Stranger Things and the Dangers of Nostalgia

The hit Netflix series Stranger Things is a love letter to iconic pop culture media of decades past. But there are dangers in leaning too heavily on nostalgia because media makers can sometimes end up reproducing harmful patterns along with their retro aesthetics, especially true when it comes to masculinity and romance conventions in entertainment.

**Spoilers for season 3 of Stranger Things

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CREDITS
Writer/Producer: Jonathan McIntosh
Outro music: Rick Lopez

The hit Netflix series Stranger Things is a love letter to iconic pop culture media of decades past.

The duffer brothers create this spectacle of nostalgia by borrowing liberally from movies and TV shows from the

1970s and 80s.

They appropriate and masterfully remix everything, from overarching themes to specific plot points

From lighting techniques to snippets of dialogue

"You want hurt me"

"Oh, yeah.. Why not"

"Because you're a policeman, there are rules for policemen"

"Because you're a policeman

Policemen have rules"

But there are dangers to leaning too heavily on nostalgia,

because media makers can end up reproducing harmful patterns along with their retro aesthetics.

This is especially true when it comes to masculinity and romance conventions in popular entertainment.

Some of the unintended consequences of

uncritical homage coming to sharp focus with the character of Jim Hopper in season 3 of Stranger Things

In addition to his new look inspired by Tom Selleck's Hawaiian shirts from the TV show Magnum P.I.,

Hopper undergoes a sudden and dramatic personality shift.

He moves from a deeply flawed but introspective character in the first and second seasons

to an entitled aggressive verbally abusive one for much of the third

"HEY...

HEYY!

WHEN I SAY THREE INCHES! THREE..."

"Do you knock?...Jeez"

Hopper's increasingly belligerent interactions with Joyce are particularly troubling.

"He's not eccentric, he's certiable"

"Glass Houses stress"

"What?"

"You know, pot calling the kettle black."

"Oh come on"

"Excuse me."

"What?"

"Do me a favor and move your lover's quarrel elsewhere"

"This: not a lover's quarrel pal"

"SPARE ME!"

They're dynamic is borrowed from well-known bickering couples of the 1980s, notably Sam and Diane's love hate

relationship on the sitcom Cheers

"Rember the day I said this:

you are the nuttiest, the stupidest,

the phoniest fruitcake i have ever met"

"You, Sam Malone, are the most arrogant, self centered..."

"SHUT UP! Shut your fat mouth"

"Make me"

"Make you?"

"I... I'm gonna bounce you off of every wall in this office!"

It's an extremely unhealthy dynamic played off as an endearing form of sexual tension

Now, I'm not going to be using that term in this video because what is often presented as sexual tension in Hollywood is, in

reality, red flag behavior for an abusive relationship

"You know, I always wanted to pop you one. Maybe this is my lucky day"

"You disgust me"

"I hate you"

"Are you as turned on as I am?"

"More"

The framing of interpersonal hostility as a precursor to romance didn't begin or end with Cheers

That pernicious pattern is part of a long tradition in media going all the way back to the Golden Age of cinema

But in the 1980s love-hate romances could be found everywhere

"Oh, I think I'm entitled to throw a little anger your way

Especially when I'm being told how to live my life by Miss Hospital corners"

"What's that supposed to mean"

"Don't start with me, all right? I came halfway across Africa to rescue you"

"Rescue me!

I was doing fine without you."

"All right, when we get out of this alive, I'm gonna kill you!"

"Come on!"

"You are imagining things"

"Am I? Then why are you following me, afraid I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"

"I'd just as soon kiss a wookie"

"I can arrange!"

Harrison Ford essentially built his whole career on belligerent romances, especially Indiana Jones

"What are you supposed to be,

A lion tamer?"

"I'm allowing you to tag along.

So why don't you give your mouth a rest?

Okay, doll?"

"What do you mean "tag along"?

Ever since you got into my club you haven't been able to

take your eyes off me."

Oh, yeah?

To understand why the Duffer brothers decision to pay homage to this particular media convention feels so jarring,

We need to take a quick look back at Hopper's character arc in the first two seasons.

Hopper begins the series as a man adrift an

alcoholic struggling with the unresolved trauma of losing a daughter and a marriage.

He's resigned to going through the motions of being police chief in a town

where nothing ever happens

"On a more pressing matter, Joyce Byers can't find her son this morning"

"Joyce is very upset"

"We've discussed this, mornings are for coffee and contemplation"

"But chief she's in..."

"Coffee and contemplation."

He's also a bit of an asshole with a propensity for solving problems by punching them in the face

Hopper's character arc in season 1 is all about regaining a sense of purpose.

"Hey, I got something!"

and through his quest to unravel the mystery around Will's disappearance, he begins to reestablish

connections with the people around him

"You were right

This whole time you were right"

Season two sees hopper continuing along that trajectory

He's figuring out how to navigate his own fears while at the same time trying to be a father again

"'Aight. Get to work"

He still loses his temper and fails in balancing work with caregiving

"Hey.. HEY! DON'T WALK AWAY FROM ME!"

But he has made progress and remarkably he manages not to fall back into alcoholism or face-punching

He's also learned to treat Joyce's feelings with a measure of sensitivity

"Nothing's gonna go back to the way that it was, not really but it'll get better

...in time"

The last episode in season two gives us this heart-to-heart in which Hopper is openly vulnerable in

sharing his feelings with Eleven

"I've just been scared, you know

that's why I get so...

mad

I'm so sorry. I could be so... so... "

"Stupid"

"Yeah...

stupid"

Now fast-forward to season 3, and all that character development has been thrown out the window in the name of paying homage to the

1980s cowboy cop archetype

"Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!"

But resurrecting that brand of action hero masculinity brings with it a veritable minefield of unhealthy behaviors

This new hopper is a domineering powder keg who no longer has any patience for the women in his life

He's obsessed with sabotaging Eleven's teenage romance with her new boyfriend Mike

"You know, is that smug son of a bitch Mike. He's corrupting her. I'm telling you and I'm just gonna lose it

I mean, I'm gonna lose it, Joyce!"

"Just take it down, Hopper."

"I need for them to break up!"

"That is not your decision!"

Joyce, for her part, implores Hopper to calm down and talk it out.

"I think you should talk to them

"No, no because talking doesn't work"

"Not yelling, not ordering

Talk to them

You know, with a heart to heart"

"A heart to heart?

What is that?"

And we see her doing a lot of emotional labor for him in an effort to help facilitate a healthy

heart-to-heart about boundaries

"So we can build an environment where we all feel comfortable"

It's all for naught though because this version of Hopper has forgotten how to express his feelings

"Share our feelings"

"To sharing our feelings. This isn't gonna work It's not gonna work."

Yes, it will

He suddenly can't even fathom the idea of openly communicating with his adopted daughter

Even though we just saw him doing exactly that at the end of the previous season

"Maybe I'll just kill Mike

I'm the Chief of Police. I could cover it up"

The old overprotective dad trope is played for laughs but it's all about patriarchal control

"HEY!

Hey! 3 inches minimum!"

It's rooted in the idea that young women can't be trusted to make their own decisions and

therefore need older men to step in and protect them from themselves

Having devolved into someone who is unable to express himself, except through anger and rage,

Hopper relies on intimidation to scare Mike into staying away from Eleven.

"You're crazy!"

"Crazy?

You want to see real crazy?"

This is just one of many instances where he relies on violence or the threat thereof to resolve conflicts

Consistent with 1980s conventions of tough-guy manhood Hopper's violent outbursts are undertaken in a remarkably casual and

humorous manner even when engaging in torture or murdering a bunch of people

"I had it under control"

"Yeah, sure you did"

Hoppers aforementioned dysfunctional relationship with Joyce is another example of his dramatic regression

"You wanna have dinner tonight"

"I have plans"

"Okay, sure"

Even after Joyce says she's not interested, Hopper tries to trick her into a date by pretending it isn't one

"I'll tell you everything over dinner. I was thinking, you know, Enzo's, tonight

seven o'clock. Hey, before you say no. I'd like to make one thing crystal clear. This is not a date"

"Wait, a date?

You never said anything about a date."

"I know. I didn't say anything about the date

I just wanted to clear it up in case there was any confusion on your part"

"There's not"

"Great! It's just two friends getting together for a nice dinner"

When she then doesn't show up for their not-date he becomes angry and resentful

"Oh, look who it is"

"We need to talk"

"Yeah, we do.I haven't been stood up like that since Alice Gilbert in the ninth grade

What are you doing?"

Recall that over the prior two seasons

he learned to respect Joyce's intuition because her ideas about the upside down have always turned out to be correct

But this new Hopper angrily ridicules her for her investigations into paranormal phenomena

"I think that when I asked you out, I think you got scared. I think you got scared and now,

You're inventing things, you're inventing things to get worked up about so that you can push me

away, because god forbid

any of us

move on. That would be too much, wouldn't it, Joyce?"

His entitlement to a romantic relationship one that Joyce?

escalates from not respecting her wishes to demeaning her feeling

and then in fits of jealousy

trying to police her friendships with other men

"That's why you should listen to Alexei"

"Yeah, your new boyfriend, right?"

"Yes, every man I talk to from now on has to be my boyfriend"

"He remind me a little bit of Russian Scott Clark."

"Oh, here we go."

"Maybe you should go on a date. I don't know. I'm thinking like Enzo's"

Instead of framing any of this behavior as cause for alarm. It's all written to be part of an endearing

Will-they-or-won't-they scenarios?

"What are you gonna do? You are gonna walk back to Hawkins?"

"I will do anything if it gets me away from you!"

"CHILDREN!

Why don't you two cut the horseshit and get to the part where you admit your sexual feelings for one another"

"WOOO"

"YOU ARE WAY OFF BASE, BUDDY"

"OH, SPARE ME! SPARE ME! SPARE ME!"

When actress Evan Rachel Wood, among others, pointed out the toxicity of Hopper's behavior on Twitter,

she received an avalanche of defensiveness from fans who simply couldn't see what the big deal was

"I'll tell you what you do? I'll tell you..."

Well, it might be entertaining to watch fictional characters verbally sparring with each other, when media frames disrespect and ridicule has

evidence of romantic interest, it can reinforce the idea that

mistreatment is a normal part of courtship

It can also lead people, including authority figures, to dismiss or downplay the seriousness of emotional abuse

The truth is that

psychological, emotional, and verbal abuse is just as real and can be just as harmful as physical violence

Media stories frequently advance the dangerous myth that volatile or

domineering men just need a special woman to soften their rough edges and temper their aggression

But intimate partners are often the ones who bear the brunt of men's rage

Guys like Hopper don't need a relationship, what they need is therapy

If you were holding out hope that the Stranger Things writers may have been going for some sort of critical commentary, about unhealthy relationships

the final episode in the season makes clear, that is not the case.

"You know,

I think despite everything, I mean, despite the arguing

I think we make a pretty good team"

In a page lifted directly from 1980s rom-coms, Joyce ultimately responds to Hopper's belligerent entitled attitude

by

asking him out

"What you say? Friday, 8 o'clock?"

This plot point then

perpetuates the idea that controlling or aggressive behavior is somehow a sign of love attraction or passion

"Just for clarification

because I... I mean... just.. if

When you say date, just so that we're crystal clear about things, so"

"Yeah, Hop?

Stop talking, or I'll change my mind"

"Okay.. yeah.. okay"

It's the kind of twisted logic that can lead people to remain in unhealthy or abusive relationships

"Live for the day! Go for it, Sam!

I tell you, go for it!"

Hollywood writers like to use combative interactions between love interests because it's an easy shortcut to dramatic tension

but there are many many ways to write interesting conflicts.

For example, tensions can arise from external pressure on relationships

Things like shared traumatic experiences, which is something Stranger Things has in spades

There's no good reason to keep writing romantic tension as something drawn from interpersonal hostility

When you really think about it, we very rarely see healthy relationship dynamics modeled on screen

That said, Stranger Things does give us one example of what a positive romantic relationship looks like

"Hey there"

"Hey"

"Do you happen to have this in any other colors?

I'm not a big fan of orange"

"I'll just check in the back"

Bob "the brain" Newby is Joyce's love interest and dad joke aficionado from season 2

Bob is loving and affectionate. He listens to Joyce and he respects her feelings

"I know it sounds silly"

"No, it's not silly.

It's not silly"

While still honestly communicating his own wants and desires for the relationship

"What if we were to move out of Hawkins

Together"

This is essentially the exact opposite of how Hopper treats Joyce in season 3,

"I just, I like you so much

Not just you

Everything that comes with you

your family, your boys"

Bob's genuinely loving nature is refreshing for male love interests, but it's also very

unusual, in fact, it's so unusual that we as the audience

almost automatically assume his compassionate persona must be some kind of trick or a cynical ploy

"Look at me now, I get to date Joyce Byers

See it all works out in the end"

"It does"

We've come to expect sensitive or loving male characters to ultimately be revealed as either selfish cowards or

to have secretly been evil all along "

"I hope

it doesn't suck"

If a man does turn out to be as warm-hearted as he initially appears

"Bob Newby. Superhero"

He's almost always killed off as a way to up the stakes for the other characters

"It's the ones like us, that don't punch back, that people really take advantage of

To rub your nose in it just a little bit more

I don't know why they do that

Maybe it makes them feel powerful"

It's the dysfunctional violent tough guys

like Hopper who are framed as having what it takes to conquer otherworldly threats and survive

A trend that helps normalize cultural ideals around aggressive masculinity

One of the reasons so many people have trouble recognizing abusive behavior is because in popular media, it's often done by the good guys

These are male characters who are otherwise written to be charming righteous and valiant

And like abusers in the real world these fictional men don't act in controlling or domineering ways all the time

their abusive behavior comes in waves,

often preceded by moments of kindness and then followed by expressions of remorse

Since Hopper is one of the good guys we're supposed to want him and Joyce to get together in the end

Despite his rage, his jealousy, his control issues, and his propensity for violent intimidation

we are nonetheless meant to be in Hopper's corner

And that's because Jim Hopper is not a one-dimensional cartoon oaf

We have after all been shown glimpses of his introspective caring and vulnerable sides

during the two previous seasons.

There are also a couple scenes near the end of season 3 that are very clearly designed to reinforce to viewers that Hopper really is

a good guy deep down inside

The first of these comes when he seemingly gives his life to save the world and the people he cares about

I'll make a whole video essay about the heroic sacrifice trope in the future. For now though. I'll just say that selfless acts are not

necessarily a negative thing

But for troubled male characters, like Hopper the grand heroic death is often written to be a shortcut to redemption

And a shortcut that doesn't require men to actually do the slow painful work of personal transformation.

The epilogue flashback at the end serves a similar narrative purpose.

In this scene, we hear Hopper's inner voice as he mulls over how to share his feelings with Eleven

"But lately, I guess I've been feeling

distant from you,

like you're

you're pulling away from me, or something"

The voice-over is meant to remind us that this is a man who is at least capable of being sincere caring and vulnerable.

The trouble is, good intentions don't mean anything without the follow-through and

Hopper never actually follows through in having that heart-to-heart with his adopted daughter.

Like we saw with his apparent death,

this flashback is designed to absolve Hopper of the emotional damage or harm he caused throughout the season

All without having him actually

apologize or make amends for his behavior.

I want to be clear about something, the problem isn't that male protagonists are sometimes depicted as having anger issues or

engaging in unhealthy behavior.

Character flaws are human and therefore a key ingredient in creating stories about relatable people.

The question is how are those flaws framed?

Are unhealthy behaviors romanticized excused or rationalized

or are they presented as cause for serious concern?

And critically, do these men learn to grow and change over time?

In action adventure stories like Stranger Things

we rarely see male heroes learning how to change their behavior, how to effectively communicate

or how to build and maintain

healthy relationships

"What did you say?"

At the end of season two it appeared as if Hopper might be able to break free from the constraints of 1980s action hero manhood.

Unfortunately, when media makers rely so uncritically on nostalgia for inspiration, it prevents them from imagining new possibilities

for male characters.

As a result, we risk encouraging men to remain stuck in the past

held hostage to retrograde ideals of masculinity.

I hope you enjoyed this bonus video on Stranger Things.

The next video published on my channel will be part two in my series on the sexual assault of men played for laughs in Hollywood.

So if you like these long form video essays, please consider going over to patreon and helping to fund this project there.

I've also left a link to Pay Pal in the description below. I really couldn't do this work without your support. So, thank you

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