Uncovering Stranger Things

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., is a professional actor and director whose previous books have covered topics ranging from Star Wars to Renaissance faires. He is a professor and chair of the theater department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments

Introduction: Stranger (Things) in a Strange Land or, I Love the ’80s? (Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.)

Section I: Popular Culture

The Rebirth of King’s Children (Ashley Jae Carranza)

Lost Nights and Dangerous Days: Unraveling the Relationship Between Stranger Things and Synthwave (Nicholas Diak)

Transmissions from the Upside Down: Post-Punk Sound Waves in Stranger Things (Jennifer Kirby)

Competing Nostalgia and Popular Culture: Mad Men and delete Stranger Things (Ryan Twomey)

Stranger Things and Our Memories of Colombian TV in the Late Eighties: Bringing Back Alf, V.I.C.I., Evie and Guri-Guri (Enrique ­Uribe-Jongbloed and Sergio ­Roncallo-Dow)

Monsters and Moral Panics: Dungeons & Dragons as Force of Good in Stranger Things (Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.)

Section II: Cinema

The ­Eaten-for-Breakfast Club: Teenage Nightmares in Stranger Things (Rose Butler)

Women as Stranger Things: Frankensteinian Exploitation and Weaponization of Female Bodies (Melissa A. Kaufler)

Not a Princess Anymore: How the Casting of Winona Ryder in Stranger Things Speaks to the Essential Falsehood of 1980s Media Depictions of the American Working Class (Lisa Morton)

Stranger (The) Thing: Echoes of John Carpenter in the Series (John Palisano)

Spielberg Things: The Nostalgic Heart of Stranger Things (Jacopo della Quercia)

Section III: Gender and Orientation Revisiting the Monstrous Feminine and Monster Parents in Stranger Things (Elsa M. Carruthers)

AIDS, Homophobia and the Monstrous Upside Down: The Queer Subtext of Stranger Things (Emily E. Roach)

The Monstrous Queer Child: Mobbing, Bullying and Bad Parenting in the 1980s (Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Canela Ailén Rodriguez Fontao and Mariana S. Zárate)

Gaslighting, Marginalization and the ­Well-Coiffed in Stranger Things (Rhonda Jackson Joseph)

Badass Mothers: Challenging Nostalgia (Brenda Boudreau)

Section IV: Society, Culture and Politics of the Eighties

Half-Lives of the Nuclear Family: Representations of the delete  ­Mid-Century American Family in Stranger Things (Anthony David Franklin)

The Forgotten Rural: Bungling Police Officers and the Rise of Vigilantism in 1980’s Film, Culture and Stranger Things (Dustin Freeley)

“Should I Stay or Should I Go?”: Stranger Things and the ­In-Between (Christine Muller)

The Upside Down of Education Reform During the Reagan Era: A Re-Examination of Education Policies Through Stranger Things (Ludovic A. Sourdot)

“A nice home at the end of the ­cul-de-sac”: Hawkins as Infected Postmodern Suburbia (Lacey N. Smith)

The Nine Most Terrifying Words in the English Language (Scott Wartham)

The Strangest Thing About Stranger Things (Jimmy Butts)

About the Contributors

Index