Rose-coloured rear-view: stranger things and the lure of a false past.

Popular culture seems determined to endlessly recycle the tropes and icons of past decades, and the 1980s is often the era of choice. The latest expression of this nostalgia obsession is Netflix series Stranger Things. In looking at the way the show embraces and reconstructs the past, writes MYKE BARTLETT, we can see how we use nostalgia to make meaning of the present--or simply attempt to escape its horrors.

A strange thing happened during the run-up to the recent US presidential election. I noticed a few of my left-leaning Facebook friends linking to the same article--a rather sweet little anecdote about former president George W Bush. This was odd because, for those on the left, Dubya has long been the devil. Until the events of 8 November 2016, he looked destined to go down in history as the most disastrous of all American presidents. Yet here was a bunch of progressives getting nostalgic for an eight-year reign that saw civil liberties curtailed, several foreign wars started and the global economy brought to its knees.

What had changed? Donald J Trump. America (and therefore the world) was facing the very real possibility that a fascistic reality TV star with zero political experience was about to be elected president. The world would be plunged into dark, uncertain times. By comparison, the Dubya years seemed positively golden.

If we're thinking about nostalgia, we can see the past as not so much a foreign country as a panic room. It's understandable that we should want to retreat there when the present looks frightening. Dubya's presidency might have been bumpy, but, as with any other past trial, we can take comfort in the knowledge that most of us made it out in one piece. Back when his War on Terror was in full swing, there was an identifiable degree of nostalgia for the certainties of the Cold War, with its less diffuse enemy. (1) During the 1980s, as the world was gripped by the twin spectres of AIDS and the A-bomb, we longed for the pastel comforts of the 1950s. In the UK, when the 1970s brought shortages, strikes and social chaos, fashion and culture began to feed on the iconography of the comparatively well-ordered Edwardian era. (2) And, of course, the Romantics wholeheartedly embraced nostalgia for the Middle Ages as the Industrial Revolution kicked into gear.

NOSTALGIA AS A MARKETING TOOL

The makers of pop culture have been quick to tap into this drive to look backwards. Cult series from the past such as Twin Peaks (1990-1991), The X-Files (1993-2002) and Batman (1966-1968) have been remastered in high definition and re-released in expensive box sets. Mostly, however, this nostalgia has expressed itself in endless reboots of past properties, be they Doctor Who (1963-1989), Star Trek (1966-1969), Spider-Man or Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984). There can be no denying that mass culture is currently driven by characters and franchises invented between thirty and eighty years ago.

More interesting are the films and television shows that steal aesthetics from the past, rather than just ideas. This isn't an entirely new trend. In the 1970s, we saw Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) and Happy Days become global hits by aping the music and screen culture of the 1950s. In Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) made this time-travelling literal when he left a dangerous and dirty 1980s to return to the America of his parents' youth. These days, the mid twentieth century is ancient history. The controls of our time machine have instead become stuck on the decade Marty departed --the 1980s.

Hit 2016 Netflix series Stranger Things is the latest expression of this fixation. The eight-part horror-fantasy-thriller isn't just set in the 1980s, it's built to look like it was made there. From the fuzzy VHS-like opening titles, via its Stephen King-inspired logo, to its electronic score, the show is designed to feel like your favourite forgotten show, given a high-def spruce for the digital age.

Usually, such carefully observed mimicry strays into the realm of pastiche. Happy Days was a sitcom, after all, whereby much of the humour sprang from the gap between the world in which it was set and the world in which it was broadcast (see also: 2000s sitcom That '70s Show). More recently, British cult comedy Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004) fed off the same source material as Stranger Things (with an added dollop of 1980s American soap opera) to hilarious effect.

* Look at a list of Hollywood movies released within the past year. How many are based on existing properties?

* If existing properties are overrepresented, why might this be? Is it simply that studios are reluctant to invest in untried ideas?

* What role do you feel nostalgia has played in the success of films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens (JJ Abrams, 2015) and Ghostbusters (Paul Feig, 2016)?

* Considering modern concerns surrounding gender and racial depictions in Hollywood films, what might be some consequences of relying on characters and franchises invented more than thirty years ago?

* Mimicking the past is often done for humorous effect. What elements of life in this decade might appear hilarious to people living in, say, 2046?

EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING

Stranger Things takes itself seriously, in the sense that it doesn't allow its borrowed trappings to undermine the integrity of the drama. More than that, it uses the sophisticated cinematic language of twenty-first century television to powerful effect. In fact, it's worth noting that this show simply wouldn't have existed in 1984. At the time, American genre television was cheap, cheerful and unsophisticated--think Knight Rider, Automan and Battlestar Galactica (two of which have been rebooted in the last decade). The format that Stranger Things adheres to, in which a single story unfolds across eight hours, didn't really exist outside soap operas and epic historical miniseries.

As such, Stranger Things draws more on the cinema of the 1980s, while employing a uniquely 2010s bingewatch format to expand its story and characters beyond the confines of a ninety-minute feature. Part of its success is that, in fusing the past and the present, it manages to re-create 1980s television as we remember it, rather than as it actually was. In other words, it avoids the sense of disappointment that often accompanies revisiting old favourites. While the kids look authentic to the period, their acting is more in line with modern standards. While the score evokes the synth-heavy soundtracks we associate with the period, it's actually a better fit with modern-day retro-flavoured electronica. This is the 1980s as we want it to have been, right now.

We'll return to this notion of the reimagined past later, but any discussion of Stranger Things would be incomplete without examining the deep debts it owes to 1980s cinema. Certainly, what makes the show so irresistible to children of that decade is that it isn't just paying homage to one or two films, but rather to all of them.

The set-up feels like a delirious mashup of King, Steven Spielberg and John Hughes. In a small American town in 1983, twelve-year-old Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) goes missing. His three best friends patrol the streets on their BMXs, hoping to End him. They are assisted in this by the mysterious Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), a girl who has escaped from the scientific research lab on the outskirts of town. It soon becomes clear that Will has been stolen away to another dimension by a monstrous and murderous creature that remains on the loose.

The central gang of pre-teens simultaneously evokes the core casts of Stand by Me (Rob Reiner, 1986), The Goonies (Richard Donner, 1985) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982), complete with thrilling BMX chases. Eleven and her nosebleed-inducing telekinesis owe a thing or two to King's Firestarter (the novel and Mark L Lester's 1984 film), while the tone and synthesiser score are pure John Carpenter. Indeed, writers and directors The Duffer Brothers initially tested the scoring concept by re-editing scenes from E.T to music from Carpenter's oeuvre. (3) Beyond these are gestures towards horror flick Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1984) and the garish fashion and teen drama of The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985). In short, Stranger Things is the screen equivalent of a 'Best of the '80s' CD.

We can actually take this analogy a step further by considering the show's soundtrack. Put on the soundtrack to, say, Pretty in Pink (John Hughes, 1986), and you'll probably be able to identify four of the ten tracks as bona fide 1980s classics. The soundtrack to The Breakfast Club fares even less well. All but the first track --'Don't You (Forget About Me)' by Simple Minds--have slipped into obscurity. By contrast, every single song played within Stranger Things belongs on a greatest hits collection. There's a rule when investigating financial fraud dictating that figures that look too perfect are likely fraudulent. Likewise, by cherry-picking the most recognisable elements of the 1980s--the best of the best--Stranger Things (and many other period pieces) ultimately ensures that it lacks verisimilitude.

* What are some of the ways in which Stranger Things creates the illusion of being set (or even created) in the 1980s?

* How important is the use of recognisable elements of that decade's pop culture?

* What elements of contemporary pop culture do you feel might come to define our current decade?

THE STORIES WE TELL ABOUT THE PAST

Nevertheless, there's no doubting that this reverent regurgitation of iconic 1980s pop culture has proved one of the series' key selling points. Journalists and bloggers have had a field day identifying every possible point of homage. (4) But the cherry-picking inherent in most nostalgic pop culture goes far beyond the superficial. When we look backwards, we also identify the values and norms that either align with our own, or provide a welcome, mourned-for alternative.

On one level, the past as depicted in Stranger Things is a very twenty-first century kind of place. There is, for instance, little of the casual sexism or racism prevalent in Western society before 1990s political correctness kicked in. Where it does exist, as demonstrated by Steve (Joe Keery) spraying slut-shaming graffiti around town, it's largely to identify a character as flawed or unlikeable, thereby reinforcing contemporary values. Steve does redeem himself somewhat by cleaning off his hateful graffiti (effectively learning how to behave like the twenty-first century boy that he isn't), but his cronies remain villainous by continuing to endorse anti-feminist attitudes.

Likewise, only antagonists are allowed to express homophobic attitudes. Anti-gay slurs were (and still are) used freely and unthinkingly between groups of heterosexual boys in a variety of manners--aggressive, scolding, even affectionate. It seems unlikely, even unrealistic, that Will's friends wouldn't use such a slur to tease one another at some point, however unthinkable this seems from a modern perspective. Instead, Stranger Things argues that homophobia is to be called out and punished, as we see when Eleven uses her powers to publicly shame the school's leading homophobe.

Writing for The Advocate, Daniel Reynolds commends the series for reflecting modern (and therefore anachronistic) attitudes to queerness. He points out that almost 'every character the audience roots for is queer in some fashion', even if no character is explicitly LGBT. Will has been bullied for being a 'fag' (as whispered by his mother when reporting his disappearance), while his misfit friends are regularly described as 'perverts', 'fairies' or 'weirdos'.(5) Eleven too is very much the 'Other'. Her role as short-haired action hero transcends gender stereotypes, even if she still seems oddly drawn to fulfil them (such as her desire to be 'pretty).

By amending outdated values and attitudes, Stranger Things reinforces their replacements as being central to modern society. This is an interesting facet of such period pieces, and one that can prove a delicate balancing act. A show set in the 1980s can't appear too modern without breaking its central illusion. At the same time, this cognitive dissonance--in which we need the past to be at once the same and different to the present--is undoubtedly part of the allure.

A sticking point in returning to classic film and television is the need to 'look around' outdated mores. By removing these obstacles to pleasure, the show allows us to take comfort in noting social progress--that is, in acknowledging the show is 'improving' on the past--and, in a complicated fashion, recognise the present as being a better place even as we long for this new past. But we should perhaps be wary of such revisionism. Erasing history's unpalatable aspects does the past and the present a disservice, because it creates a narrative in which social progress is seen as an inevitable force, rather than a hard-won and ongoing battle.

As it is, the internet is (unsurprisingly) divided on how well Stranger Things conforms to modern standards of feminism. While Vulture praises its feminist aspects, (6) Mic argues that the series is 'actually fairly regressive in terms of its depiction of women'. (7) Writer EJ Dickson notes that being set in what now appears to be a 'conservative decade' will inevitably lead a show to inherit undesirable values. Likewise, the necessary embracing of tropes and iconography from a past decade might lead to unconsciously perpetuating outdated ideas. There's no getting around the fact that Stranger Things is dramatically unbalanced when it comes to gender representation. In borrowing from Stand by Me, The Goonies and E.T., it replicates the 'gang of boys' model, whereby women largely exist as sidekicks, mothers or victims. Although Eleven may subvert gender norms in some ways, in others she fiercely conforms. Writing in The Atlantic, Lenika Cruz argues:

Eleven is the show's most thinly sketched protagonist, and it sometimes feels like Stranger Things' reverence for 1980s pop culture is to blame [... She] is clearly the token girl of the group--recalling the 'Smurfette Principle' trope that pervaded children's TV during that decade. (8)

Being subversive and, say, gender-flipping the characters so that the central group of heroes was female would undermine the nostalgia at the heart of series. Stranger Things would no longer resemble the texts it aspires to mimic. (9) In other words, no matter how hard you revise or cherry-pick, you can't properly evoke the past without summoning at least some of its demons.

* In what ways does Stranger Things belong more to 2016 than 1983?

* In what ways does it belong more to 1983 than 2016?

* Does imitating the past necessarily mean we endorse outdated values and attitudes?

THE PAST GIVES MEANING TO THE PRESENT

We'll return to this notion in a moment, but first it's worth considering why our cultural compass remains fixed on the 1980s as the decade of choice. Watching Stranger Things, this becomes clear pretty quickly. It was the last analog decade--the end of the pre-internet age. In the second scene of the first episode, we step in on Will and his gang as they conclude a ten-hour game of Dungeons & Dragons. These boys have spent an entire day in one another's company, sitting face-to-face, without once glancing at a screen. Having concluded the game, they jump on their bikes and ride home in the dark. Alone, without mobile phones or an adult chaperone.

It's tempting to wonder if the thoroughly connected twenty-first century children are ever able to feel alone in such a manner. More likely, this would be deemed parental neglect (consider the uproar when a New York mother allowed her son to travel home solo on the subway). (10) After all, Will's mum, Joyce (Winona Ryder), doesn't notice her son missing until the next morning. Here we come to nostalgia as an expression of what we have collectively lost.

Broadly speaking, the internet age can be seen to have cost humanity two virtues: our innocence and our physical presence. When the unsocialised Eleven begins to disrobe in front of the teenage boys, their reaction is one of panic. They have never seen a naked girl before and they're not sure they want to now. It's a charming, comic moment, particularly when seen from a time when more than half of all kids aged eleven to sixteen have viewed internet pornography. (11)

The longing for innocence, simplicity or authenticity is a major driver of nostalgia. From a twenty-first century perspective, the 1980s appears rich in all three. The kids are active, free from the shackles of a virtual life, and capable of sourcing their own entertainment. In a sense, they embody the middle-age memes that shame millennials (or 'digital natives') for their lack of attention spans, their inactivity and their narcissistic obsession with social media. Of course, what these memes tend to miss is that millennials appear to yearn for this lost past even more keenly than those who lived through the 1980s firsthand. The delightfully clunky technology of Stranger Things, in which so much depends on a landline or a walkie-talkie, is the very same tech that millennials notoriously fetishise--as played on in the sharply observed generation gap comedy While We're Young (Noah Baumbach, 2014).

Indeed, it appears the pull of the past is no less strong for those who can't remember it. Variety notes that Netflix's nostalgiatinged programming, including the recent Full House revival, is overwhelmingly watched by viewers in the eighteen-to-thirty-four bracket--the very eldest of whom would have been newborns when Will Byers disappeared. (12) Given that, we can see the appeal of Stranger Things as lying not in pure nostalgia, but in what the Welsh call hiraeth. Writing in The Paris Review, Pamela Petro expands this untranslatable term beyond the loose definition of 'homesickness' to:

an unattainable longing for a place, a person, a figure, even a national history that may never have actually existed. To feel hiraeth is to feel a deep incompleteness and recognize it as familiar. (13)

In other words, this dominant form of nostalgia isn't so much simple longing for a lost past, but rather longing for a home that never was.

* Does Stranger Things identify a sort of childhood that no longer exists, and is therefore longed for?

* Are contemporary children less free or less innocent than those of past generations?

* One of the most sought-after pieces of technology last year was the NES Classic Edition--a small-scale replica of the original Nintendo console. What explains the fetishisation of outdated technology?

* Why might younger audiences be more prone to nostalgia than people who actually experienced the past?

* In what ways does Stranger Things create a past that never actually existed?

THE DARK SIDE OF NOSTALGIA

This brings us, finally, to the dark side of nostalgia. Earlier, I suggested you can't appeal to the past without uncorking demons. For some, those demons might actually be the reason they turn to nostalgia. It's tempting to consider whether setting our stories in the past means we don't have to bother with the complexities of modern society. Back in the 1980s, it's still okay for straight white men to fill every heroic role without having their privilege checked. Likewise, issues of race and sexuality--which might appear challenging to the straight white men who have traditionally wielded power--can be elided on the grounds that to address them would be anachronistic.

Perhaps the most potent danger of investing in the sort of reimagined past peddled by Stranger Things is that it feeds the sort of backwards-looking resentment currently driving nationalist movements across the globe. When Trump promised to 'Make America Great Again', he was referring to that 'national history' that doesn't (and never did) exist. Writing in Business Insider, Oliver Darcy explicitly links Stranger Things with Trump's ascendency. While most election campaigns have historically focused on the future, Trump's appealed to a large chunk of the electorate who would rather return to the past. Darcy quotes a Republican strategist as saying Trump 'would like to take us back to a simple world where right and wrong were very clear'. (14) It's this simplified, homogenised version of America that lies at the heart of Stranger Things.

Nostalgia matters because, according to studies conducted by the University of Southampton, it brings meaning to our lives. The stories of our pasts become myths through which we attempt to explain the present. More than that, they become the means by which we manage existential threats. As we have seen, nostalgia brings comfort when the present offers little. (15) Up until the Victorian Era, nostalgia was classed as a form of mental illness. One eighteenth-century Russian general was so worried about the 'nostalgia virus' that he told his troops that the first one to come down with it would be buried alive, and allegedly made good on his threat. (16)

While we needn't feel guilty (or in need of such drastic psychiatric assistance) for indulging in the likes of Stranger Things, we should perhaps strive to think more critically of the stories we tell about the past. If we allow the past to be our panic room, let us at least examine the ornaments we use to decorate it--and, of course, question exactly what it is we are hoping to escape.

* In what ways could nostalgia be used as a political tool?

* Can you identify a link between the version of America portrayed in Stranger Things and the one Trump supporters wish to re-create?

* How could nostalgia bring meaning or comfort to our lives?

Myke Bartlett is a journalist, author and the entertainment editor for The Weekly Review.

Endnotes

(1) Paul Kennedy, 'The Good Old Days of the Cold War', Los Angeles Times, 18 February 2007, <http://www.latimes.com/news/la-op-kennedyl8febl8-story.html>, accessed 1 December 2016.

(2) For more on this, see 2007 BBC Four documentary The 1970s Edwardian Reconstruction.

(3) The Duffer Brothers, 'Stranger Things Episode 5: The Duffer Brothers on the Perfect Soundtrack', Entertainment Weekly, 19 July 2016, <http://www.ew.com/article/2016/07/19/stranger-things-duffer-brothers-episode-5>, accessed 30 November 2016.

(4) See, for example, Scott Tobias, A Stranger Things Glossary: Every Major Film Reference in the Show, from A-Z', Vulture, 18 July 2016, <http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/stranger-things-film-reference-glossary.html>, accessed 29 November 2016.

(5) Daniel Reynolds, 'Homophobia Is the Real Monster in Stranger Things', The Advocate, 26 July 2016, <http://www.advocate.com/television/2016/7/26/homophobia-real-monster-stranger-things>, accessed 29 November 2016.

(6) Adam Banicki & Cait Munro, 'The 5 Most Feminist Moments in Netflix's Hit Summer Show Stranger Things', Vulture,

2 August 2016, <http://www.vulture.com/2016/08/feminist-moments-in-netflixs-stranger-things.html>, accessed 29 November 2016.

(7) EJ Dickson, '5 Reasons Why Stranger Things Isn't the Feminis' Show of Our Dreams', Mic, 5 August 2016, <https://mic.com/articles/150689/5-reasons-why-stranger-things-isn-t-the-feminist-show-of-our-dreams>, accessed 29 November 2016.

(8) Lenika Cruz, 'Where Stranger Things Loses Its Magic', The Atlantic, 26 July 2016, <http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/stranger-things-netflix/49l68l/>, accessed 29 November 2016.

(9) It's worth noting the cries of outrage when the Ghostbusters reboot did just this--by modernising the property, director Paul Feig was seen to have trampled on the intended audience's childhoods.

(10) Lenore Skenazy, T Let My 9-year-old Ride the Subway Alone. I Got Labeled the "World's Worst Mom."', The Washington Post, 16 January 2015, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/16/i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-the-subway-alone-i-got-labeled-the-worlds-worst-mom/>, accessed 30 November 2016.

(11) Katherine Sellgren, 'Pornography "Desensitising Young People'", BBC News, 15 June 2016, <http://www.bbc.com/news/education-3652768l>, accessed 30 November 2016.

(12) Oriana Schwindt, 'Stranger Things Tests Limits of Netflix's Nostalgia Strategy', Variety, 25 July 2016, <http://variety.com/20l6/tv/news/stranger-things-netflix-fuller-house-nostalgia-strategy-120l822075/>, accessed 30 November 2016.

(13) Pamela Petro, 'Dreaming in Welsh', The Paris Review, 18 September 2012, <http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/20l2/09/18/dreaming-in-welsh/>, accessed 12 December 2016.

(14) Matt Mackowiak, quoted in Oliver Darcy, 'How the Magic of Netflix's Stranger Things Can Help Explain the Rise of Donald Trump', Business Insider Australia, 14 August 2016, <http://www.businessinsider.com.au/netflix-stranger-things-popularity-donald-trump-20l6-8>, accessed 14 August 2016.

(15) See 'Research Project: Nostalgia Provides Existential Comfort', University of Southampton, <http://www.southampton.ac.uk/psychology/research/projects/nostalgia_provides_existential_comfort.page>, accessed 29 November 2016.

(16) Julie Beck, When Nostalgia Was a Disease', The Atlantic, 14 August 2013, <http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/when-nostalgia-was-a-disease/278648/>, accessed 29 November 2016.

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Publication:	Screen Education
Geographic Code:	1USA
Date:	Apr 1, 2017
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