Abstract
McDaniel argues that the Netflix series Stranger Things shows youth horror films have entered a progressive era where the old rules do not capture the diversity of human experience. The protagonists’ statuses as outsiders—in terms of gender, disabled, queer, and racial identities, their self-proclaimed “geekiness,” and their adolescence—places them in a liminal space where they are more susceptible to the Upside Down and better able to overcome its powers. Through tactics such as the uncanny, Stranger Things endorses a therapeutic version of rites of passage in youth horror and critiques traditional exclusionary psychological and narrative models of adolescent identity. As a result, the show’s vision of adolescent development is more flexible and inclusive than traditional teen films.
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Notes
- 1.
The Upside Down refers to the parallel universe that appears in Stranger Things as a shadowy alternate dimension where creatures roam in a landscape that bears an uncanny resemblance to our own world. For example, a pristine swimming pool full of water in the right-side-up world might appear in the Upside Down devoid of water with cracks and rotting vines growing in it. In Season One, using special telekinetic powers cultivated by government experimentation by Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) unwittingly creates a portal between the Upside Down and our plane of existence, which allows the monstrous Demogorgon to kidnap local kid Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and to move back and forth between the two worlds. Will’s mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) and brother (Charlie Heaton) enlist the help of local sheriff Hopper (David Harbour) to search for Will. Alongside this official search, Will’s friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Luke (Caleb McLaughlin) launch their own search for Will and in the process meet Eleven and discover that Will is trapped in the Upside Down. They give the Upside Down its name after a location from their Dungeons & Dragons game: the Vale of Shadows, which was developed by the Stranger Things crew and does not relate to an official Dungeons & Dragons location. Mike’s sister Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and her boyfriend Steve (Joe Keery) also become involved in the search after Nancy’s friend Barb (Shannon Purser) goes missing. Season Two adds new students Max (Sadie Sink) and her step-brother Billy (Dacre Montgomery). Max eventually befriends Mike, Dustin, Luke, and Will, much to the chagrin of Billy, whose violence and bullying makes him the primary human monster for Season Two. Along with Joyce’s boyfriend Bob (Sean Astin) and Will’s Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser), the characters attempt to help Will and Eleven contend with the many aftereffects of Season One, including a new Upside Down monster: the Mind Flayer. For a more detailed description of how the Upside Down relates to the characters’ primary world, watch the fifth episode of Season One “The Acrobat and the Flea,” in which a science teacher explains the connection.
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McDaniel, J. (2019). Growing Up in the Upside Down: Youth Horror and Diversity in Stranger Things. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_11
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