Among my students at university the very last season final of Netflix’ blockbuster series „Stranger Things“ was greeted with disbelief, grief and according to some, a feeling that the world would feel different without it. The story about a bunch of adolescents in a forgotten corner of 1980s America, who are accidentally drawn into the aftermath of a failed government lab experiment involves alternate dimensions, monsters, mental torture, various forms of death and destruction, and, of course, the old good vs evil.
Billed as retro sci-fi horror, the story gives physical form to many fears and anxieties plaguing us today - individually and collectively: The fear of circumstances beyond our control. Lives we are not in charge of anymore. Powerful, invisible, evil forces able to pry open our innermost selves. The ground shifting beneath our feet - metaphorically and literally so. A crumbling social fabric. Economic pain. A wholly uncertain future.
I believe, the series' success rests on how the protagonists deal with all of these - and ultimately prevail. They are teenagers who have grown into young adults during the 5 years of the story line 1983 to 1987 (although the series was produced over a period of ten years). They are friends and their interactions are typically set in what in the 1980s would be the most ordinary situations - chatting at kitchen tables, game nights in basement lounges, video rental stores, local radio stations, hospitals, schools, after school clubs, basketball games, road trips, family holidays.
These locations and the quotidian interactions they facilitate constitute the social fabric of these friends. Crucially, most of their interactions are physical and involve all their senses. Where they do interact remotely it’s usually via their amateur radio sets. And even those are prominently depicted in their most physical form: Clunky, massive handsets that are being drawn from bags with antennas that have to be manually pulled out of the device seemingly with great effort. And when they radio each other the sound of the static is so thick you feel you can almost touch it.
Even the evil alternate dimension - the „Upside-Down“ (which technically is just a bridge connecting to another dimension - the „Abyss“ - you're welcome) is rendered in sensual physical terms: The kids can literally climb into it through wholes in the ground or in walls. Holes that are covered by a fabric of orange glowing fibers that you can touch and pull aside.
These kids know that together they can take on the world. They feel agency and belonging. Not just because they are friends and work together. But because they do so using all their senses. They navigate, interrogate and manipulate the world not just by seeing, speaking and listening but by walking and running, cycling and driving, playing and chilling, cooking and eating, pulling and punching, laughing and fighting. Together. In the here and now. Well, in the 80s, that is. And maybe that’s the central premise of the story: That the 1980s was the last decade, where this was still possible. Before cable news, email, the Internet, social media, algorithms and AI started to relentlessly bombard our senses, hijack our attention and colonize our minds.
The growing number of initiatives and apps facilitating physical community - neighborhood apps, meetup platforms, book clubs, co-working services, travel buddies, gym companions, etc also speak to this yearning for physical connection with others and the world. And maybe that’s why young people - such as my students - are grieving the end of Stranger Things. Because it offered them a vision of a world that was less strange than the one they live in.
A world that you can touch is much less scary, no matter how many monsters.