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. The highly intertextual, critically-acclaimed series fondly recollects popular entertainment of the past as it draws on allusion and pastiche of 1980s blockbuster novels and films. Yet, by filtering these source materials through the thematic and aesthetic darkness typical of contemporary quality television, it also departs from the more idealized visions of childhood found in films like E.T. and The Goonies to characterize youth as a time of profound fear, anxiety and alienation. Drawing on series’ critical reception as quality entertainment to frame and direct its analyses, this discussion focuses on how the low-key lighting, cluttered and menacing mise en scène of Stranger Things work to evoke a sense of noirish realism which complicates its nostalgic rendering of childhood and the past.
Introduction
Hey, stuff is serious! Turn off most of the lights. Ideally your primary color palette is also heavily tilted toward the browns and greys. If you must use saturated primary colors, they’d better be because someone is bleeding in an aesthetically artful way
“13 Signs You’re Watching a ‘Prestige’ TV Show” Kathryn Van Arendonk
A set of textual features synonymous with contemporary quality US television combine in Stranger Things (Netflix 2016 – present) to both foster and challenge audience nostalgia for childhood and adolescence. Highly intertextual, in a manner common to contemporary quality television, Stranger Things makes overt references, stylistic and generic homage to films and novels of the past, evoking nostalgia for the 1980s child-focused entertainment, childhood and adolescence more broadly. While in some respects it departs from the “blood and misery” that dominates prestige or peak programming of the past fifteen years (Keeley 2016), as a quality series it also strives for psychological and social realism or authenticity seeking to present sufficiently serious content in a manner consistent with quality audience’s values and world view. In doing so it tempers—or even subverts— cozy notions of nostalgia with which it is strongly associated. The focus of this discussion is how Stranger Things employs thematic and literal darkness in a manner typical of contemporary quality or prestige television, complicating the series’ nostalgia along the way. In its assessment of Stranger Things as quality or peak programming, this article draws on critical responses to the acclaimed series. In its focus on darkness, this article utilizes the ready vocabulary provided by the scholarship of film noir, many of whose aesthetic and thematic concerns pervade contemporary quality television well beyond noir’s usual generic bounds of crime thrillers and urban melodramas of beset manhood.
Darkness, like the concept of quality is always relative. While Stranger Things differs from more straightforwardly noir influenced examples of contemporary US television featuring anti-heroic gangsters (The Sopranos HBO 1999 – 2007), drug dealers (Breaking Bad AMC 2008 – 2013), and unscrupulous advertisers (Mad Men AMC 2007 – 2015), the series is nevertheless markedly darker than 1980s child and teen-focused films it nostalgically recalls. While Stranger Things, with its focus on childhood and adolescence, its debt to the sci fi fantasy films of Stephen Spielberg and teen films of John Hughes, falls outside the usual generic scope of noir, noir scholarship is nevertheless useful in discussing its persistently dark themes of insecurity and alienation which are supported by expressionistic lighting and menacing mise en scène. By drawing on the scholarship of noir this discussion emphasizes the degree to which these aesthetic effects as they are utilized in Stranger Things represent social and psychological anxieties, rather than being solely directed to the horrors of the supernatural.
Stranger Things has been praised for its attention to detail as period text, its ability to faithfully replicate critics’ own experience of the 1980s—including both recollection of the period’s lighter entertainments and its darker, social and political realities. Critics note the series’ multiple allusions to and pastiche of 1980s texts including: Aliens (Cameron 1986), The Goonies (Donner 1985), Spielberg science fiction films, Stephen King horror novels, John Hughes teen films (Gilbert; Mancuso, Loofbourow), and—more generally—depictions of the “grim reality” of small town, cold war 1980s America (Lainey Gossip). WhileStranger Things plays with pastiche and allusion to lighter, child-focused entertainment fare of the past, it also often works to subvert audience expectation to dark effect. The horror films of the 1980s featuring latchkey children like The Monster Squad (Dekker 1987), The Gate (Takács 1987) and Lost Boys (Schumacher 1987) had strong comic elements while Spielberg’s children’s films described by the director himself as “stories of empowerment”, “are distinguished by a signature tone of optimism” (Shone). By contrast, the dark visual style of Stranger Things (which reflects its debt to the noirish horror Aliens but also to the tradition of psychological or paranoid thrillers more broadly) presents late childhood and adolescence as a precarious, alienated, liminal period of vulnerability. Its young protagonists are equally prey to both supernatural monstrosity, and also to fallible and exploitative institutions as well as flawed, neglectful and abusive parental figures.
At the same time Stranger Things’ noirish themes and aesthetics highlight its difference from 1980s source texts, they also confirm its debt to aesthetic and ideological tendencies of contemporary quality television. Writing about television’s first “Golden Age,” Feuer posited that in the US context quality television can refer to “any TV genre that appeals to a more highbrow, educated audience” (“Quality Drama” 98). In the contemporary period, quality television, also commonly referred to as prestige or peak television, can be understood as “a complicated aggregation of industry discourses, aesthetic norms, audience practices and politics” (Kackman). Stranger Things as quality television text is validated through links to more “legitimate” media (Jaramillo 586; Feuer “Quality Drama” 99; Feuer “MTM Style” 32; Thompson Television’s Second Golden Age ), including blockbuster films of the past, utilizing a marked cinematic style indebted most obviously to Spielberg. But alongside its indebtedness to cinematic fare of the past, it also aligns itself with trends in contemporary quality programming, darkening the visual style and worldview associated with Spielbergian source texts, supporting its aspirations to realism. What in critical rhetorics of quality has been variously described as “seriousness” (Cardwell 25), “controversy” (Thompson “Quality Shows”), and “edge” (Curtin 11), is manifested in Stranger Things through its representation of childhood and youth as a time of alienation and vulnerability to abuses of power.An emphasis on flawed characters, abusive institutions, and catastrophizing plots—a thematic darkness—appears as a legitimation device in quality television which in the case of Stranger Things announces its difference from more straightforwardly nostalgic recollections of youth.As critic Elizabeth Alsop reflects on the darkness of contemporary prestige television in The Atlantic,“this new solemnity could be seen as a sign of status anxiety: a by-product of both serial television’s desire to disassociate from its soapy origins, and genre programming’s striving for cultural legitimacy.”In its literal/aesthetic darkness as well as in its thematically dark focus on topics such as child abuse, PTSD, alongside conventional horror and science fictional concerns with government conspiracy, Stranger Things simultaneouslydistinguishes itself both from the lighter focus of 1980s television and film texts it nostalgically recalls, but also from non-quality television. And, in exploring these aspects of Stranger Things, the scholarship of film noir is useful.
While film noir is concerned with the adult world, Stranger Things as quality television bends its dark style and thematicpreoccupations to explore youth. Both screen horror and film noir share origins in German Expressionist films such as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and Fritz Lang’s M (1931) characterized by “sinister shadow and unbalanced images” and recurring themes of “madness, duplicity and alienation” (Telotte 16). While horror is a broad genre with diverse variations from body horror and slasher films to psychological thrillers that seek to elicit fear and revulsion in audiences by various means, film noir possesses more specific thematic preoccupations: lack of agency and victimhood, the failings of institutions, a preoccupation with the past and morally ambiguous and alienated characters – all of which resonate with narrative concerns of Stranger Things. The anti-heroes ofnoir are characterized as morally ambiguous (Sanders and Skoble 9), alienated loners (Palmer 78), but also flawed– capable of mistakes, indecision and weakness (Dixon 4). In this way, noir is associated with representations of complex humanity, tropes of social and psychological realism. Much of quality television following the traditions of noir favors morally ambiguous anti-heroes (especially, as Van Arendonk notes, adult white male anti-heroes). While Stranger Things does not have the same focus on adult masculinity, it nevertheless has its own concern with anti-heroes:with fallible guardians and parents, especially. And though the first season attracted critical acclaim as a prestige product offering relief from the grimmer tendencies of recent television, when the rotting corpse of teenager, Barbara Holland (Shannon Purser) was discovered, it confirmed that the antagonist of Stranger Things is “no cuddly extraterrestrial who’ll be satisfied with Reese’s pieces” (Stephens).
Intertextuality and Nostalgia
The density of intertextual reference marks Stranger Things as a quality television series produced for a media literate audience who finds pleasure in the act of decoding, while evoking a nostalgia for the 1980s period setting. Similar to other recent prestige productions, Stranger Things shares links with historically more culturally legitimate media including popular horror novels and films that through camp re-evaluation and nostalgic reminiscence are reclaimed as less culturally suspect than on release. Its homage to and structural links with literature are emphasized with episodes labelled “chapters.” Specifically, the series which has been described by critics as a “Stephen King headscratcher” (Schembri) draws on his blockbuster novels about powerful adolescent outsiders, both Carrie (1974) and Firestarter (1980), while the opening credits recall the cover of 1991 novel Needful Things (Tobias). Bringing together actors familiar from 1980s teen films, Winona Ryder (Beetlejuice [Burton 1988], Heathers [Lehmann 1988]), and Sean Astin (The Goonies) with overt and covert references to Steven Spielberg films inflect its cinematization of the prestige television text. Described by critics as a “Spielberg pastiche” (Wickman), its narrative and aesthetics are shaped by cinematic quotations such as night bike rides through pitch black woods, and Spielbergian signature “god light” cutting through an otherwise dark mise en scène (McBride). As critic Cruz states “Stranger Things is an homage to all things Spielbergian—broken families, kids having secret adventures on bikes, supernatural beings, government conspiracies, heartfelt endings.” These intertextual references are just one part of a broader pattern of quotation, references to the past. As Keebler notes
Every haircut, every rippling synth pattern, BMX chase and adolescent gesture of friendship seemed to come from an 80s movie. Its young protagonists communicated through references to Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons and the first trailer for season 2 shows them trick-or-treating as the Ghostbusters.
Finding and identifying such intertextual quotations is one of the pleasures of Stranger Things along with the nostalgia these quotations inspire, as allusions to 1980s pop-culture are notedand shared by critics and fans.
Alongside its quotes and allusions, the series self-consciously reflects upon, plays with and subverts genre and character expectation established through these references. While in Season Two Max (Sadie Sink) responds to a synopsis of Season One with the comment that it is “a little derivative in parts” (2.05), the series as a whole works to subvert expectations excited by nostalgic allusion. For instance, Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) is initially constructed to appear as a 1980s jock stereotype: one of the popular, rich, emotionally cold and arrogant bullies familiar from John Hughes films such as Some Kind of Wonderful (Deutch 1987)and Pretty in Pink (Deutch 1986). Unexpectedly, popular and rich Steve is revealed to be considerate and unconcerned with high school social hierarchies, befriending the primary group of younger, geeky, misfits. At times, this address to a knowing audience appreciative of intertextual play is often used to dark effect. For instance, Madison notes how the series subverts conservative 1980s horror tropes, namely that of the “last girl” in slasher movies by allowing Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) to remain alive and active after sleeping with Steve, while her friend Barb is sacrificed. Characters in the series have garnered critical praise for their complexity, the product of comprehensive backstories and their ability to excite and subvert expectation. Groom praises the series unexpectedly complex female characters:
The Netflix original is a clear homage to cheesy 80s flicks… that aren’t known for their progressive treatment of women. So it came as something of a surprise that, far from being cookie-cutter, the majority of the show’s female characters are multi-layered, well rounded, and—dare I say, for a show about a government conspiracy, an alternate dimension, and a rampaging monster—realistic?
As a semantically dense quality television series, Stranger Things establishes genre, plot and character expectation, then subverts these to present a darkly authentic view of adolescence and childhood. As a prestige product its self-reflexive intertextual play brings it in line with an audience comprised of both youth and adult viewers, alsowith contemporary values.
As exemplified by these reconstructions of 1980s stereotypes into more complex characters in Stranger Things, contemporary quality television is preoccupiedwith notions of social and psychological “realism”(Jaramillo 584; Thompson “Quality Shows”; DeFino 10). Contemporary prestige, peak, or quality television series are often described in both critical and scholarly discourse in terms of “truth telling.” Lainey Gossip praises the series attention to detail and ability to recall their personal memories of the period: “Stranger Things is steeped in its 1980s setting down to the smallest details… anyone with actual memories of the 80s will be caught in an odd vertigo—you KNOW this is fake, and yet it feels completely real, like it was actually made in 1983.” This ability to recall reviewers’ own fond memories of their 1980s childhoods sees the series routinely described as “nostalgic” (Mancuso; Loofbourow; Gilbert). Yet, fond recollections of 1980s media texts are undercut by reminders of darker elements. Lainey Gossip praised the series for presenting the “grim reality” of a bygone era by focusing on “three of the biggest 1980s fears in America: Single mothers, disappearing children, and Russians.” Stranger Things summons nostalgia for an era where children rode bikes home unaccompanied at night, yet with the disappearance of Will (Noah Schnapp), reminds its audience why this is no longer the norm. Recalling Groom’s comment on the surprising realism of complex characters in a generically fantastical text, Mancuso positions the series as having current relevance, telling “a story of the here and now— sci-fi, monsters, government conspiracies.” McFarland perceives second season bully Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery) as proxy for the racist anger of Trump voters: “The sinister peril Billy visits on Lucas resembles one we’re contending with in the real world, and receives no name and is left open to interpretation. True life remains stranger than fiction and infinitely more dangerous than Hawkins, Indiana.”As these critical responses attest, Stranger Things employs fantastical science fiction and horror elements (a parallel universe featuring monstrous creatures, individuals with telekinetic powers), but as a text concerned with realism in the common manner of prestige television,truth telling according to contemporary values and worldview is still a measure of its success.Though supernatural elements are present, much of the darkness is derived from social elements: government conspiracies and the everyday cruelty of children and guardians.
Metaphoric darkness
The notion of darkness, both metaphoric and literal, unifies disparate elements associated with quality television: seriousness, controversy and “edge.” While seriousness and controversy are self-explanatory, reflecting ongoing concerns of quality television from the 1950s and 1960s, “edge” is a specific concern of contemporary peak television. Curtin describes “edge” as content that “pushed up against the boundaries of mass taste… [that] offended some viewers while catering to the passions of others” (11). Seriousness, controversy and edge constitute the thematic darkness of contemporary prestige programming, expressed both metaphorically through narrative content deemed sufficiently serious and realistic and challenging, and literally through dark lighting and cluttered, grimy mise en scène. Scholarly language used to describe mid-century Hollywood film genre, film noir is useful in understanding thematic and aesthetic darkness that permeates Stranger Things and other quality television series. Post-World War II French film critics identified in a set of American films, collectively referred to as film noir, a “new mood of cynicism, pessimism, and darkness” with these films epitomizing a “black vision of American life in which the only shared responses are fears and repressed impulses” (Ewing 64). In noir and neo-noir, “lighting grew darker, characters more corrupt, themes more fatalistic, and the tone more hopeless” (Schrader 8). Relevant to the orientation of Stranger Things to the past, Schrader describes the overriding noir theme as “a passion for the past and present, but also a fear of the future… film noir techniques emphasise loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities” (11).
Quality television series and film noir share a preoccupation with the past expressed through seemingly contradictory temporal modes – that of nostalgia and trauma. Palmer perceives film noir ’s backwards focus as concerned with protagonists’ dark pasts “frequently explored in some form of backward turning that is motivated by a present crisis of identity…Does he belong to the negative space the film limns (a dark city and/or a stylized defamiliarization [demelodramatization?] of the family home)?” (74). Similarly, Biesen perceives film noir as often concerned with “psychic trauma, insanity, a tormented protagonist’s quest for psychological identity, elaborate flashbacks of haunting surreal nightmare memories” (1). Sanders and Skoble note that in film noir the familiar is “made unfamiliar through the point of view of the noir anti-hero, whose alienation invariably reflects his estrangement and distorts the narrative,” (3 – 4). The denizens of noir are motivated and concerned with past trauma which often foster a sense of alienation as they struggle with identity.
Where the concerns of Stranger Things meet those of noir is in the way it combines a nostalgic fondness for the past with the trauma of remembering distressing past events. These contradictory temporal modes are employed in relation to the liminality of childhood and adolescence as a cause of anxiety. Nostalgia in the series is largely audience focused – invoked by the viewing public through the previously explored references to 1980s cultural products and milieu – evocative to those of a certain age of childhood. Yet this nostalgia is variously blended with trauma for the characters themselves. Gilbert notesthat Season One of Stranger Things seamlessly “wove together the opposing qualities of comfort and fear” at the same time that “its nostalgic ambience was cozy. . . real terror peeked through in flashes: the alien invasion of Will’s tiny body, the psychological torture of Eleven, the cruel end of Barb.” Keebler observes the ways that trauma inflects the broader patterns of quotation and allusion shaping its nostalgia, for instance positing Winona Ryder’s casting as integral to the commingling of trauma and nostalgia through her 1980s teen movie rise and later public struggles with anxiety and drugs. The series evokes nostalgia through its 1980s hyper-referentiality in a way that heightens the effect of trauma: contrasting “comfort” with “fear.”
In contrast to nostalgia, trauma in Stranger Things is largely located diegetically: in examples of victimhood—extreme events of physical violence and neglect, but also in more everyday and perhaps universal adolescent traumas such as bullying, rejection and social isolation.The more overt trauma is apparent in Eleven and Eight (Linnea Berthelsen), both of whom were abducted as small children and tortured by government agents interested in exploiting their special powers. Eleven’s trauma is revealed in a series of flashbacks akin to noir ’s “elaborate flashbacks of haunting surreal nightmare memories” (Biesen 1). When locked in a cupboard at the Wheeler house, Eleven flashes back to being locked in a dark solitary confinement room, a striking moment of anxiety associated with a home that until this moment is offered as a stronghold of suburban safety. While not tortured by covert government agents in the manner of Eleven or Eight, Will, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) nevertheless experience an everyday set of childhood and adolescent traumas. With predilections for Dungeons and Dragons and J. R. R. Tolkien, the boys are bullied as they fail to meet hypermasculine 1980s small town archetypes. An antagonist in one instance informs the group their missing friend is likely dead before violently pushing Mike. In another instance, Dustin receives haircare lessons from jock, Steve to impress at the school dance only to be greeted with snickers, forcing Dustin to retreat to the bleachers as no one will dance with him. Eventually he dances with his friend’s big sister, Nancy, who takes pity. Given this outsider peer status, it is unsurprising that Mike recognizes the abused and alienated Eleven as a kindred spirit. Eleven eventually befriends Mike, Lucas and Dustin, although Lucas and Dustin are initially skeptical. Lucas in particular is unconvinced by her unusual appearance, halting speech and lack of understanding regarding social mores resultant of life in the laboratory, referring to her as a “pyscho,” and concluding “She’s not a super hero. She’s a weirdo” (1.01). But following Mike’s lead, the boys eventually embrace Eleven as fellow alienated “other.” Like the adult protagonists of noir, children and adolescents in Stranger Things contend with identity crises and a stifling lack of agency, both thematic concerns of noir. Abused Eight deals with her trauma by forming an outlaw gang. Unlike Eleven’s more wholesome group, Eight uses her band of misfits to exact violent revenge on her enemies, those who have wronged Eight in the laboratory. Her present entirely controlled by her past. When Eleven joins her, she is unable to kill the laboratory worker after spying a photograph of him with his children. This highlights the divergent paths of two characters with similar traumas, thus underscoring a familiar, fatalist noir theme. Without friendship and guidance, Eleven might have continued down Eight’s darker path.
Trauma in both film noir and quality television often results from the failures and inadequacies of institutions—breeding fear while cutting characters off from themselves and others and positioning protagonists as victims without agency. Dixon characterizes the world of noir as
one of perpetual threat and contestation. Social conventions are stripped away to reveal the hard-scrabble realities underneath; even the family unit no longer functions as a zone of refuge. Families, small towns, churches, civic groups, doctors and lawyers, ministers and mayors; all are tested and found wanting (4).
Cohen describes film noir protagonists as “unable to control the forces around him, caught in a vise between impulse and guilt” (22) and invariably “swept up… in a series of events over which he has no control” (27). Police Chief Hopper (David Harbour) is in many ways an anti-hero in the noir tradition. Military veteran and ex-city detective, his character incorporates familiar noir personae from postwar films where “veterans painfully reintegrated themselves into postwar society, [where] cracks were starting to show” (35). Haunted by the cancer death of his young daughter, Hopper retreats to his home town where he is shown drinking, smoking, taking pills, and arriving to work late. However, at the same time, he is shown to be hardworking and a good detective when investigating Will’s disappearance. Appropriately cynical of the nefarious government laboratory which he investigates, Season One nevertheless concludes with him entering a dark car destined for the compound. Hopper is depicted as struggling to negotiate his relationship to shady but powerful institutions, while also dealing with his own powerlessness in the face of his daughter’s death, rendering him flawed and morally ambiguous, with limited agency.
While film noir has always dealt almost exclusively with the adult world, Stranger Things recognizes childhood and adolescence as no less dark and alienating with extreme events of physical violence and neglect and more everyday adolescent traumasresultant of young people’s lack of agency. Children and adolescents’ lack of agency is made apparent through discomforting reminders of what happens when individuals and institutions tasked with young people’s care fail. Just as the government and medical establishment are not always trustworthy or reliable, home and family in Stranger Things are not always places of safety and comfort. Dixon notes on noir ’s post-war context that “mothers weren’t always going to be there for their children…” (35). Will and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) Byers live with hardworking and loving single mother, Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder). Nevertheless, on the evening of Will’s disappearance, he runs in terror through the dark family home—empty of parental figures, his absence only noticed the following morning. Both big brother and mother working late the previous evening express guilt on failing to inquire earlier of Will’s welfare, though it is unlikely they could have protected him from the Demogorgon. Both struggle with feelings of powerlessness which is not entirely to do with their supernatural foe. Like Hopper, they negotiate limited options. Thus, in Season Two Joyce aligns with the laboratory that imprisoned Eleven for aid with Will’s post Upside Down medical issues, even though their trustworthiness remains murky. When Joyce tells Will “I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again” (2.04), it is touching but ironic as Joyce lacks the agency to deliver on this promise. These moments speak to a darker truth not always acknowledged in media—that young people’s guardians, despite their best efforts are fallible and not always able to keep them safe. The blurring of lines between trustworthy and not, good and evil, is consistent with film noir thematics of ambiguity and differentiates Stranger Things from the more binary representations of darkness found in “non-quality” horror texts that situate threats firmly outside of individuals and society.
While Joyce and Hopper are well-meaning but lacking in agency that allows them to protect their children, unengaged and abusive parents also appear in Stranger Things. Mike’s dad Ted Wheeler (Joe Chrest), the head of a highly traditional, Reaganite nuclear family is a breadwinning, emotionally distant father who appears to barely talk to his children at the dinner table. Lonnie Byers (Ross Partridge) as deadbeat divorced dad has limited contact with his children after moving away. In contrast to Joyce’s distress when learning of Will’s disappearance, Lonnie appears uninterested—not offering to help locate his son. On learning of Will’s apparent death, Lonnie surfaces on the self-serving prospect of suing the quarry where the body was found. Lonnie attempts to mold his children into being more stereotypically masculine: Joyce says Lonnie thought Will was “weird” and called him a “fag,” he promised (then failed) to take Will to a baseball game despite Will’s disinterest, and forced a young and reluctant Jonathan to kill a rabbit. These bad fathers echo the abuses of Dr Brenner, Eleven’s adoptive father figure whom she calls “Papa.” Similarly uninterested in the parental role except as it might serve his own ends, oversees the torturous experiments performed on her to further Cold War military aims. In flashbacks she is directed to kill a cat with her telekinetic abilities. When she refuses, she is dragged kicking and screaming into solitary confinement. Distressed, she uses telekinesis to open her prison door and snap orderlies’ necks. Dr Brenner clearly pleased she has used her abilities to kill, tenderly strokes Eleven’s hair, carrying her away from the room. Affection is shown only when she capitulates to Brenner’s will—acting, like Jonathan and the rabbit, against her instinct and desires. Season Two also delineates a familial cycle of violence: Neil Hargrove (Will Chase) calls his son Billy a “faggot” then punches him for failing to watch his stepsister. Billy then bullies, focusing on his stepsister Max, and directing what appears to be racial hatred against the series’ only black lead, Lucas. The powerlessness and lack of agency experienced by young people in Stranger Things evident in their inability to stay safe in the face of bullies and abusive family members resembles that of adult film noir protagonists. Stranger Things presents a dark, yet also realistic portrayal of youth, in contrast to more optimistic representations of childhood presented in many 1980s children’s movies.
Film noir and quality television share a preoccupation with flawed and complex anti-heroes deemed more realistic than stereotypical traditional heroes. Bruun Vaage defines anti-heroes as: “…morally flawed main character[s] whom the spectator is nonetheless encouraged to feel with, like and root for. The moral complexity of the antihero series entails that the spectator is intended to like the antihero – but through a challenging narrative also come to dislike him” (xvi). As Dixon notes of this construct “Whom can we trust? No one. We cannot even trust ourselves… we could make a mistake; an error in judgement that might cost us our lives…” (Dixon 4). The anti-heroes of noir are characterized as morally ambiguous, alienated others, but also flawed—capable of mistakes, indecision and weakness—thus more realistic representations of complex humanity.While recent quality television has been characterized by a preponderance of morally ambiguous, adult male anti-heroes who engage routinely in criminality and social boundary transgression, Stranger Things extends this moral ambiguity and imperfection to the world of suburban young people. The series is rife with flawed anti-heroes—concerned as it is with the fallibility and judgement of parental figures, child and adolescent outsiders. For instance, a story arc concerning Jonathan Byers’s peeping tom behavior exemplifies the series’ moral ambivalence. After Will’s disappearance, Steve’s friends are seen mocking Jonathan behind his back as he posts flyers for his missing brother, Nancy steps forward to offer her sympathies. Later, keen photographer and dutiful brother, Jonathan looks for his missing younger brother in the woods when he hears a scream. On investigating, he finds the cool clique. Jonathan loiters on the tree line unobserved photographing the party, including Nancy and Steve in an intimate moment. On learning of this, the group confronts Jonathan, calling him a “perve” and ripping up the photographs. The audience is left conflicted: encouraged to identify with Jonathan as a bullied outsider and dutiful brother who has also violated Nancy’s privacy. Jonathan’s motivation in taking the photographs is his isolation as an outsider, envious of the community the clique feels. And yet, Steve and his friends’ anger and characterization of Jonathan as a “perve” are valid; it is considered immoral (and sometimes illegal) in most contexts to photograph others without their consent when in intimate moments. Stranger Things as dark quality television series asks audiences to identify with and “root for” an abused, deeply flawed and murderous child also adolescent outsider protagonists experiencing identity crises as they make morally questionable decisions.
Literal darkness
Supporting metaphorically dark elements of theme, story and character (a preoccupation with the past through trauma and nostalgia, the failures and inadequacies of institutions, alienation and disempowerment, morally ambiguous anti-heroes), both film noir and contemporary quality television employ similar dark visual styles characterized by low-key lighting techniques, cluttered and grimy mise en scène, and an abundance of the oppressive low angled long shots. As Place and Peterson note of film noir:
All attempts to find safety or security are undercut by the antitraditional cinematography and mise-en-scène. Right and wrong become relative, subject to the same distortions and disruptions created in the lighting and camera work. Moral values, like identities that pass in and out of shadow, are constantly shifting and must be redefined at every turn. (32).
Noir-esque aesthetics including low-key lighting, cluttered and run-down mise en scène, and a preponderance of low angles position characters as victims, existing in a precarious, frightening and uncaring universe.
Literal darkness manifests perhaps most clearly in noir and contemporary quality television through lighting. Place and Peterson describe noir lighting as characterized by a “constant opposition of areas of light and dark,” in which “small areas of light seem on the verge of being completely overwhelmed by the darkness that threatens them from all sides. Thus faces are shot low-key, interior sets are always dark, with foreboding shadow patterns lacing the walls, and exteriors are shot ‘night-for-night’” (31). Schrader notes that actors and settings are “often given equal lighting emphasis,” creating a fatalistic, hopeless mood (11). In film noir (as in quality US television) extensive use of shadow affords a “combination of realism and expressionism” (Schrader 10). Palmer similarly notes noir low-key lighting schemes “instantly ‘other’ everyday locations” (70). Low-key lighting applied evenly to characters and environments in both expressionistic and realistic ways, visually evince themes of fear and paralysis and loss.
Some examples from Stranger Things demonstrate what film noir and quality television style share stylistically, through common tropes of cinematography. Both film noir and quality television extensively use long shots, and a greater depth of field, deep focus in medium and long shots combined with lighting to give equal weight to objects and characters. This renders the film world
a closed universe, with each character seen as just another facet of an unheeding environment that will exist unchanged long after his death; and the interaction between man and the forces represented by that noir environment is always clearly visible (Place & Peterson 30).
Highly cinematic noir lighting supports Stranger Things dark thematics.We see this for instance in Figures 1 and 2, depictions of Joyce and Will Byers in Seasons One and Two. In Figure 1 in a chiaroscuro-lit day interior, an emotional Joyce smokes alone in her kitchen, only barely visible backlit by the window as she contemplates her son’s disappearance. A beam of light dissects the frame, highlighting the pet dog that has noticed lit Christmas lights as Will attempts to communicate from the dark, parallel, mirror universe known as the Upside Down. This is a literal version of the “defamiliarized home” (Palmer 74) and nightmarish mirror image of contemporary America (Palmer 69), not unlike that found in noir. Clearly expressionist, the darkness of the Byers’s home and Joyce’s silhouetted figure express her dark thoughts on her son’s disappearance, the highlighted pet representing hope that Will may be alive.
After being returned Will is sporadically, unpredictably transferred back to the dark realm across Season Two, another version of an “unheeding environment” underscoring his feelings of isolation from friends and family. Like a noir protagonist Will struggles with lack of agency and the question of whether he belongs to this “negative space” (Palmer 74). Well-meaning Bob (Sean Astin) Joyce’s new partner believes these events are in Will’s mind—failing to grasp their reality. In Figure 2 an incredibly low-key lit Will attempting to heed Bob’s advice, makes the mistake of confronting the sentient, dark, octopus-like Upside Down creature known as the Mind Flayer—the product of both supernatural and political evil.
While this is a moment of horror it is also one that recalls noir as Will’s alienation is both supernatural and social. And Bob’s flawed advice offers another instance of the vulnerability of children and adolescents when guardians prove fallible.
In Figure 3, a handcuffed Joyce is interrogated by Dr Brenner in a dimly lit room. The one-way glass, another dark mirror reminiscent of the Upside Down combines with the shadow of the table to physically distance Joyce and Dr Brenner – reflecting their contrary positions as Joyce refuses to help the military-industrial establishment responsible for her son’s disappearance. Tight framing decapitates Dr Brenner whose pose is threatening, his face only visible in the dark mirror.
Stranger Things, as is common to quality television, makes use of what has been identified as “the archetypal noir shot”: the extreme high-angled long shot at “an oppressive and fatalistic angle that looks down on its helpless victim to make it look like a rat in a maze” (Place & Peterson 32). We see this in the image of Will being menaced by the Mind Flayer. The high angle highlighting Will’s lack of agency – positioning him as a victim, observed by the large creature. Likewise in Figure 4 this archetypal noir shot is used when Hopper flashes back to memories of his sick daughter and is seen crying in a hospital stairwell. The stairwell dissects the shot at a sharp angle, ensuring half the screen is black. The railing adds an additional discordant screen dissection, so he appears trapped. The high angled long shot overwhelms Hopper’s figure in frame, reflecting his emotionally overwrought state at his helplessness—reflecting his overwhelming sadness and lack of agency. Like many noir protagonists he is trapped by his past.
Similarly, Figure 5 depicts a high angle with Chief Hopper and Joyce silhouetted as they lay out Will’s drawings to create a map of the extensive interdimensional caves underneath their small town. The high angle dwarfs the adult figures as they realize the enormity of the cave complex and threat.
In noir and quality television,grimy, untidy or cluttered settings combine with long shots to visually overwhelm characters in their environments, reflecting protagonist’s deteriorating psychological states, and presenting a dark mirror to the American dream. Interiors suffer from an overabundance of what Philip K. Dick in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep described as “kipple”: “useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape” (53). As with low-key lighting, the kipple-strewn mise en scène serve both an expressionistic and realistic function: realistic in that the real world is often messy; and expressionistic as figures are overwhelmed by mise en scène with individual objects providing information about their neighboring people and places. This cluttered mise en scène is akin to Krutnik’s “distorted mise-en-scène” which “serves as a correlative of the hero’s psychological destabilization” (31). Figure 1 depicts the Byers’ kipple-strewn kitchen, with paperwork and ephemera spread haphazardly across the kitchen. Here, dense, dark and grimy mise-en-scene position Joyce as a hard-working single mother failing to fit the Stepford Wife paradigm, the clutter reflective of her hectic life and the emotional and practical disarray caused by her son’s disappearance. And, while the Byer’s home receives a clean and tidy at the beginning of Season Two, Figure 5 shows that by the fourth episode it has again subsided into noirish chaos as Will’s fevered drawings take over the domestic space. Likewise, in the audience’s first introduction to Hopper depicted in Figure 6, his dark home is cluttered with empty beer cans and other ephemera reflecting Hopper’s disordered personal life and emotional state.
Grimy and dark mise en scène in noir presents “a version of contemporary urban America that also contains its nightmarish mirror image” (Palmer 69). The Upside Down pictured in Figure 2 is a literal “nightmarish mirror image,” a visually dark analogue overgrown with a toxic black animal/plant hybrid structure and populated by the dangerous and frightening Demogorgon creatures that threaten to invade both Will and the universe at large. The Upside Down represents childhood fears and anxieties, the proverbial monster under the bed. With Bob’s inability to recognize the authenticity of Will’s childhood fears and anxieties, we see another breach of trust between guardian and child. But the Upside Down is not the only dark place in Stranger Things. As an example of quality television’s tendency towards darkness Stranger Things’ mise-en-scene and cinematography combine to present a version of childhood and adolescence where safety and comfort often ascribed to these periods is constantly undermined—and where the familiar and every day is made strange, dark, and threatening.
Conclusion
Video on demand services such Netflix create original content with the aim to poach both network mass audiences and more niche premium cable audiences. Aesthetics and features usually associated with cinema—intertextuality through allusion and pastiche of more culturally legitimate media for example—are increasingly employed by such television producers to differentiate and legitimate their offerings in a progressively saturated market. This is evident in the Duffer Brother’s original pitch book for the series (originally titled Montauk ) that stated “The visual style will be energetic, creative, and cinematic. The framing will be bold; the cinematography will be dark…” (Duffer and Duffer 9). This affects its nostalgic relation to the 1980s. Intertextuality through allusion and pastiche of 1980s blockbusters combined with dark noir themes and aesthetics deemed at once more realistic and cinematic foster and challenge nostalgia for childhood and adolescence in Stranger Things by characterizing youth as a time of profound fear, anxiety and isolation. The pessimism inherent in this dark characterization of youth and adolescence may be reflective of broader sociocultural contexts akin to the post-war era that bred film noir ’s air of anxiety, paranoia and malaise: involvement in overseas conflicts, perceived geopolitical instability including escalating tensions with Russia, nuclear proliferation—added to which in the contemporary context, there is also a sluggish US economy and the post-9/11 fear of terrorism. Through its dark aesthetic, along with its supernatural storyline, Stranger Things establishes itself as quality but also registers contemporary discomfort and anxiety which is not entirely attributable to the proximity of the Upside Down.
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Biographical note
Rebecca Wildermuth recently completed Honors for the Bachelor of Communication (Screen Studies and Marketing) in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences at Griffith University (Brisbane and Gold Coast, Australia). Her thesis, titled Shots in the Dark: Rhetorics of Darkness in Contemporary Quality and Non-Quality Television, focuses on literal and metaphoric darkness in contemporary US Quality Television.