Movie Enthusiast Issue 18: Stranger Things and Stranger Movies
I’ve been watching Stranger Things, the new 8-episode Netflix original series that pays homage to the beloved movies of the 1980s. In the spirit of the eighties, I only watch one episode each week, so forgive me if, at only halfway through the series, my thoughts here are underinformed. In any case, I’m sure it’s been pointed out in the zillions of Stranger Things thinkpieces on the internet (which I’ve been avoiding for fear of spoilers), but for whatever virtues the show may have, it isn’t…exactly…strange.
Hear me out! When you think about your favorite Hollywood blockbuster from the eighties —E.T., Back to the Future, Robocop—chances are that movie was presenting contemporaneous audiences with something they had never seen a movie do before. We could be talking special effects, or we could be talking about big ideas more generally. I would posit that one reason the eighties seem to have such a long-lasting cache with so many American movie lovers is because the risks these movies took and the new avenues they pioneered lend themselves to greater nostalgia down the line.
In 2016, there’s very little special effects-wise—at least at a television show’s budget—that audiences haven’t seen before. It’s no surprise then that Stranger Things has gone full-homage, opting to milk the nostalgia factor for all its worth. The consequence of this approach? A fairly enjoyable, and certainly handsomely-made product, but not one that, four episodes in, has really surprised me at all. Sure, there’s an element of surprise inherent in the way that the central mystery—what happened to Will? who is Eleven and what’s the story behind her powers? why won’t all these weird, faceless creatures just leave Winona Ryder the hell alone?—gradually unfolds, but nothing about the way the show is told is at all groundbreaking yet.
For a point of comparison, consider Twin Peaks (a nineties show, granted, but close enough to be relevant to the present discussion). There’s a similar vibe going on there: a homely American town is rocked by [something bad] happening to one of its beloved children, followed by a string of weird occurrences and lots of personal drama tangential to the main mystery. The key difference here is that Twin Peaks was capital-S STRANGE in a way that Stranger Things is not. Four episodes into ST, I’ve yet to encounter any storytelling non sequiturs or any example of thinking-outside-the-box filmmaking that has elevated the show to something singular, in the way that backwards-talking dwarves or Julee Cruise musical interludes or random appearances by Killer Bob made Twin Peaks a singular act of storytelling.
Stranger Things doesn’t need to be outré to be a good show, but I wonder if it’s as successful an homage to the eighties as it’s hoping to be without the element of innovation or surprise that was key to making so many of its antecedents memorable. Every plot development, every edit, every use of sound effects or chance appearance by an extraterrestrial feels logical as per the Rules for Sci-Fi Storytelling that have been passed down from generation to generation. The Duffer brothers’ imagination extends only so far, and falls short of delivering something meaningfully stranger than what we’ve become accustomed to seeing in movies and TV.
By comparison, what has been a truly out there, imaginatively unexpected work of audiovisual art this year? To name a few examples from what I’ve seen: The Fits, Cemetery of Splendour, Mountains May Depart, Lemonade, The Lobster, Knight of Cups, Embrace of the Serpent, Aferim! And though I haven’t seen it, I suppose we can count Swiss Army Man among this crowd as well.
I hope it escapes nobody’s notice that the only movie of any of the groundbreakers I’ve listed above that most of you are likely to have seen is Lemonade, which isn’t a “movie” in the traditional sense of the word. When the perennial “Is This the Year Cinema Died?” thinkpieces roll around (this year’s crop was ready for harvest just last week!), the common conclusion the authors come to is that music videos and TV have upstaged what used to be cinema’s turf. A cursory glance at what the Hollywood studio system has been up to lately will tell you all you need to know about why any sort of innovative storytelling and filmmaking only seems to happen outside the realm of big-budget movies. (Of the above movies I listed, 5 are international productions; The Fits was funded by a microbudget first filmmakers initiative developed by the Venice Film Festival; and Knight of Cups, being a Terrence Malick project, just sort of…happened in the way that Terrence Malick projects tend to happen.)
The weird and wonderful collage of sounds and images that Beyoncé assembled for her new visual album ought to put to rest any fears that filmmaking as a form of innovative storytelling isn’t done just yet, but its grand success in comparison to the modest-to-minimal exposure of other daring works of film this year indicates which way the tides are turning. Moviegoers seeking something new and daring are increasingly not going to the movies to find such. And for whatever else you want to say about it, you have to admit that the Stranger Things isn’t doing the memory of its eighties antecedents any favors by failing to capture the sense of newness they once brought to their initial audiences. Who after all says an homage can’t take chances of its own?
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