Steven’s Spectres: Stranger Things in Small-Town USA
Steven’s Spectres: Stranger Things in Small-Town USA

Summary/Abstract: In recent years, the 80s and the attached plethora of cultural synecdoches have been haunting various genres of American film and TV. Often both the cinematic form and the content of these recirculations are structured around tropes established in the period by directors such as Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, Robert Zemeckis, Richard Donner, Rob Reiner, Ivan Reitman and others. The paper considers the case of the Netflix TV show Stranger Things, directed by the Duffer brothers, attempting to read its spectral physiognomy and filiations, as well as to interpret its theoretical undertones in popular culture. The paper will analyze the theoretical implications between the small town of the story and the placeholder planetary spaces it is distributed to, as well as the curious palimpsest of temporalities manifest in the show’s stories, the show itself as a global product and its distribution.

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