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Stranger Things


methodwriter85

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I finally broke down and got Netflix so I could watch Stranger Things, which is kind of like an homage to 1970's/1980's sci-fi teen fantasy movies/books. It's about a nerdy group of middle school friends in small town America 1983, when one of the group goes mysteriously missing.

 

Some big nostalgia factor- aside from being set in '83, it's also got 80's teen stars Matthew Modine and Winona Ryder. Winona especially turns in quite the performance as a single mom slowly but surely coming apart at the seams as the horror of realizing her son has gone missing.

 

I'm on the 4th episode currently- it's been pretty true to the early 1980's setting other than some anachronisms, like playing "Hazy Shade of Winter", a 1987 song, or someone calling another person a "douchebag", which is more late 90's slang. I'm pretty thrilled by that- nothing's more annoying than watching a period piece where they completely bungle the setting and don't get it right, like 'The Carrie Diaries". But yeah, watching the show, they really get that "First-Term Reagan America" ennui right, with the girls in the prairie blouses and long tartan skirts and the guys in tight jeans and pattern/colored polo shirts and the way the cars/houses look. Still lots of traces of the 70's, but slowly fading out.

 

The soundtrack has been pretty fun- they played one of my favorite songs...the melancholy

.

 

Anyone else watching it?

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I did, and I thought it to be good and entertaining. You're right about it being pretty nostalgic of the 80's... Since you're only on Ep 4, I'm curious to know where you'll land on the story (tropes) as a whole so I hope you'll update.

 

David Harbour as Sheriff Hopper though, is my Netflix summer man crush.. 

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I did, and I thought it to be good and entertaining. You're right about it being pretty nostalgic of the 80's... Since you're only on Ep 4, I'm curious to know where you'll land on the story (tropes) as a whole so I hope you'll update.

 

David Harbour as Sheriff Hopper though, is my Netflix summer man crush.. 

 

I wound up finishing....

 

I was already spoiled for this, but I LOVED that Nancy didn't suddenly start dating Jonathan and dump Steve. I liked that they allowed Steve to redeem himself. Maybe I just have a thing for tall lanky guys with a great head of hair.

 

All in all, it was great. I liked that they wound up leaving up just enough to allow for a new season, but at the same time, they wound up answering the big questions. (If they had left Will in the Upside Down, I would have been PISSED.)

 

I'm definitely in for a season 2.

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I didn't pick up on Hazy Shade of Winter... must have been the Bangles version from 85, because I had the Bookends album by Simon and Garfunkel who did it originally, and that was 1968-69... got it on my 15th birthday... love the series... need more....

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Referring to the accuracy of ST's... I have been ruminating about douchebag and it's place in this time period, mainly because it was one of my friends favorite words... I was sure the first time I heard it had to be before 1980... anyway, I ended up checking it out and found it was used long before I first heard it... as far back as the 1940's... here's an excerpt from one of the articles I read...

 

--The first usage of douchebag/douche bag that I could find in the pejorative sense dates back to at least 1951, in the classic novel From Here to Eternity (here an adjective):

“The trouble with you, Pete,” the voice that did not seem to come with him but from that cigaret said savagely, “is that you can’t see further than that
douchebag
nose of yours.”

So douchebag seems to have been used in a vulgar context as far back as World War II or thereabouts. It’s worth noting, however, that this is the ONLY usage of the type found in 1950’s literature: all other examples of douchebag/douche bag refer to medicine or hygiene. I doubt the term was in popular currency at the time.

The next such usage doesn’t appear until 1964, in a stream-of-consciousness passage of another famous novel, Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn:

“…and she yelled to Jack to come on and she/d f***in blind not like that f***in
douchebag
he was with and someone yelled we/re coming and she was dragged down the steps …”

Still, examples of the pejorative douchebag in the 1960s are few and far between. And seeing as that decade was famed for its relaxation of literary puritanism, I’d hazard to guess it was still uncommon.

It was only in the following three decades that douchebag seemed to make some headway. There are about a dozen examples of the word being used pejoratively in literature between 1970-1980. In the 80s, this increases to several dozen.* And by the 1990s, this skyrockets to somewhere between 100-200.

 

So there you have it for what it's worth... I think it's a perfectly acceptable choice for the ST's time period... I was really taken with the accuracy of all the details... even the look of the outside phone lines on the poles were accurate....

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Just finished the last episode! Absolutely loved it! I'm a 90's kid, so all the 80's nostalgia is lost on me. Oh, well! Still a great show! Kept me entertained and binge watching! Haha! I'd highly recommend it to anybody!

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