Skip to main content

Why Stranger Things 3 Made Me Feel Things


Any piece of art, and particularly a piece of media, with heavy themes of and explicit ties to nostalgia has the capacity to affect us emotionally. Especially in times as turbulent and aggravating as these, it’s comforting to reminisce through art that emphatically harkens back to a simpler, seemingly more innocent time, whether through the connection to a popular brand or the depiction of certain atmosphere and environment -the former being essentially the driving force in Hollywood right now. But what I think is unique about Netflix’s Stranger Things is how it appeals to a nostalgic sensibility completely separate from the other two despite relying heavily on both as well. I didn’t grow up in the 80’s, but I relate more to the nostalgia of Stranger Things than to just about any other piece of media that tries to scratch at that sweet spot.
Granted, as much as 80’s kids would argue to the contrary, growing up in the mid-80s wasn’t all that different from growing up in the 90’s and 2000’s. Season two’s Halloween episode for instance, resonated incredibly authentically to my experience trick-or-treating circa 2002. But also, there are just universal experiences of childhood (at least universal to straight white North American kids in middle class suburbia) that don’t belong to any time period, and that I would argue is a big reason why Stranger Things is so popular with audiences who didn’t experience Reaganomics, Cold War fatigue, and the blockbuster boom first-hand.
Stranger Things 3 continued to profit off of this clever use of nostalgia throughout its eight episode run and it was fun, but something was different. it wasn’t until the finale that it finally came together for me. This season dealt a lot with change and vulnerability and finding ones’ own agency. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) finally gets to break free and express herself individualistically, divorced from the influence of Jim Hopper (David Harbour) or Mike (Finn Wolfhard), and assert her heroism on her own terms. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) has to adjust to his friends not always sharing in his interests and endeavours, and finding new people who do. Robin (Maya Hawke) opens up to Steve (Joe Keery) in a deeply personal and (for the 80’s) potentially dangerous way. And Will (Noah Schnapp) has to contend with his friends, all preoccupied by relationships and other distractions seemingly leaving him behind, no longer having the patience or passion for D&D that remains his source of escape.
One of my disappointments with this season was that it underutilized Will (and really all of the Byers family for that matter), after having been such an instrumental part of the first two seasons. While I appreciate after all he’s been through, the Duffer Brothers gave him a break from being the conduit to the Upside Down’s horrors, there was more to touch on with regard to his relationship to his group of friends now. Aside from his failed attempt to bond with Mike and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), followed by a possible outing of his character and his destruction of Castle Byers -the most heartbreaking scene of the season before the finale -all in one episode, Will was mostly prioritized for his Upside Down “spidey sense”.
But then came the final episode, and in spite of how shakily set up it was, the Byers moving from Hawkins with a once more orphaned Eleven in tow hit like a ton of bricks. With the same sincerity and boldness, but with a more potent honesty than the ending of Ralph Breaks the Internet, Stranger Things took on the emotional minefield of moving away, and executed it with pure, bittersweet deftness. And it just about moved me to tears. When I was their age, I was definitely the Will of my group of friends. Like Will, I clung to certain pastimes after my peers were outgrowing them, and like Will, I moved away when I was fourteen having to leave those ties behind. Of course even Stranger Things is likely not to delve into the brutal honesties of this situation it ends the season on. Even no further than Chicago from Indiana, I fell out of touch with my early teen friends, and that’s not going to happen when Stranger Things 4 is certainly going to reunite the gang. But in addition to making me think back on that time in my life, my regrets and emotions, it made me realize this season of Stranger Things was ultimately about the end of childhood.
Hopper says as much in his posthumous heart-to-heart with Eleven, beautifully articulating how futile it would be to try and recapture the familiar trappings of childhood, as much as one may want to, and the importance of moving forward and facing all the new challenges, discoveries, hardships, and joys the future yields. Will may take it the hardest, endearingly attached as he is to the fondest memories of his friendships, but everyone is made to confront these changes. Eleven and Max (Sadie Sink) both suffer personal loss by the end of this season, in the case of the latter a really dramatic personal loss. Mike, Lucas, and Dustin are all in relationships; where two years ago they were still averse to notions of romance, now Mike and Dustin have to deal with the emotional fallout of being separated from their girlfriends. Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), and Steve now out of school, have to literally navigate an adult world they may not be equipped for. Everyone, even Joyce (Winona Ryder) is leaving something of themselves behind this season; everyone is beginning a new journey full of enlightenment, adventure, hope, but also sadness and hurt -which as Hopper points out, are feelings worth treasuring and remembering as much as the good ones. I remember that stage of adolescence, its pleasures and pains alike, and it’s the nostalgia I’ll look for in Stranger Things 4.

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Stylish and Charmingly Reinvented David Copperfield

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)  is the most important book Charles Dickens ever wrote. It is not the most famous or influential by any means (that would of course be A Christmas Carol ), but it is the book that is the purest expression of the authors’ style, identity, and worldview. It is his most personal work, semi-autobiographical in its story of the chronology from infancy to adulthood of a character who overcomes great loss and hardships to find a fulfilling life as a writer. To read David Copperfield  is to understand Dickens himself. Armando Iannucci knew this when he decided to make a new adaptation of the novel for a twenty-first century audience. He also knew that Dickens adaptations are ubiquitous at this point. Films are a bit rarer, but every few years a new television adaptation rears its head to keep the authors’ unique world an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more