’ characters. Videos which directly address fans could be considered an example of what Genette calls the private epitext, or ‘authorial correspondence’ (1997, xviii), as they are direct correspondence with fans. While this term originally referred to letters and conversations, social media means that fans can engage directly with the cast and crew of shows which they are watching. Therefore, the YouTube videos, although public, are produced and directed to fans, not the general public, who would not gain any real meaning from them. They also bridge the gap between seasons and provide extra content for fans, as Genette states that a paratext is ‘a transitional zone between text and beyond-text’ (1997, 407). The vlog-style videos are more akin to private epitexts than public, as they are making an address on the assumption that the audience is a fan. Although the cast

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members featured are not the creators of the show, they are given this authority both by the Duffer Brothers, as shown through editing, and by the fans who perceive the cast as having authority over the text through their involvement as the characters.

Adverts as Paratexts The public paratexts of Stranger Things, such as its promotional videos or trailers, progress from simply sharing content with fans to advertising in a more commercial way. A significant paratext is the prelude to Season Three, which provides no direct link to the existing text, apart from the location, and the brief inclusion of one character, Steve (Joe Keery). The video, ‘Coming Soon: The Starcourt Mall! | Hawkins, Indiana’ (Stranger Things 2018) is an advertisement for the new Starcourt Mall, which is coming to Hawkins and will go on to feature heavily in Season Three. The scene is immediately set by a narrator who states ‘Earth. America. Indiana. Hawkins’. This places the setting firmly in the real world, making connections between the setting and fans, which gives the impression of the storyworld being a ‘possible world’ as ‘for a world to be possible, it must be linked to the actual world by a relation of accessibility’ (Ryan 2013, n.p.). The trailer showcases and describes shops available in the mall, which are easily recognisable by viewers, who may shop there or remember shopping there. A storefront for The Gap is shown, with branding from the 1980s, setting the era of the trailer and providing a sense of nostalgia for fans who can remember the design. Other stores featured include Waldenbooks and Sam Goody, which no longer exist, but are still recognisable. When audiences recognise the shops in the video, they understand that they can engage with those shops - or may have engaged with them previously - and are encouraged to participate in the world of the brands, including purchasing related merchandise. This targets the cult fan audience, as they are the type of audience who would engage with the show in this way. Unlike other videos on the channel, there is no ending title referencing Stranger Things or Netflix, so audiences may be unaware of any connection to the text if not for the channel name, and the appearance of character Steve. The video resonates with fans, as it generates excitement for the new series, or hype, which ‘aims to be the first word on any text, so that it creates excitement, working to create frames through which we can make sense of the text before even consuming it’ (Gray 2008, 34).

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The video gives a clear indicator of the setting, or key feature of the new series, and rewards fans who recognise the character Steve being present in the trailer. The third season of Stranger Things featured a collaboration with Coca-Cola, including a promotional video that advertised the show and the drink. The video begins in a similar manner to the Starcourt Mall trailer, in that it mimics the quality of footage from the 1980s, but makes clear the connection to Stranger Things by featuring central characters from the beginning, as Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) affectionately dubbed ‘LuMax’ by fans - play next to a vending machine, and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven - Mileven - are shown kissing next to a staged can of New Coke. The video features other 1980s imagery, before linking back to Starcourt Mall as Steve visits its cinema and orders a New Coke. The staff member asks if Steve is on a date, but unlike the romantic pairings shown so far, Steve is meeting a friend, who is quickly revealed to be Dustin, who laments his own lack of female partner. After some playful banter, the friends knock cups, again displaying the iconic New Coke logo. Just as the movie begins, the mall loses power, and the audience is reminded of the Upside Down, but this time they are shown an inverted Coca-Cola logo, employing the recognisable font of Stranger Things. The cheesy 1980s imagery and nostalgia for New Coke may not resonate with younger audiences, and as such, the inclusion of romantic pairings provides them with a connection to the trailer, targeting fans who ‘ship’ - short for relationship - the couples shown. These happy pairings are a beacon to ‘shippers’, fans ‘whose primary interest is in a romantic pairing within the show’s cast of characters’ (Hadas 2013, 336). Therefore, the promotional video still appeals to all groups of the Stranger Things audience, regardless of whether they have knowledge of the advertised product. The video is no longer available on YouTube, the link stating that this is due to a copyright claim by the Coca-Cola Company; however, other users have uploaded and recirculated the video (Near Mint Fanboys 2019), while the original tweet featuring the video can be found on the Way Back Machine (Coca-Cola 2019). This paratext thus engages fans by generating excitement for the upcoming series, but is also clearly an advert promoting a soft drink. In addition, the advertising tells fans that Stranger Things exists in the audience’s actual world, as the connection to a recognisable brand makes the content more accessible, which ‘ties the fictional world to [the Actual World] through a common

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past history, geography, and inventory of individuals’ (Ryan 2013, n.p.). The narrative of Stranger Things has now become intrinsically linked to the history of Coca-Cola and vice versa. By framing Stranger Things as a presence in our own reality, viewers can also play with the notion that perhaps the Upside Down, too, is an actual-world reality.

Fan Engagement and Creation The online nature of Stranger Things encourages fans to engage with, and generate, their own community alongside the show, and particularly in between series, which generates hype and excitement. A good example of this kind of fan activity occurs in the #justiceforBarb campaign, which began with the first season of Stranger Things, when a minor character, Barb (Shannon Purser), was killed in the Upside Down. Cult fans often ‘[identify] with subversive characters’ (Kinkade and Katovich 1992, 194), and Barb’s death drew attention from fans who took to social media to express their frustration at her demise and demanded justice for her narrative. The response to Barb is well defined by writer Brian Moylan in a Vulture article: ‘Nancy is an archetype created through an evil conspiracy launched by Wes Craven, John Hughes, and Molly Ringwald sometime during the Reagan administration. It’s a conspiracy more dangerous than nuclear proliferation, because everyone is still trying to be Nancy and hating who they really are: Barb’ (Moylan 2016, n.p.). Indeed, unlike Will, also dragged into the Upside Down, Barb lacked a close-knit group of friends, and at least to the audience, a devoted mother, to bring her back from the void. Barb’s only friend, Nancy, was busy pursuing her love life, and it was this neglect that led to Barb’s death. Audiences connected with this, due to Barb’s low social status in school. This can be seen by following the hashtag #justiceforBarb, where fans expressed their take: for example, user @AllisonRFloyd tweeted, ‘I know it’s been years, but I’m still really, really not okay with what happened to Barb on Stranger Things. Super upsetting. #JusticeForBarb’ (Floyd 2019). This tweet prompted a discussion from other users, who replied with comments such as, ‘The whole school’s apathy about Barb disappearing was pretty disturbing’; ‘She just wanted to follow the rules’ and ‘That no one missed her always breaks my heart. If Nancy hadn’t asked would anyone have noticed she wasn’t there?’. More recently, user @mabdacuma tweeted ‘I know I am super late to the game here, but I am 2.1 episodes into Stranger Things and Barb deserved

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better, and I am especially pained about this having been a Barb’ (Dacuma 2020). Here, the user notes that she felt a connection to the character, perhaps due to similar experiences in her past. The @strangerwriters account also engaged in Barb-related content and posted a tweet saying ‘rip barb’ including an image of the dead character (@strangerwriters 2020). This encouraged fans to continue their discourse on the character, with one fan replying with ‘why are you doing this to us?’. The Stranger Things YouTube channel has also engaged in the discussion surrounding Barb’s fate in the description of their upload, ‘Stranger Things Rewatch | Clip: Barb is Dead | Netflix’, which simply states ‘Barb is 100% dead’ (Stranger Things 2017). As discussed, ‘[blogging] has provided a new cultural space for media producers to engage with fan-consumers’ (Chin and Hills 2008, 253). The writers not only engage in fan-like discourse, but provoke fans to continue their discussions with each other, using social media and hashtags as a way for fans to find each other: ‘The media provide the systems of communication that bring fans together and create the impression of an imagined community’ (Gwenllian-Jones and Pearson 2004, 29). By uniting fans with each other, their activities are normalised, and fans are encouraged to engage in further cult-like behaviour. In this instance, fans of Stranger Things effectively developed their own sub-cult around Barb, and this was explicitly facilitated by content offered by official Stranger Things social media channels, including the YouTube account and @strangerwriters on Twitter. One of the more engaging elements of YouTube is that fans not only view content but can also create and share their own content on the platform. Many fans, not only of Stranger Things but across all fandoms, upload video edits, often called fanvids or vids, to YouTube, collating their favourite clips to music. The Stranger Things YouTube channel uploads similar videos to these fans, pairing popular couples together and uploading highlight reels, which invites fans to engage in the generation and development of paratexts: ‘Consumers have no control over the industry but take the texts that it produces and subvert them for their own ends. They appropriate the fruits of the cultural industries but in ways that resist the controlling power of the media’ (GwenllianJones and Pearson 2004, 40). For example, the video ‘Stranger Things | Together’ (Little Mat 2019) was uploaded shortly after the release of Season Three. The video title mirrors the style of the official Stranger Things YouTube layout and focuses on clips from Season Three. The

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user appropriates the description box to communicate directly with other fans, stating ‘WARNING: SPOILERS SEASON 3’ and ‘I own nothing but the editing’, showing that they are claiming no ownership of the content while conveying the work that they have invested into the edit. Other fans use the comment section to commend the editor, with one fan commenting ‘Do a mileven edit too’, using a popular shipping term. Rebecca Tushnet discusses fans’ moral perception of their activity, stating that they ‘acknowledge copyright owners’ legitimate economic interests, but maintain that their activities do not hurt and even help revenues from authorized works’ (Tushnet 2007, 64). As fans, they feel that they hold some claim on their text, even though they know they were not involved in its creation. Fan disclaimers are also ‘directed at an imagined audience, the copyright owners/original creators’ (Tushnet 2007, 65). This directly implies that fans are imagining that those authority figures, the creators of the series, will be engaging with their content. Another user also adopts the same title structure in ‘Stranger Things | Heroes’ (slyfer2812 2019). This user has a much larger following and so in turn has generated their own fans, in addition to fans of the show itself. Again, this user includes a copyright disclaimer in their video description; however, the end of their video also features an end credit ‘BY SLYFER2812’ claiming credit for the work. There is an element of selfmonitoring in fandom circles, as ‘being socialized into a fan community means being policed in relation to communal norms’ (Hills 2017, 878). Fans feel that they must clearly state their lack of authority regarding a text, but when they begin to gain their own authorial voice (through a large number of subscribers on YouTube for example), they can also begin to take some credit for their submission to the world. These videos are continuations of the fan experience outside of official channels. While the Duffer Brothers may have no knowledge or active involvement in the development of these texts, the videos are still a collaboration between creator and fans: ‘By transmediating the public domain instead of corporate private property and distributing amateur and professional works through similar digital platforms, fans and professionals collaborate in such transmedia networks’ (Kustritz 2019, 141). Fans envisage a direct link between themselves and the auteur, and by uploading onto the same platform as the official content, fans are positioning themselves in a level of authority. Genette states: ‘By definition, something is not a paratext unless the author or one of his associates accepts responsibility for it, although the degree of responsibility may vary’ (1997, 9). By creating

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fannish videos and inviting fans to engage in this manner, Stranger Things and its creators are by default accepting responsibility for the paratext, even if they are not truly faithful to the authors’ vision. However, due to the nature of the upload, there is a higher level of legitimacy of texts on Stranger Things YouTube due to the authority it holds compared to fan accounts.

Conclusion Stranger Things succeeds at mobilising fans in its own cultdom, not only through its central narrative urtext, but by engaging directly with the audience through social media and framing producers and fans as equals. In particular, the use of paratexts such as YouTube videos and physical events help to immerse fans in the text, not only through engaging with other fans but through official channels which validate their passion for the show. According to Genette, a threshold text ‘exists to be crossed’ (1997, 410), and Stranger Things creates thresholds for fans, inviting them into a community where they can engage with other fans and generate their own content. The ability to cross thresholds is emphasised by the narrative parallels with the fictitious threshold within the show, the Upside Down, and audiences progress through multiple layers of engagement with Stranger Things, across multiple different platforms, furthering their appreciation of the urtext. The sequence of Dustin and Suzie’s performance of ‘NeverEnding Story’, as discussed in this chapter’s introduction, showcases Stranger Things ’ self-awareness, referencing other cult stories and audiences. This creates an environment where Stranger Things is both a text which has fans and acts as a fannish entity itself, through the media it references. Through Stranger Things ’ playful engagement with paratexts, including events, videos, and social media, fans are encouraged to develop their own content between each season, which in turn allows the story of Stranger Things to be never-ending.

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CHAPTER 12

Sponsored Things: Audiences and the Commodification of the Past in Stranger Things Antonella Mascio

Stranger Things, with its extensive references to 1980s culture, could be considered a true repertory of that decade. The show’s nostalgic aesthetics and mood has secured the attention of Generation X and encouraged a contemporary retrieval and revival of pop texts, fashion and music from the period. The fans of this generation have shown their attachment to Stranger Things through appropriation and textual enhancement practices, by publishing memes, wearing T-shirts and posting images of vintage objects referencing the 1980s. This is something mostly visible online, where users post images and texts, testifying their affection for the TV series. Halloween costumes and outfits inspired by Stranger Things characters are often present in Generation Z user profiles, while comments related to the soundtrack, or on teen past-times featured in the narrative, are a part of the online discussions in forums by Generation X followers.

A. Mascio (B) Bologna University, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_12

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In both cases, these are nostalgic references emerging and being valued in different ways, by distinct generational groups. Drawing on the theoretical framework of nostalgia studies, this chapter examines the way in which the narrative of Stranger Things encourages a commodification of the past, actively engaging its cult audience of fans in consumption through its specific focus on retro-culture. Starting with textual analysis, using Umberto Eco’s concept of the model reader (1979), we can trace two different and possible reading paths of Stranger Things, connected with Gen X and Gen Z cohorts. The analysis will assess the results of a questionnaire and a series of interviews conducted with a sample of the show’s viewers to investigate its influence as a product of nostalgia marketing. The questionnaire, administered to a group of 20– 25 year olds, and the interviews, conducted with individuals aged 46 to 54, will be used to explore the ways in which the show’s links to 1980s pop culture are experienced and accessed by different audience demographics. In particular, the analysis will consider how the show’s nostalgia, skilfully embedded at narrative level, plays specific roles not only to create an emotional effect between the text and the audience, but also with the aim of creating marketing opportunities in partnership with several brands.

Stranger Things, Cult Television and Nostalgia Stranger Things ’ articulation of its storytelling and development and its ‘cinematic’ modes aid us in classifying the show as a ‘complex’ text (Caldwell 1995; Dunleavy 2017). Its ‘density of visual texture’ (Nelson 2007, 113) invites the viewer to linger over the composition of the mise-en-scène, infused with nostalgic references to create an ‘authentic’ version of the 1980s. As Brett Mills reminds us, ‘the cinematic can be seen to delineate programming that prioritises the visual more than what is assumed to be typical for television, offering audiences both narrative meaning and pleasure in the imagery that appears on the screen’ (2013, 58). Mills’ remark is useful to understanding how these kinds of texts present multiple layers of interpretation and enjoyment. It is also this ‘narrative complexity’ (Mittell 2015) that ties the show to the cult television paradigm. Matt Hills observes that there are often some textual commonalities to cult television texts, including their generic affiliation to science fiction, horror and fantasy, and their inclusion of a ‘hyperdiegesis’—a new narrative world for the show’s audience (Hills 2002).

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Stranger Things is arguably unique in that it also presents its ‘telefantasy’ narrative through a second magical hyper-diegesis for its fans: the 1980s. Stranger Things presents this decade as a universe of references for its cult audience, activating its sense of nostalgia (Mathijs and Mendik 2008). Following the aesthetic dynamics brought into play by the text and relating to the historical period being considered, it is possible to trace two outlines set for the reading and interpretation of the series. One concerns all those who, through narration, experience a world they have never known directly, while the other considers viewers who have experienced that world first hand. At first glance, Stranger Things may appear to speak to the lucrative cult teen market (Davis and Dickinson 2004; Ross and Stein 2008) through its central focus on a ‘coming of age’ narrative for its group of leading tweens, but the show also facilitates a second reading path, addressed to an anagraphical older audience. Stranger Things is, above all, a nostalgic product, and its narrative construction helps us to understand why it has become a cult hit for audiences belonging to diverse generational cohorts. Nostalgia, in effect, involves a feeling and desire for a past which some have never encountered, while others have experienced it and left it behind. It is a longing that finds its linchpin in loss, around which a range of feelings and emotions can emerge: ‘Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy’ (Boym 2001, xii). The feeling of nostalgia also belongs to a shared experience in its referring to common historical events which have marked past epochs and are increasingly being brought back into the present moment via media storytelling. It is through its contemporary reawakening that Stranger Things evokes what Tom Vanderbilt (1994) defines as ‘displaced nostalgia’ and for Janelle Wilson ‘refers to nostalgia for times which were not known to us firsthand’ (2014, 32). Nostalgia, therefore, is a complex mood, induced both by specific and well-defined signs anchored in the past and by situations, objects and habits, thus working as a time simulacrum that no longer exists. Its evocative (melancholic) and - at the same time - projective (and sometimes optimistic) power is increasingly used in media productions (Loock 2017; Tsapovsky and Frosh 2015; Garner 2016). Thus, nostalgia has indeed emerged as one of the dominant aesthetics of our time (Niemeyer 2014; Wetmore 2018), and TV series such as Stranger Things are a substantial part of this. The show presents an imaginary story set in a past which is defined by its cultural references, thus charging the narration, characters and objects

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appearing on screen with specific aesthetic connotations. Through its plot, protagonists, set design and costuming, Stranger Things is configured as a possible world that uses a recognisable cultural background. The nostalgia induced by the show not only refers to viewers in their forties and fifties, but it also includes the new generations who can enjoy that world alongside and as a part of their own contemporary existence. As Niemeyer and Wentz argue, ‘nostalgia is a powerful way to create this bond’ (2014, 129), as it provides ‘a specific function for media, where the evoking of nostalgic emotions, the symbolic charge of things, aims at turning those things into desirable commodities’ (133). The 1980s serves here as a repertoire of styles to draw on, enabling a functional use of intertextuality through which nostalgia is used both as a mechanism of contemporary cult television and as an effect to obtain a relationship that ties the viewer ‘passionately’ with the text (Pezzini 1998). In this way, nostalgia becomes a device within the text capable of triggering an intense tie between the narrative and its viewers. The show thus immediately activates cult followings in different audiences: it is both the preserve of a ‘golden age’ rebuilt in retrospect for those who experienced the decade first hand and an object of desire for contemporary audiences.

Stranger Things, Generation X and Retro-Marketing By drawing on a repository of cultural—and above all medial—scenarios from the 1980s, Stranger Things functions as a stage for props and products that make up the show’s 1980s hyper-diegesis. These products are charged with values (passionate, cognitive, cultural and social) deriving precisely from the nostalgic discourse. For this, we find in them an overlapping of the levels of meaning: these are objects where the values of the past have been inscribed as they derive from the historical period being considered, but they are also endowed with meanings linked to their placement in the plot and therefore connected to their presence in the text. The objects are thus provided with more possibilities of meaning: it is the viewer–consumer who attributes a value to them, based on their own experiences. This was certainly evidenced within my interview responses collected from the sample of Gen X viewers. For instance, for some of the interviewees, characters wearing certain outfits facilitate a recollection of specific clothes worn by fans in the 1980s. For many of them, the rituals performed by characters created a connection with their past: the sense

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of friendship between teenagers as well as their way of spending time together, without the explicit use of technology. By referring to a past that adults can remember and staging stories full of quotes from popular culture in those years, the show has become for many a cult text that concerns their own generation, because it offers a ‘pop’ cross section of the eighties. For many of the respondents, watching Stranger Things meant thinking back to their adolescence, finding themselves again in their bedrooms with movie posters on the walls and feeling moved by the songs in the soundtrack. As one respondent shared, ‘It is a sort of an emotional nostalgia of myself as a little girl’.1 The show’s landscape and its mood thus work as mechanisms triggering the strong participation of audiences, recalling a familiar experience, located in a historical past. Statements like, ‘I found my adolescence back in the soundtrack’, or, ‘It brought my mind back to the jumpsuit I had in my closet’, or again, while ‘watching Stranger Things I recalled the days spent playing with my friends, riding our bicycles’, are just fragments of the interviews administered to the Gen X fans group, showing the impact Stranger Things was having on them. This creates new relational modes between the text and its viewers: the viewing framework recalls meta-reflexive modes of fruition. The text takes up, therefore, the role of activating links between fictional stories on screen and the possibility of grafting them into one’s own personal memories. As Ugo Volli writes (2002), in TV programs, the cult includes intertextuality and citation, features that are present in Stranger Things, as we have already seen. In the TV series, there are not only simple connections with a historical memory generally linked to pop culture: the plot uses pop cults from the past, thus showing their importance at the time when they were taking hold. For example, the impact that Ghostbusters (1984) has for the group of friends in Stranger Things, evokes in adults the winter when the movie hit the cinema halls and the great resonance it had, together with personal memories linked to this event. For these groups of viewers, the kind of loyalty-building produced by Stranger Things is therefore linked to the cults from the past. All that contributes to the pleasure induced in the viewer by the text (Barthes 1973), and nostalgia is part of this pleasure. The show’s depiction of daily life in the 1980s is specifically conveyed by the staging of habits and objects rich in meaning, like the boys’ bicycles, LEGO, Eggo waffles and the 1980s video games that they play.

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These are a focal point for the show’s activation of personal nostalgia for the show’s older audience. All this refers to a positive association between the objects from the past and the ways they were used, which cross-reference with a system of instructions specifically linked to those objects (affordances). For example, regarding video games, Wulf et al. argue that ‘remembering gaming experiences can create nostalgia and that competence and relatedness fulfilments within memory connect to nostalgic reverie […] nostalgia contributes to self-continuity’ (2018, 62). However, it cannot be denied that these objects were prized commodities in the 1980s (as they are for the tweens within the narrative), and thus, they are turned into merchandise for the show’s contemporary audience, facilitating a consumer-based engagement with the show’s retro-culture. The presence of a great quantity of objects from those years, playing relevant roles in the narrative, and the attention paid to their detail (the stripes of some T-shirts, or some sneakers, for example) cannot go unnoticed. All of the narrative, from the first to the third season, is interspersed with products of 1980s pop culture, from the posters of hit movies hung on the kids’ bedroom walls to music clips and walkie talkies. This has long been a feature of 1980s fantasy movies. As Angus McFadzean reminds us, ‘multinational capital […] manifests itself in the representation of the corporate business world, or more specifically, the force that produces the commodities that clutter suburbia’ (2019, 94). The bikes and video games are intertextually important, as they link the show to its 1980s cinematic counterparts, but they also link to consumption practices and what is on offer on the market. The TV series are comprised within this framework, so much so that many games based on the TV series are typically 1980s: graphics are retro in their aesthetic, serving to reinforce the authenticity of Stranger Things as a ‘true’ 1980s text. The presence of products of 1980s pop culture pushes Gen X viewers into a game of recognition and makes forays into the territories of intertextuality. Such experiences are common for cult television audiences who are targeted to buy the merchandise that accompanies these kinds of narratives (Abbott 2010, 1). This was also evidenced through a survey carried out among the show’s younger audience, which involved a questionnaire administered to 350 university students aged 20 to 25 and will be explored in the next section of this chapter.2 Alongside films like E.T. (1982), Ghostbusters (1984) and The Goonies (1985) which featured in many answers, other intertexts which seem further removed from the core themes of Stranger Things were also referenced. These

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included Flashdance (1983), Star Wars (1977) and Magnum PI (1980– 1988), which, although produced and featured during the 1980s, are not mentioned explicitly in Stranger Things. The show therefore not only triggers the identification of those intertextual references which are evident and explicit for older audiences; it also constitutes a type of connection with a period that hasn’t been experienced directly for younger viewers but which is charged with known cultural products. They become a focus of the discourse and part of a contemporary shared cultural capital for the 1980s among the show’s extensive cult fan base.

Millennials to Generation Z: Stranger Things ’ Younger Audience Despite the show’s reverence of the 1980s, Stranger Things also uniquely grounds itself within the contemporary moment, speaking directly to the show’s younger audience. Most respondents of the survey aged 20–25 confirmed that although the setting seems to represent a distant period, the topics being explored are understood as close and often referring to one’s own life experience. For example, certain fears presented in the plot (fear of diversity, of the unknown, of bullying) are considered entirely relevant to contemporary life. For some respondents, the actions and dynamics in Stranger Things are placed in an idealised historical period but are presented anew with contemporary relevance. One crucial way in which the series invests its 1980s setting with contemporary relevance is through the specific timing of its story. Each season references a major holiday or event, reminding viewers of their chronological situation and of the new seasons’ distance from the first series’ narrative development, but also forging a tangible link with the present. Stranger Things ’ first season is set at Christmas, Stranger Things 2 during Halloween the following year and Stranger Things 3 over the 4 July weekend the year after. Jenner reminds us that such timings also often coincide with the show’s release date on Netflix, a further ploy in creating social media hype for the show (2019). These events themselves remind viewers and audiences of the composition of their yearly calendar, centred on consumption, and yet also encourage a backwards glance infused with nostalgic sentiment. The show has also created its own ‘holiday’, marking 6 November ‘Stranger Things Day’. As well as evoking self-referential nostalgia within the life of the show, reminding viewers of the date that the character of Will Byers disappeared

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from Hawkins, the event serves to carve out a space in the calendar for cult followers of the show. The setting of a date marking the anniversary of the main event in the storytelling works perfectly as a marketing ploy for the TV series. 6 November has therefore become the day when fans celebrate the show, with exclusive material released on the show’s social media channels for fans through the hashtag #StrangerThingsDay. Fans also post pictures, create memes, engage in cosplay, and publish videos as they re-enact scenes from all three seasons. The video sharing app, Tik Tok, for example, houses a plethora of clips in dedication to Stranger Things Day, featuring Gen Z users replaying the TV series’ most famous moments. In 2019, the third season bloopers were screened through social media platforms. All of these activities, both those devised by the production team and those enacted by fans, further expand the visibility and the importance of the Stranger Things universe, assigning to it specific meanings and rituals which have resulted in establishing a sort of social media ‘tradition’ linked to the TV series. This also has strong implications for marketing. In this way, the nostalgia in Stranger Things is intrinsically combined with the notion of cult. There are many online fandom groups, thus confirming the strong social aggregation generated by a cult television show. This is especially important when one considers the viewing experiences of Stranger Things ’ younger audiences. Stranger Things forges a strong sense of community in the show’s fan base, creating online events and using retro-style products to unite its dedicated followers. In the survey, most respondents admitted to watching the series alone (78%) and a smaller percentage with friends (15%). However, for many (47.3%), the fruition of the television product is further enhanced by the participation in social media. 66% of respondents use Instagram, Facebook and Twitter profiles linked to their favourite shows. 55.8% also enjoy chatting with friends while watching individual episodes, enacting what Jenner has termed a ‘second screen’ for their engagement with the show (2019). Respondents also identified that Stranger Things is situated within a wider body of cult television shows prominent within the contemporary television landscape. Teen dramas showed a large following—from Gossip Girl (2007–2012) to Pretty Little Liars (2010–2017), Riverdale (2017–) and many others. Alongside them, TV series for older audiences was referenced, such as Black Mirror (2011), Narcos (2015–2017), Better Call Saul (2015–) and La Casa de Papel (2017–). Others noted were period dramas such as

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Downton Abbey (2010–2015), sci-fi series including Doctor Who (2005–), Sense8 (2015–2018) and The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–). Together with its episodes and seasons, Stranger Things introduces itself to audiences through a system of widely marketed commodities, present primarily in social profiles and online environments. These represent complementary contents, capable of involving large sectors of audiences as well as enthusiastic fans, often drawn in by particular elements of the story (soundtrack, characters, locations, love stories, etc.). They carry out an important function in the creation of different forms of engagement, as they create and amplify meanings which provide a substance to the ‘DNA’ of the media product by interweaving together their promotional and narrative functions (Grainge and Johnson 2015). Stranger Things offers itself to its viewers as a text presenting a narrative universe with a modular or ‘reticular’ form (Perryman 2008), easy to recognise even outside the television framework where it is initially placed. In doing so, it takes up the features of a real brand similarly to many other successful cult TV series. As the next part of this chapter demonstrates, the assimilation between series and brand becomes an important asset for the marketing operations linked to the promotion of the show’s seasons and its overall success.

The Wardrobes of Stranger Things: Between Past and Present Stranger Things ’ costumes are often mentioned as the winning factor of the television show. Connected to a ‘vintage’ past, they reproduce an aesthetic which garners the audience’s attention. In many instances, the clothes and outfits used on screen become ‘must-have’ merchandise. The large pool of contents, archetypes, symbolic images and everyday objects characterising the series are configured as materials available to users who may appropriate it in many different ways. In the characters’ wardrobes, Gen X respondents recognised many of the styles of their teenage years, even if they didn’t feel the desire to wear that type of clothing again. For this group, outfits represent only one among many connections that the text is proposing with their past. For Gen Z, on the other hand, clothes worn by the Stranger Things characters facilitate different attachments to the text. They signify an engagement with the retro tastes displayed within the show’s general 1980s aesthetic. They also work to exhibit a connection with an imaginary world of the show’s fictional characters.

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For these reasons, part of the research focused on the use of Instagram by audience–fans, to explore how much and in what contexts Stranger Things outfits are appreciated.3 Even if Stranger Things is not a TV show where the fashion discourse is overemphasised, as it is for other teen dramas, such as Gossip Girl (2007– 2012), clothing still seems to play a relevant role in each season. As a result, there are many references to Stranger Things clothing styles in social media profiles. In some instances, they refer to Halloween costumes or ‘cosplay’ attires, so they are characterised by the evident connection with a world of fiction. In other instances, however, users show outfits in their Instagram profiles which visibly incorporate explicit references to the show. For example, the use of 1980s jeans or shirts from the same period, together with ponytails and other popular 1980s haircuts, demonstrates a clear homage to the show. In some cases, the clothing consists of merchandising items such as T-shirts or sweatshirts marketing the Stranger Things brand, recognisable by the show’s logo. In others, however, cosplay is overtaken by the opportunity to enact character experience. In particular, in the third season, the importance of clothes is further stressed by the central setting of the Starcourt Mall - hub for consumer activity for the show’s young leads. The narrative works to create a sense of wonder and magic for Eleven played by Millie Bobby Brown (and for the show’s audience) as they experience the sights and sounds of the 1980s mall. Max (Sadie Sink) introduces Eleven to the pleasure of consumerism, through the experience of buying, based on the choice of garments through personal taste (Bourdieu 1979; Wilson 2003). Eleven and Max shop in ‘real world’ shops such as The Gap, and these outfits were immediately made available to fans of the show (Steigman 2020). It is specifically within this third season that contracts between Netflix and several fashion brands have multiplied and occupied different spaces, both online and offline: from H&M, which dressed some of the protagonists in specific scenes and then dedicated a capsule collection to the show,4 to Levi’s, Havaianas, Nike, Primark and Pull N Bear, which produced clothes inserted in specific scenes and subsequently featured them in their stores. The companies’ garments have been linked to Stranger Things by following the dynamics of a real operation of co-branding,5 with an added value to all involved stakeholders. Such placement has enormous power for cult fans as it ‘indicates that the protagonists are living in the same worlds of merchandise and branding as the audience’ (McFadzean 2019,

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95). It brings fans closer to living within the world of their favourite TV show. Although characterised as retro, as was evident for the video games mentioned above, the Stranger Things style hits the mark, drawing the attention not only of audiences but also of companies.6 In the fashion world, there are many examples of strategies put in place by brands to utilise the show’s success or build collaborations. One example is Louis Vuitton. On 23 September 2016, during Paris Fashion Week, the young cast members of the show met with creative director, Nicholas Ghesquiére, and were photographed with him. These photos were immediately posted on the Instagram profile of the well-known designer.7 The following year, again during the Paris Fashion Week, Louis Vuitton showed a T-shirt dedicated to the show on its runway.8 Gucci has also featured Stranger Things T-shirts and sweatshirts, this time inserting stylised images of the characters, dressed in the brand’s jackets. In this way, for the brands, the TV show has been configured as a lucrative platform in which to display their garments, exploiting the potentials offered by Stranger Things ’ extensive transmedial storytelling strategy where the narration includes the use of multiple online platforms, such as Websites and official social profiles (Jenkins 2006; Jenkins et al. 2013). On the other hand, through these collaborations, Stranger Things was able to extend the scope of its influence beyond the television narrative, emerging from a purely fictional framework to become part of the territory of the daily and real-life experiences of its audience–fans. By inserting Stranger Things in everyday products, the show has secured a more persistent presence within the lives of its cult followers.

Nostalgia Marketing: The Commodification of the Past All of the above demonstrates the ways in which nostalgia embeds within the show’s complex narrative and intertextual mechanisms. For 76% of the survey sample, Stranger Things is based on a reconstruction of the past removed from one’s own experiences, but linked to a much wider range of media texts, some of which are also contemporary. For these reasons, the show is considered ‘close’ to experiences of the present and therefore capable of generating the kind of nostalgia that Appadurai (1996) considers as detached from any specific past. In Stranger Things, adolescents watch ‘a world they have never lost’ (Appadurai 1996, 30), because

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it has never been experienced by them first hand. For Appadurai, this is a paradox of the politics of global cultural flows: it is a ‘nostalgia without memory’ (30) rooted in media experiences. From this point of view, Stranger Things shares a narrative strategy with many other recent productions, such as Mad Men (2007–2015) and The Americans (2013– 2018). It is based on cross references considered part of a shared culture of the past. By taking advantage of the device of nostalgia within a regime of affective economy, Stranger Things has been able to involve even those who have never experienced the past to which the nostalgia refers. Nostalgia, as stated by Wilson, ‘is, of course, created in the present, and thus the displaced nostalgia (as well as the myriad of other examples of nostalgia that abound) can be viewed as a commentary on life in the present’ (2014, 101). In fact, co-branding products are aimed not only to adults, but, above all to a younger audience, recognising the importance of nostalgia as a positive attribute in its being connected with a cultural tradition. The use of nostalgia as a process of connection with an idealised past therefore works on several levels: for the recognisability of the historical context being used, but also for the creativity with which this context is brought back into the present. The respondents of the conducted questionnaire clearly recognised a principle of authenticity producing an additional added value for the branded products and objects associated with Stranger Things. Nostalgia thus becomes an important framework, not only to draw the attention of the audience, but also to transfer this attention onto the marketplace. Nostalgia, in other words, enables objects to hold on to the values already acquired in the storytelling, while changing the context of reference, shifting from the TV show to advertising, e-commerce Websites and the physical high street or shopping mall store. As nostalgia marketing tells us, brands can entice consumers with a story of a brand’s past by exploiting—in a positive fashion - the brand heritage, as is attempted by Eleven’s shopping at The Gap (Cui 2015; Hartmann and Brunk 2019). The brands, however, can also invent a story from their past, as is the case for H&M with its produced line of garments inspired by 1985. These brands ‘can become dear to consumers when they manage to integrate contradictions between past and present, such as juxtapositioning new features with nostalgic associations’ (Hartmann and Brunk 2019, 670). As we have seen, this is exactly what happens with Stranger Things where

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the use of objects and atmospheres evoke different modes of nostalgia, appealing to diverse consumers and audiences. For this show, nostalgia is configured as a historically embedded consumer cultural phenomenon, rather than a purely individual phenomenon. The Stranger Things Day belongs to this context in its establishing forms of ritualism typical of a cult. The cult also contaminates the narrative world where the story develops, by becoming part of the many merchandising strategies growing around the title brand of the show. These objects contribute to bring the story of the TV series closer to its fans: the type of merchandise available enables audiences to physically own something coming from the story. Stranger Things, therefore, is projected as a brand capable of creating a double movement on the time axis. It presents an imaginary story set in a past which is defined every season by its specific reference year, thus charging the narration, characters and objects appearing on screen with specific aesthetic requirements. In the same way, the show points towards the present, serving as a focal point for the Stranger Things ’ contemporary commodification of the past. Through Stranger Things, objects are placed in a context of ‘(re)enchantment’ where ‘past-themed market resources render a past condition as a site for hedonic, ludic, playful, and ironic engagement’ (Hartmann and Brunk 2019, 679) by establishing a re-appropriation of the product by the audience. In Stranger Things, the devices of nostalgia enable stories, products and topoi from the past to enter into today’s mainstream culture.

Notes 1. Interview with Paola (invented name), 57 years old (March 15, 2020). 2. The questionnaires were administered to students of Bologna University. Most of the sample was made up of Italian respondents (64.3%) together with Chinese, Albanian, Russian, Ecuadorian and Ukrainian. 3. This part of the research is still ongoing. At the present time of writing, 500 posts have been analysed, linked to several hashtags (e.g. #strangerthingsfashion; #strangerthingsstyle; #strangerthingsmood). 4. There are many references, just to mention a few here: Cosmopolitan: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/it/moda/a27431658/hm-stranger-thi ngs-estate-2019/ Vogue: https://www.vogue.it/moda/article/strangersthings-la-collezione-di-netflix-e-hm-costumi-tshirt; Amica: https://www. amica.it/2019/05/08/hm-e-netflix-stranger-things/.

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5. In this online case as well, there are different references: Corriere dello Sport: https://www.corrieredellosport.it/news/sport-e-style/moda-e-ten denze/2019/07/10-58787590/stranger_things_3_e_le_capsule_collect ion_di_moda_in_pieno_stile_1985/; GQ Italia: https://www.gqitalia.it/ moda/article/nike-stranger-things-anni-80; Nike: https://www.nike.com/ it/launch/t/cortez-stranger-things-hawkins-high; Levis: https://www.levi. com/IT/it_IT/stranger-things/c/levi_collections_stranger_things?camp= DRSearch_Levis_IT_IT_GOO_Generic_Dynamic_Search_Ads&gclid=Cj0 KCQiA4NTxBRDxARIsAHyp6gCpFbf4WNRimc0k9ekGUcMnF1nZXY3VJjC_v6wP7rXHwtZZisKthkaApD1EALw_wcB. 6. See, for example, Tom Fordy (4 July, 2019): https://www.fashionbeans. com/article/stranger-things-fashion/. 7. See Harper Bazaar: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/designers/ news/a17835/stranger-things-kids-visit-louis-vuitton/. 8. As reported in Vogue: https://www.vogue.com/article/nicolas-ghesquierestranger-things-shirts-louis-vuitton-spring-2018.

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Correction to: Investigating Stranger Things Tracey Mollet and Lindsey Scott

Correction to: T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8 The original version of the book was inadvertently published without incorporation of the final corrections. The book has been updated with the changes.

The updated version of the book can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8_13

C1

Index

A ABC, 3 adolescence. See also teenagers consumerism, 24, 26 female, 26, 73 male, 22, 27–29, 61, 66, 73, 75 relationships, 8, 22, 28 representation, 24 Alexei, Dr., 57 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 48 Alien, 66, 113, 136 Aliens , 66, 77, 78 Altered States , 65 Amazon Prime, 5 AMC, 4 American Dream, 118, 123, 173, 175, 179 Americans, The, 128, 238 Apprentice, The, 119 arcade, 27, 70, 116, 195, 203, 213 Arrested Development , 5 Astin, Sean, 72, 160 audience/s adult, 6, 8, 45, 47–50, 59, 238

algorithm, 192, 193 cult, 2, 3–8, 10, 11, 29, 43, 45, 66, 141, 167–169, 175, 178, 184, 192, 209, 210, 212, 214, 216, 221, 228–230, 232, 236. See also fans cultural capital, 174, 233 Generation X, 2, 46, 227 Generation Z, 2, 227, 233 millennials, 2, 46, 233 practices, 2, 11, 203. See also fans teen, 21, 29, 35, 37, 51, 229 tween, 2, 6, 8, 21, 46, 59 B Back to the Future, 8, 9, 112, 114, 118–121, 123–127, 133, 194, 195 Beetlejuice, 69 Better Call Saul , 234 bikes, 46, 154, 232 Bill and Ted Face the Music, 114 binge-watching, 6, 169. See also audience/s

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021, corrected publication 2021 T. Mollet and L. Scott (eds.), Investigating Stranger Things, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66314-8

245

246

INDEX

Black Christmas , 150 Black Mirror, 234 Boardwalk Empire, 4 Bowie, David, 32 Breaking Bad, 4 Brenner, Dr Martin, 54, 55, 70, 77, 161. See also father relationship with Eleven, 54, 55, 70, 77, 161 Brown, Millie Bobby, 22, 44, 51, 69, 124, 150, 198, 236 Buckley, Robin, 32, 69 relationship with Steve, 34 sexuality, 34 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 3, 21, 24, 26, 34, 37, 211 Buono, Cara, 69, 157 Byers Castle, 34, 175, 177 family, 168 home, 10, 55, 76, 157, 167, 168, 172, 175–184 Jonathan, 30, 36 Joyce, 22, 69, 83, 155, 160, 173, 175, 178, 179, 182 Lonnie, 157 Will, 32, 50, 55, 136, 137, 162, 173, 174, 213, 233

C capitalism, 45, 56, 57, 117 Captain America, 29 Carpenter, John, 48, 82, 134, 149, 150, 190 Carrie, 66 Carroll, Lewis, 48 Casablanca, 8 Centipede, 195 Child’s Play, 50 children/childhood, 8, 34, 44–60, 120, 122, 123, 133, 140, 150,

151, 154–163, 169, 175, 177, 180, 181. See also adolescence; teenagers possession of, 54 representation of, 8, 54, 157 Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The, 6, 21 Cinderella Story, A, 26 Clash, The, 138, 149 Clueless , 26 Coca Cola, 199 advert, 210 New Coke, 217 coming of age. See adolescence commodities, 44, 56, 58, 116, 194, 230, 232, 235. See also consumer/consumerism consumer/consumerism, 12, 44, 55–58, 113, 122, 127, 178, 199, 202, 211, 212, 219, 230, 232, 236, 238, 239 cosplay, 234, 236. See also fans Craven, Wes, 10, 48, 151–153, 156–158, 161, 162, 218 films of, 10, 48, 151–153, 156, 158, 161, 162 cult appeal, 8 audiences, 11, 169, 175, 184, 212, 228, 229 characters, 7 film, 3, 5, 7, 47, 53, 111, 150, 154, 162 following, 3, 24, 28, 70, 192, 230 horror, 3, 7, 8, 10, 35, 45, 46, 48–53, 56, 60, 61, 65–67, 81, 151, 228. See also genre media, 2, 4, 9, 10, 12, 43, 47, 79, 133, 135, 138, 139, 141, 143, 145, 210–212 television, 3, 5, 6, 11, 23, 46, 139, 168, 211, 228, 230, 234

INDEX

texts, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10, 43, 78, 111, 144, 150, 151, 157, 159, 163, 168–170, 174, 175, 177, 179, 183, 231 D Dawn of the Dead, 56 Dawson’s Creek, 23, 24, 28, 32, 34, 37, 211 Demodogs, 76, 144, 146 Demogorgon, 32, 51, 70, 72, 74, 82, 136, 137, 141, 142, 146, 151, 156, 162. See also monsters Dig Dug, 27, 133, 142 Dirty Dancing , 26, 114 Doctor Who, 235 doppelgänger, 135, 141, 143–145 Downton Abbey, 235 Duffer Brothers, 1, 5, 46, 47, 51, 59, 60, 65–68, 71, 80, 112, 120, 138, 149, 170, 191, 198, 215, 216, 220 Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), 33, 34, 50, 57, 169, 174, 177 Dyer, Natalia, 29, 57, 69, 156 E Eleven/El appearance, 70 costume, 27, 33, 44 relationship with Brenner, 55, 77 relationship with Hopper, 26, 27, 55, 58, 61, 125, 160 relationship with Max, 22, 26–28, 33, 57, 70. See also Elmax (Eleven and Max) relationship with Mike, 22, 24–26, 28, 33, 34, 36, 154, 217. See also Mileven (Mike and Eleven) superpowers, 21, 118 Elmax (Eleven and Max), 24, 26

247

Empire Strikes Back, The, 196 ET: The Extra-Terrestrial , 50 Evil Dead, The, 149 Exorcist, The, 49, 50, 152 F family 1980s, 10, 150, 151, 153–157, 161, 163 fathers, 26, 152, 155–159, 163. See also Byers Lonnie; Neil Hargrove; Hopper, Jim;Wheeler/s Ted mothers, 159, 163, 175, 182. See also Ives, Terry; Joyce Byers; Wheeler/s Karen nuclear, 10, 29, 50, 54, 150, 151, 153, 155–157, 163, 171, 175 representation of, 151 surrogate, 31, 162, 163, 180 values, 83, 117, 151, 153, 154, 158, 159, 171 fans. See also audience/s activity, 218, 220 consumption, 10, 45, 212, 228 fandom, 6, 194, 197, 213, 219, 220, 234 generated content, 11, 210 merchandise, 2, 216, 236, 239 fashion, 11, 65, 111, 113, 118, 141, 170, 176, 181, 199, 227, 236–238 father, 26, 32, 54, 55, 155–161, 163 featurettes, 11, 210, 214 femininity adolescent, 73 representation of, 67, 71, 75, 81 feminism, 76, 80, 83 postfeminism, 78 Ferguson, Priah, 31, 57, 69, 161 film, 2–5, 7, 23, 26, 29, 35, 47–53, 56, 65, 68, 69, 81, 82, 111–116,

248

INDEX

118–123, 125, 127–130, 136, 150–154, 156, 158, 159, 161–163, 170, 179, 181, 184, 194, 195, 199, 210, 213, 232 Final Girl, 8, 48, 67–73, 75–77, 79–81 Flashdance, 121, 233 Flayed, The, 27, 45, 56, 80, 135, 144–146 Flight of the Navigator, 123 Fox, 3, 122 friendship, 22, 25–30, 32–34, 36, 37, 52, 53, 83, 127, 161, 163, 180, 231. See also teenagers Fright Night , 123 G Game of Thrones , 4, 6, 9 Gap, The, 216, 236, 238 Gate, The, 51, 54–56, 70, 140, 142, 143, 146, 151, 154 geek adolescence, 27 practice, 197. See also fans space, 27, 28, 174, 196 generation, 6, 53, 56, 115–117, 121, 123, 126, 127, 151, 155, 158, 159, 161, 219, 227, 230, 231. See also audience/s genre fantasy, 3, 7, 23, 35, 193, 209 horror, 3, 7, 23, 35, 52, 66, 68–70, 77, 78, 81, 171, 193 science fiction, 3, 7, 23 teen drama, 7 Glee, 56 Goonies, The, 27, 35, 50, 120, 123, 124, 232 Gossip Girl , 22–24, 28, 32, 234, 236 Gothic tradition, 179. See also genre; horror Grigori, 57

H Halloween, 66, 82, 150 Handmaid’s Tale, The, 235 Harbour, David, 22, 53, 70, 154, 214 Hargrove Billy, 83, 157 death, 157 relationship with Max, 30, 70, 158 relationship with Steve, 30, 70 Harrington, Steve and masculinity, 22, 36 relationship with Billy, 30, 70 relationship with Dustin, 22, 28–31, 34, 161 relationship with Robin, 22, 30, 31, 34–36, 57, 70, 83 Harry Potter, 3 Hawke, Maya, 22, 57, 69, 161 Hawkins High School, 22 Laboratory, 24, 124 Mall. See Starcourt Mall Middle School, 154 Post, 56, 79 Steel works, 57 town, 56, 65, 122, 167, 173–175, 179 Heathers , 69 Heaton, Charlie, 57, 70, 149, 156 Hegemony/hegemonic, 24, 29, 32, 35, 36, 65, 67, 78–80, 82 Henderson, Dustin, 209 relationship with Steve, 28 relationship with Suzie, 209 Heroes , 3 heterosexuality, 23–26, 30, 34–37, 72 High School Musical , 35, 56 Hills Have Eyes, The, 152, 153, 159, 162 Hobbit, The, 3 Holland, Barbara (Barb) death, 70

INDEX

representation of, 70 Twitter campaign, 219 Holloway family, 80 Heather, 70 Tom, 80 home Byers, 10, 55, 76, 157, 167, 168, 172, 175–184 representation of, 157 suburbia, 152, 174, 176, 182 Wheeler, 50, 155, 169, 175 Home Box Office (HBO), 2, 4, 5 Homeland, 9 homosexuality, 32, 35, 36. See also queer Hooper, Tobe, 52, 161 Hopper, Jim. See also father death, 160, 163, 180, 214 letter to Eleven, 58, 125 relationship with Eleven, 26, 27, 55, 58, 61, 70, 72, 125, 154, 160, 214 relationship with Joyce, 22, 54, 57, 74, 79, 124, 154, 160, 163, 184 horror, 3, 7, 8, 10, 23, 35, 44–46, 48–54, 56–61, 65–71, 75–78, 80–83, 116, 117, 120–123, 136, 145, 150–153, 155, 158, 159, 161–163, 171, 173, 179, 191–194, 199, 202, 213, 228. See also genre House of Cards , 5 Hughes, John, 25, 29, 35, 120, 218 Hulu, 2 Hunger Games, The, 23 I identity adolescent, 22, 66 asexual, 32, 33, 36, 53

249

femininity, 71 heterosexual, 28 homosexual, 32 masculinity, 22 queer, 22, 32 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 52 intertextuality, 11, 45, 59, 190–192, 196, 197, 230–232 Invasion of the Body Snatchers , 66 It: Chapter Two, 115 It Follows , 194 K Kali, 54, 69, 77, 81, 161 Keery, Joe, 22, 57, 70, 161, 216 King, Stephen, 1, 115, 150, 163, 170, 190 Kline, Larry, 122, 128 L Labyrinth, 123 La Casa de Papel , 234 Last House on the Left, The, 150–153, 162 Lord of the Rings, The, 3 Lost , 3, 211 Lost Boys, The, 123 M Mac and Me, 123 Mad Men, 238 Magnum P.I., 233 mall, 27, 57, 122, 154, 178, 182, 216, 217, 236, 238 Mandalorian, The, 114 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), 2 masculinity, 23, 29, 32, 33, 36, 67, 80, 82, 158, 160, 162, 173, 196 adolescent, 8, 22 hyper-masculinity, 24

250

INDEX

Matarazzo, Gaten, 22, 51, 161, 209, 215 Matrix, The, 128, 210 Mayfield, Max (ine) relationship with Billy, 70, 124 relationship with Eleven, 69 relationship with Lucas, 33, 34, 51, 154, 217 McFly, Marty, 120, 125, 195 McLaughlin, Caleb, 25, 51, 154, 217 men, 26, 27, 29, 54, 60, 66, 76–80 representation of, 71. See also father; masculinity merchandise, 2, 216, 232, 235, 236, 239 Midnight Special , 194 Mileven (Mike and Eleven), 24, 25, 217 Mind Flayer, 27, 32, 34, 36, 53–57, 80, 122, 124, 138, 139, 142– 144, 146, 154, 158, 159, 162. See also monsters monsters, 1, 7, 21, 32, 43, 50–57, 67, 74, 75, 82, 123, 124, 151, 152, 158, 159, 161–163, 169, 173, 178–182, 192. See also horror Monster Squad, 123 Montgomery, Dacre, 30, 57, 70, 155 mothers, 32, 55, 74, 79, 124, 137, 156–163, 171, 175, 180–182, 218 music, 11, 72, 111, 172, 195, 213, 214, 219, 227, 232 N Narcos , 234 narrative canon, 10, 211 cult, 2, 6, 10, 11, 24, 28, 46, 53, 151, 229, 230, 239 expectations, 6, 29, 30, 36 progression, 36

structure, 6, 22, 143 NBC, 119 neoliberalism, 10, 59, 121, 191, 192, 202 Netflix audiences, 2, 5, 6, 11, 45, 49, 192, 193, 195, 202, 203, 210, 214, 216 binge watching, 2 narratives, 5 Secret Cinema, 199–201, 203 Youtube Channel, 212, 213 networks, 3, 4, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143–147, 168, 174, 220 systems, 139, 140 users, 139, 144, 145 Neverending Story, The, 221 duet, 56 Nightmare on Elm Street, A, 48, 151, 153, 155–157, 159, 162, 191 1980s childhood, 46, 115, 120, 122, 123. See also adolescence class system, 116 commodities, 116, 230, 232 families, 150, 153, 155, 156, 161, 163 fashion, 11, 111, 113, 118, 199 fiction. See King, Stephen films, 26, 35, 48, 65, 69, 111, 113, 120, 150, 161–163 government. See neoliberalism; Reagan, Ronald, President HIV virus, 32 politics. See neoliberalism; Reagan, Ronald, President reboots, 113 remakes, 113 suburbia, 22, 149, 151, 232. See also family technology, 231. See also nostalgia 1990s, 2, 26, 37, 60, 115, 127

INDEX

teen drama, 37 television, 3, 7, 24, 36 nostalgia, 1, 6–12, 23, 34, 37, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 58, 111, 113, 115, 118, 121, 126, 127, 133–135, 138, 143, 147, 149, 150, 168–170, 174, 183, 184, 189, 193, 194, 201, 202, 216, 217, 228–234, 237–239

O Omen, The, 49, 152 One Tree Hill , 23, 34, 35 Orange is the New Black, 4

P Paperhouse, 53 paratexts, 6, 10, 11, 191, 192, 198, 202, 210–217, 219–221 Party, 27, 61, 136, 140, 143, 144, 146. See also Dungeons and Dragons (D&D); friendship Peggy Sue Got Married, 114 Poltergeist , 52, 65, 150, 161 Pretty in Pink, 29 Pretty Little Liars , 234

Q queer adolescence, 8, 22 characters, 24 isolation, 32 representation, 24, 35

R race, 54, 117, 128 representation of, 54 Raimi, Sam, 149 Ready Player One, 115

251

Reagan, Ronald, President, 2, 10, 117–121, 123, 126, 129, 153–155, 157, 159, 162, 163, 173, 218 Reddit, 194, 196–198, 202, 203. See also fans Return to Oz, 123 Ringwald, Molly, 218 Risky Business , 29 Riverdale, 21, 23, 24, 234 Rocky Horror Show, The, 209 romance heterosexual, 23, 24, 26, 35, 36 love triangle, 36 teen, 22, 26 Romero, George, 9, 48, 56 Roswell , 21 Russia, 30, 31, 57, 117, 124, 128, 130, 135, 140, 178, 179, 213, 239 Ryder, Winona, 22, 52, 69, 78, 154

S script, 112, 130, 172, 184 Secret Cinema, 199–201, 203 Sense8, 235 Sex Education, 24 sexuality asexual, 32, 33, 53 heterosexual, 23–26, 28, 34–36, 72 homosexual, 24, 33 Shadow Monster. See Mind Flayer Sinclair Erica, 69 relationship with Max, 69 Sink, Sadie, 22, 69, 154, 158, 215, 217, 236 Six Feet Under, 4 Snow Ball, 25, 27, 30, 33, 154 Sopranos, The, 4 Soviet Union

252

INDEX

hitman, 57. See also Grigori representation of, 135, 140 Spaced, 115, 128 Spiderman: Homecoming , 29 Spielberg, Steven, 1, 7, 46, 51, 52, 60, 116, 122, 128, 149, 170, 190, 191, 195 Stand by Me, 27, 35, 150, 191 Starcourt Mall, 31, 56, 120, 135, 140, 150, 159, 199, 216, 217, 236. See also mall Star Wars , 113, 115, 127, 128, 196, 233 storytelling, 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 60, 180, 210, 211, 228, 229, 234, 237, 238. See also narrative streaming, 2, 4, 5, 8, 11, 45, 49, 113, 143, 169. See also Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu Summer of ’84, 194 Super 8, 193, 194 Suzie, 33, 57, 79, 158 duet, 56, 209 relationship with Dustin, 33, 56, 209, 221 Syfy, 196, 197 T technology 1980s, 140, 145, 146, 231 connections, 140, 230 control, 145 fear of, 145 retro-technology, 145 teenagers. See also adolescence audience, 6, 22, 35 drama, 7, 21, 35, 37, 234, 236 Final Girl, 8, 48, 67–73, 75, 76, 79–81 representation, 24, 35 romance, 22, 26, 35, 36 superpowers, 21

television cinematic, 3–5, 228 cult, 3, 5, 6, 11, 23, 139, 168, 211, 228, 230, 234 narrative, 7, 22, 31, 32, 237 quality, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 23 teen, 7, 22, 29, 31, 32, 36 10 Things I Hate About You, 26 Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 114, 127, 128 Terminator, The, 114, 121 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The, 52 Thing, The, 48, 65, 149 Thriller, 213 Tik Tok, 234 trailer, 210, 213, 214, 216, 217 Trump, Donald, President, 56, 58, 113, 117–119, 121, 122, 129, 163 24, 3, 4 Twilight , 23 Twilight Zone, The, 162 Twin Peaks , 3 Twitter, 60, 122, 210, 212, 214, 215, 219, 234. See also fans U Upside Down, The, 8, 10, 32, 34, 37, 44, 47, 54–56, 58, 73, 74, 117, 124, 126, 128, 130, 134–136, 139–141, 143, 144, 146, 147, 154, 158, 167, 173–177, 179–182, 184, 192, 193, 211, 213, 217, 218, 221 V Videodrome, 65 Vietnam War, 150, 152, 153 viewers, 2, 3–6, 8, 11, 23, 44, 45, 47–49, 60, 82, 112, 134, 167, 169, 193, 197, 213, 214, 216,

INDEX

218, 228–233, 235. See also audience/s

W Walking Dead, The, 9 Wheeler/s family, 155, 175 home, 50, 155, 169, 175 Karen, 69, 79, 83, 160. See also mothers Mike, 50, 155 Nancy, 36, 69, 156 Ted, 157. See also father Wire, The, 4 Wolfhard, Finn, 22, 50, 150, 217

253

women, 22, 24, 25, 30, 66, 69–72, 74–79, 81, 83, 117, 160. See also femininity adolescent, 26, 66 in horror films, 52 X X Files, The, 3 X-Men: First Class , 198 Y YouTube, 60, 200, 201, 203, 210, 212–215, 217, 219–221 Z Zemeckis, Robert, 9, 120, 128, 195