The fourth season of the hit series has started on Netflix. Why so many people yearn back to a monster-ridden 1980s small town.
After the first season was mainly cast with male and white actors, “Stranger Things” now shows more diversity
Around 30 million dollars per episode: That's how much the streaming platform Netflix is said to have spent on the production of the fourth season of “Stranger Things”. Since the 27. The first seven episodes of the new season can be seen on Netflix on May 15, and the total production costs are said to be an incredible $ 270 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The series is one of the flagships of the US streaming platform Netflix and captivates a worldwide audience.
“Stranger Things” takes place in the 1980s: In the small town of Hawkins, a little boy named Will disappears. His friends try to find him again – and learn that Will has been kidnapped by monsters in a parallel world. Together with a girl with supernatural powers and with the help of older siblings and adults, they put the monsters to flight.
This is the “Stranger Things” principle, which was repeated faithfully over the following seasons. The children got older, the monsters bigger, but the horror, the humor and the relationship drama were reliable, whether in friendship or first love.
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Also: the nostalgia. Each season guarantees a return to a lovingly recreated 1980s small town in the United States. Season 4 is no exception: in the first scene, the camera follows a small white boy who is delivering newspapers on his bicycle. He cycles through an affluent neighborhood with well-kept single-family homes, long driveways and neatly mowed lawns. Jogger greets the newsboy, there's a big car in every driveway, all is right with the world.
A celebration of nostalgia
Many critics see the recipe for success of “Stranger Things” in the scene. “The wave of nostalgia for the 1980s began even before 'Stranger Things',” says Joachim Friedmann, professor for serial storytelling at the International Film School in Cologne. As early as 2009, series were sold from the point of view that they would serve a nostalgia for the 1980s. “These waves always start when the teenagers from back then get to the switching points and as adults can decide what series are made now become”, explains Friedmann.
The actors Charlie Heaton (l. ), Noah Schnapp (second from left) and Finn Wolfhard (right) back to “Stranger Things”
“Stranger Things” openly draws on cult works from the 1980s, including the horror film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” starring villain Freddy Krueger (1984), the horror comedy “Ghostbusters” (1984) and Stephen King's creepy coming-of-age story “It” (“It”) – the first film adaptation was only released in 1990, but the novel was released in 1986. Also the music of the 1980s and their aesthetics are revived for the series, as are the hairstyles, fashions, and gadgets of the time.
“It's the 'I feel young again' phenomenon,” says Friedmann. “But beyond that, the 1980s were also the last clearly defined decade in western pop culture. Politically, the classifications during the Cold War were still clear: here East, there West, here good, there bad. And there was, for example, in Germany in the Basically just a music show, many listened to the same thing, watched the same thing, although of course there were subcultures.”
Because of their relatively uniform pop culture, the 1980s would be a nostalgic setting, Friedmann explains. “That gives orientation. The feeling is: 'The world was still fine back then'.”
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Our top 80s cult flicks
Who Ya Gonna call?
The “Ghostbusters” are among the box office hits of the 1980s. Although critics gave the film a weak story and dramaturgy, the team around Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson became a cult. Using proton packs, the ghost hunters recreated eerie beings like Gozer, Zuul and Vinz Clortho. Oscar nomination for visual effects.
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Our top cult strips from the 80s
Klamauk ist Trumpf
“The Naked Gun” made the audience laugh with a veritable slapstick firework display. The comedian trio ZAZ (Zucker, Abrahams & Zucker) wrote the screenplay, in which all film and television genres are made fun of. The Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen became a star with his role as the overwhelmed Lieutenant Frank Drebin, especially in German-speaking countries.
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Our top cult films from the 80s
A DVD for the Chancellor
It was a real gap in education: when she visited the Hanover Trade Fair, Angela Merkel admitted that she didn't know the science fiction comedy “Back to the Future”. Barack Obama generously promised to send her a DVD of the cult trilogy. Now the Chancellor can let Marty McFly (r.) and “Doc” Emmett Brown (l.) show her how the past and the future can still be changed.
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Our top cult 80s flicks
Action meets musical comedy
An equally bizarre and hilarious story, many stars, lots of music and action. John Landis' recipe for his film “Blues Brothers”, which opened in 1980, was ready. In Germany people were amused about it more than in the USA. In Germany, the strip attracted over two million people to the cinemas. The 1998 sequel “Blues Brothers 2000” had only moderate success worldwide.
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Our top cult strips from the 80s
Archaeologist in a cowboy outfit
The first Indiana Jones from 1981 had two famous masters at work: Steven Spielberg at the director's chair and George Lucas at the screenplay. The result was the lavishly staged adventure story “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with Harrison Ford as the bold archaeologist. In 2019 – Ford will be 77 years old – a new film will be shot. The “Indy” cult continues.
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Our top -cult strip of the 80s
Why beat around the bush?
With just 17 sentences to success: Only the Terminator, embodied by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was still a bodybuilder at the time, can do that. Of course, there was enough “bang bang” in the science fiction film from 1984: in Germany, the original version was initially on the index. Only since 2010 have we been able to watch the Terminator on his revenge campaign uncensored.
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Our top cult flicks from the 80s
“Give Me Back My Baby”
When shy Frances Houseman meets hot dance teacher Johnny at a holiday resort, it's not just about “Baby”, it's also about millions of moviegoers: In 1987, Dirty Dancing is the highest-grossing film of the year. Both the Oscar-winning music and quotes like “I carried a watermelon” or “Give me back my baby” are cult today.
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Our top cult strips from the 80s
Phone home
“E.T. phone home”: It was not least with this sentence that the homesick extraterrestrial conquered the hearts of young and old in 1982. Spielberg's story “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial” one of the most successful films ever. Actually calls for a sequel, but Spielberg was against it. In his opinion, a sequel would rob the original of its innocence.
Our top 80s cult flick
Party girl meets outdoorsman
In 1986 Paul Hogan celebrated his breakthrough as the daredevil Crocodile Dundee in the film of the same name. He even won a Golden Globe for his role as a crocodile hunter in the Australian bush. The punch lines in the constellation “spoiled party girl” (Linda Kozlowski) meets “nature boy” caused a lot of laughter. They were penned by Hogan himself, among others.
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Our top cult strips from the 80s
First flop, then great
Unlike other cult films from the 1980s, Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner” didn't initially resonate with audiences. At the same time, the visual language and characters of the science fiction film demonstrate great sophistication and offer multi-layered levels of interpretation, especially with regard to the concept of humanity. Filming on Blade Runner 2 is set to begin in July. Featuring: Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling.
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Our top -Cult strips from the 80s
Johei, Heiho: Gremlins as Snow White fans
In 1984, the initially cute, fluffy Mogwais were transformed into nasty little monsters on the big screen. The Gremlins wreak havoc in the most hilarious and whimsical ways. Only Snow White's seven dwarfs manage to silence the monsters for a moment with “Johei, Heiho”. Because of its trash character, the film is still iconic today.
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Our top cult strips from the 80s
Social criticism and action – that's possible!
Sylvester Stallone landed his first big screen success in 1982 with his role as traumatized war veteran John Rambo. During preliminary survival and hand-to-hand combat training, Stallone sustained four broken ribs and burns. But it was definitely worth it, because the critics praised the action film for, among other things, its coming to terms with the US past.
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Our top cult films from the 80s
Not only a success in Germany: “Das Boot”
Originally started as a television series, the 1981 film “Das Boot” by Wolfgang Petersen was a huge hit around the world. After “The Neverending Story”, the war drama about the occupation of the U96 is the German box office hit in the USA. It received six Oscar nominations, including one for Best Director. “Das Boot” is scheduled to return to screens as a series in 2018.
The 1980s: A decade of uncertainty
Of course, the 1980s were anything but carefree: mass unemployment and the economic crisis marked the beginning of the decade, and the political environmental movement also emerged in this decade. Fear of large-scale forest dieback spread, 1986 also saw the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and in the same year the “Challenger” space shuttle crashed before the eyes of the world public.
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Therefore, historian Angela Siebold describes the 1980s in an article for the Federal Agency for Civic Education as “time of great economic, military or ecological threats, which often appeared diffuse and at the same time inescapable and thereby fueled fears”.
Friedmann confirms this in an interview: “As a contemporary witness, I can say: Of course, nothing was okay at the time. We were constantly afraid of nuclear war. But there was a great deal of clarity.”
These fears are expressed in “Stranger Things” as in the horror movies and novels of the 1980s. They appear in the form of life-threatening monsters that can often be seen and defeated primarily by children – and usually mostly by boys.
That's what makes “Stranger Things” so appealing: the desire to return to a lost but clutter-free childhood, where you could still see and defeat evil in the form of monsters under the bed, rather than yourself as an adult having to deal with ambivalences, routines and structural problems such as the climate crisis, the threat of nuclear weapons and energy or ever-increasing global inequality.
You like to turn on the TV for – and for more than just one evening: The fourth season of “Stranger Things” runs for more than 13 hours, almost four of which are in the last two episodes, which Netflix only releases on January 1st . July 2022.
This may seem unusually long, but it is not surprising. It's not just the never-ending nostalgic longing that plays an important role here. According to Friedmann, television is already moving in a narrative tradition that has long stories to offer, sometimes even potentially endless ones. “A story is essentially a report about a solution to a problem. The series assumes that the problem cannot be solved – and is therefore often much closer to life, which constantly confronts us with problems.”
Winona Ryder plays Joyce Byers, Will's mother, in the Netflix series Stranger Things
The desire of people of all ages for long, epic stories full of adventure, love and danger is nothing new and not tied to any particular era in human history. Even in ancient times, bards told stories that lasted several days, such as Homer's “Iliad” or the “Odyssey”, in which the monsters just cavort. So there must have been an audience back then, too, returning for several hours night after night to hear how the battle against the monsters continues.
Streaming platforms like Netflix have elevated this form of long, closed storytelling to the premier class, especially because they don't have to stick to advertising slots and broadcast times like linear television.
Share the excitement: A romance could develop between Jim Hopper (David Harbour, center) and Joyce Bryce (played by cult actress Winona Ryder)
Just a little creepy
“Stranger Things” simply makes it particularly exciting – and pairs it with likeable outsiders as the main characters, so-called nerds, who have long since dominated entire sectors of the economy, and the longing for a more manageable, lost world, the world of childhood, which Of course, there never was.
Because the problems that many people in Europe and North America were aware of in the 1980s are still as relevant today as they were then. Whether rising temperatures, growing global poverty or the war in Ukraine: For 13 hours, the audience of “Stranger Things” can leave all their fears behind to the synthesizer sounds of the 1980s, about the love life of likeable boys and girls get scared and just get a little scared.
The fourth season of “Stranger Things” was released on May 27, 2022 on Netflix. The final two episodes will be released on July 1, 2022.