Stranger Things has some bad politics in it

hello I'm trendy Clickbank garbage and today I want to talk about stranger things season 3 and none of you can stop me my holding video is going to have spoilers for the season and probably the other seasons go watch it or don't I don't care stranger things is a show about what if it was the 80s but also monsters I love the show I think it's pretty much made for me I love the weird Spielberg Ian kids movie adventure vibe I love the be horror movie references it wears on its sleeves I think the characters are great mostly I think the action is well-done and exciting and I think the music friggin slaps I mentioned that I really like the show up front because I'm only going to be complaining about it from here on out and I know it's turned your brain off style entertainment and I definitely did watch and enjoy it on that level but I think it's possible to find harmful or downright insidious messages in pop culture that you otherwise liked plenty of people like the works of HP Lovecraft I don't think I got to tell you that dude had some fucked up ideas about black people and whether or not they are secretly fish stories have an emotional impact if they're told well whether or not they have bad messages in them you can still be affected by a story even if you think it has gross or bad themes some of my favorite movies have some dog shit latent messaging in them Ghostbusters is essentially about presenting deregulation as importance to the natural balance of the universe but it also has a slime bull in it so you gotta like it for that most of the movies I watch for fun or weird slashers from the 80s and a lot of ink has been spilled explaining why they have some fucked up gender politics the ending of sleepaway camp for example relies on you taking it for granted that being trans would turn you into a murderer I'm not telling you you're not allowed to enjoy stranger things I enjoy stranger things I'm not here to be a lefty prude telling you how everything you love is problematic I just think the show unconsciously projects some highly liberal bullsh and I think it's worth examining why I think that might be and I bet you think you know what I'm gonna talk about the bad guys in this season they're Soviets this show has an anti-communist bias I don't give a fuck I can't imagine why anyone on earth would even if you like the Soviet Union weirdo it doesn't exist anymore do you think stranger things season 3 is what's keeping people from embracing the immortal science of Marxism Leninism there's a certain take circulating about this development that I think is wildly overblown people argue that since socialism is getting popular the establishment is responding by putting anti-communist propaganda in our pop culture I don't really think that's what happened here I mean sure the Soviets on stranger things are clearly doing something bad they kill one scientist for no reason I guess that's pretty bad beyond that everything the Soviets do in the show is something that the American government did in previous seasons the opening shots of the season actually deliberately toy with this but showing a secret government compound doing some sort of scientific experiment to open up the mold and monsters dimension and then surprise its the Soviets you thought it was the Americans but the Soviets are doing the same dang thing they invade the United States sort of I guess which is a little rich considering in real life the Americans invaded the Soviet Union and not vice-versa but they don't seem interested in like taking over or killing people or anything they just want to do science with the mold and monsters dimension which granted is a bad idea but isn't any more evil than the Americans if they wanted to make the show anti-socialist they'd probably throw in a line where one of the Soviets is like soon we will have the means to crush the Americans I can't do a Russian accent so I just decided he was Dracula what I'm trying to say is the show isn't very subtle look what happens when they try to write product placement without you noticing how do you even drink that because it's delicious what it's like carpenters to thing the original is the classic no question about it but the remake sweeter bolder better no I'd like to present a much simpler explanation for why the bad guys are Soviets this season it's because the bad guys in 80s movies were Soviets and that's literally all the thought that was put into it they literally reference red dawn and rocky 4 in universe the show is not subtle if I had to make a gas into series creators the deafer brothers is political views based on what I've seen in stranger things I'd say they're the type of vaguely progressives who call themselves a political stranger things like all art makes political statements but it is my sincere belief that the D boys and other series writers do not recognize them as such the ideology of the show is unconscious it doesn't seem to be something they willfully inject it's just something they can't seem to avoid because they don't really know that they are putting an ideology in the show take for example the sanitized way that the show handles race there are two instances where the show presents Lucas the sole person of color in its principal cast until season 3 as in any way affected by racism when his friends insists that he has to be Winston the black Ghostbuster when they dresses the Ghostbusters for Halloween which is presented as a comic relief bit and it's not because every kid obviously wanted to be Slimer the sweet slime boy and when Billy is a human monster later turned monster monster this the show is not subtle he's directly an openly racist to Lucas now I don't think it's unrealistic that an otherwise shitty person would also be racist but having that as the sole example of racism in your television show set in the American Midwest in the 1980s suggests that racism a systemic problem in Hopkins and therefore the nostalgic version of the United States you've imagined it's just the moral fault of individual people in this case the worst dude in town who you're supposed to hate anyway so why not also make him the only racist in town this scene essential eise's racism people watching the scene get to give themselves a little pat on the back you're not like Billy so you're not racist you never have to think about your complicity in larger systems of oppression and domination because you personally don't openly and consciously hate people based on race which is the only thing that can possibly be racist if you've ever told someone that something they were saying had it had an unconscious racist connotation and they snap back no no no it couldn't be it can't be it's not racist because I'm not racist I know I'm not racist it's because of scenes like this and the message they send now I can see the thought process that led them to this choice they wanted to establish Billy as a shitty dude and also maybe as a bonus send the message that racism is a shitty thing for shitty people they didn't decide that their show should present racism as an individual moral failure rather than a systemic network of domination that was just their starting assumption and it filtered into what they were writing it's possible however that maybe the writers of this episode do consciously believe that racism is an individual moral failure and not the result of systemic oppression maybe they did intend to send that message but once again this is what happens when stranger things writers try to write subtly so that you won't consciously recognize the message they're trying to send sweeter bolder better let's not give them too much credit here in season 3 though there is one political theme that I do think was consciously inserted and what's more I think it was consciously inserted by the duffer Bros specifically in one scene the characters Nancy and Jonathan have just been fired from their job at the local newspaper and they have an argument to give you the context Nancy has been investigating a story about monster rats going nuts and eating poison chemicals and the newspaper doesn't want her to do it because she not a reporter there and then I want her to because she's a woman they don't think her seriously and Jonathan tries to persuade her to drop it because he's scared of getting fired but Nancy convinces him to come along in her investigations which results in an old lady being sent to the hospital and both of them are fired now the old lady and several of the other people involved in this situation are being mind-controlled by gibbering massive alien goo it's not really relevant to the point I want to make though so anyway they're driving home and Jonathan is upset at Nancy because she got him fired and she tells him he doesn't know it's like being a woman in the working world and he responds that he comes from a very poor background and without this job and the opportunities it would give him that'll be it'll be difficult for him to provide for his family she comes from a relatively well-off family and she doesn't understand what it's like for him either now you might hear that and say oh well they both make some good points but the thing is we're only meant to sympathize with Nancy in this scene she goes home and gets a big pep talk from her mom and encouraged to keep going even if nobody believes in her because she's just so frigging strong in case that wasn't clear enough Jonathan later apologizes and admits he was completely wrong about everything and Nancy was right the whole time and like I get what they're going for here Jonathan is forced to confront his own privilege and his complicity and the sexism of his co-workers to learn to believe his partner when she tells him that she's being treated badly in ways that are largely invisible to him as a man that's that's great stuff love that good good job thing is though Nancy's not really forced to confront her privilege she didn't really need this job she could have fallen back on something else but Jonathan didn't have that luxury she just completely dismisses that and is never forced to reconcile the fact that her boyfriend who supported her in her reckless choices albeit reluctantly was hurt by her inability to consider how her actions would affect him he specifically tells her he's afraid to be fired multiple times and she just waves that off and then she gets him fired and that kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth is essentially saying that we should ignore class in the face of Institute generalized sexism do you think it's hard being poor try being a woman pal which kind of sucks because like women can be poor too and poverty compounds sexism it's significantly harder to be a poor woman than a middle-class woman but also even if poverty were just a male issue it's possible to care about the distinct ways in which two groups of people suffer at the same time the fact that sexism is bad does not in and of itself excuse classism against men the same way that the fact that racism is bad wouldn't excuse sexism against white women is jonathon right in this scene no he fucks up for sure he very clearly tells Nancy she should have dropped it and goes to bat for their sexist bosses but that doesn't change the fact that he also has a point about Nancy being blind to the economic realities he faces I'm not mad that Jonathan apologized but I'm a little annoyed that Nancy never really apologizes for her mistakes leaving the audience with the distinct impression that Jonathan's concerns about feeding his family aren't really as important as Nancy's concerns it's not like Nancy saying hey I got caught up in the story in lost sight of how my actions affected you so I - I'm sorry - you would in any way cheapen the feminist message the show is trying to get across it would in fact strengthen the characterization of Nancy they've been building the season as single-minded and endlessly determined in pursuit of a story instead the only thing Nancy apologizes for is for comparing him to the other shitty er dudes at the office a comparison he earned by doing the same shitty thing that they did and not taking her seriously that actually does undermine the sexist message of the show because no Jonathan you're not responsible for the sexist thing you did because you are not essentially a sexist person and thus you're better than the other essentially sexist dudes no matter what you do just forget the fact that you might have caused his family a large part of their livelihood Nancy and then summarily dismissed his concerns as an Oliver Twist routine the real problem is that you might have heard his delicate feelings by implying he's more sexist than he actually is this scene is technically speaking pure horse apples and I place the blame squarely at the feet of those dastardly duffer bros even though they didn't write or direct the episode where the argument happened let me explain why I think that stranger things isn't really a period piece in the traditional sense sure it takes place in the past and sure there's great pains taken to convey that through costuming and sets and endlessly talking about contemporary pop culture detritus but it doesn't really use its setting to comment in any way on the history of the times it portrays the show is mostly about fondly looking back to the dumb garbage we liked in the 80s and making us remember what we felt like when we were young and didn't have actual problems its crystallized nostalgia the 80s are presented as carefree and fun for everybody forget the crack epidemic and subsequent brutalization of largely black communities done under the banner of the war on drugs forget the AIDS crisis forget the entire Reagan administration but remember Atari remember the way Taco Bell's logo used to look remember that do you remember the Gobots as such the show largely avoids focusing on the ways that the past sucked for a lot of people I mentioned the way that the show handles or rather decides not to handle race earlier but there's precisely one queer character on the show and she reveals this to exactly one person who reacts with perfect acceptance and understanding immediately another character is coded queer a little bit but it's left purposefully ambiguous now I'm not saying the show has to focus on lgbtq+ misery but it would be nice if they acknowledge that the childhoods of queer people in that era weren't as easygoing and carefree as their Strait contemporaries - maybe just note that the time period they are uncritically celebrating had some dark shit going on under the surface they don't do that though do you remember the Gobots so why then the sudden focus on feminism in season 3 why was Nancy's mother and thing character whose most notable scene prior to this season was when she gets seduced by a minor suddenly a font of strength from which Nancy Drew the power to resist the closed-minded men of the world why is Mike who had been the protagonist in previous seasons given nothing to do but a ghen eyes back and forth about his possessiveness he has to learn that 11 doesn't belong to him which he never really seemed to believe but it's a good message I guess so whatever don't get me wrong the show has always had capable women Nancy for example defied gendered expectations by being the protector of the group with her amazing shoddy skills as far back as season one there's also a lot of subtext to be read into how everybody just dismisses Joyce's point of view all the time even though she's always right no matter how crazy she seems season 3 actually nails this part with Joyce just saying fuck it and demanding that everybody listen to her when she sees spooky shit listen you meatheads my magnets fall off my fridge there's clearly a monster we live in a town where there's a monster every year it's another monster just get on my level but the show has always allowed these themes to emerge organically it's never been didactic about showing strong women what could have happened to have made them feel like they had to be more explicit about their feminism what why did they feel the need to show what allies they are and how empowering their characters are last season those dastardly Duff's got themselves mired in a couple of controversies that you might have heard about a crew member accused them of verbal abuse towards multiple women on set yelling at them insulting them and even threatening them the d boys responded to these allegations with the following we're deeply upset to learn that someone felt uncomfortable on our set due to the high-stress nature of production tempers occasionally get frayed and for that we apologize however we think it's important not to mischaracterize our set where we believe strongly in treating everyone fairly regardless of gender orientation race religion or anything else sorry you felt uncomfortable when we threatened random women on set but I'll have you know you're wrong we're actually super cool and treat everybody really nice cool apology they also set up an actor who was a miner to receive an unscripted kiss without her consent I get there the first day of filming the snowball walk immuno are like walking in like seeing the decorations and stuff one of you I think is you Ross you say like Sadie you ready for the kiss make what no no that's not in the script okay that's not happening and so the whole day i was extremley am i gonna wait like is it gonna happen is it not and it didn't happen that day but then the second day of filming the snowball yeah but you're you reacted so strongly to this I was just joking and you just went you were so freaked out that I was like well I gotta make her do it yeah that's why I'm saying this you're falling I don't think I need to explain why it's fucked up to say the least to teach children literal children that they should be cool with random kisses given without their consent at their workplace so that's two controversies where the showrunners come off as sexist douchebags but I doubt they see themselves that way look at the cool and strong female characters they write into the show they're not like the bad individuals who are sexist they don't want to be associated with the caricature they have in their mind for what sexism looks like quite a pickle how are you gonna get out of this 1d boys now imagine that you're a very bad writer and you want to make it clear to everybody that you're not sexist how do you do that well one really hand fisted way to do that but also the only way you can think of is have a woman directly state to the audience that men don't understand the hardships that woman's face but then you have the man say something like well I got problems too lady but it's not the same thing men don't get it it's just that the unimportant non-problem they chose was poverty and that shows a blind-spot that I think a lot of liberals have liberals tend to recognize some forms of oppression but overlook others I don't think a critique of sexism is complete without acknowledging the ways that capitalism compound sexism and makes it more dangerous for women cosmetic companies for example are notorious for making women feel shittier about their appearance so they can sell them various creams and sounds rigid gender roles are enforced exacerbated and literally invented by selling each product in two different colors one for girls and one for boys usually the girls one costs more but weirdly the only time capitalism is even discussed in a whole season about fighting communists comes with a little girl an african-american little girl no less extols its virtues because she's entrepreneurial enough to scam free ice cream out of a couple of dipshits do you know what capitalism is yeah it means this is a free market system which means people get paid for their services depending on how valuable their contributions are and this seems to me my ability is very very valuable to me you want my help this US has better scotch better be the first mini other characters make some limp critiques of capitalism there's a major subplot about how the monolithic shopping mall is crushing local businesses there's an exchange where a character explains that the heart of America is rich people scamming poor people out of their money but he says it like lovingly like isn't that fun just go with it and the other guy is delighted but the only person who has any sort of strong opinion either way economically happens to be an african-american little girl a person at the exact intersection of groups in the United States harmed the most by capitalism a lifetime is making 61 cents on the dollar compared to your white male counterparts makes that ice cream she got literally cold comfort hey thought slime you you big time ray sister you saying black women can't be conservative no of course they can but Erica isn't real she's written by two white men and probably other people on staff I guess but they have final say over her character direction and this type of stuff she does and I think that's tone-deaf in a way that they absolutely cannot recognize liberals like to present social ills as the result of bad actors ultimately the systems in place and the powers that be are acting in our best interest and all we have to do is hold them accountable to the existing rules and everything will work itself out small changes can be made here and there as necessary but ultimately it's these systems and structures that protect us from bad individuals that's why they have no real solution when bad individuals get control over these structures and spoiler alert they always do eventually Jonathan and Nancy shouldn't be arguing their interests align in that the oppressive structures that harm Nancy as a woman are the very same ones that harm Jonathan is a poor person these aren't conflicting perspectives they're two sides of the same coin anything done to benefit one group inherently benefits the other remember the Gobots do you remember the Gobots they're like bad transformers hey thanks for watching my video look at all these pretty little cartoons boy what boy howdy wouldn't you like to get a cartoon while you can all you gotta do is go to patreon.com/scishow and await further instructions that's the place people can go to that where they can give me money to make youtube videos and then I spend that money at my discretion also you can like and subscribe why don't you why don't you like and subscribe you got nothing to lose you don't have a limited amount of likes or subscriptions that you can spend in a day just go hog-wild like the video subscribe to me prove to yourself that you're alive you have choices in this world I know I haven't been live-streaming lately I'm gonna get back to it I normally livestream every 8 p.m. on Thursdays Eastern Standard Time why do all the scientists want to get into the upside down it doesn't seem like there's anything good in there and it keeps letting monsters out there isn't what is there why do they want that are all governments just Pro monster for some reason our major world governments just like in favor of letting monsters out of portals I mean literally not figure I do believe that figuratively but it literally I don't think they do like it at all you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 391,180

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Id: XMV_iLv6LQo

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I know it wasn't a focus of this video, but can we just take a moment, as a group, to consider a man telling a young girl "when I found out you were upset by the idea of kissing someone, I had to make you do it, and that is your fault?"

What the fuck.

[u/ptsq]

The bizarre romanticization of police violence was really unnerving too.

[u/jokdok]

I know the show is a cheesy satirical parody of the 80's, but the anti-communist rhetoric coming from a bloody 10 year old girl felt like straight propaganda. Made me cringe massively.

[u/dougyroland]

I loved Erika up until she started talking in libertarian I was like yeesh

[u/draw_it_now]

Interestingly, if you put too much thought into it, the slime monster in this season can be read as a subtle commentary on Capitalism. For one, the episode it's introduced in is called "E Pluribus Unum" - the traditional motto of the USA, and a reference to the monster's way of maintaining itself by destroying the life around it ("from many, one"). Not only that, but the episode ends with the opening of "Satyagraha" - an opera about the life of Ghandi, in which the lyrics are something like "I have gained all this now, but I’m not yet satisfied. This wealth is mine, and much more will also become mine soon.”

[u/ZaphodXZaphod]

it's actually embarrassing to take that approach towards the 80s in this case, but generally with period tv shows. now that we're several decades hence, why would you not use what we've learned about that era in the interim? i grew up in the 80s. i remember distinctly the threat posed by the rising moral majority. it was so frequent to see evangelical pastors and religious-grifting republicans on the news for hypocritical actions - often illegal and sexual. there are more people of color in the show this season and none of them have even a passing skepticism of the status quo? people fucking hated reagan lol. the show has also veered away from incorporating subcultures in the first two seasons to 'everyone's just kinda normal unless possessed by a monster.' the 80s were the era for subcultures to really become a thing in america. overall, pretty disappointing.

[u/ZaphodBeebleebrox]

While watching I mostly wrote off most of the annoying regressive shit (Hopper's toxic masculinity, Erica's whole character, consumerism, torture working) as being reflective of the media that came out of the 80s.

I did bother me that there was never a payoff to Hopper being a complete dick to El and Mike. It seems like something was set up but it just never payed off and then he just fake dies.

[u/FyrdUpBilly]

I think people are making way too much of the anti-communism in this season. It's obviously a throw back to 80s cold war films and plot lines. And I mean, every show pretty much has bad politics if you're an anarchist or communist. Which brings me to the point I really wanted to make, season 2 wasn't bad and actually had better politics. Kali and her gang was great. People who disliked it are bourgeois swine.

[u/Spicy2ShotChai]

I love Slimy Boi but I can't believe he didn't even talk about Hopper.