Stranger Things & the 80’s
I’ve always had a love for the eighties. I remember watching The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Return of the Jedi, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with my family’s old rusty VHS player when I was a kid; DVDs have just come into light but with tapes already sitting on a large bookcase why would we settle for anything else? Every day, I would walk to preschool with my grandparents, my dad’s old walkman in hand playing Old Macdonald or basically whatever I could find sitting in boxes once the old nursery rhymes got a little too repetitive. None of the lyrics ever really sat in my head, but I just had a need to always have a song playing in my tiny little ears. Tapes like Duran Duran, Simple Minds, The Beatles, Kate Bush, and Cyndi Lauper were some of the ones that were always in and one of my tiny plastic cassette player (that has now died circa 2022.).
When Stranger Things came out in 2016, I was immediately hooked. During the time of 2016, all media was focused on sci-fi, fantasies, and futuristic portrayals of what life would look like in 100 years when the Earth is dead and scientists are left to find humans a new home. The media has never really decided to delve deep within our past unless it was some dramatic biopic of a person that most of us don’t really care about but will win many awards soon after. But this show was different. It took everything we loved about the eighties (the music, the fashion, the CARS, etc.) whilst bringing in something new. Who knew that I would be so addicted to kids playing a ten-hour Dungeons and Dragons campaign?
Stranger Things brought back the eighties in a form we’ve never seen before. Walkmans and cassette tapes are coming back to trend, Nike Cortez’s are selling out because everyone’s favourite character Steve Harrington donned them, and Kate Bush reached No.1 on the Hot 100 Songwriters Chart. I remember forcing my mom to watch Stranger Things during season two, and the first thing she said was that Nancy Wheeler’s closet was almost to a tea to her own.
Stranger Things (Duffer Bros. 2016) being compared to Karate Kid (John G. Avildsen, 1985)
Setting up this show in the eighties was probably the smartest thing the Duffer Brothers have ever done. The number of references to pop culture favourites was hilarious, the taking of the John Hughes effect and making stereotypical characters do the exact opposite of what we expect them to be, to Jonathan Byer’s showing Will his new favourite song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” had me bursting with joy. References to IT, E.T., Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Sixteen Candles, Karate Kid, Wonder Woman, Risky Business, Top Gun, and so many more were found in these four seasons.
Stranger Things (Duffer Bros. 2016) being compared to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
Stranger Things has used nostalgia so well in their show, it is incredibly hard to see it not set in the eighties. Without the use of portable telephones, using just landlines adds to the suspense of having trouble contacting different parties; instead, walkie-talkies are used with the added suspense having come from if the radio signal works, whether or not the device was silenced, or the device dying from low battery. Mystery elements are added in due to the characters not being able to use the Internet and look up information, instead forcing them to go to places like the library or interrogating random people who may have witnessed an important event. Toys and places like the LiteBrite, the Rink-O-Mania, the arcade, Family Video, Starcourt Mall, and Dungeons and Dragons rarely ever seem forced into the show. Instead, all these things kind of come naturally. Even major events like the election of Ronald Reagan and Satanic Panic are featured.
Clearly, this show means a lot to me. And now, as I sit and wait for season five to come out I can only imagine the possibilities of what songs may appear next time we see this group come onto my screen, or what shows they reference in the camera work, or really just what happens next. Below are all the songs from Stranger Things so you can a listen (or 500) for the first time or the 80th time, with some little added bonuses from me (after watching too many 80’s movies during my childhood).
Header Image: Valerie Letts
