STRANGER THINGS
STRANGER THINGS- CONTEXT
Kate Bush's 'Running up that hill' spiked after being used in Stranger Things. This was perfect for stranger things as it was a 1980s song in a series set in the 1980s.
Stranger things is like a love letter to the 1980s and a lot of things are intertextually referenced, such as the bikes in ET
1980s:
Outfit:
- Brightly coloured outfits
- Big hair
- Yuppies
- Bold makeup
- Funky patterns
Film:
- Back to the future
- Labrynth
- Goonies
- ET
- Star Wars
- Ghostbusters
- Teen Wolf
Music:
- Michael Jackson
- Madonna
- The Smiths
Entertainment:
- Games consoles
- Arcade games
- MTV
- Cabbage patch kids
- Care bears
- Transformers
- Basketball
- Board games
- Chopper bikes
History:
- Cold War
- Chernobyl
- Rise of HIV/AIDS
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- Premiered summer 2016
- Similar to 'An inspector calls' where JB Priestley set it in 1912 but writes in 1945
- 2016 election- Trump
- Republican- Trump, Democrats- Biden
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PLOT EVENTS:
- Scientist in lab corridor chased and killed by monster
- Will, Dustin, Mike and Lucas playing dungeons and dragons
- Will goes missing
- Opening credits
- Hopper introduced
- Nancy kisses Steve in toilets
- Eleven introduced
- Eleven's telekinesis introduced
- Benny shot in diner by secret agent
- Joyce in police station
- Phones being listened to all over Hawkins
- Mike, Lucas and Dustin discover Eleven when looking in the woods for Will
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EPISODE 1 ANALASYS
First scene: Boys playing DnD in the Wheeler household
Camera shots:
- Extreme close up of sprinkler in the first frame represents wealthiness. This contrasts to the Byers household, who aren't as wealthy.
- Establishing shot of the Wheeler's household showing the wealthy family home.
- Close up of Mike- the first character to be seen
- Close up/Mid shot of Dustin showing his 80s style costume (iconic trucker cap)
- Master shot of the four boys together for the first time so far. All of them are arranged equally, showing that there isn't a true leader.
- High angle shot of Mike's mum looking down on Mike and his friends in the basement. Makes his mum look powerful and intimidating. His mum fills up almost double of the frame than Mike, making him look even smaller and less in control.
Props:
- Sprinkler in Wheeler's garden representing their wealthiness
- Dustin's trucker cap, representing the 1980s. He has a karate jumper, and martial arts became popular in the late 70s/early 80s with the film Karate Kid.
Camera movements:
- Pan left increases fear and shows that someone might be watching them.
Sound:
- Mike is the first character to speak- sound bridge (one footage to another)- house is shown while Mike speaks
- Diegetic sound effect of the bike torches being turned on- makes the bikes seem like an important prop
Mise en scene:
- Recorded in a large warehouse style place
- Intertextuality in the basement where a poster of 'The Thing' can be seen in the background. The movie is similar to the Demogorgon in Stranger Things.
- Will didn't know how to use the gun- lack of male role model?
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All 4 boys represent different groups
Mike- comes from a wealthy family
Lucas- different ethnicity to the others
Dustin- has a disability
Will- thought of as possibly gay, also an honest character. This is shown when his honesty takes over and he tells Mike that he rolled a 7 in DnD and the Demogorgon got him- mike is left speachless.
First lines:
Will- "I don't know"- unsure about himself, doesn't feel like he can speak up to his friends
Dustin- "Cast your protection spell"- cowardly, scared young, wants to get his ideas across as a loud member of the group. "We're in deep shit"- juxtaposition of the game and swearing, acting older. "Son of a bitch"- more sexism
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Stuart Hall- sometimes texts create deliberate anti-stereotypes. An effective strategy is the go inside the stereotype and open it up from within, to deconstruct the work of representation.
Ted Wheeler- "I think you should listen to your mother"- lacks personality, boring.
Specifically chosen comic that links to the Hell Fire club- intertextuality.
Henry Jenkins- Fans act as "textual poachers"- taking elements from media texts to create their own culture
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Synergy- another company which isn't media that collaborates with media
Stranger things Lego
£380. 71
Product placement- where products appear on a show. This happened with Coca Cola which was featured in Stranger Things.
There is lots of Stranger Things merch such as:
STRANGER THINGS CONTEXT
Why is 1983 a good time to set Stranger Things?
- Cold war- America and Russia
- Space race- technology
- Conspicuous consumption- very commercialised age
- Pre-digital revolution- no mobiles yet
- 'Golden age' of American dream- people were making a lot of money
- Ronald Reagan administration
- The fear of the unknown
- Films attracted at younger audiences and had big cinema releases
STRANGER THINGS- KEY FACTS FOR INDUSTRY
- First aired on Netflix 15th July 2016 (summer release)
- 8 episodes in the first season
- Made by the Duffer Brothers (Matt Duffer & Ross Duffer)
THE DUFFER BROTHERS
- Began making films in the third grade using a Hi8 video camera that was a gift from their parents
- Relocated to Orange, California to study film at Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, where they graduated in 2007.
- After writing and directing a number of short films, their script for the post-apocalyptic horror film, 'Hidden' was acquired by Warner Bros. Pictures in 2011.
- Directed in 2012 and it was released in 2015
- Director M. Night Shyamalan read the script and hired them as writers/ producers on the Fox television series Wayward Pines
Similarities between 'Hidden' and Stranger things:
- Horror theme
- Silence and sound to create suspense
- Bunker similar to the Wheeler's basement
- Fear of the unknown
- People hidden
- Families
- Innocence of children
After discussing Hidden as a 'jumping-off point, the brothers began talking about what Matt describes as 'bizarre experiments we had read about taking place in the cold war'. Specifically project MKUltra, a mind control program the CIA led from the 50s through the 70s. This led them to placing the show in 1983, a year before the cold war hysteria Red Dawn came out, and it brought into focus the fantasy aspect of the story they'd wanted to include.
"We wanted the supernatural element to be grounded in science in some way" matt says. "As ridiculous as it is, the monster (in the alternate dimension) doesn't come from a spiritual domain and is not collected to any religion. It made it scarier. I don't believe in ghosts, but I believe in aliens and alternate dimensions".
Production and distribution
- Produced by 21 Laps
- Original Netflix series, so paid for by them and distributed by them exclusively
- Ranked as the most popular digital series in the US only the week after it's release on Netflix
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NETFLIX AND GENRE
Micro genres:
Emotional fight-the-system documentaries
Foreign satanic stories from the 1980s
Gritty suspenseful revenge westerns
Critically-acclaimed emotional underdog stories
- Netflix have genres to fit everyone
- This shows how TV has evolved
- Shows are targeted explicitly to the viewer- Netflix knows information such as name, address, bank details, how many people are in your household etc. This means that they can target films to fit you.
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S1 C1 RECAP
- Story begins in 1983, in the fictional town on Hawkins, Indiana
Could link to Steven Hawkins
Demogorgon functions as a political version of Donald Trump
- Will Byers goes missing whilst riding his bike home
- In search of Will, his friends encounter a mysterious girl- Eleven, who has a buzz cut
Judith Butler- Gender is more of a socially learned element. Gender is performed. People who don't fit into the heterosexual gender norms have 'gender trouble'.
Eleven is de-gendered by her hair and name
- Strange occurrences start taking place in Hawkins
- The police begin a search for Will, led by Jim Hopper
- Joyce, Wills mum becomes desperate trying to find her son
- We learn about a secret government lab conducting experiments
- Will's brother, Jonathan tries to uncover the truth about Will's disappearance
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THE DUFFER BROTHERS
Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer
Why is Netflix so perfect for the Duffer Brothers?
- It can be recommended to Netflix users based on what they have previously watched. This is particularly good for Stranger Things because 80s films are very popular. It is also part of many genres so can match many people's taste (romance, sci-fi, horror).
- Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' was used in Stranger Things. She was very protective about her music and didn't let many people have it. In 2016, Netflix was the only company that could afford Kate Bush.
- The pacing and binge-ability of Stranger Things can link to the success. In its earlier days, The Duffer Brothers wanted Stranger Things to be a film. They met with Netflix and decided to make it a series.
- The Duffer Brothers said that season 1 was low budget
- They make use of cross-media convergence (gaming, theatre, film)
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POLITICAL CONTEXTS
PRACTICE QUESTION
Why do longform TV dramas from other countries offer different representations? [30]
STRANGER THINGS
- Lucas is only major character who is black
- Joyce as she is female
- Will as he is gay
LUPIN
- Asanne Diop as he is black
- Babakar as he is lower class and black
- Juliette as she is upper class white female
- In France, there is a lot of racial tension. They are often racist
- Senegal is an African country. It used to be a colony (owned) of the French empire. France took over Senegal. These days, Senegal is an independent country but it still has friendly links to France, including the French language. Because Assanne is from Senegal, he represents a post-colonial world (after colony).
Lucas is a black American. The reason that black people were first in America was due to the slave trade. He's only treated differently once by the bullies. This is different to how Babakar is treated as he is seen as an outsider.
Heubert Pelligrini embodies the French empire- white, rich, wealthy but without morals. He represents everything that is wrong with racism in France. He believes he is superior as he is white.
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POLITICAL CONTEXT
TRUMP DEMOGORGON THEORY
Similarities between trump and the demogorgon
- Powerful
- Accused of preying on minorities
Barb does not fit into the conventional norms- short hair, masculine clothing, not conventionally attractive
Will does not fit into the conventional norms- shy, gay
Both of these characters were taken by the demogorgon
MEDIA AUDIENCES
How media forms target, reach and address audiences, how audiences interpret and respond to them, and how members of audiences become producers themselves
Audiences these days have access to 3d printers, and can create anything.
What matters the most for a Stranger Things audience?
(In order)
Age
Lifestyle interests
Class/social status
Intelligence
Regional location
Sex
What matters the most for a Lupin audience?
(In order)
Age
Intelligence
Lifestyle interests
Class/social status
Regional location- Lupin was out in COVID where a lot of people couldn't travel, so it gives an insight into Parisian life.
Sex
- People with higher levels of education often have access to better streaming services. They are also more likely to subscribe to services like Netflix
- Women make up around 50-55% of Netflix's subscriptions
- Primarily targets people age 18-39
- Netflix's target market is increasingly international, with growing viewership in regions like Latin America, Europe, and Asia
- Subscribers typically have an annual household income of $100,000 (75,000) (higher income)
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