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Stranger Things
Nov. 17th, 2017 08:53 amI'm watching the second season of Stranger Things, and I'm stuck on episode six for two reasons. First, everyone says episode seven is awful; and second, because everything I have seen is very good and I want to spread it out.
Even though Stranger Things is set in Indiana, a lot of it was actually filmed in the town where I grew up in Georgia, Jackson. The pharmacy where Winona Ryder works is really there, and my aunt used to work there until she moved to a Wal-Mart pharmacy in a white neighborhood where she wouldn't have to see so many black and Hispanic people. Make America Great Again!
The Radio Shack where Samwise Gamgee works is also really there, and Sean Astin's character reminds me of someone who really used to work there. Let's call him Jim, because that is his name. The way I tell Jim's story is going to sound elitist as hell, and this is probably because I'm an asshole, but bear with me.
Jim had the misfortune of being born in a tiny backwards town in rural Georgia with dreams and ambitions. His real problem, though, was that he didn't realize that he was only a big fish in a small pond. He went to college at UGA, which is a big deal for someone from a place where most people don't graduate from high school. (Or, if they do, it's because their parents put them in a private school where they didn't have to see black and Hispanic people. Make America Great Again!) Once Jim got to college, however, he didn't do so well, and so he came back to work at Radio Shack in Jackson, where he could be the college boy who went off and did good and came back to be the smartest person in town.
Although there could be some sort of plot twist later in season two, Sean Astin's character seems to be a huge nerd but is genuinely intelligent and almost radically kind. Meanwhile, Jim has found solace for the fact that his grand ambitions were not realized in the alt-right movement, and now he spends his free time at work getting on social media and, for example, linking to articles that attack progressive politics by saying that people who do not support Trump are basically Nazis so that he can stage debates in the comments, like so:
My point here is that, even though I love Stranger Things, I'm immensely distrustful of its cultural nostalgia. I understand the critique of late Cold War Reagan-era America that it's presenting with its scary white male doctors and scientists who insist on refusing any sort of social or political oversight while they abuse children, but the actual legacy of the 1980s in places like the fictional Hawkins, Indiana or the real Jackson, Georgia is white supremacy and xenophobic nationalism. This is why I've spent the show being more afraid of Winona Ryder's "nice guy" boyfriend than I am of any of the alien creatures.
Speaking of which: PLEASE FEED THOSE ALIEN CREATURES, they look very hungry and I am concerned.
Even though Stranger Things is set in Indiana, a lot of it was actually filmed in the town where I grew up in Georgia, Jackson. The pharmacy where Winona Ryder works is really there, and my aunt used to work there until she moved to a Wal-Mart pharmacy in a white neighborhood where she wouldn't have to see so many black and Hispanic people. Make America Great Again!
The Radio Shack where Samwise Gamgee works is also really there, and Sean Astin's character reminds me of someone who really used to work there. Let's call him Jim, because that is his name. The way I tell Jim's story is going to sound elitist as hell, and this is probably because I'm an asshole, but bear with me.
Jim had the misfortune of being born in a tiny backwards town in rural Georgia with dreams and ambitions. His real problem, though, was that he didn't realize that he was only a big fish in a small pond. He went to college at UGA, which is a big deal for someone from a place where most people don't graduate from high school. (Or, if they do, it's because their parents put them in a private school where they didn't have to see black and Hispanic people. Make America Great Again!) Once Jim got to college, however, he didn't do so well, and so he came back to work at Radio Shack in Jackson, where he could be the college boy who went off and did good and came back to be the smartest person in town.
Although there could be some sort of plot twist later in season two, Sean Astin's character seems to be a huge nerd but is genuinely intelligent and almost radically kind. Meanwhile, Jim has found solace for the fact that his grand ambitions were not realized in the alt-right movement, and now he spends his free time at work getting on social media and, for example, linking to articles that attack progressive politics by saying that people who do not support Trump are basically Nazis so that he can stage debates in the comments, like so:
My point here is that, even though I love Stranger Things, I'm immensely distrustful of its cultural nostalgia. I understand the critique of late Cold War Reagan-era America that it's presenting with its scary white male doctors and scientists who insist on refusing any sort of social or political oversight while they abuse children, but the actual legacy of the 1980s in places like the fictional Hawkins, Indiana or the real Jackson, Georgia is white supremacy and xenophobic nationalism. This is why I've spent the show being more afraid of Winona Ryder's "nice guy" boyfriend than I am of any of the alien creatures.
Speaking of which: PLEASE FEED THOSE ALIEN CREATURES, they look very hungry and I am concerned.
