Nostalgia, VHS and Stranger Things' homage to 80s horror
- Written by Mark Steven, Research Fellow, UNSW Australia
Stranger Things is the newest binge-worthy series on Netflix. Set during the winter of 1983 in the fictional township of Hawkins, Indiana, its eight episodes tell the story of a boy’s disappearance and the subsequent investigation, which coincides with the arrival of a mysterious girl sporting a lab-rat buzzcut and telekinetic superpowers.
The narrative, which shuttles between adolescent adventure, sci-fi conspiracy, and balls-to-the-wall horror, features an ensemble cast of Hollywood veterans (Winona Ryder, Matthew Modine) and brilliantly charismatic newcomers (meet Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, and Caleb McLaughlin, your new favorite actors).
Gurgling away in the background to all of this is the geopolitical antipathy between American capitalism and Soviet communism. This plays out in Reagan Era paranoia, with espionage manoeuvres against Moscow, multiple references to the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka Star Wars), and a whole subplot dedicated to Project MKUltra, the CIA’s mind control program.
In cultural reach if not critical reception, Stranger Things seems to have outshone its competitors in televisual horror. These include numerous remakes of much-loved films and just as many adaptations from gothic literature and penny dreadfuls.
While not a remake or an adaptation as such, Stranger Things is absolutely a throwback, borrowing shamelessly from the crowned masters of horror: it recreates scenes and sets and tableaux from the likes of Tobe Hooper, Ridley Scott, Stephen Spielberg, John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, and Wes Craven.
Easter eggs abound, frequently referencing the classics of horror. And yet, whether you can pick the citations or not, it would be harder still to miss the loving nostalgia of the visual style, which takes us back to the manifold horrors of a particular decade in film history: the 1980s. That is to say, Stranger Things taps into the 80s not just with the story it tells, but also in the way that it looks and feels. Here, retrograde design is coupled with a pulsating synth score.
80s horror
When it comes to cinematic horror, the 80s are distinct from the decades on either side. Nowhere near as vicious as the 70s, and yet to sell out for the self-reflexive cynicism of the 90s, it was during the 80s that horror fully melded with sci-fi, allowing for fantastical narratives in which humankind could face off against the unimaginable evils of an expanded cosmos.
To cite only the least obscure iteration of this, and the one that really popularized sci-fi horror, think of the freshly hatched xenomorph bursting from John Hurt’s chest in the spring of 1979, in Ridley Scott’s Alien.
VHS
Perhaps more important than the melding and mutation of genres, however, is that during the 80s, horror also found the technological medium on which it would ultimately thrive – namely VHS.
Video allowed for the wide distribution of films that enjoyed little screen time at the cinema and became the format through which cheap productions could recuperate their funding.
Video also shaped the way horror was experienced by countless viewers. In the words of Matt Duffer, one of the two brothers that created Stranger Things:
So many of our greatest moviegoing experiences were actually experienced in our house, on VHS. These were the films that were on our shelves, that we would watch. When you’re a kid, you don’t watch a movie one time. You watch it 10, 20 times. These were the movies we grew up on. It became a part of us.
With a visual palette so obviously indebted to the 80s, it comes as no surprise that fan-made mock-ups of VHS dust jackets for Stranger Things are already doing the rounds.
Authors: Mark Steven, Research Fellow, UNSW Australia
Read more http://theconversation.com/nostalgia-vhs-and-stranger-things-homage-to-80s-horror-63055