Stranger danger: Is Netflix straying too near history?
Stranger Things
IN THE week after the release of the conclusion to Stranger Things Season 4, two pieces of information have emerged that make me want to rewind the entire thing in my brain and see if it now plays out any different. For those who’ve somehow managed to avoid Netflix’s monster monster hit, four billion hours watched for this season alone, it’s a coming of age story about four pre-teen geeky boys finding a mysterious girl with special powers. From that starting point the cast, scope and locations have ever increased, until we just had battles fought by three groups of heroes across the world, for the fate of the world.
I actually jumped ship midway through the last season, the 80s references and kooky teenage drama wearing a bit thin, but I’d heard creators the Duffer brothers had coursecorrected, and indeed the show has returned to a scarier and more gruesome milieu, as befitting its 15 rating. This seemingly omits a chunk of its core audience, especially as part of the show’s success has been its clever positioning in being all things to all people. Adults get a knowing postmodern throwback to the films and fashions of our childhoods, younger viewers get an apparently original teen drama with a tempered bit of sci-fi horror, with the higher rating on a streaming service turning out to not be much of a barrier to entry.
It’s the impact though on both these groups, from this week’s revelations, that I’m trying to work through. A clip went viral from an online Q&A session where actor Noah Schnapp, Will of the bowl cut fame, talks about being Jewish and worse than that a Zionist! Chatting to a Jewish fan they both expressed their love of Israel, which of course the anti-Zionists aka bigots took umbrage with, even digging up photos of him in Israel hugging, shock horror, an IDF soldier. Whilst most took to defend him, some even citing his young age as an excuse, the idea that his actions in any way
Part of the show’s success has been its clever positioning in being all things to all people
needed defending or justifying is in itself ridiculous and telling. For the younger generation, especially of Jews, I hope his forthrightness and openness serve as a positive example. But apart from noting that his TV mum Winona Ryder’s also Jewish, somehow tying things up more nicely in my head, it doesn’t really shift my appreciation of the content.
What is troubling though is the revelation that large chunks of this season where shot at Lukiskes prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, used during the Second World War to house Jews, Roma, and Polish partisans on their way to execution in the nearby Ponary railway station. The local tourist board’s ill-advised attempt to cash in with a specially themed Stranger Things cell haven’t helped the argument that this was a badly thought out location. The problem is, as anyone who’s travelled in that part of Europe knows, the everyday buildings and locations of our genocide are alarming prevalent, their physicality and regularity grounding history in a way no documentary or book ever can. If Netflix can in any way harness this, perhaps some good might emerge, but it’s also drawn attention to the shaved heads and wrist number tattoos given to the test subjects in the series, and the very disturbing trend of young people now getting tattoos themselves, even being officially endorsed by the programme on Instagram. Obviously a larger conversation needs to happen, as the dangers debome apparent of making something knowing, for those who don’t know.