Feb 26, 2019 | Television, Volume 31
Rebecca Wildermuth Abstract: This article concerns itself with how Stranger Things, as an example of contemporary quality television, simultaneously fosters and challenges nostalgia for the past, with its pervasively dark vision of 1980s suburban childhood....
Feb 26, 2019 | Television, Volume 31
Lucy Baker and Amanda Howell Abstract: This paper focuses on how families of Hawkins, Indiana respond to trauma and threat and considers how the idea of family itself shifts in Stranger Things between Seasons One and Two. “Parenting into the Spin” (or skid)...
Feb 26, 2019 | Television, Volume 31
Tracey Mollet Abstract: Following David Harbour’s anti-Trump speech at the SAG Awards 2017, Stranger Things positions itself as a text that derides neo-conservatism and embraces difference. However, this inclusive veneer is problematized by the 1980s texts it...
Feb 26, 2019 | Television, Volume 31
Amy S. Li Abstract: Abstract: Stranger Things capitalizes on a recent revival of 80s pop culture, recycling aesthetics and cultural references of this bygone era. Looking backwards, however, provides opportunities for critical reflection, which Stranger...
Feb 26, 2019 | Television, Volume 31
Kathleen Hudson Abstract: The Netflix series Stranger Things (2016-2017) negotiates the boundaries of genre and gender in its depictions of female rage. While ‘strong women’ archetypes in 1980s horror and science fiction novels and films are often labelled...
Feb 26, 2019 | Television, Volume 31
Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols Abstract: The character of Jane/El/Eleven in Stranger Things appears to the viewer in Season One as a blank slate, free of individuality, gender or identity. Her transformation, over the course of two seasons, allows us to consider the...
