Idle thought:-
My main problem with Stranger Things is the same as my problem with Ready Player One.
They serve up my childhood from the perspective of someone who clearly didn’t have that childhood, be they too old (ST) or too young (RP1) to have lived it. It’s a fetish, a creepy sexual ideation of something we suffered through, but is seen as some ideal.
Being a kid in the 70s was awful. We were all shit poor, our parents had lost their jobs and the economies had collapsed.
Being a teen in the 80s was worse. We were literally all about to die in a fire every single day. You went to bed confident that you’d be dead by morning.
Being a 20 year old on the 90s, got to be honest, that was okay. We fucked and sang and drank and we had great new drugs. Good times.
Then we were in our 30s in the noughts. The world went mad and the boomers were all going to die, which meant we got creeping fascism, and they were so scared they tanked the economy again and most of us lost the jobs we’d just gotten started in.
By the time we made it to our 40s in the 10s, the economy had collapsed for the THIRD TIME in our lives. We were left with kids in houses we couldn’t afford with no jobs (again), and the world was dying.
Apart from a maybe six year period in the 90s, our lives have been an unremitting, continuous, cavalcade of shit. So fuck every wanker who wants to idealise our childhood and make bank. I hope they suffer as we have. Fuck them all.
My main problem with Stranger Things is the same as my problem with Ready Player One.
They serve up my childhood from the perspective of someone who clearly didn’t have that childhood, be they too old (ST) or too young (RP1) to have lived it. It’s a fetish, a creepy sexual ideation of something we suffered through, but is seen as some ideal.
Being a kid in the 70s was awful. We were all shit poor, our parents had lost their jobs and the economies had collapsed.
Being a teen in the 80s was worse. We were literally all about to die in a fire every single day. You went to bed confident that you’d be dead by morning.
Being a 20 year old on the 90s, got to be honest, that was okay. We fucked and sang and drank and we had great new drugs. Good times.
Then we were in our 30s in the noughts. The world went mad and the boomers were all going to die, which meant we got creeping fascism, and they were so scared they tanked the economy again and most of us lost the jobs we’d just gotten started in.
By the time we made it to our 40s in the 10s, the economy had collapsed for the THIRD TIME in our lives. We were left with kids in houses we couldn’t afford with no jobs (again), and the world was dying.
Apart from a maybe six year period in the 90s, our lives have been an unremitting, continuous, cavalcade of shit. So fuck every wanker who wants to idealise our childhood and make bank. I hope they suffer as we have. Fuck them all.
