"I don't mean merely that the series is a period piece, though its evocation of the 1980s in small-town Hawkins, Ind., is a big part of the appeal; you can almost smell the hair spray and taste the Orange Julius. I mean that the series is an entertainment machine built by repurposing vintage pop-culture parts something that streaming would come to specialize in."
"There is the Spielbergian coming-of-age through-line, familiar from movies like E.T. (in which Dungeons & Dragons also played a character-establishing role); the horror and adolescent bonding of Stephen King; the chills (and typography) of '80s supernatural tales; the mean jocks and soulful goths of John Hughes; the well-curated pop-culture quotations, from Kate Bush to The NeverEnding Story to the casting of Winona Ryder of Heathers and Beetlejuice."
Stranger Things became a defining streaming hit by repurposing 1980s pop-culture elements into a cohesive horror-adolescent drama. The series evokes small-town 1980s specifics—hair spray, Orange Julius—and blends Spielbergian coming-of-age, Stephen King horror, '80s supernatural typography, John Hughes archetypes, and curated pop-cultural quotations. The casting and musical selections further anchor the retro feeling. The show functions as an entertainment machine built from vintage parts, packaging nostalgia as broadly appealing serialized storytelling. The result attracted wide audiences and set a template for nostalgia-driven content across services.
Read at www.nytimes.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]