“Stranger Things” is unfortunately a huge missed opportunity
Geeks could have mattered. But they are again pushed aside.
WARNING — MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD
Much like half the planet, I too have binged “Stranger Things”.
And yes, it’s pretty damn good. The 80s feeling is just amazing, with the intro animation being pretty much the best intro I have seen on screen since … forever. The music, typography, scenography, everything is more 80s than the 80s itself.
But “Stranger Things” failed me hard. As I started watching it I believed it will be the next “Goonies”, the next kids flick which could define childhoods. Instead it did quite the opposite.
Let me elaborate.
1: “Stranger Things” suggests you should give in to bullying
In one of the really intense moments, the main character Mike is bullied into literally jumping off a cliff. And he does it. He caves in to the bully and jumps off the cliff. Care to guess who saves him from falling to certain death? A telekinetic friend. So if you are a kid who is being bullied at school, you better have a friend with supernatural powers, because otherwise you will just get killed by bullies. Great.
2: “Stranger Things” believes others should fight your battles
Yet again, as one of our main characters is attacked, Eleven stops the attack, and makes the assailant pee his pants. Because, why stand up for yourself, when your ever present telekinetic friend can just fight your battles for you.
Main characters never actually stand up to bullying , they cave in or are saved by the super hero.
3: Eleven solves all the problems
Yes, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas do run around quite a lot. They even ride their bikes like champions. But they don’t contribute to anything special in the whole series. Seriously, name one thing they actively contributed to, which hasn’t already been discovered or solved one way or the other by adults or teenage cool kids.
In the most dramatic moments in the series, it’s Eleven who solves everything, using supernatural powers.
Eleven kills the monster in the end, in one of the most disappointing scenes I have seen in the whole series. The whole scene is set up so kids actually kill the monster, but then Eleven just swoops in all deus-ex-machina guns blazing and steals the kill.
The message for the kids here is that they cannot really solve any problems themselves, and that only a help from a telekinetic superpower-wielding friend will do the trick.
The way series sets you up from the first episode is to make you think:
Yes, this is going to be good. Finally they made a series where basement dwelling, Dungeons & Dragons playing, non athletic, radio amateurs interested in science and Star Wars will fucking finally matter.
And then series hits you straight in the kisser as you realise that all the problems are solved either by adults, or by those having-sex-since-14, athletic capable, rebellious teenagers. Those cool kids. Cool kids get to have fun and succeed in life. Geeks get killed by bullies or monsters because they are incapable of solving a problem themselves. Remember also what happened to Barbara, again a non-cool girl. Yes, she gets eaten and forgotten in 10 minutes or whatever. She’s not cool, she deserves to die.
I have heard some rebuttals to this, primarily in the form of “Stranger Things is not supposed to be kid’s show”, to which I can just ask: why not?
It would take so little to turn this into an instant kid classic. If only in just a few scenes, but including the last fight, the kids solved the problem instead of El, the whole series would be a solid 10/10 for all eternity.
Imagine if the last fight was something like this; El kills those humans, and as the party gets trapped in a room, since El is too exhausted the kids actually then have to deal with the monster. And then they use some of the knowledge of playing Dungeons & Dragons to take down the monster as a team. Shooting it with slingshot, flanking it, outwitting it, outfighting it.
Solving problems as a team, a team of real humans. Geeks, scientists, flawed human beings doing stuff that matters.
That’s what “Stranger Things” should have been.
