Stranger than you think (example: “Stranger Things”)

A little boy goes missing in the first episode of ‘Stranger Things’ – and his disappearance creates this ginormous metaphor in the story.

It’s just that most viewers of this much-lauded television series won’t ever see the metaphor.

It’s not that they don’t understand it; they simply don’t see it in the first place. That one big, central metaphor the whole story revolves around. That metaphor that’s so dark, so cold, so empty…

The show’s fans will take apart each minute detail in it, yet most of them will fail to see the wood for the trees – the huge, scary, bad place for the little props and decor pieces they love to discuss and dissect ad nauseam.

They will analyze to death some poster hanging on Mike Wheeler’s wall, some toy or piece of clothing lying on the floor of his bedroom, the colour of his shirt, the triangle on his breast pocket, some word he said to his best friend Will Byers, the way he smiles or looks at him or vice versa…

And admittedly they will often come to the right conclusion, no doubt about that: They will often conclude that this is essentially a love story between two boys.

What they don’t see, though, what they never see, is that this love story is so much more meaningful and moving and deep and sad and intense and wonderful and just surprisingly profound and powerful…than an examination of some detail or other will ever disclose.

Just looking at smiles and glances, at costume choices and colours, at props and accessories lying around or the set design and scenery in general is not going to give you that big-picture understanding of what a show like this is actually all about.

For all of these are just the details, the fancy dress the skeleton of this story is clad in. This is the icing on the narrative cake, not the Biscuit de Savoie itself.

It’s the core metaphor you have to pick up on if you want to understand what you’re dealing with when you’re watching ‘Stranger Things’:

What is the Upside Down – metaphorically speaking?

And who is El?

(And no, I don’t mean: ‘a girl with superpowers who managed to escape the baddies in the story and is now on course to save the world’. I mean: Who is El in metaphorical terms? Who is she in the subtext of this story? What is her function as a character in this script? Spoiler alert: The answer is not ‘Mike Wheeler’s love interest’. She is, in a sense, a walking, talking metaphor – or rather a walking, talking allegorical personification.)

Being unable to see the wood for the trees, the big metaphor at the very heart of a story, is incredibly common. And it happens to the best of us. (No, really!)

Just to give you one example:

Many, many moons ago, a literature teacher I know (and no, that’s not the one who I had featured on this blog before – a different one) told me about his favourite movie:

It was (and still is, I suppose) the 1944 black-and-white film classic ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ with Cary Grant.

Now, as I said, this was a long time ago, and I have to admit that, back then, I had somehow (for some reason that I don’t quite recall) never seen ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’. So I was completely in the dark about it.

My friend, the literature teacher, kept going on and on and on about how great this film was, how funny, how entertaining, how suspenseful. There were all of these wonderful details he could recount off the top of his head, the lines he had memorized perfectly…In short, he told me all about this movie that he loved so much and that I (mea culpa!) hadn’t even watched at that point.

And just as he was recounting yet another darkly humorous line, I suddenly interrupted him, “So you’re saying that this is a macabre story about these seemingly harmless, sweet old ladies, who, as it turns out, have murdered eleven people and are hiding their corpses in the basement, right? Is it possible,” I wondered out loud, “that this is all just one big, giant metaphor?”

My friend was visibly stumped. “What…I…Huh?!...What sort of metaphor?”

“Well,” I replied, “I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t tell you that. But just listening to what you were saying, it sounded a lot like a metaphor for American history, wouldn’t you agree? Where the country pretends to be all normal on the outside, an old entity like a sweet old lady, a nation that seemingly embraces all these wholesome ideals and values…But actually, it was literally built on top of a mass grave, so to speak, its history dark and violent and the way by which its current inhabitants came to inhabit the lands they call their own now awfully, awfully suspect, to say the least.”

There was a moment of silence and then my friend confessed. “I hadn’t considered this.”

“Well, I’m not sure if I’m right,” I tried to assure him quickly. “As I said, I haven’t seen it. It’s just that this is what it sounds like to me, what with there literally being bodies hidden in the basement and such.”

Spoiler alert: Yes, this is most definitely what ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ is all about. And once my friend had mulled it all over, he actually agreed. (This is also the scholarly consensus on what the movie’s central metaphor and deeper themes are, by the way.)

Make no mistake: My friend is a very good teacher, beloved by his students from what one hears, and almost certainly much more educated and intelligent than I am. (I’m not kidding and not fishing for compliments here. This is a fact.) But somehow he had got so immersed in this movie which he loved so much, had dived so deeply into all the details he liked about it, all the lines he adored, all the shots he found so wonderful…that he had never considered that the whole thing itself might just be one big, giant metaphor for American history.

He teaches literature for a living (and he’s awfully good at it, from what one hears), but it hadn’t even occurred to him to apply the same literary tools and methods to a film that he would without hesitation apply to any book or play.

In fact, I’m reasonably sure that the only reason why I had picked up on the central metaphor of ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ so quickly…was ironically the fact that I hadn’t seen it.

You can’t be seduced by the visuals, the wittiness of the script, in short, all the cinematic qualities of a film, if you haven’t bothered to watch it in the first place.

It is really very easy to miss the wood for the trees – especially if you’re a fan who’s deeply invested in something. And when that something comes with the added bonus of being presented as a moving picture on screen, you can easily forget that what you’re watching is just as artfully (and artificially) constructed as any novel or drama; it just all seems so real that you forget that you’re not watching real life, you’re watching a story – a visual story, sure, but a fictional story nonetheless.

Recently I listened to this chap, who I suppose you would have to label right-wing, as he had some rather interesting and even quite insightful takes on the culture wars, and so I listened to him for quite a while. But then, oh then, it came…the utter naïveté of someone not used to looking at a text (any text!) through a metaphorical lens: In his rant, he had turned to the British TV show ‘Merlin’ (which ran from 2008 to 2012, recounting the legend of King Arthur, Merlin, Camelot, and Excalibur) and described it as, and I quote, ‘Quite okay. Not a bad show at all. Really wholesome, for a change. At least there was nothing gay in it. All the protagonists are straight.’

I have to admit that I snorted at this description because it was just so obvious what had happened there:

This man had been anxiously looking out for any boy-on-boy kissing, and when, to his great relief (or secret disappointment, deep down? who knows…), none of that had materialized, he had given the show his ‘A-okay’ seal of heterosexual approval. Because what else could be gay about a story, right? If no man ever smooches any other man or ever gets a tad too handsy with him under the sheets, then obviously the show you’re watching is totally, completely, absolutely straight, isn’t it? Phew.

I picture this bloke analyzing every minute detail about this show, too, watching it, all eagle-eyed and with great trepidation, bordering on paranoia:

Was there perhaps a hint of a rainbow-coloured chainmail to be seen underneath Arthur’s breastplate? Did Percival snuggle up to Gwaine a wee bit in their campaign tent after dark? Also, speaking of tented things…did any of the Knights of the Round Table ever polish each other’s swords that tad too elaborately in a scene? And hang on…did Lancelot just wince in pain when he mounted that horse?

Well, if this gentleman did, in fact, watch the show ‘Merlin’ like that, then he missed the wood for the trees, too. (No. No. Deep breath. Not making any dumb puns with the word ‘wood’ here. Nope. Not happening.)

Because, you see, what this chap didn’t catch was the core metaphor of the whole show. Want me to explain it? Okay. Here we go:

The main protagonist of the television series ‘Merlin’ is…(drum roll)...Merlin. (Duh!)

So, not Arthur, okay?

Now, Merlin, the wizard, has the ability to do magic. Magic, however, is banned (!) in the kingdom this story is set in. It is so strictly outlawed, in fact, that it will get you killed: You will be executed if you are found to be a sorcerer. So, Merlin has to hide his, uhm, ‘magic’ from everyone. But that’s really difficult, you see. Because it is actually an innate trait, an immutable characteristic about him. He cannot change it. He was born (!) a wizard. He was literally…born this way.

In the very last episode of the show’s final season, we then get Merlin’s teary-eyed confession: He reveals his, uhm, ‘magic’ to his (by then) best friend Arthur. He comes out as a sorcerer, basically. He tells him that he is one of the people the state persecutes so severely. One of the people who have to hide their true identity as, uhm, wizards.

Here, take a look at the scene.

So, he confesses to being one of ‘them’, but, in a sense, he also pleads with Arthur to understand his predicament: Merlin tells Arthur that he uses his ‘magic’ to protect Arthur, that he does it all the time, that that’s what his, uhm, ‘magic’ is actually meant for: to protect Arthur, to defend Arthur, to care for Arthur. That his ‘magic’ isn’t a bad thing. “I use it for you, Arthur,” Merlin says, “only for you!”

You get it, right?

How can anyone not get that? I mean, honestly! This metaphor is visible from outer space, for crying out loud.

And yes, it’s the core metaphor this entire show is written around.

By the way, I really think it would serve conservatives well to choose a different career path from time to time than just good ol’ business school. I mean, that well-paid McKinsey consulting job is all nice and well. Great for getting the hot babes and all. But have you ever considered impressing those hot babes with your stellar knowledge of art and culture? (It works like magic, I promise. You’re gonna beat them off with a stick. Although…if you’re really that much into art and culture, perhaps you’re not into hot babes in the first place.) Anyway…Shock your family, pick a liberal arts college for a change, re-familiarize yourselves with some basic literary concepts in order to understand how stories actually work and what people mean when they say ‘subtext’. It would really do you good. (Honestly, it would do the liberal arts guys good, too. For diversity-of-thought reasons and because mental uniformity is not a good thing in institutions of higher education.)

So, yes. Yes, of course! Magic is a metaphor for homosexuality/same-sex love on this show.

It’s incredibly obvious once you approach ‘Merlin’ from the big-picture perspective of ‘What is this story actually all about’.

I mean…“Merlin, you are not a sorcerer. I would know!”

Really? There are people out there who think this is literally about magic?

Oh, man.

I mean, if you’re so hellbent on avoiding any gay stuff, fair enough. You’ll have your reasons, I don’t know. I’m not forcing you to watch anything you don’t want to. But just then…maybe…you know…don’t watch a show that’s literally all about that, okay? Just an idea. (Still wiping tears of laughter from my eyes about this chap, honestly.)

Anyway, I admit I was chuckling my way through his ‘analysis’ whenever he kept repeating how ‘wholesome the innocuous, straight, strong, brotherly bond between the two main protagonists’ allegedly was.

Yeah. As straight as a boomerang.

People don’t see the central metaphor when it’s staring them in the face. And I mean most people! Almost everyone, as a matter of fact. Good people. Intelligent people. Not so intelligent people. Both: People who are anxious to find or to avoid that gay love story that might be hidden in the show or movie they’re watching.

People of all stripes tend to miss the big picture for the minute details.

So, let us rectify that now when it comes to the show ‘Stranger Things’. Let’s not dwell on the posters in Mike Wheeler’s teenage bedroom or the choice of colours he and Will Byers tend to wear (although all of those details are undeniably lovely and very well-thought-out by the creators of this show working behind the scenes).

No, let’s look at the big picture! Let’s look at the central metaphor of this show and discover how great the love story in it actually is, how powerful, how moving and how meaningful.

We will look at that horror scene in which Barbara is dragged off and fights for her life while Nancy and Steve are having sex and ask ourselves why these two scenes were crosscut in the editing process. (How the hell are these two scenes even connected? Why the crosscutting?)

We will take a look at the many triangular character constellations in the basic character structure of this show.

And of course, we will talk about El. (Who is she? And what is she there for?)

Off we go into the darkness of the Upside Down to examine the story of Mike Wheeler and Will Byers (who, you’ve guessed it, this whole show is actually written around), to explore the depth of this show’s subtext, to understand its metaphors, mirror characters and allegorical personifications…and yeah, yeah, yeah…Of course, you can still revel in the nostalgia of that sea of 1980s perms and mullets, if you want. In aerobics headbands, tapered jeans and shoulder pads, in mixtapes, walkmans and iconic muscle cars, in white cowboy boots and leather jackets, in big hair and chevron moustaches…We’re all only human, after all.

Just remember that we won’t be looking at those details specifically.

Because what I’m going to ask you to do now is…put away the magnifying glass! Stop looking at the tiny details and zoom out…way, way, way out…

What happens on this show, dear reader?

Should we perhaps start afresh?

Okay, once more for old times’ sake…Here we go:

A little boy goes missing in the first episode of ‘Stranger Things’ – and that little boy’s name is Will Byers.

The scenes of his family despairing, banging their heads against the wall in absolute anguish as they can’t locate him, are actually the hardest scenes to watch on this entire show – harder by far than most of the (rather tame) prototypical horror film scenes.

Yeah, you get some big, bad CGI monsters of questionable quality, and, of course, you get a few favourite tropes of the horror film genre thrown in for good measure, too (think: that good old close-up shot of a chain on a door slowly moving as if by an invisible hand, etc.).

All of these are a bit trop-y, unselfconsciously camp and wonderfully hammy (so, all in all, really neat). But they’re also largely harmless.

None of these horror film clichés compare to the emotions you experience, as a viewer, as you watch Joyce Byers, Will’s mother, be confronted with the real horror of being unable to find her child, trying desperately to locate him somewhere, anywhere (school? friends? his dad?) and slowly coming to the horrible realization that he is indeed missing, that he has somehow disappeared without a trace.

So, yes, the series premiere ‘The Vanishing of Will Byers’ is hard to watch – much harder than the monsters. It’s painful to see what this does to his family. (And in case you, dear reader, haven’t watched this show yet and are hesitating to do so now, let me just include this tiny, yet potentially very reassuring spoiler: Will Byers will be okay in the end. He will be reunited with his family by the time the last episode of season one rolls around, okay?)

So, Will Byers vanishes without a trace. And here is the first thing we have to take note of when it comes to the way the show’s writers decided to go about this:

They make it clear very early in the story that poor little Will is gay!

Or rather that there are quite a few people around who think that he might be and bully him for that very reason.

As I said, the show makes that very clear very, very early on. You cannot miss it.

There are the remarks by the school bullies who call him a ‘fairy’ and ‘queer’. There’s the scene right in episode one in which Will’s mother Joyce tells the police chief (who she approached for help in her despair) that other kids are mean to her son, calling him names and making fun of his clothes.

As viewers, we even experience a slight shock when Will’s mother tells us that somebody named Lonnie called her son a ‘fag’. Naturally, we assume that this Lonnie character must be another bully at Will’s school, but it then turns out that this awful person is in fact…Will’s father (Joyce’s ex-husband). And that’s obviously where the shock comes in.

There are all of these hints at Will’s orientation very early on in the story: Will is consistently described as artistic and called ‘sensitive’, and we’re told that he likes drawing and painting. There are all of these remarks that he isn’t like other kids, that he’s different. There’s also the way in which Will’s mother reacts with obvious disbelief to the police chief’s blasé suggestion that Will might have just disappeared to get some alone-time with a girl somewhere.

In short, the show is filled with these glaringly obvious hints that this somewhat frail and pale 12-year-old boy, who has just disappeared off the face of the earth, is gay.

The show’s writers make very sure you get the hint and aren’t left in any doubt about Will’s orientation.

Now, there is a second character who disappears fairly early in the story, too. And here things are done much more subtly:

We never hear a word about Barbara’s sexual orientation (which makes sense, seeing as Barbara isn’t as central to the story as Will is, anyway). What we do get in her, though, is a female character who is subtly gay-coded.

What does the term ‘gay-coded’ mean?

Well, the creators of a film or show don’t always have to literally spell out what their character is all about; they don’t always have to verbally, explicitly spill the beans, so to speak (the way they do with Will Byers). They can simply imply their character’s orientation in a visual way. They can use easily recognizable (often somewhat stereotypical) traits and characteristics to make sure you get what they are trying to tell you.

By the way, this doesn’t necessarily have to mean that the character in question is literally gay in the story itself (although it can mean that), but it definitely means that in the story’s subtext, the character acts as a stand-in for gay people in general, i.e. that the character is a representation of that particular demographic for the purposes of the story’s subtext.

Now, how do we know that Barbara is indeed gay-coded as a character?

Well, for one, she is notably and visibly a more butch girl than the more dainty, delicate and feminine Nancy Wheeler. And these two characters are constantly shown together throughout Barbara’s short stint on the show, so that’s probably not a coincidence. (It’s at least not inconceivable that their two actresses were specifically cast with this contrast in appearance in mind.) Barbara is also inevitably shown to be wearing more practical clothes; she has a more can-do attitude about her in general. Her simple hairstyle, her chequered shirt, the lack of any girly jewellery, her thick glasses, her noted dislike of prom king and school beau Steve…yes, yes, yes, all of these are stereotypes, I’m aware. But that’s the whole point! That’s how you gay-code a character as a filmmaker.

And I have to say it’s done really subtly in Barbara’s case.

Just remember that this doesn’t necessarily have to mean that Barbara is literally a lesbian in the text; it just means the filmmakers are subtly painting her with that gay brush by means of some (slightly stereotypical) ‘outwardly lesbian’ visuals, in order to make sure you get the general idea here:

The two kids who disappear without a trace at the beginning of this show, Will and Barbara, are both shown to be…not exactly straight. They are both of the same kidney, so to speak.

With Will, this is done more overtly, and it is textually, i.e. verbally (!), confirmed and constantly reinforced by the other characters on the show. With Barbara, it’s more a case of subtle, visual gay-coding.

So, two kids disappear, and the show’s creators specifically made sure to add a bit of a rainbow-coloured flavour to both characters, so to speak.

Hmm…Interesting ‘coincidence’, don’t you think?

Now, where exactly do Will Byers and Barbara Holland disappear to?

This, my friends, is where we enter spoiler territory. So, if for some mysterious reason you have so far missed out on the hype and failed to watch ‘Stranger Things’ yet, this is where I would stop reading and give the show a chance first if I were you, then return to this post later on and read the rest of the text below. At least watch the first five episodes to know where Will and Barbara have disappeared to, okay?

In case you have watched the show and know already what has happened to Will and Barbara, please proceed…

(So, spoilers ahead, is all I was trying to tell you here. You have been warned!)

You see, as it turns out, Will Byers and Barbara Holland haven’t been abducted or anything in that vein. They have fallen into an alternate dimension, which later in the story will get nicknamed the ‘Upside Down’.

The Upside Down, we are told, is several things: It’s dark. (And we can see for ourselves how horrifyingly constant that darkness actually is.) It’s cold. And it’s strangely empty, i.e. devoid of any other people. Later on we also find out that it has a toxic atmosphere and that you shouldn’t breathe in its thick air for too long.

Most importantly, though: It shows us the exact same town, the exact same houses, the same school, the same playground, the same supermarket, the same streets…In short, it looks just like Hawkins, Indiana (the fictional town this show is set in). It is the same place, just in a parallel dimension. It looks the same – just pitch black, cold, and empty…and it is inhabited by monstrous creatures instead of human beings.

It’s like being in the exact same place you know and love, the same town you’ve grown up in, but it’s also completely different; it’s as if your world has been turned inside out, and you’re on the outside now, left alone, stranded there without a way back in.

All the houses are the same, yet they are covered in slimy, twining, disgusting vines. The streets look the same, but they’re shrouded in permanent darkness. And the night air is filled with tiny particles; breathing in the thick fog is poisonous. And nobody, absolutely nobody is there. It’s a wasteland, all dark and empty.

Should we reiterate the fact that the two characters who fall into this alternate dimension and subsequently become trapped in there…are subtly (and sometimes none-too-subtly) presented as gay?

What do you think the Upside Down is?

What do you think the writers of this show are trying to tell us, hmm?

What do you think was the very first thing they drew up when they originally came up with the core idea, the basic premise of their story?

What is this alternate dimension that those two gay/gay-coded characters have inadvertently become trapped in?

If you’re of the heterosexual persuasion, dear reader, then I won’t fault you for not seeing it right away because this might not be immediately obvious to you, but as a gay person, this is actually so blatant that you really can’t miss it.

This alternate dimension, the Upside Down, is what it feels like to be in the closet!

It’s incredibly dark. It’s dangerous and toxic. It’s so, so cold. And you’re all alone in there. There’s absolutely nobody there to support you or help you in any way.

You’re utterly lost, trapped, and no help is coming.

The closet is like an alternate dimension!

What’s interesting, though, is the fact that this alternate universe (read: the closet) looks exactly like your own home town – just darker, colder, emptier and more horrifying.

Because this is what it’s literally like to be gay and closeted: You still live in the same house. You still sit on the same chair. You still walk down the same streets. Everything in your environment is technically still the same…but it’s also not the same anymore. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

The moment you realize that you’re gay (perhaps the realization only exists vaguely at the edge of your perception at this point) and understand that you cannot tell anybody about those strange confusing feelings you’re experiencing, the moment that happens, the whole world around you transforms into a different one: into a very, very dark place indeed.

Being closeted means living in an alternate dimension from everybody else’s – everyone you know, everyone you love, your friends, your family, the other kids at your school…

The closet is an alternate reality.

Technically everything is still the same…and yet it isn’t…at all…anymore. You’ve become trapped in a horrible place.

It’s still the same school and the same playground, the same road and the same walk home. But everything has become dark and terrifying. Everything is a literal horror show.

And guess what: You’re all alone in there! In that closet. In that alternate dimension. In that awful, awful situation that you’ve become trapped in through no fault of your own.

You’re all alone! Nobody is there with you. Nobody is there for you.

Do you know the expression ‘the loneliest footpath in the universe’?

No?

I’ll give you a hint: It’s not about the last few steps a convicted criminal has to take up to the guillotine or electric chair. But it’s a reasonably similar experience. (Okay, I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek right now.)

It describes the experience all concert pianists know intimately: that meandering path from your backstage room through an endless maze of corridors and hallways to the stage of the concert hall where the audience awaits you in the auditorium, the last few steps you have to take in those last few moments right before a performance, those last minutes where you’re so hyper-focused you don’t really see anyone anymore and are totally ‘in the zone’ as you stagger towards your final destination, ignoring anyone and anything around you.

Those are the infamous, loneliest minutes in an existence that’s already marked by long stretches of loneliness as you spend days, weeks, months and years of your life all alone, locked away in some practice room or other, rehearsing for hours on end.

The loneliest experience you will ever go through is that walk up on stage (over and over and over again). And yes, it’s different for a pianist. Other instrumentalists often have…each other. They’re ensemble players far more often than pianists are. Pianists are lonely by definition.

If you’re lucky, then you’re in a piano duo, and then…you don’t have to walk that walk alone all the time. You can share that experience with your duo partner, silently and hyper-focused on each other. Again and again.

Well, and if that time in your life coincides with you vaguely sensing the confines of that suffocating closet around you for the first time, then maybe that lonely ‘footpath’ could become a metaphor in your story.

Hmm…methinks somebody should write a book about that and use that exact metaphor for the closet. At least that’s what I would do…

As you can see, there are lots of ways in which you can approach a metaphor like that, depending on what kind of story you’re trying to tell.

The writers of ‘Stranger Things’ came up with a cool metaphor for the closet, too. It is their core metaphor. (And before you ask: No, the Upside Down is not just a closet. It’s a bit more than just that. But we only find out about that in season two.)

The Upside Down is an alternate dimension that these two (clearly gay/gay-coded) characters have disappeared to. It’s a horrible experience for both of them. It’s so cold, so dark, populated by so many monsters, but above all: it’s so, so, so empty! There’s nobody there. You are completely alone in there, totally isolated from everyone else.

The thing that hits you the hardest, as you watch the first season of this show, is the realization that Will Byers and Barbara Holland never run into each other in the Upside Down!

They never seem to cross paths in there. They never meet there. Which is also an all-too-common experience for gay people to go through: “There is nobody else who’s the way I am. There can’t be. I’m the only one. I’m all alone in this,” is what every teen and pre-teen thinks who realizes that about themselves, not seeing all the other people trapped in the same awful predicament.

But the thing that probably makes the whole metaphor on this show most obvious is the fact that none of Barb’s and Will’s friends suspect that this alternate dimension exists in the first place. Nobody has the faintest idea. Nobody can ‘see’ this parallel reality.

You live (well, actually, barely hang on to your life)...in this horrible state of being, you’re trapped in this gruesome existence, and it’s all so obvious to you, as you keep desperately repeating that you are ‘right here’! Why can’t they hear you? Why can’t they see what you’re going through?

You are, after all, still in the exact same place as everyone else, in the same house, in the same town…you’re still there. Right there! Just in a different dimension.

But they just cannot see it, this alternate reality. To them, it doesn’t exist. (Because they’re straight and have no idea what that whole ordeal feels like.) This alternate dimension just doesn’t exist for them. They cannot see the closet you’re trapped in.

One of the most brilliant and poignant and spooky moments of the first season is the scene in which Will’s mum Joyce paints that alphabet on the wall that’s decorated over and over with Christmas lights. (By the way, I love how all these Christmas lights taken together form a visual rainbow, but that’s a detail of the set design, of course; and we’re trying not to get bogged down in the details today – we’re trying to focus on the big picture).

So, Joyce Byers paints that alphabet on the wall and asks her son (who she doesn’t yet know is trapped in an alternate dimension, yet has started to communicate with), “Okay. Okay, baby. Talk to me. Talk to me: Where are you?”

Will manages to make those (rainbow-coloured) Christmas lights glow above the letters: R…then…I…then…G…then…T…

…and then suddenly we realize that he is spelling out the words, “Right here!”

He is right there. He is in the exact same place as she is. Just in an alternate dimension.

This is what it feels like: You’re closeted. But you are still right there. In the same room as everyone else. Why can’t they all see this awful predicament you’re trapped in? Why don’t they see your suffering, your pain? You’re right there, after all. Why can’t they see it?

But they simply cannot see the closet. This alternate dimension doesn’t exist for them.

It doesn’t even enter their brains that this dark place might exist. Even though it clearly does and although it’s hurting you so much, making you suffer so terribly.

They don’t see it, and thus condemn you to even more suffering, potentially an even worse fate. They just leave you all alone in there; they leave you to die. (A prospect that, back in the 1980s, with the AIDS crisis raging on, was all-too-real and not just a metaphor.)

You’re trapped in the closet, even though you’re right there. And nobody can see your anguish. Nobody can feel your pain.

And the longer you stay in there, the higher the risk of you simply suffocating in that closet.

You’re slowly dying day by day, breathing in the toxic atmosphere of that alternate dimension, and nobody does anything about it. It’s harrowing. And you don’t even see the other people trapped in the very same dark place. (Will Byers cannot see Barbara Holland and vice versa. Both of them feel like they’re all alone in that closet, i.e. in the Upside Down.)

Now, here comes the big thing, the big deal, and arguably the whole point of this entire first season (and yes, I’m just going to tell you right now, instead of making a big mystery out of this, because we have to take a deeper dive into the subtext further down in this here post, so I won’t have the time to come back to this point later on):

The whole point of this first season is that Will’s mum, Joyce Byers, slowly but surely gets there!

She senses it. She starts to suspect that her son is trapped in some sort of way that she simply hasn’t fully understood yet. She gets that hunch, that vague feeling, that creeping suspicion that something is wrong, and as shocked and horrified as she is, she still doesn’t let go. She’s like a dog with a bone. She sticks to her belief even when everyone else thinks she’s lost her marbles.

She just knows there’s something going on. And she won’t leave her son to deal with it on his own. She will save him. She just knows she’s right, and all those other people are wrong.

Sometimes a parent can have a hunch, yeah? Sometimes a parent just feels that their child is struggling, going through something horrific, this tells us. Sometimes a parent just knows that something is off. The parent in question might not have fully understood that their child is in the closet; they might not even know what the closet is or what all of this ultimately means about their child’s sexual orientation. But said parent still knows, knows deep down, that something awful has happened to their kid, and they are determined to support them come hell or high water.

This is the kind of parent Joyce Byers is. And Will is actually incredibly lucky to have a mother like that.

On the surface of the text, this is just a story about a boy disappearing into an alternate dimension and his mother slowly figuring out what has happened to him. On the textual surface, this is a horror/science-fiction/mystery story about other dimensions, monsters, secret labs and conspiracy theories.

Deep in the subtext, this is a different story, though: It’s a parable, telling you not so much the story of this one concrete boy with his concrete mother and the concrete alternate dimension (metaphor for the closet) he disappears into…but a general story about so, so many young pre-teens and teens and their parents and the closets they’re all trapped in.

(Interestingly, these types of coming-out stories – even when they’re just a coming-out story hidden inside a parable – often feature mothers who are understanding and warm and wonderful…and fathers who are utterly clueless, often even cruel, heartless bastards. Makes it somewhat difficult to watch for people where the real-life experience is the other way around, I suppose. Mothers on screen in these types of fictional stories always have this hunch and then start to understand their kid and work it all out in the end, in a mum-always-knows kinda way. The fathers are typically depicted as dumb brutes, insensitive and sometimes even physically abusive, often alcoholics or otherwise horrible, homophobic arseholes. I understand the reasoning behind this depiction, of course: Screenwriters like to make a general allegorical point here, an anti-patriarchal point, if you will, with fathers being a personification of the whole system, so to speak. Still it’s an incredibly weird experience to be watching this same trope in film after film and show after show if you’ve got the loveliest, warmest, kindest dad imaginable. Like…whenever I see these wondermum screen stereotypes – think Linda on ‘Young Royals’ – I feel myself instantly bristle on instinct. I just instinctively dislike them because the writers are trying so hard to make me like them, I suppose. Thank God Joyce on ‘Stranger Things’ didn’t set my teeth on edge in quite the same way as Linda on ‘Young Royals’ did, but then she is being played by Winona Ryder, whose performance here is just in a different league, nay, stratosphere from that all-too-familiar saintly-mum-and-ally character template I usually find so irritating.

In real life, these experiences do, of course, fall roughly along a 50-50 line. For some people, their father is more supportive; for some, it’s their mother. These things are often unpredictable. Some really unlucky bastards have two parents who are both equally awful about the whole thing. And I suppose some people end up with the golden ticket where both parents are perfectly fine with it. Can’t think of anyone in that golden-ticket category off the top of my head, but you know, they must exist somewhere. It’s a big world, after all…In any case: Reality is not fiction. And fiction is not reality. In a movie or TV show, a father pulling a Micke Eriksson or even a Lonnie Byers, i.e. being a useless piece of you-know-what, does, of course, serve a broader purpose: The father is an allegorical personification of a patriarchal system in the story’s subtext. But boy, do I wish filmmakers would come up with a different trope now and then.)

So, Joyce Byers gets there. Slowly but surely. She starts to ‘see’ it.

Her ex-husband, the somewhat trop-y, gay-bash-y Awful Dad™ doesn’t see it, doesn’t get it and doesn’t even want to see it. She is crazy, according to him. There is no alternate dimension. She is simply unwell – or so he thinks. She is seeing things. He knows what’s best for his two sons, that’s at least what he seems to believe, and the show’s writers show us that this is a lie and a delusion: Lonnie doesn’t even know his own kids. He doesn’t know what college Will’s older brother Jonathan wants to attend, always wanted to attend, always will want to attend.

This detail is probably in the script to make the whole deal more obvious: This father doesn’t know his children at all. Has no emotional connection to them and has probably physically abused them in the past (one of the first things he does as he sees Jonathan in his new apartment is he pushes his son against a wall; you could argue that that’s just a coincidence, that Lonnie doesn’t realize right away that the visitor is his own son, but things in screenplays happen for a reason, and the reason here is clearly to paint Lonnie with a very dark brush indeed: This is the kind of dad who pushes his children against walls. Not a good look.)

So, this dad doesn’t ‘see’ this alternate dimension. He doesn’t think anything is going on. (Read: He doesn’t see the immense pain and suffering the closet is causing his youngest son and how the boy is practically suffocating in there).

The mum in this story, on the other hand, knows…she just knows that something is going on. And she doesn’t let go of that hunch. She never backs down, never gives in, doesn’t bow to anyone; she just follows her instincts, no matter how often people try to talk her out of it.

Here we should mention the signs!

What you will often hear from relatives of gay people is that they actually suspected something all along, that there were signs. Closeted teens and pre-teens will send out (conscious and unconscious) distress signals to show their families that they are struggling, that something is off and that they need help to deal with this crisis.

There are usually signs.

But as a parent, you will only be able to pick up on those signs if you pay close attention to your child, if you love them enough to care. If on the other hand, you just dismiss all of it as nonsense and as ‘oh-well-it’s-just-your-usual-teenage-drama-again’, then your child will keep on suffering in that closet in silence. My point being: You can’t help your closeted son or daughter if you don’t acknowledge that he or she is, in fact, closeted. And that you can only do if you pay close attention to any subtle distress signals that they might be sending your way, distress signals from out of that closet, subtle distress signals that penetrate that thick, seemingly impenetrable closet wall. If you don’t pick up on those because you’re too wrapped up in your own problems or are too full of yourself (like Lonnie), then you can’t help your child through this difficult time in their life.

But Joyce actually does pay attention: She starts to see the signs.

In the context of this show, they are, of course, metaphorical signs:

She starts to pick up on mysterious things that are going on in her house. Lights going on and off by themselves. Music suddenly being turned on and off again in the boys’ room, etc.

But that’s the nature of this metaphor, right? The Upside Down is the closet (well, it’s a bit more than just that, but we only find out about this in later seasons) and the Christmas lights, the music, etc. are the signs Will is giving his mother.

By the way, I love the fact that Will actually uses the song ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ to communicate with his mother.

Yeah. Should he stay…in the closet? Or should he go, i.e. ‘come out’ of it?

What did those lyrics say again?

“[…]If I go there will be trouble,/

And if I stay it will be double.[…]”

How fitting!

Yeah, should Will come out or not? If he does, there will be trouble. If he doesn’t…it will be double. Heh.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that that same song was used in a highly suggestive flashback scene in which Will’s older brother Jonathan told him that he (Will) was allowed to be different from other people and shouldn’t be forced by anyone to like ‘normal things’. (Ahem.)

Anyway…So, once Will is trapped in the Upside Down (read: closet), he finds a way to communicate with his mother through the lights and the music. He’s giving her signs, sending her distress signals…

When you think about it, Joyce is actually the one who reaches out and helps Will give her even more signs. After all, it is she who installs the Christmas lights everywhere in their house and paints that alphabet on the wall, so he can talk to her.

Joyce isn’t just paying close attention to her (metaphorically) closeted son in the, uhm, parallel dimension (closet) he is trapped in, she is specifically reaching out to him, cautiously telling him to give her one more sign and yet another and yet another…so she can help him!

That’s the metaphor here!

All of this imagery is actually quite beautiful when you think about it: The mother hanging up the (rainbow-coloured) Christmas lights, painting that alphabet on the wall, so he can talk to her and telling him over and over and over again, “Talk to me! Just talk to me, baby.”

She wants him to talk to her, so she can help him.

If there’s one thing all parents of teenagers and pre-teens know, it’s that their kids suddenly stop talking to them at some time around that age. They are constantly up and about somewhere, seeing their friends, and you can barely keep up with their interests, hobbies, and pals anymore…You don’t even know where they are at any given moment and what problems they might be facing, what struggles they might be going through.

Closeted children go through even more turmoil in that regard precisely at an age where children tend not to talk to their parents.

One of the big problems in those scenes in which Will is trapped in the alternate dimension and his mother is worried sick about him is the fact that he cannot talk to her.

It is implied that Will can just about make out her faint voice as it rings out, penetrating the walls of the Upside Down. But she, in turn, cannot hear his voice at all.

It’s literally very difficult for him to communicate with her in those scenes – metaphorically, that’s an age-old experience of anyone who has ever faced the incredible challenge of having to come out to one’s own parents. Coming out is always difficult, but nothing, absolutely nothing compares to having to face that conversation with your parents. It’s as though you cannot talk to them at all. As though you were mute.

Joyce is a good parent, though. She is really trying to get her son to tell her what is going on, reaching out to him in every conceivable way, trying to tell him that she is there for him, that she wants to help him, that she loves him, that he can talk to her wherever he is trapped and whatever is going on, that she will help him no matter what, that he just needs to talk to her.

And he replies. Finally. He ‘talks’ to her. Through those signs.

It’s difficult. It’s incredibly hard. But he starts giving her these signs…he is making the (rainbow-coloured) Christmas lights glow.

He is still giving her very short and downright monosyllabic answers at this point (cf. the alphabet on that wall), incredibly scared out there in the dark and cold of the Upside Down (read: the closet), but at least he is talking now. He is saying something.

In a particularly brilliant scene, Joyce is holding a tangled bundle of Christmas lights in her hands and then tells her son to blink once for yes and twice for no. She has literally climbed into a tiny little closet for this scene. It’s a very confined space, down on the floor level; she had to basically crawl into this thing.

And let me tell you, there is absolutely no plot reason for her to be climbing into this tiny closet. None.

This scene could have been filmed anywhere: with Joyce comfortably sitting on the couch or in her kitchen somewhere or even in Will’s bedroom.

But she is specifically in this tiny, basically child-sized cupboard that she barely fits into!

Because…subtext!

Metaphorical meaning: If parents want to receive a message from their potentially closeted child, they have to crawl into that closet, no matter how dark, narrow and small (and child-sized) that thing is. They have to get on their child’s level – and not just literally, but figuratively, too; parents have to try and meet their son/daughter on his/her terms if they want to establish communication with their kid.

It’s a beautiful scene, and the way that whole tangled bundle of lights starts to shine and illuminate her face when Will finally ‘says’ something, the way she is so, so ecstatic about it, is such a wonderful emotional pay-off once you understand the metaphorical subtext of this scene.

It’s beautiful! And really I don’t understand why more people don’t see the metaphor here.

For it is a metaphorical scene: Joyce is reaching out to her closeted son, and he finally gives her an answer. He is finally, finally ‘talking’ to her.

Wherever he is, whatever he is going through, at least he is talking to her now!

And Joyce is really putting herself out there; she is reaching out to him, trying to get on his level and put herself in his shoes. The metaphor tells you that this is about empathy and understanding.

And lo and behold, it works. He speaketh!

The Christmas lights in her hands light up like whoa!

It’s such a beautiful scene. And you really have to see the metaphor to understand just how powerful it is.

This scene is a perfect encapsulation of parenthood right there. A visual metaphor for what good parenting should be like.

This whole first season is essentially a story about the way parents communicate (or rather should communicate) with their closeted children: It’s a story about how to do it cautiously, how to keep reaching out even when everyone around you tells you to ignore your intuitions. It’s a story about how to read the signs correctly, about how to empathize with your child’s situation and get on their level. And it’s a story about how to be patient and keep reaching out, no matter what. A story about how not to give up, how to be a fierce protector of your child, how to be truly devoted to them and how to love them.

You have to understand once again that what you are watching there is a parable, right?

Remember what a parable is?

In the language of symbolism, a metaphor is basically a thing that represents another thing. Usually it’s a concrete thing that represents an abstract thing.

Water is something concrete. You can touch it. It’s warm or cold, but definitely wet and liquid and difficult to grasp with your hand. It can freeze or evaporate. It’s something concrete. But you can use this concrete thing as a metaphor to represent something abstract: feelings and emotions, for example. Because those are famously more difficult to show on screen. They’re abstract, after all. You can’t touch them. So, you can use water (the concrete thing) to visualize feelings (this abstract thing that you want to show your viewers) by, say, having it rain in a scene where two characters kiss for the very first time.

So, a metaphor is a thing that represents another thing – usually a concrete thing that represents an abstract thing.

A parable, on the other hand, is a story that represents another story – usually a concrete story that represents an abstract story.

A parable can tell you the concrete story of a twelve-year old boy disappearing into an alternate dimension and his mother trying to work out what happened to him, looking for him, helping him to communicate with her by reaching out to him, so he can talk to her through the (rainbow-coloured) Christmas lights. And ultimately, one by one, his friends and his brother will realize what has happened to him, too. They will all come to his aid.

But this concrete story of the twelve-year-old boy represents an abstract story: The story of everyone who is closeted in general. This general, abstract story is a story about how, when you’re trapped and totally isolated in the closet, you’re in urgent need of help – help from your parents, your family, your friends, your teachers, etc.

It’s a general story. An abstract story about anyone who’s potentially trapped in a situation like this, not just a story about one concrete child.

Please remember this definition of a parable as you proceed through this here post because the distinction between the concrete story we are literally being shown on screen and the abstract and more general story we are supposed to understand is hidden behind this concrete story is actually very important.

As we watch ‘Stranger Things’, we are following a concrete story. The abstract and more general story is the one we are supposed to infer. But these two are also distinct!

Much in the same way that Barbara doesn’t need to be necessarily gay on the literal surface of the text (she just needs to be gay-coded in order for us to understand what this story is about in the subtext!), Will doesn’t necessarily need to be ‘out’ by the time he is finally saved from the Upside Down.

Will doesn’t come out as gay by the end of the first season once he is saved from the Upside Down and returns to our normal reality. Far from it. The (so far) latest season (season four) has him cautiously putting out his feelers in that regard. He is still crying silently, though, when he thinks that the boy he likes is only into girls. Even in season four, Will still hasn’t come out yet.

So, no, at the end of season one, when Will is rescued from the Upside Down, he doesn’t come out.

This is why I said we have to understand the distinction between the concrete story we’re being shown and the abstract story it represents: We see Will being saved from this alternate dimension because this is what the writers are trying to tell us. This is what they’re telling us in their abstract story that this story represents!

Closeted people can be saved from that awful, horrible, dark place they’re trapped in if their friends and family really pay attention to them, care for them and reach out to them.

This saving at the end of season one exists for the abstract, general story that this parable represents. It exists for the overall message of this parable! Not (or at least not so far) for the concrete story at that specific moment. (Because Will is not out of the closet at that point, okay?)

The message here is: You have to be involved in your child’s life to help them get ‘out of there’, out of that awful place…to even just understand that they are trapped in there in the first place.

You have to be involved and constantly reach out to your child again and again. You have to establish communication (however hard that might be with a kid that age). This difficult communication is brilliantly represented by Joyce Byers working her arse off with the Christmas lights and the phones and the alphabet and…just everything. Her climbing into this tiny closet is just such a brilliant image in that scene.

What is most important, though, is that, once she has established communication with her son, she doesn’t give up. She never gives up!

She is going to get him out of there, no matter the cost.

And you see this executed so beautifully in the last episode of the first season: Joyce Byers refuses to let anyone else (here: the police chief Jim Hopper) do the rescuing on his own. She is Will’s mother. She is responsible for his well-being. She is fiercely devoted to him. She is going to rescue her child from that dark place, no matter what.

This is the kind of parent you want as a closeted guy (or girl), to be honest: You want the mum who fights for you, come hell or high water, in order to drag you out of that horrible place you’re trapped in and where you’re suffocating, breathing in the toxic air, where you’re being eaten alive by gruesome monsters or tentacles or what have you.

As a closeted child, you want that kind of mum. The mum who fights her way into this dark closet and gets you out of there!

It’s a glorious, wonderful, powerful ending to the first season: The mother getting the son out of the dark, alternate dimension he was trapped in, saving him from a fate where he was slowly wasting away, already on death’s door when she came for him.

Again, keep in mind that this is about the abstract story, not necessarily the concrete story all that much: Will himself doesn’t have HIV (thank God). He is too young in season one to have had any kind of sexual experiences yet. In season one, he probably barely knows himself what is going on with him.

But if you view this concrete story as a parable for an abstract, more general story with a broad and general message, then you understand it: People who stay in the closet for years and years and years, people whose parents aren’t like Joyce Byers, closeted people who waste away in that closet are at a much higher risk of dying a horrible death (very realistic back in 1983 when this story is set). This is about the abstract, general story behind the concrete one, not so much about this one concrete boy and his concrete mother. It’s not about one individual, it’s about everyone. Because this is a parable.

I hope you can see the distinction.

Anyway…do we get the flip side, too?

Yes. Sadly, we do.

What do you think is Barbara’s function in this text?

Yes! She serves as a mirror character for Will Byers. But she is specifically mirroring him to show us the contrast between the two different possible outcomes – to show us what happens when everything goes wrong.

Barbara (subtly gay-coded in the subtext, as we’ve mentioned above) is swallowed by that same dark and cold parallel dimension. She, too, ends up in that horrible place.

But crucially…nobody comes for Barbara.

Not her parents, in any case.

We see her parents in utter despair in later seasons, of course. We see them search for her desperately and mourn her death later on.

But we never see them try to establish communication with Barbara in the way Will’s (ostensibly) ‘crazy’ mother Joyce does with her child.

Barbara’s parents have no idea what is going on with her; they don’t even suspect that she is trapped in some dark place somewhere. Nobody reaches out to her.

Or rather…when somebody finally does (Nancy through El), it is already too late.

Message: If it’s just a couple of friends who reach out to you because they sense that you might need help, then that might not be enough to rescue you from that dark place! It might be too little, too late.

It’s much better if at least one parent gets it too. And even then, that parent has to fight a hell of a fight to help you and save you in the end. (Like Joyce does for Will.)

Barbara’s parents fail to establish communication with Barbara and so…she dies. She wastes away in the Upside Down. The closet becomes her grave.

Barbara exists in this story to show us Will’s alternative timeline: This is what would have happened to Will if his mother hadn’t fought for him tooth and nail. This horrible ending…would have been his had it not been for his mother Joyce.

What I’m trying to tell you here and what I hope you took away from this first part of my long rant about ‘Stranger Things’ is:

The Upside Down is the closet. (Well, it’s a bit more than just that, but we’ll get to that in a sec. For the purposes of the first season, it’s the closet.)

An almost metaphysical entity for anyone who’s ever been in it.

Something most straight people cannot even begin to understand.

But if they try, if they really, really try, open their ears and their hearts and listen and then reach out again and again…then they can actually help their closeted son, daughter, brother, best friend…

That is the underlying metaphor of the first season. This is the parable that you are watching unfold there, as you watch ‘Stranger Things’ season one.

Now, let us take a somewhat closer look at the characters, too. Because as you might remember from our analysis series on ‘Young Royals’, just looking at metaphors won’t give you the full picture. If you want to be able to get to a story’s subtext, you need to understand why the writers have included the characters they have written into their story, and you need to understand what functions those characters serve in the text.

Because guess what, the characters in your favourite story are all structured around each other in a very deliberate way. They’re not just thrown into the story at random or because some writer woke up one morning and spontaneously thought, “Oh, yeah, it might be fun to have a character like that on the show.”

All characters are drafted on a drawing board to fit into the structure of the story, and they usually all serve a very specific function with regards to the subtext.

So, let’s talk about El!

Who is El?

The girl named Eleven.

And no, I don’t just mean on the surface of the text; I don’t just mean Jane Ives, who was abducted as a baby by the baddies in the narrative. I mean: What does El stand for in the subtext? What does she represent?

El appears right in the first episode of season one.

And what is immediately striking is that she appears in the very episode in which Will disappears!

Will vanishes without a trace, and she suddenly appears on the scene.

We don’t know where Will went. And we don’t know where El came from.

He disappears off the face of the earth. She appears out of nowhere.

That in and of itself should already tell you that there is something fishy going on in the story’s subtext. All of your subtext-detecting alarm bells should be ringing once you realize that there’s this strange parallel.

And the parallel is made even more obvious (right from the start): Will disappears. I.e. a boy goes missing.

And everyone who first interacts with El thinks that she is a boy!

There’s a tiny bit of dramatic irony going on there. (Remember what dramatic irony is? It’s something we get straight out of the ancient theatre tradition of the Greek tragedy. It’s when the audience knows something that the characters in the story themselves don’t know.)

So, there’s at least some level of dramatic irony in that we, the audience, know right from the start that this is undoubtedly a girl, but the characters themselves need some time to work this out: Right before El appears on screen for the first time, staggering barefoot towards that diner in nothing but her hospital gown, so right before that scene, the baddies in this story mention her: “And the girl?” “Oh, she can’t have gone far.”

Cut.

And there she is now, staggering towards Benny’s Burgers in her hospital gown.

So, we, the audience, know that this is a girl. We have just literally been told that she is. This is how she is introduced to us.

But everyone else who interacts with her first thinks that she is a boy due to her buzz cut and her neutral hospital attire.

Later on in the season, people will tend to get her mixed up with Will. After all, Will disappeared and everyone is now looking for him. And this child (who’s assumed to be a boy) suddenly appeared on the scene. So, it makes sense to assume that this…is actually Will.

This whole mix-up isn’t really necessary from a plot point of view. It doesn’t really serve a textual purpose for the plot, i.e. it never really goes anywhere. So, in a sense, you, the viewer, keep asking yourself, “What is this little instance of dramatic irony actually for?”

(And in case you now say, “Well, but it makes sense why they got mixed up: Will disappeared and she appeared…looking like a boy, at that. Of course, people would get them mixed up,” so, in case you’re now saying that, please keep in mind that you’re watching a fictional story here. These characters aren’t real people. This mix-up was something the writers of this show decided to include in their story. They could have gone without it. And since it clearly doesn’t really serve any plot purpose, it must be there for the subtext!)

So, what’s the subtext here?

Well, for one, the weirdly contrasting parallel becomes much clearer: Will (a boy) disappeared. And a new character appeared (who is at least subtextually coded as a boy, too). And in the very same episode, at that. One boy disappears without a trace (and into the closet, no less). And another ‘boy’ appears in the story as if out of nowhere. So, who is this ‘boy’?

And what is this ‘boy’s’ function in the text? What is El’s function in this story? Why this weird parallel with Will’s plot line? Why this strange masculine coding? Why her whole supernatural abilities?

What is going on with El? On a subtextual level, I mean. Not literally. Not on the surface of the text.

One of the things people often get wrong is the idea that, in a film, only objects can carry symbolic meaning. They will examine props and costumes and immediately realize that those can be metaphors, i.e. represent something abstract beyond their literal meaning.

But here’s the thing: The characters in a movie or TV show are just as made-up as any object or building or piece of clothing!

The characters are, after all, fictional too.

So, characters (living, breathing human beings) can represent abstract ideas – ideas that interact with each other and thus paint an allegorical picture, i.e. give us a meaning beyond the literal one of just two people interacting.

Here’s a short reminder of what is typically called an ‘allegorical character’ in a film context (in literature studies, these types of characters are usually called a ‘personification’):

A personification is a very common element in allegory: It’s a concrete character who is introduced into a story as a representation of an abstract concept.

Sounds complicated but isn’t.

Basically it just means that an abstract idea is given human form.

So, instead of creating a metaphor by taking a substance like water, for example, (i.e. a concrete thing) and having it represent feelings (i.e. an abstract concept), a writer will create a personification by taking a character (a human being!) and letting this human being represent the abstract idea in question.

And even if you think that you’ve never seen this done before, I can guarantee you that you definitely know at least some examples. (You just don’t know…that you know. Heh.)

This beauty here is a painting you might know from the Louvre in Paris:

(Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is the 1798 oil painting ‘Allegory of Eros and Psyche’ by François Gérard, a French neo-classicist painter.

Technically, it depicts a scene from the ancient Roman novel ‘The Golden Ass’ by the Latin poet Apuleius – the famous love story between the beautiful mortal princess Psyche and Eros, the immortal God of Love.

So, you might think that what you’re seeing here is just the depiction of a concrete scene from a novel.

But actually, the depicted scene in this painting is an allegory! The two (concrete) people you see in the picture are both personifications, i.e. they both represent abstract concepts.

Psyche represents the human soul. She is being kissed by Eros for the very first time in her life.

The implication is that she cannot see him because he is invisible to her. (Ha! In a sense, that’s dramatic irony, too, because we, dear reader, can absolutely see him, right? After all, he is right there in the painting.)

So, her big, round eyes in this picture, that whole deer-in-headlights look there…actually signifies surprise. Psyche, the mortal girl, the beautiful princess in the story, is surprised that this is happening to her.

But Psyche is also a personification representing an abstract concept: the human soul.

I.e. allegorically speaking, the human soul is surprised, surprised by that kiss. A kiss she receives from…Love for the very first time in her life. (Because that’s what Eros represents. He, too, is a personification. He represents Love.)

Well, and isn’t this painting exactly what you felt like when you fell in love for the first time, dear reader?

You couldn’t really see it yet. And you were very surprised by whatever was happening to you. There was also something almost innocent to it, right? (See how Eros, i.e. Love, is innocently kissing Psyche, i.e. the human soul, on her forehead of all places? There’s a hint of innocence to this, which makes this painting so great. Because we all know that this is often what it feels like when your soul falls in love for the first time.)

This painting is an allegory. The two subjects in it aren’t just two people; they’re personifications that represent abstract ideas. And together, i.e. through their interaction, they create an allegory, i.e. a symbolic image with a message, a message that is more universal and more abstract than merely the depiction of a concrete scene from a novel.

I think this painting is a good example illustrating how this type of thing is usually done.

Allegorical personifications of this kind can be found all over art history.

But here’s the deal: You can also find them almost anywhere in film history! Films and TV shows are full of them.

Yes, that’s right! Your favourite TV show almost certainly contains a couple of characters that are actually allegorical personifications. Sometimes they represent very broad, abstract concepts such as Love or War or Peace or Justice, etc.

But sometimes they will also represent something like another (!) character’s heart or mind. Or perhaps a relationship between two people. Or a character’s past. Or the bad blood between two characters, the bone of contention two different parties are fighting over, the stumbling block for two sides in an argument. Or perhaps the challenge that the main protagonist of the story has to rise to, an obstacle that he or she has to overcome, etc.

The popular TV show ‘House M.D.’, for example, has lots and lots of allegorical personifications like that running around:

There are so many patients showing up in Dr. House’s clinic who are actually just personifications of a relationship that Dr. House himself is in…in some way, shape or form. (Usually, a patient like that will be a personification of Dr. House’s relationship with his best friend Dr. Wilson or a personification of Dr. House’s relationship with his boss Dr. Cuddy.)

The patient is ill because the relationship isn’t in a good place. If the patient dies in the end, then the relationship in question will be toast. If the patient lives to see another day, so will the relationship…then Dr. House has managed to save the patient, i.e. to save the abstract concept this patient represents: Dr. House’s relationship with either Dr. Wilson or Dr. Cuddy.

But the one thing that’s always, always important to note is the fact that Dr. House himself usually doesn’t know at first why the patient in question is feeling so poorly. He will typically go to great lengths to figure out what exactly ails that patient. But he will struggle to find the right diagnosis for a very, very long time in each episode…Because Dr. House isn’t very good with relationships; he has trouble figuring out why all human interactions are so hard for him and why he keeps messing up all friendships and relationships in his life.

These patients with their diagnoses are often just allegorical personifications like that. And their entire purpose in the script of ‘House M.D.’ is to tell you something about the main protagonist: Dr. House.

El on ‘Stranger Things’ is one such character!

She is a concrete character who actually represents an abstract idea.

Once you introduce a character like that, you can make that abstract idea walk and talk. You can make that abstract concept act. You can have other characters interact with this idea. You can show us that other characters are afraid of this abstract concept or that they embrace it, that they want to eradicate it or confront it, etc.

A metaphor is cool, don’t get me wrong. As a filmmaker, you can take water and have it represent feelings in your story and then make sure it is sometimes frozen in your shots and sometimes liquid. You can show us a flood. Or you can show us a desert. So, you can play around with this metaphor in order to visualize what is going on in your story with those pesky, abstract feelings that are so difficult to depict in a visual way. The metaphor (water) can do the job for you.

But water cannot talk!

It’s not a character.

A metaphor can’t say anything.

If you have a character who represents something as abstract as feelings, you can make that character say all manner of things and suddenly you’re getting far more for your story’s subtext than just a few nice shots with water in the background, right?

You can make the abstract concept speak. You can make it walk. You can make it cry and laugh and run and break down…and all manner of other things.

Eleven, the girl known as El on ‘Stranger Things’, is undoubtedly that:

She is an allegorical character, i.e. a personification of an abstract concept.

It’s not easy to see.

But once you see it, you cannot unsee it, I promise.

Wanna know who she is?

Okay. Buckle up!

I think Eleven is a personification of the feelings that Mike Wheeler has for Will Byers. She is also (at times) a personification of the feelings Will Byers has for Mike Wheeler (depends on who she’s interacting with and in what context, etc.). Since Will and Mike are two boys, these feelings are of the same-sex variety. So, she is essentially a representation of those (homosexual) feelings, that (same-sex) love, and for the broader abstract story behind this parable, she’s a personification of homosexuality/same-sex love in general.

Did that just break your brain?

No worries. I promise it sounds more complicated than it is:

Look at where El is actually being kept: She is kept in a secure facility, under lock and key, not allowed to interact with anyone outside of this facility. She is hidden away. And nobody on the outside knows that she exists.

These feelings (homosexual feelings, mind!) that Mike and Will have for each other are locked up. They are hidden away. They are inaccessible. At the beginning of the story they aren’t even accessible to the two boys themselves. Mike and Will don’t know that El exists…Read: they don’t know that these (same-sex) feelings exist. These feelings, this (same-sex) love is under lock and key, i.e. hidden away from everyone. These feelings are not allowed to break out.

El is a (concrete) personification of these (abstract) feelings.

So, her being locked up, hidden away, imprisoned, under lock and key…means those (same-sex) feelings/that (same-sex) love isn’t visible to anyone; it’s still unexplored and locked away.

At the beginning of the story, in episode one of season one, something happens, though:

El breaks out!

She gets away from the facility she was held captive in.

This is very, very important!

The story we are watching is one in which homosexuality/same-sex love escapes the prison it was kept in. It gets out. And it becomes visible for the first time. We, the audience, can now see it. We can see El, i.e. we the audience start to see homosexuality/same-sex love – even though we don’t yet understand who or what El is (read: we don’t really understand what this love, those feelings are all about yet).

I think a lot of people point to the way in which Mike Wheeler, in season four, describes his first encounter with El and say that it sounds like the ultimate love confession; Mike Wheeler recounts meeting and seeing El for the very first time and being instantly taken with her.

Mike literally tells her, “The truth is, El, I don’t know how to live without you. I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods. You were wearing that yellow Benny’s Burgers t-shirt, and it was so big it almost swallowed you whole. And I knew right then and there in that moment that I loved you. And I’ve loved you every day since.”

Now, on the surface of the text, this is just a desperate, deeply distressed boy trying to save his girlfriend from a horrible fate in a very suspenseful scene by confessing his love for her and recalling the first time they met. At first glance, this seems to be a heterosexual love confession, right?

But now read it with the knowledge in mind that El isn’t so much a person in this text, that in literary terms, she is an allegorical personification:

She represents homosexuality/same-sex love. She is Mike and Will’s feelings for each other.

Suddenly, this whole scene in season four gets a different meaning: Mike feels like his life started when he ‘found’ El, i.e. when he found his love for Will, when he discovered this love.

He stumbled upon El, i.e. this love, by accident. He didn’t mean to discover El (read: didn’t mean to discover his love for Will). It just happened. And El (read: that love) was still just a little thing back then. But by now, in season four, El (read: that love) has grown up. That love Mike feels for Will kept growing and growing and growing…It has grown so, so much over the course of those years. (See, that’s the beauty of a personification when compared to a simple metaphor: An actress can grow up, and if the character she plays is a personification of an abstract concept, then the abstract concept grew up together with her. Cool, right?)

I’m pretty sure a lot of people misinterpret this ‘love confession scene’ with Mike and El (and Will) as a straight love confession coming from a boyfriend and intended for his girlfriend. But in the subtext, this isn’t what’s happening there at all!

People misinterpret this scene, and then (because they actually want Mike to be with Will), they get angry at Mike and try to invalidate this love confession by saying that Mike doesn’t mean all the things he’s saying there to El.

They see El as a romantic rival to Will, i.e. as a character only, not as a symbolic element in the subtext of the show. They think she is Will’s rival, instead of a personification of Mike’s feelings for Will.

But El has a twofold function in the text! She is both an actual character and a subtextual element: a personification.

She might be a rival on the surface of the text, but in the subtext, she is the expression of those feelings that Mike has for Will.

Look how it’s specifically Will who pushes Mike to confess his (alleged) ‘feelings for El’! It’s Will who is instigating this. Because this isn’t actually about Mike expressing his feelings for this girl; in the subtext, this is Mike talking about his feelings for Will. El is a personification!

This whole confession is also visually shown to be a scene between Will and Mike! These two boys are constantly being framed together by the camera. With El (the personification of their feelings, their love for each other) being shown in separate, crosscut shots. She (read: their love) is trapped in the Upside Down, i.e. in the closet, literally shackled to something, trapped, imprisoned, locked up, yet struggling to get out, fighting to be set free.

And what does El (read: their love) need to liberate herself?

What helps El (read: their love) break free? It is Mike’s confession!

El (those same-sex feelings, that love the two boys feel for each other) needs Mike to finally say it, to finally confront how he feels and express that out loud. That’s what El (their love) needs in order to fight her way out of Upside Down, i.e. the closet.

And no wonder it is Will who is pushing Mike to finally say it in that scene. No wonder Mike and Will are being framed together, just the two of them, again and again here, with cuts to a captive, bound El in the Upside Down.

And we get it all in this pivotal scene: Mike recalls how El first appeared in his life. He specifically refers to their first encounter in the woods. Because this is what this story is all about: It’s about how Mike first discovered his feelings for Will. By accident. By the wayside, so to speak. Totally unexpected. It’s not something he planned for.

The first episode of this entire show gives us the disappearance of Will Byers, i.e. a story about a gay boy being trapped in a parallel dimension (a.k.a. the closet). And it also gives us (far more subtly) the story of how El (read: same-sex love) first appeared almost out of nowhere right in front of Mike! How Mike was first confronted with those strange feelings that he didn’t understand yet in season one, but how he was also instantly intrigued and fascinated by El (those feelings for Will). I mean, he says so, right? He instantly felt it!

By the way, note how Mike says here that he isn’t scared of El (anymore?). Yeah, so quite some character growth there! Mike says he’s not afraid of homosexuality/same-sex love anymore.

Don’t invalidate Mike’s love confession for El just because you think you have to do so in order to defend your favourite couple Mike&Will. Invalidating this love confession means fundamentally misunderstanding the subtext of this scene. This love confession is about Will! That’s the whole point of it.

Not convinced yet that El is an allegorical personification?

Okay, how about this:

In episode two of season one, we get Mike and El home alone: Mike doesn’t want his mother to find El (ahaaa!). He is convinced that his mother will be able to help El, but he wants El to pretend like they don’t know each other. He wants her to show up on the Wheelers’ doorstep, ring the doorbell and pretend like she’s never seen Mike before.

I.e. Mike seems to sense that his mother doesn’t have a problem with same-sex love/homosexuality per se, not if it turns up on their doorstep, as it were, with no connection to him. But he doesn’t want his mother to think that this thing has anything to do with him. He sees his mother as tolerant and helpful, but only as long as homosexuality remains an abstract thing that has no connection to him. (All of this is very typical behaviour at that age, by the way. Thinking that your parents are probably okay with homosexuality in the abstract, but that they won’t be anymore once they find out that it’s their own child who’s gay. Very typical, that.)

Then Mike’s mother does, in fact, surprise the two of them by coming home early, and Mike…well, Mike quickly proceeds to hide El!

El is supposed to be a secret. (Duh! She is a personification representing homosexuality/same-sex love.)

So, he hides El from his mother.

And where does he hide her? (Pay close attention now!)

Mike hides El in his closet.

Get it?

El isn’t just a girl in this story. She is also not just Mike’s direct, literal, textual love interest.

El is an allegorical character, a personification. Screenwriters do this sort of thing all the time: They introduce characters who aren’t just individuals in their own right but actually something like walking, talking metaphors – or rather more precisely: personifications. So, El is more than just Mike’s love interest. She is actually only his love interest on the surface of the text.

In the subtext, she represents Mike’s (same-sex) feelings, the love he feels for another boy (Will). And that’s why El has to hide in the closet (of all places) when Mike’s mother comes home unexpectedly.

I’m sure a lot of people have picked up on the fact that Mike’s mother then proceeds to give Mike a rather strange little talk at that point. (That’s the infamous ‘couch scene’ here.)

She tells him that she will always be there for him and that she hopes he will always be able to talk to her, no matter what.

What Mrs. Wheeler literally tells him on that couch is, “I want you to feel like you can talk to me. I never want you to feel like you have to hide anything from me. I’m here for you.”

I’m sure a lot of viewers picked up on the fact that this little talk sounds like it’s subtly coded as a relative-reassuring-a-gay-kid speech.

It’s ‘the talk’™.

It’s not exactly hard to spot, right?

But how many people have also picked up on the fact that Mike’s mum literally says those words while El is hiding in the closet.

This isn’t a coincidence!

El is a personification of same-sex love/homosexuality. Mike is hiding El. He is hiding her in a (literal) closet while his mum tells him she doesn’t want him to feel like he has to hide anything from her.

‘The talk’™ ends because there’s a loud thud coming from upstairs. That thud is El making a sound in the closet as she literally collapses in there. And Mrs. Wheeler does pick up on that. (Subtextually, this means she is picking up on something, uhm, a tad rainbow-coloured from her son, okay? She’s picking up on sounds coming from the closet. Sounds Mike’s homosexuality/same-sex love is making in there.) Mike then proceeds to lie and tell her that there’s nobody there. Read: Mike doesn’t want his mother to find out what’s hidden in his closet – El, the personification of homosexuality/same-sex love.

So, these are the things that are happening simultaneously: El is hiding in the closet. And Mike’s mum is giving him ‘the talk’™ in that ‘couch scene’.

We also find out, by the way, that El is having an episode in that closet while Mrs. Wheeler is talking to Mike: El is experiencing flashbacks. She is flashing back to being thrown into solitary confinement inside that facility that she was previously held captive in.

You understand what that means, right?

El (same-sex love) is being actively hidden by Mike from his mum. El is being hidden by him in the closet. And El is thus flashing back to being locked away completely with no contact to the outside world (and Mike).

Mike’s homosexuality/his same-sex feelings are going through a horrific, traumatic episode because Mike is putting on a show for his mother, pretending that there’s nothing hidden in his closet. Mike is going through hell because he lying about himself.

By the way, note how El is wailing, “Papa! Papaaaa!” in that scene, with flashes of her captor, Dr. Brenner, being shown to us.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dr. Brenner has all his captives call him ‘papa’.

Homosexuality/same-sex love is being abused by a father figure. A father figure that pretends to love the victim and care about her.

You do understand that both Mike and Will have very difficult fathers, right? (And this is putting it mildly.) Will’s father is more overtly homophobic, but Mike’s is subtly coded as a homophobe in multiple interactions with Mike, too.

On this show, authoritarian father figures are the problem. (And yeah, I’m rolling my eyes for the hundredth time here, but okay…you get it. These fathers represent a patriarchal system, so this tired old trope gets wheeled out again and again.)

In season four, we get a bit of nuance, then: Dr. Brenner reappears on the scene, and yes, ‘Papa’ is still a very problematic father figure, but ultimately something else is worth noting: There are various factions in the government that have different views on what to do with El. (There are various factions within politics that have different views on homosexuality/same-sex love. No surprises there.) And these factions are potentially even more dangerous to El than the individual fathers on this show (as personified by Dr. Brenner). At least, ‘Papa’ seems to love her in his own deranged way. Still, he remains an ambiguous figure until the very end.

Still not convinced that El is a personification?

How about this: When exactly does Mrs. Wheeler show up unannounced and interrupt Mike and El, so Mike has to hide her in his closet? When is this whole scene set in the context of the story?

El has just discovered Will in a photograph on Mike’s desk. She instinctively zeroes in on Will in that picture.

That’s because El doesn’t just represent homosexuality in the abstract for Mike!

Mike hasn’t just discovered same-sex feelings in the abstract when he found El, allegorically speaking. He has feelings for Will specifically. And those same-sex feelings (as personified by El) are specifically zeroing in on Will in this scene. Mike’s same-sex feelings aren’t abstract feelings about guys in general. They are all about Will! They are just about Will. I.e. they aren’t about his other (male) friends at all. For Mike, this is all just about Will.

El zeroes in on Will (read: Mike’s same-sex feelings zero in on Will). And that’s the moment Mrs. Wheeler comes home, and Mike has to hide El in a literal closet, for crying out loud. Which in turn is the point where Mrs. Wheeler gives Mike a whole song and dance about how he ‘can talk to her’, no matter what.

Understanding screenplays becomes so much easier once you realize that it’s not just objects that can carry symbolic meaning. In a fictional story, the characters themselves can be treated in just the same way by a writer. After all, a fictional character is just ink on a formerly blank page, too. A fictional character can be just as much part of the symbolic web a writer is weaving in the subtext of their story as any prop or piece of set design.

By the way, did you notice that El had difficulty speaking at first? She did speak English, but she had a lot of trouble expressing herself.

Again: El is a personification. A personification of homosexuality/same-sex love.

The love that dare not speak its name!

(Look how El doesn’t even know her real name at the beginning of this story. She’s just got this number. She doesn’t know that her name is actually Jane Ives.)

And she has trouble expressing herself because all of these feelings that Mike has for Will are still very difficult for him to wrap his head around. They’re not something he can truly put into words yet. (Not at all atypical at that age, right?)

As time goes by, El gets better at speaking. She’s saying more and longer sentences…She is expressing herself better and better. It’s not ideal yet. But it’s getting there.

All of that…is your subtext. Right there.

Look at where exactly El was being kept in the past, too: In a rainbow room, for crying out loud. (The rainbows exist for no textual reason whatsoever, by the way. That’s just for the subtext.) You can see the big rainbow painted on the walls of that common room in the facility she was held in. You get the smaller rainbows in her drawings, too.

She was being experimented on in there. In the most cruel way imaginable.

Again: This is not just a concrete story. It’s a parable.

I.e. the concrete story about El and the evil men in suits, this concrete story represents an abstract story about the persecution faced by gay people (and specifically gay men) in general.

Homosexuality has been kept under lock and key by powerful people for a long, long time. It has been cruelly experimented on – just like El. (Do we need to discuss gruesome medical experiments and electroshock ‘therapy’ on gay men? You get the picture there, right?)

And for no textual reason whatsoever, this whole prison-like existence is being shown to be happening in a rainbow room. Yeah, about that…

El isn’t just El! She’s not just a girl, okay? She is a personification. A walking, talking abstract concept. She is homosexuality/same-sex love.

And look what is so great about this:

She has superpowers!

This love has powers that are immeasurable; they are unfathomably great. The evil people in the suits, the baddies who keep homosexuality locked up, are actually afraid of it (El). They are afraid of what it (El) could do. They are afraid of how powerful this kinda love is. (Hint, hint: This love can actually save the world, is my guess for season five.)

El has superpowers because (same-sex) love has superpowers. It can save the world.

Love can move objects and find people. And most importantly: Love can reach out into the Upside Down and penetrate the wall between different dimensions. Love can locate Will in the Upside Down!

You understand how important this is, right?

This is an absolutely crucial part of the subtext:

El can reach out and into the Upside Down because Mike’s (same-sex) love can reach out to Will in the closet that Will is trapped in.

The closet might be horrible and dark and cold. Will might be wasting away in there.

But there is a direct line to him: El can reach him. El can see and hear him in there. Because El isn’t just a girl; El is a personification of those feelings, that love that Mike feels for Will.

El can reach out into the Upside Down and find Will in there because that’s what love can do: It can reach out to the person lost and alone in that horrible, dark, lonely closet and help them.

El has superpowers like that because love has superpowers like that.

The Upside Down might be a horrible, horrible place, something you are seemingly trapped in forever (because that’s what the closet feels like), but El (love) can reach inside and find you. She (Mike’s love for Will) can help Will. El has superpowers in the text for this specific reason: Because she is more than just a character. She is an allegorical personification.

The writers of this show did, of course, choose a very difficult course with this writing decision: El is a character who fulfils two functions in the text simultaneously. She is both Mike’s (textual, superficial) heterosexual love interest and an allegorical personification of his (same-sex) feelings for Will in the subtext.

El is these two things at the same time. And at any given time, you, i.e. the viewer, have to dissect her with a scalpel in hand: Is she saying this particular line as a character in her own right (i.e. as the girl who is Mike’s love interest)? Or is she saying this line as an allegorical character representing Mike’s (same-sex) feelings for Will?

That’s a very difficult needle to thread for the writers. A true tightrope walk, if you will.

But it pays off beautifully on this show.

One of the most beautiful scenes is that love confession in season four, of course, which we have already discussed above. You think this scene is about El as a character (i.e. as Mike’s heterosexual love interest), but it’s actually not about that at all. This is El in her function as a personification of homosexuality/same-sex love, i.e. Mike’s feelings for Will.

By the way, did you notice what else Mike says in that ‘love confession scene’ in season four?

He says, “You can do anything. You can fly. You can move mountains. I believe that. I really do!”

This is so, so obvious once you know it. What do we usually say ‘moves mountains’?

Love! That’s what.

‘Love can move mountains’ is a common idiom in the English language.

Really sneaky, these writer, aren’t they?

Note also that Mike ends his love confession by shouting, “Fight! Fight!” at El.

This love has to fight. It has to fight, fight, fight.

Fun subtext, right?

Also, you did notice how Mike said, “I can’t lose you,” and, “The truth is, El, I don’t know how to live without you.”

Mike doesn’t know how to live without this love.

He said, “I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods.” I.e. Mike feels his life started when he found those feelings for Will. Aw.

Take another look at El’s superpowers:

You probably remember that whole deal with the quarry in season one. How Will’s ‘body’ (which is actually just a dummy, so don’t worry) is pulled out of the lake at the bottom of that quarry and everyone thinks that Will fell in and died?

Well, here’s the deal: When you see a scene like that, you should understand that we are again encountering an instance of ‘coding’ in the text.

This isn’t ‘gay-coding’, though (as was the case with Barbara and her attire). This is ‘suicide-coding’.

It’s subtle, and the show never comes right out and says it, but the way this is filmed, the way Hopper and his colleague almost step off that cliff and then discuss that fall in one scene, the way we get these shots of the immense depth of that quarry…all of that in conjunction with the fact that Will is clearly gay makes this a very subtle case of ‘suicide-coding’.

Not because anyone literally thinks that Will jumped off that cliff to end his own life (the official explanation that is given when that dummy is presented to the public as Will’s body is that he accidentally fell off the cliff and died), but because jumping off a cliff is unfortunately a common way in which people end their own lives – and this, in turn, is sadly much more common among gay teens and pre-teens than among their straight peers.

What this show then cleverly does is point out a very salient fact to us: Those cases might all look like suicides, but actually…they’re murder!

When somebody decides to end their own life because they were relentlessly bullied for their sexual orientation, well, was that really their own decision? Was that really suicide? Isn’t what is happening there murder instead? Aren’t the people responsible for that ‘suicide’ the tormentors? Shouldn’t they bear the full legal responsibility for what they did?

I think those are the questions the show’s writers are asking in episode six of season one. They do that in a metaphorical way, of course, but it’s still obvious:

It’s Mike (notably not Lucas or Dustin!) who is being forced to jump off the cliff by the bullies.

Mike!

Mike, who (as we had seen before) is hiding El (same-sex love) in his closet and will later on describe meeting her (i.e. discovering his love for Will) as a pivotal moment in his life.

It’s Mike who is being forced to jump in that scene.

This is subtly coded as a suicide – or rather something society so often deems a suicide: Just another gay kid jumping off the cliff to end their life.

In reality, these ‘suicides’ by gay teens and pre-teens are all murder. They are being bullied so badly that they see no other way out…is what the show is subtly telling us here.

This scenario is (subtextually) being presented to us in that exact way: Mike is being literally pressured by a group of bullies to jump. He has no say in the matter. No choice. It’s not truly his decision. The blackmail in that scene is a clear indication that this isn’t actually a suicide attempt, this is attempted murder.

(And please keep in mind that, as we’re watching ‘Stranger Things’, we are watching a parable unfold. This is a concrete story about concrete boys in a concrete little town, but it represents a broader, more general story about young teenagers out here in the real world.)

So, what we’re being told here (subtly, of course) is that Mike is actually at risk of becoming suicidal – at a higher risk than his straight peers, in any case. Yet that his potential suicidality isn’t actually a part of some intrinsic mental health problem. It’s society that is the true cause. If people were to treat boys like him more normally, it wouldn’t ever occur to him ‘to jump’. Mike is at risk because people make him…be at risk. It’s not (attempted) suicide; it’s (attempted) murder.

Now, look what happens there at the last moment: El appears and saves him.

El saves Mike!

Remember who El is in this story?

El is an allegorical personification representing Mike’s (same-sex) feelings, his love for Will.

So, what we’re being subtextually told in that ‘quarry scene’ in episode six of season one is that a) Mike is at risk of becoming suicidal, b) it’s because of his sexuality, but the actual reason isn’t intrinsic; it’s the awful way in which gay people are being treated that could make him consider suicide…and c) there is something that saves him from actually doing it, from committing suicide: And that something is his love for Will!

Mike might be toying with the idea of killing himself at the back of mind, but his love for Will (as personified allegorically by El) is stronger.

So, so much stronger.

El (read: his love for Will) keeps him from falling. El (his love) holds him suspended in mid-air. He cannot truly jump, cannot fall to his death, as long as he’s got those strong feelings for Will. That love is what keeps him alive. It’s what keeps him breathing. It’s what saves him.

Told you this story was much more profound and moving than you’d think at first glance!

Did you notice how often in the story El actually shows up at the last minute and acts as a deus ex machina, by the way? She is there to save the day again and again and again over the course of those four seasons we have seen so far.

What would be a tired old trope on any other show is actually pretty cool here – once you consider that she is a personification of (same-sex) love.

It’s love that saves the day again and again. That specific type of love. This love has superpowers, and it can save the world (is what I’m guessing this means).

In this particular ‘quarry scene’, that’s coded so subtly as a ‘suicide attempt scene’ for Mike, we get a very interesting ending, too:

El flashes back to how she opened the gate to the Upside Down.

That is so important!

It is homosexuality/same-sex love that opened the gate to…well…the closet for Mike.

No El, no gate to the Upside Down. (Read: no homosexuality, no closet. Makes sense, right? Straight people don’t have to hide in the closet, after all. It’s once you discover that your feelings aren’t the societal norm that you also create a gate into this other horrible reality where you then hide.)

She feels responsible in that scene even though she shouldn’t feel that. It’s other people, the baddies in the suits, who should be ashamed of themselves for running all of those cruel experiments on her in the first place. (Get it?) Her opening the gate to the Upside Down is, thus, technically not her fault. It’s the fault of those who ran the experiments and scared a little girl so badly that she did what she did.

Read: It’s not a gay person’s fault that they feel like they have to open the closet and crawl in. It’s the fault of those who made the gay person do that.

Same theme as with the ‘suicide-coded’ scene at the quarry: It’s not the person who jumps who’s responsible. The ones who made the gay person jump by bullying them are to blame.

El says, “I’m the monster!” at the end of this ‘quarry scene’. She says it to Mike.

Historically, homosexuality hasn’t just been ‘othered’, but…well…‘monstered’, so to speak. It’s been seen as something monstrous and horrible, something that is too awful and beastly to even acknowledge.

El saying that line makes all the sense in the world.

But it’s Mike who tells her the most important thing in that scene, “You saved me!”

No, El isn’t a monster. (Read: homosexuality/same-sex love isn’t something monstrous). El saved Mike. (Same-sex love has the potential to save people when they’re being bullied so badly that they are at risk of committing suicide.) Love isn’t monstrous; it can save people.

The subtext of this ending to the ‘quarry scene’ is beautiful, and that exchange between her and Mike is just so powerful.

You just have to understand the subtext here.

Do we get another confirmation anywhere in the text that all of these ‘quarry scenes’ and the whole jumping-off-a-cliff deal is actually a way in which the writers of ‘Stranger Things’ subtly introduced the topic of suicide and its sad and tragic prevalence among gay teens and pre-teens into the story?

Sure, we do.

In episode one of season two, the Wheelers are having dinner. It is in this scene that we find out that Mike has been acting out. Notably, this has been happening ever since El disappeared at the end of season one, seemingly lost forever in the Upside Down (or perhaps even dead?).

I.e. Mike got his best friend Will back at the end of the first season. But he got him back as exactly that: as a best friend.

El, the personification of (same-sex) love, just went and disappeared into the Upside Down. And Mike is desperate. He wants her back! (Spoiler alert: She isn’t really gone. She is just in hiding. So, yeah, those same-sex feelings are still there, okay? They’re just suppressed. They’re in hiding. They never truly left.)

Now, to Mike it must seem as though he got his friend Will back, but only as a friend. Never as something more. It must seem as though all he can ever get from Will is this platonic friendship, now that El (read: same-sex love) is seemingly gone. So, of course, Mike is acting out. He is frustrated. He wants El (same-sex love) back.

Mike’s behaviour is being criticized by his parents in that dinner scene.

“This isn’t strike one. This isn't even strike three,” Mrs. Wheeler says.

“It’s strike 20,” Mike’s father adds. “You're on the bench, son. And if it’d been my coach, you'd be lucky to still be on the team.”

(This is some hilarious double entendre right there, by the way. Yeah, Mike actually plays for the other team. Ahem. We get it, dear writers. Great subtext.)

In the context of this conversation, Mike’s father also brings up the following age-old parental wisdom, “So if your friend jumps off a cliff, you're gonna jump, too?”

It seems like such a typical dad truism, doesn’t it?

I mean, it’s right up there with, “Finish your plate, there are children starving in China,”…“This is not a democracy,”…“Am I made of money?” and, “Who put a gun to your head and made you do it?” (Granted, cultural experiences differ. So some of us got to hear, “Finish your plate, or all your uneaten food will come running after you on Judgement Day,” and stuff of that variety – to name just the most harmless one; many of these lines were much more colourful and, uhm, evocative, and would probably count as ‘psychological harm to children’ among Western pearl-clutching, namby-pamby parenting experts. Aaaand you can tell me all about your personal favourites from your childhood in the comments section below if you want. I’m all ears.)

In any case, “If your friend jumps off a cliff, you’re gonna jump, too?” is just such a classic, right?

(Although…correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the line usually ‘jump off a bridge’, not ‘a cliff’? I don’t know. That’s a question for you, English native speakers.)

But in the context of this show, where we literally saw a boy physically jump of a cliff, this line in the script is, of course, super-intentional and highly charged.

Mike has already jumped once. Also, the powers that be had made up a story about Will jumping/falling off the cliff, too. Ergo: Mike has, in a sense, already copied his best friend and done exactly what said best friend had (allegedly) done before him.

The friend, Mike’s best friend, who actually seemed to have jumped off that cliff (well, only seemed; that wasn’t really Will’s body, after all, just a dummy)...so, the friend who actually appeared to have fallen off that cliff was…Will!

Will is gay. The show is filled with subtle and not-so-subtle hints at his orientation.

So, Will is gay. And the powers that be pretended that Will had ‘jumped off that cliff’, so to speak (in the subtext: the powers that be had pretended that a gay boy had committed suicide). While actually Will had never been anywhere near that cliff. He had instead been wasting away in the Upside Down. (Read: Actually, that gay boy was never suicidal to begin with. He was just closeted and in danger of dying inside that closet because the powers that be had restricted everyone’s access to that closet.)

The powers that be had covered everything up: “Just another teenager who jumped. Nothing to see here. The closet (the Upside Down) needs to remain a secret that nobody can know anything about. Or else somebody could actually try to do something about it. Perhaps even ‘unlock’ the prison facility and free homosexuality for good. Nah. Better safe than sorry. Teenagers just jump off cliffs all the time. Sad truth. End of story.”

So, subtextually, Mike’s father is alluding to a friend (Will) who has already jumped (read: tried to commit suicide for being gay)...Will Mike now try to follow suit and jump off that cliff, too (read: try to commit suicide for being gay, too)?

Subtextually, this is what Mike’s father is saying there.

And, of course, Mike’s dad doesn’t know that Mike himself has, in fact, already ‘jumped off that cliff’ once in season one. And he doesn’t know that Mike was saved by El (his love for Will).

Which obviously makes the subtext of this remark (in the context of a scene where Mike is moping at the dinner table because El has, seemingly, disappeared) much more obvious.

This show is already very long (four seasons long, as I’m typing this), and El is, of course, its central character.

But reflect on what that means for a moment: The central character of this story is a personification of homosexuality/same-sex love!

So, this is what this story is all about.

The girl with the superpowers is…a kind of love that has superpowers. A love that was held captive and locked away, yet that is incredibly strong, can save people from falling into despair and (subtextually) committing suicide. A love that is growing and growing and growing. A love that isn’t a monster! A love that saves people.

We can say many things about this kind of love just by looking at El throughout the seasons:

How she is the only one (at first) who knows about the Upside Down. How she is the one to point out to Mike, Lucas and Dustin that Will is trapped in there. In the Upside Down.

This happens at a point where nobody yet knows what the Upside Down even is and that it exists.

How she is instinctively scared of the Upside Down and doesn’t want the boys to find it, going so far as to confuse them, trying to make sure they never reach that gate into this alternate dimension.

A lot of this makes far more sense once you watch it with the knowledge in mind that El is a personification of homosexuality/same-sex love and that the Upside Down is a metaphor for the closet.

In season four, we get an especially powerful moment in Mike’s love confession (as discussed above, subtextually, this isn’t just a straight love confession between boyfriend and girlfriend): Mike specifically tells El that he isn’t afraid of her and her powers. (So…Mike isn’t afraid of this all-consuming, insanely powerful love he feels for another boy anymore, right? That’s the subtext here.)

Well, that’s at least what he says at this point, so it’s certainly deeply meaningful, seeing how pivotal that scene is and how it helps El find the strength to free herself at that point.

Season four gives us another very important scene, too, by the way: The infamous ‘car scene’ in which Will shows Mike his painting.

I’m pretty sure that people misinterpret this scene quite often, too. Lots of viewers seem to think that El is Will’s romantic rival. That she is coming between Mike and Will. That she is getting in the way of the two boys becoming a canonical couple.

But I would argue that ‘romantic rival’ isn’t her function in the text. She is a personification – a personification of the two boys’ feelings for each other.

Watch the ‘car scene’, please. And don’t just pay attention to the details. (Yes, I know it’s nice that Mike is consistently framed with the word ‘boy’ beside his head. Mike has a boy on his mind…is what this is visually telling us. A very specific boy. The one who’s sitting right next to him. The shadow of the letters ‘boy’ actually move around Mike in that car, too, if you watch the entire scene on Netflix.) So, yeah, details are lovely. And they’re certainly there to support the main message.

But you have to look at that main message, the basic premise of the scene, first:

What does Will tell Mike in this scene?

He tells Mike that El made him paint that painting. That it was ‘practically her idea’.

On the surface of the text, that’s a lie. (El doesn’t even know who Will painted this painting for. We find that out right at the start of the season.) But in the subtext, this is exactly correct: In a sense, El did make Will paint this painting.

El is a personification of same-sex love.

So, what Will is subtextually saying here is that it was same-sex love that made him do it!

In other words, his feelings for Mike made him paint that painting with Mike as the heart. (Remember how I said El can be a personification of Mike’s feelings for Will or a personification of Will’s feelings for Mike, depending on the context? Well, here’s a scene in which she is clearly a personification of Will’s feelings for Mike.)

Will says El told him what to draw.

His feelings for Mike told Will what to draw…is what that means. (Do I hear a long ‘awwww’ from you here, dear reader?)

And now pay attention to how Will says that without a heart they would all fall apart – even El, especially El.

Yeah, El (homosexuality/same-sex love) is all about that heart. And that heart is Mike.

Without Mike, Will says here, his homosexuality wouldn’t really be as meaningful to him. It would all ‘fall apart’. Mike is the one that Will needs, so he can hold it together.

And this is also why Will calls El ‘different from other people’, of course. That’s why Will projects his entire feelings on El. That’s why he talks about her as though she were him (Will).

El is a personification. She represents something.

So, no.

No, El isn’t a simple romantic rival. El is something else in this text. On the surface of the text, this ‘car scene’ is about romantic rivalry, yes. But in the subtext, there is just so much more going on here.

The whole basic premise of the Upside Down being a type of closet is actually broadened and becomes more and more elaborate as the seasons march on:

In season two, we find out that Will might have been freed from the Upside Down, but that the Upside Down curiously didn’t entirely leave him alone.

You can take a boy out of the closet, but you can’t always take the closet out of the boy.

Will is suffering horrific flashbacks that turn out not to be flashbacks at all. His episodes are an indication of him essentially being possessed (a creature from the Upside Down called the ‘Mind Flayer’ will get inside of him in season two).

All of that makes a ton of sense once you remember that the closet isn’t just something you leave behind once and for all. That’s what straight people often tend to think: You come out as gay and then…tada! That’s it. You’re ‘out’ now. You’re not in the closet anymore.

This is, of course, ridiculous.

There is no state of being completely ‘out’. Ever. You are always in the closet with regards to somebody, even if that’s just a stranger you’re meeting for the first time. There is always a closet around you. It never goes away. No matter how often you come out to someone, the question always remains: This new colleague, too? Should I say something to them or not? How about that one coworker I barely ever talk to? How about this acquaintance or the person I’m making small talk with at this party? Do I have to come out to them, too? Or does it not matter this time around? What do I say? Has this person just stared at the ring on my finger? Do they think I have a wife now? Do I have to correct that assumption right away or nah? Is it perhaps not worth it this time? Should I say something? Or should I wait if this person says something along the lines of, “Well, you should come around sometime, you and your wife,” and only then correct them?

The shadow of the closet always surrounds you. Always. You cannot get rid of it completely unless you want to only interact with people who know you and never meet a single new person again in your life. (Which would be ridiculous.)

And all of that is…today. Arguably at a point in history where things have got much, much better in that regard. (Sadly, I think we might have reached peak-better at this point, and it’s only going to get worse again from here on out. But ignore me and my pessimistic ways, if you want.)

In any case, things were so much worse in the 1980s, what with the AIDS crisis and everything.

Imagine being in the closet, then being dragged out of that closet by your family and closest friends (as personified by Joyce and Hopper) and then being thrown into that world: America (!) in the 1980s.

There’s a reason why Will’s possession by the Mind Flayer is compared to a virus by Dr. Owens in season two, I think. Why all of these doctors are portrayed as so helpless and clueless about how to treat him. And why they even suggest continuing with the scheduled burn at his peril, implying that they’d rather stop this ‘virus’ from spreading than spare his life. Stop the shadow monster even at the boy’s detriment. Stop it – even if it kills Will.

The theme of a virus is, of course, brought up very deliberately here. This ‘virus’, we are told, has infected Will and is connecting him to the Upside Down, to the monster, to everything…That’s the nature of the possession, and you can clearly see that in the context of the 1980s, this is more than just a little deliberate.

The closet staying with you forever even after you’ve come out is a sad fact of life even today. But it was, of course, so much worse back then – especially in the US (and to a lesser degree in Europe). So this is actually a reality of the 1980s being described in metaphorical terms here, I think.

And again: None of this means that Will literally has HIV, okay? This is a parable. We are being told a concrete story about a concrete boy which metaphorically represents a more abstract story in general, a broader story about many, many gay men in real life.

So, what we’re being shown from season two onwards is that you can be dragged out of the Upside Down, i.e. out of the closet (by your mum, for example), but this closet is still wreaking havoc inside of you like a virus, potentially condemning you to a horrible fate in which you lose everything when it eventually eats you alive, devours your whole personality and basically just erases you…

You can be dragged out of the closet, but you can bet a part of the closet will stay with you, scare you and reach its tentacles deep, deep inside of you for a long time afterwards.

So, what Will is going through in this parable is actually only logical from a metaphorical point of view.

The show just casts this in the form of a typical horror story: ‘now-memories’ of something horrific happening, then quasi-demonic possession by a Mind Flayer.

It’s a brilliant idea to describe this state you’re in when the closet never leaves, never goes away completely, even though you’ve technically come out. (Remember once again that this is a parable: This doesn’t mean that Will as a character is ‘out’ at the beginning of season two. He has a long way to go. This is just about that more general story that is represented by this parable, okay?)

So, Will has internalized the closet, literally swallowed the darkness and it is eating him alive. It is taking over all of his thoughts, ordering him about, in the end: destroying all sense of self and his entire personality and identity as an individual.

In episode two of season two, Will tells Mike about his ordeal. He tells him about it in confidence in a very intimate and quiet moment towards the end of the episode:

“It’s like…like I’m stuck,” Will says about a second after we’ve seen that ‘Reagan & Bush '84’ yard sign. (Subtle this is not.)

So, Will feels like he’s stuck in that closet. Or is there something more?

“Like stuck in the Upside Down?” Mike asks.

But Will clarifies that it’s more like in a View-Master. (God, remember those? That was a long time ago.) It’s like when you’re caught between two slides, he says.

“The other slide is the Upside Down,” Will says, hinting at the fact that this is something more than just the closet. It must be. After all, Will can see both worlds at the same time. Aaaand we have just seen that ‘Reagan’ yard sign that was not subtle at all.

Remember that we are dealing with a parable here: So, in general terms, this tells us that gay people in the 1980s can see something coming. Something bad (cf. Will’s now-memories!). They are caught between two worlds, in a sense. Which is why they can see the danger that their straight friends and relatives have no idea about so far.

There’s an alive shadow in the sky. And that thing is coming. It’s coming! And gay people are the canaries in the coal mine who can already see it coming. (In this parable, of course.)

Then Will begs Mike, “Just please don’t tell the others, okay? They won’t understand.”

To which Mike replies, “Eleven would!”

Ahaaa!

…is what you should shout right now.

And I hope you did, dear reader.

Eleven!

Eleven is a personification. She is those feelings that Mike has for Will. Will begs his best friend not to tell their other friends, but Eleven, we are told, would understand.

Yeah, because Mike is actually facing a similar dilemma to Will: He has feelings for his best friend Will (as personified by Eleven). Those feelings were clearly there last year. But they’re not allowed to be around anymore. He is supposed to just be Will’s best (platonic!) friend now. He isn’t supposed to have any of these mysterious and downright ‘supernatural’ feelings for Will. All of that has to stay hidden away (just like El, who is in hiding at this point in the story).

Oh, but we can practically see in this scene here how much Mike wants El back!

So, Will says, “Just please don’t tell the others, okay? They won’t understand.”

And Mike replies, “Eleven would.”

“She would?” Will asks. (Iiiiinteresting subtext.)

Mike nods. “Yeah, she always did.” (And the soundtrack gives us a mysterious, romantic-sounding singing voice or rather humming voice at this point.)

Translation: Yeah, Mike has always loved Will. He’s always had those feelings. And he’s always understood…

“Sometimes I feel like I still see her,” Mike adds. (I don’t need to say anything about this, right? Mike’s feelings for Will aren’t platonic. And these romantic feelings keep flaring up at times. Mike feels like he can still ‘see’ them.) “Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Me, too,” Will says quietly.

This. Is. Not. Literally. A. Conversation. About. El. As. A. Girl.

This is a conversation about El as a personification of same-sex love.

Mike replies. “Hey, if we’re both going crazy, then we’ll go crazy together, right?”

This is so obvious at this point, I don’t even know what to say. This is about love.

“Yeah, crazy together,” Will agrees.

Anyway…How forbidden are these feelings that these two boys have for each other? Well, the ‘bad men’ could easily still come after Eleven and lock her up again, right? So, she has to remain hidden away somewhere. (The subtext isn’t really all that complicated.)

Mike keeps feeling her presence, listening for her on his radio set, even sensing her when she trips Max and makes Max fall off her skateboard at their school gym. Mike just feels that there’s something going on. But Eleven isn’t visible to anyone. She is seemingly ‘gone’.

Read: To the outside world, it appears as though there were no homosexual component to Mike’s friendship with Will. To any outside observer, they’re just best friends. Platonic friends! But deep down Mike regrets that. He mourns the ‘disappearance’ of those feelings…and he senses that actually they aren’t really gone. They have never disappeared in the first place. They are just lying dormant somewhere, hibernating.

Sometimes Mike feels like that certain something between him and Will is still there. He wants it back. He desires it so much. It’s not fully gone. It’s never fully gone.

But Will is struggling with his own problems right now. Will isn’t alright at all. Will is stuck in a very dark place. And seeing into that dark place means seeing more than just the closet; it means seeing something that is coming…

Will’s possession story line in season two, where Will is possessed by the Mind Flayer, tells us all about that.

The fact that it’s, in a sense, Mike who saves Will from that possession or rather makes it possible for Will to break free of it…is beautiful once again and deeply meaningful: Mike touches Will’s hand in episode five of season two in a moment when Will is in distress; he puts his hand over Will’s in a reassuring way that can also be read as subtly romantic.

Later on, it is Will’s hand, the very same hand that Mike had touched, that manages to escape the possession and surreptitiously communicate Will’s thoughts and intentions to the outside world when the rest of his body has come under the full control of the Mind Flayer: Will can communicate with the people he loves with this one hand only (!)...while the monster has seemingly taken over his entire body and mind. It’s the hand that was touched with love and tenderness by his best friend (and subtextual love interest) Mike Wheeler, which tells us that there’s one part of Will’s soul that has managed to escape the Mind Flayer’s control – it’s the part of Will’s soul that was touched by Mike.

There is more going on with the Upside Down, though.

In season two, we find out that it serves as more than just a metaphorical closet for the gays in the story: We find out that it is actually spreading. Its toxic poisonous vines are stretching out deeper and deeper into the fields around the town of Hawkins, destroying every living thing, poisoning all the crops and plants around…

You would have to be utterly blind not to see the metaphor in that: This is a show that wasn’t just set in the 1980s on a whim. It is a show about the 1980s and the societal climate in the US created by the so-called ‘Reagan Revolution’, the conservative backlash that followed the liberalization of the 1960s and 1970s.

I mean, it’s not like the show doesn’t show us enough yard signs in front of people’s houses to make sure we really get it: This show isn’t just set in this era; it is about that era.

It is about it down to its core metaphor: the Upside Down. Because clearly what this is…is a metaphor for the political and societal climate created by this conservative revolution.

Now, I have to be honest here: I have cut out several looong pages of text here because I had gone off on a rather political tangent on a quiet and stormy night in Paris over a glass of wine too hastily enjoyed. No, but seriously! It’s actually very important to me to keep this blog as free of my political views as humanly possible.

So, I have taken out a rather large chunk of the text: a reminder not to confuse the US with Europe, not to think the 1980s were exactly the same anywhere in the world, and that – with the noted exception of the UK under Thatcher – the situation was actually very different in the various (continental) European countries, i.e. different from the US and different from country to country. I also removed several long paragraphs with a specific reminder that even the AIDS crisis was not the same in Europe as in the US (the spread was slower, the pace was different, the target demographic was much more diverse, i.e. far more straight people were hit by the infection wave than in the US; hell, in some regions of Europe the main demographic experiencing an explosive growth in infections was…women!).

In other words, know your history. America is not the world. With the noted exception of the UK, where the situation was in fact at least somewhat comparable to the US, gay men in other parts of the world have different, sometimes overlapping, sometimes more nuanced, always more complex memories when it comes to the 1980s. We don’t all live in America.

All of this also reflects a reality that is potentially very difficult to understand if you live in the US: Evangelical Christians (think: megachurches, ‘born-again’ Christians, dispensationalism, the Scofield Reference Bible, that sort of thing) are a very marginal group over here in Europe (they exist in small numbers, but the numbers aren’t the point: They don’t hold any institutional power the way they do in the US). A lot of the storm that was created in the US at that time under Reagan came out of this particular religious movement, a movement that people in other parts of the world just look at with some, uh…bemusement is perhaps the right word here.

Short PSA here at this point:

Now, it is obviously not my place to tell you what to think about politics. In fact, I’d like to emphatically remind everyone around here once again (!) that this is not a political blog, that I’m trying to stay the hell away from politics on here and that I’m not particularly interested in what political ideas you, dear reader, espouse or reject.

It’s none of my business. And likewise my views are none of yours.

I would like to point out once again that you can be in favour of whoever or whatever you like if you’re a reader of this blog, just leave me out of it.

And please don’t assume that I agree with you. Most likely scenario: I don’t. In fact, I can almost guarantee you that my politics are probably not what you think they are. (They’re also probably not the opposite of what you think they are. But that’s a separate matter.) Which is why I don’t talk about them. Full stop. (All of this is incidentally something you learn working at a higher-education institution: Political neutrality is an important component of academic freedom. And objectivity is most important when you disagree with someone, which is about the most important thing you have to learn there.)

So, please, I’m begging you once again: As you read this post, keep in mind that I’m not writing about my politics when I’m discussing the Upside Down, for example. I’m saying that this is what I think the writers of the show ‘Stranger Things’ are saying. (At least it’s what I THINK they are saying. I could always be wrong!) It doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with their ideas. And it doesn’t necessarily mean I disagree with them either. (I mean, I find most of the subtext of season three pretty, uhm, braindead, just to point out one such disagreement. But to each their own, I suppose. If you like that subtextual story there, be my guest. It’s none of my business. It’s easy enough to figure out, too, so I don’t think I need to bother with it all that much.)

All of this is to say: I’m not talking about tvmicroscope’s politics here. Please don’t assume that. And keep the political rants in the comments to a minimum if possible, I’m begging you. This is a film blog, after all. (Don’t make me tap the sign.)

All of that being said…

That the creators of this show chose their central metaphor (the Upside Down) to revolve around the horror and dread they, the creators, probably felt and still feel examining the views enshrined in the ‘Reagan Revolution’ is, I think, obvious: There’s this dark, dark thing so close to this seemingly charming and harmless small town of Hawkins, and it is spreading its toxic vines everywhere, poisoning everything and everyone. (It’s obvious what they’re saying there, right?)

This alternate dimension is threatening to take over. And what we thought was just a closet for gay people in season one is actually better defined as a type of ‘closet for everyone’, or better still: ‘a dark place for everyone’.

It’s a dark and cold place that everyone will eventually end up in, the show’s creators seem to be telling us. Because from season two onwards, it becomes more and more clear that this doesn’t stop with the gays in Hawkins; the gays are just the canaries in the coal mine. This dark place is reserved for society in its entirety if it first ignores the threat and then gives in to these ideas...or so the creators seem to be telling us.

This Reaganite worldview and the societal climate it creates is poisonous and dark and cold for everyone, the writers of this show seem to be saying. The gays (as personified by Will) were just the first ones to be hit by that wave. The darkness is coming for everybody. It’s coming closer and closer, threatening to devour everything in the world. (Well, that’s at least what they seem to be implying, I think.)

The ‘Reagan Revolution’ was, of course, the conservative backlash of the 1980s (in the US, and at least somewhat comparable in the UK) that was marked by fiscal conservatives suddenly allying with evangelical Christians. Which obviously had strong implications for the lives of gay people, and specifically gay men, at an already difficult time. But not just that: These Reaganite ideas came coupled with a quasi-Messianic and eschatological foreign policy. (First the movement’s apocalyptic ideas were trained on the Soviet Union, a.k.a. the ‘Empire of Evil’, then they shifted to the Middle East, expecting Armageddon to happen there and even trying to bring it about.) It should also be said that the movement embraced the market-radical ideas of Reaganomics, i.e. often promoted a type of extreme free-market capitalism without any guardrails, putting a specific emphasis on economic deregulation and laissez-faire policies. (I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say the creators of this show aren’t fans of any of the items on the Reaganite agenda.)

I think all of this is at the heart of the metaphor of the Upside Down. This is what the writers probably mean by this dark thing that is coming to devour everyone.

The end of season two sees Dustin compare the Mind Flayer and the Demodogs to the Nazis in World War II, for example. He sees these monsters from the Upside Down as racial supremacists convinced of their superiority as a master race and the inferiority of all other living things, trying to take over the world. This description might seem absurd and hyperbolic, but I’m guessing that this is a point the writers are trying to make there.

So, the Upside Down is more than just a metaphorical closet for the gays, yeah? The show seems to be saying, “It started with the gays, but they were just the first victims. In the 1980s, this movement was coming for everyone in the US. The gays just happened to be its first targets, which is why they could see this more clearly than the rest of society still blissfully unaware of what was to come.” (Consequently, it is speculated in episode three of season two whether Will obtained ‘True Sight’ while he was in the Upside Down.)

I can’t go into everything that happens on this show because it’s just too long, but season three in particular ratchets up this whole angle: Here we now get the Mind Flayer controlling people through a type of hive mind. (Hint, hint: This is what the show’s creators are probably saying about this particular flavour of 1980s American conservatism: It’s a hive mind where nobody thinks for themselves and everyone just follows one ideology…seems to be their message here.) The Mind Flayer strips people of their ability to think for themselves, their agency, their whole identity and turns them into empty and controlled meat puppets, essentially. (This is what happens to Billy Hargrove, for example. But we will come back to Billy later on, I promise.) These meat puppets, in season three, are completely controlled by the Mind Flayer, i.e. the dark entity from the Upside Down; they are just a fleshy entity without any thoughts or agency of their own and will be turned into a gigantic biomass fighting that evil fight for the monstrous powers of darkness…

You don’t need any special subtext-reading skills to understand what you are being told here about the Reaganite flavour of American conservatism, about its followers and fans, and about the evangelical Christian Right taking over both domestic and foreign policy in the US in the 1980s: Mindless meat puppets, completely controlled by a dark entity from an alternate dimension just about covers it. This seems to be the general message here.

And if you’re wondering now why that same season suddenly gives us scenes of Soviets trying to open a gate to the Upside Down too, then I would encourage you to look up what happened in the Soviet Union at that time: Season three is set in 1985. This is the precise year in which the Soviet Union tried its first steps towards economic liberalization. It tried to ‘drill a portal’ to free-market capitalism during its so-called ‘perestroika’ years, failing to make it work again and again. Ultimately, these attempts culminated in the chaos of the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, in a complete and utterly catastrophic shift towards extreme market-radical capitalism without any guardrails. These market-radical reforms, which were literally called ‘shock therapy’ by American economic advisors (often with a former Reagan administration background), were unleashed on a completely naïve population. Poverty exploded, hyperinflation devoured all savings and, all in all, google tells me, life expectancy collapsed to a catastrophic 57 years in men. (But you can look that up just as well as I just did.)

I’m guessing that this is what the creators of this show had in mind when they wrote that part of season three:

A dark place that the Soviets started to drill into in 1985. A dark, cold place that tried to take over the world with its ideas…that seems to be what the writers of this show were trying to say there.

As I said, some of the subtext of season three, I found pretty tiresome and downright stupid, to be quite honest. But at least this one part was interesting, historically speaking.

(Oh, well…but at least season three told us that Cary Elwes has aged quite considerably since the 1980s. But then…who hasn’t? Big sigh.

We were all in love with him back in the day, right? Right?...Oh, you’re straight and don’t know what I’m talking about. My bad. Here, have another example. Do you recognize him now?)

But enough said on this topic.

So, the Upside Down is clearly something more than just a closet for gay people in this story…is what I would like you to take away from these long ramblings of mine. Yes, it was introduced to us thusly in season one, but once season two comes rolling around, we can practically feel this ‘dark place’ spreading outwards, engulfing everyone else in the process, as well.

Now, we need to talk about mirror characters for a bit. Because those are among the most widely used tools in a screenwriter’s toolbox. Many TV shows use a large number of them and ‘Stranger Things’ is no exception there.

We have to keep in mind that this is a very long show already, though (we are at four seasons now, with the fifth scheduled to come out sometime in 2025); so I won’t be able to go through each and every single mirror character there is in this screenplay.

But let’s get to some of the most obvious (and most important) ones.

Oh, you don’t know what a mirror character is? Okay, so if you’re new around here, you might need an explanation on what a mirror character is and does. So, let me elaborate on this for a moment… (This is much more interesting than politics anyway, I promise.)

Well, long story short: A mirror character is a character (often a minor side character, but sometimes it can be a pretty major ‘big-deal’ kinda character, too) who shares superficial characteristics with the story’s main protagonist.

These superficial characteristics can be a similar name, similarities in appearance and/or attire, the same hobbies and interests, etc.

A writer can be a bit more subtle, too: If they don’t want to be too obvious, they can simply give the mirror character a few similar or identical lines in the script and have them say something the main protagonist has said at some point, as well. The writer can also give the mirror character a parallel story line (i.e. give them the same problem to solve or confront them with the same challenge as the main protagonist). Another way of showing that a character ‘mirrors’ a main protagonist would be to make sure the mirror character occupies the same spot in the narrative and/or in a character constellation as the main protagonist. (If the main protagonist is a mother, the mirror character can be a mother, as well. If the main protagonist is a teacher, the mirror character can be a teacher, too, to make sure the audience sees the parallel, etc.)

In short, mirror characters share superficial characteristics with the main protagonist of the story.

Now, why is it that writers do this? What do they even need a mirror character for?

Well, turns out writers don’t always like to spell out every last thought, dream, desire, plan and/or fear that their main protagonist might feel or think or sense or whatever.

A main protagonist might have a backstory the writer doesn’t want to tell us about explicitly (this was the case with Simon on the show ‘Young Royals’). A writer might want to hint at potential future developments for their main protagonist without explicitly disclosing future plot lines. Sometimes the main protagonist might also have a hidden identity and/or sexual orientation that the writer wants to hint at without being too explicit about the whole thing.

Now, instead of telling us, the audience, outright what the writer is just hinting at between the lines about their main protagonist, the writer will employ the mirror character: The mirror character will get that backstory or that future plot line or will simply spell out each and every single thought and desire that is (so far) hidden inside the main protagonist’s skull.

This is how writers tell us things about their main protagonists without explicitly spelling them out: They tell us about them subtextually, i.e. through the mirror characters they introduce in their text.

Now, let us talk about our first mirror characters, so you get a hang of this mirroring game:

One of the things we learn pretty early about Nancy Wheeler is that she ends up in a bit of a love triangle on this show.

On the one hand, there’s Steve Harrington, her boyfriend at the beginning of season one. On the other hand, there’s Jonathan Byers, the boy she is fascinated by pretty early on and obviously feels drawn to quite quickly. There’s a lot of back and forth, but she does break up with Steve and end up in Jonathan’s arms mid-season two.

Love triangles in and of themselves are, of course, always interesting, but this one is particularly interesting because we are told (obliquely) over and over and over again that Steve would be the safe choice, the accepted one, the one everyone expects Nancy to make. She is prom queen material. He is the beau all the girls are swooning over. It seems to make sense…and yet…and yet…

There’s Jonathan!

She notices him pretty early on.

And nobody is encouraging that relationship; I mean, everyone is more or less openly telling her that this is the town weirdo here. The unspoken implication that Jonathan is from a poor family and a bad neighbourhood is palpable. He is poor and has parents who are divorced. She is from a wealthy family with a stay-at-home mum and one single income that’s apparently high enough to not just finance a very nice house ‘at the end of the cul-de-sac’ but also three children. (Unthinkable these days, one should add.)

In short: Steve is the safe choice. Jonathan is the one nobody wants her to make.

Well, here’s the deal when it comes to mirror characters: A particularly cool writing trick, when introducing mirror characters, is the introduction of a mirror couple or perhaps even a mirror love triangle!

So if, as a writer, you’ve got a (main protagonist) couple that you’re only hinting at and whose feelings for each other only exist in the subtext, you might want to introduce a mirror couple consisting of two mirror characters who get to act out all the things you’re not explicitly showing us about that (main protagonist) couple you’ve got going on there in the subtext.

We have seen above how integral the relationship between Will and Mike is for understanding this show’s message, how important it is to understand that one if you want to get the parable being told there.

And yet Will and Mike’s relationship and romantic feelings for each other are told almost entirely through subtextual means (in season four, we finally get textual confirmation on the show that Will is indeed in love with Mike, but the writers are still keeping a tight lid on Mike’s feelings for Will at this point).

If, as a writer, you’ve got a couple like that in your script, a couple where you don’t want to disclose their feelings for each other too overtly, then it makes sense to introduce a mirror couple consisting of two mirror characters.

What’s more: If you’ve got a love triangle going on between three main protagonists, you might wanna introduce a mirror love triangle consisting of three mirror characters.

In season four, it becomes absolutely clear that we do indeed have a love triangle in ‘Stranger Things’: We have Mike as the central character, i.e. the ‘main corner’ of this triangle. And both El (his on-and-off girlfriend) and Will (his best friend, who is also gay and, so far, in the closet) are showing a romantic interest in him.

It becomes crystal clear in season four, but the El-Mike-Will love triangle has existed pretty much since season one, of course.

Now, look at Nancy, Steve and Jonathan again!

For one, they, too, are a love triangle, which is a fact that we shouldn’t dismiss just in and of itself.

But then, look at the individual characters:

Nancy is the ‘main corner’ of the triangle. (Just like Mike!) She has two people vying for her attention. (Just like Mike!)

That in and of itself should mark her out as a clear mirror character for her brother Mike. (Superficial parallel and all that. She is clearly being positioned in the same spot in a character constellation as Mike by the writers.)

But the similarities don’t end there: Like Mike, Nancy is a Wheeler!

And even her predicament is framed in the same terms: There’s the acceptable choice (Steve), and there’s the unconventional one that everyone frowns upon, i.e. the forbidden choice (Jonathan).

Mike has a similar choice to make; although in his case the consequences are far more serious: The acceptable choice is…a girl. El. (Because heterosexuality is widely regarded as a societal norm in virtually every society around the globe.) The deeply, deeply unacceptable and far more dangerous and risky choice is…Will. A boy.

(Here we get another typical feature of the mirror-writing trick: The mirror character will often get the toned-down, muted version of the main character’s more serious plot line. Where Nancy’s choice is just one between a more popular boy and a less popular ‘weirdo’, Mike’s choice is between an alternative that’s regarded as normal and one that is downright dangerous and risky at that time. The mirror character, i.e. Nancy, gets the less serious, more muted version of a more serious plot line faced by the main protagonist she is mirroring, i.e. Mike. Very typical, that.)

The similarities don’t end there, by the way:

Nancy isn’t just a Wheeler; the person she is interested in – despite his being the unpopular and less acceptable choice – is…drum roll…a Byers (Jonathan).

The same is true for Mike, of course: The less acceptable and unconventional choice (Will) is a Byers, too.

You can practically see the writers come up with this idea on the drawing board, can’t you?

Now, it would have been very easy to come up with a romantic rival who is an antagonist and just a full-on baddie, but the show introduces a lot of nuance here actually:

Steve Harrington has the most fascinating redemption arc on this entire show, and if you watch season one closely, you will quickly realize that he might never have been a total villain to begin with. Emotions got the better of him a few times, and he did a couple of stupid things (graffitiing Nancy’s name and a slur above the front door of a cinema was one of them, for example). But ultimately, Steve isn’t a bad guy. He’s just very emotional and, well, a guy in his late teens, right?

If we keep in mind that Nancy mirrors Mike and Jonathan mirrors Will and then follow our mirror love triangle to the third corner of the triangle, then we arrive at the conclusion that Steve must be mirroring El (at least in the context of this love triangle, if not always in the text).

Like in Steve’s case, there must therefore be things in El’s past that she isn’t exactly proud of. Just…you know…more serious things (because main protagonists usually get the more serious plot line, and mirror characters get the more lighthearted, sometimes more comedic, often more toned-down version of events).

And indeed, we find out later on that El has actually hurt people with her powers. Like Steve, she is not a true villain, though. What happened happened because her emotions (of despair when she was imprisoned and tortured) got the better of her. She is, after all, just a helpless child, so that shouldn’t surprise us.

You can see how Steve is a mirror for her there, right? (He doesn’t always mirror her, by the way. Just so you know.)

So, we’ve got ourselves a nice little mirror love triangle in Nancy, Jonathan and Steve, right? One that should tell us a ton of things about the characters being mirrored: Mike, Will and El.

Because that’s literally the function of mirror characters: They tell us things about the main protagonists they are mirroring.

Before we forget it: Jonathan is, of course, a mirror character for his brother Will. For one, he is literally a Byers, as well. He is interested in someone from the Wheelers clan (Nancy; in Will’s case it’s canonically Mike). Will, we are told, is artistic; he likes drawing and painting. Jonathan is artistic, too: He is into photography. Both of those belong to the visual arts and thus show us a clear parallel between the two boys. In short, Jonathan is obviously mirroring his brother Will for the purposes of this script.

Now, what does this tell us?

Nancy does not stay with Steve. She breaks up with him in season two and ends up with Jonathan.

This is a major hint that this is what the writers see for their same-sex couple Mike and Will, too. It might very well foreshadow a future plot line (because that is literally the whole purpose of mirror characters). It is possible that Mike will leave El, his safe choice, behind and end up with Will, the unconventional and socially far less acceptable choice.

But this could also be something else: Just a hint at what the writers are implying could happen to Mike and El after the end of the show. It could be the writers’ head canon for them: i.e. them breaking up and Mike getting together with Will off-screen once the show is over.

There is no way to tell whether we will get any of this canonically or whether it will stay in the subtext of this show. Sorry.

We can also see how strong that attraction is between Nancy and Jonathan right away. Nancy is supposed to stay with Steve, but something is inexorably drawing her to Jonathan. So, this is what the subtext is telling us about Mike’s feelings for Will. They must be very, very strong. Mike is very much attracted to Will right from the start of the story!

We are also told something interesting about Will in this way: Jonathan is a loner. He doesn’t really have anyone. He is always alone.

At first glance, this seems to clash with Will’s situation: Will seems to be so well integrated in his little circle of friends there. He has three very close friends and seems to occupy an important position within the party.

I think this little mirroring trick is a stroke of genius here, though: Through Jonathan, we are actually told that Will might not feel as well integrated in the party as he appears to be at first glance. Jonathan’s obvious loneliness tells us about Will’s (more hidden) loneliness.

Jonathan’s loneliness is overt and in-your-face while Will’s is of the silently-screaming-on-the-inside variety.

And all of that makes a ton of sense once you remember that Will is actually gay in a group of friends whom he almost certainly perceives as entirely straight. That is a tough situation to be in. And it can indeed get very lonely there because you will constantly feel like nobody understands you. You are the one that’s different. They are the ones that are ‘normal’...or so you think.

A fascinating scene that shows us how exactly the mirroring in this show’s script works happens in season one:

In episode five, Nancy and Jonathan have just teamed up to fight what they don’t know yet is the Demogorgon. (At this point, they are not a couple yet and are still checking each other out very cautiously.)

In the context of their preparations, the two teenagers practise shooting a gun in a clearing out in the woods and have a fascinating conversation about their respective families:

Jonathan says, “I haven’t shot one since I was ten. My dad took me hunting on my birthday. He made me kill a rabbit.”

Nancy is shocked. “A rabbit?”

“Yeah. I guess he thought it would make me into more of a man or something. I cried for a week.”

“Jesus!”

“What? I’m a fan of Thumper.”

“I meant your dad,” Nancy clarifies.

“I guess he and my mother loved each other at some point, but...I wasn’t around for that part,” Jonathan replies.

So, that’s the Byers family for you, my friends.

Then the conversation turns to Nancy’s family, a.k.a the Wheelers:

“I don’t think my parents ever loved each other,” Nancy says.

“They must’ve married for some reason?”

“My mom was young. My dad was older, but he had a cushy job, money, came from a good family. So they bought a nice house at the end of the cul-de-sac...and started their nuclear family.”

“Screw that.”

“Yeah, screw that.”

Later in the same episode, as they have made their way deeper into the forest right before nightfall to hunt for the monster, Nancy and Jonathan get into a fight.

Jonathan is clumsily trying to explain why he surreptitiously took Nancy’s picture through a window just as Nancy was undressing before that sex scene with Steve. Since this photo was taken without her knowledge and consent, she isn’t exactly happy about the whole thing, as you can probably imagine. In this context, Jonathan tries to explain why he was taking her picture (and just so you know: It wasn’t to perv on her; he looked at her and suddenly felt that he understood something about her; doesn’t make the taking of the picture right, but might explain it).

Jonathan says, “I saw this girl, you know, trying to be someone else. But for that moment...it was like you were alone, or you thought you were. And, you know, you could just be yourself.”

“That is such bullshit!” Nancy exclaims angrily.

“What?”

“I am not trying to be someone else,” she insists adamantly. “Just because I’m dating Steve and you don’t like him–”

Interesting, right? Everyone else would be upset about their naked picture being taken without their consent. Nancy however is angry that Jonathan has just hit the nail on the head: She is trying to be someone she’s not. With Steve, she is just pretending to be a popular girl who’s dating the popular guy. But actually, deep down, Nancy isn’t like that at all. And now she’s angry with Jonathan because he has figured that out, because he has figured her out. She feels found out, and she doesn’t like that feeling.

It is particularly interesting that Jonathan says she looked most herself when she was undressing right before she had sex with Steve, the implication being that once she turned to Steve, she became less herself, i.e. was pretending again.

The whole argument in the woods then escalates. Nancy shouts, “You know, I was actually starting to think that you were okay. [...] I was thinking, “Jonathan Byers, maybe he’s not the pretentious creep everyone says he is.”

Jonathan hits back by saying, “Well, I was just starting to think you were okay. [...] I was thinking, ‘Nancy Wheeler, she’s not just another suburban girl who thinks she’s rebelling by doing exactly what every other suburban girl does...until that phase passes and they marry some boring one-time jock who now works sales, and they live out a perfectly boring little life at the end of a cul-de-sac. Exactly like their parents, who they thought were so depressing, but now, hey, they get it.’”

Both of these conversations (the one during target practice and the later argument in the woods) are really interesting from a mirroring point of view:

That whole predicament that Nancy Wheeler is in, trying to do what’s socially acceptable and going after the popular guy while actually knowing deep down that she’s just pretending and that she’s actually not like that…that whole predicament sounds just a tad forced when talking about a straight person, wouldn’t you agree?

Look, I’m not saying straight people don’t face the forces of conformity vs. the desire not to conform, too, from time to time. It can be a real thing. But this particular dilemma and the whole fight about it just fits much better when applied to a gay character.

So, the writers of this show making such a big deal out of Nancy’s yearning to live an unconventional life sounds just a tad forced to my ears. Not entirely unbelievable. And yet…it sounds like this actually applies to a different character and was just tagged onto Nancy for mirroring reasons. (I mean, please keep in mind that this is a straight, middle-class girl from a pretty affluent family having, well, ‘rich-straight-girl problems’, if you know what I mean.) The space this argument takes up in the episode doesn’t seem to be justified when looking at it as a direct, straightforward scene about Nancy.

Now, apply what we know about Nancy being a mirror character for Mike, and suddenly her whole problem seems to become much more acute and painful: I.e. this is about the subtext, not about the text. This isn’t about Nancy. It is about the character she is mirroring: Mike.

Here’s my hypothesis on how to read this:

Nancy is a mirror character for Mike. Jonathan is a mirror character for Will.

It’s not Nancy as Nancy who is having these secret and forbidden desires to rebel and live an unconventional life. This is about Mike! (Because writers use mirror characters to tell you things not about the mirror characters themselves but about the characters being mirrored!)

So, this problem of hers isn’t so much about Nancy; it’s about Mike!

It’s Mike who feels this pressure to conform. It’s Mike who doesn’t really want that heterosexual marriage and the kids and the house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Mike wants something…less socially acceptable, if you catch my drift.

And it’s not Jonathan; in the subtext, it’s Will who is egging him on.

Look how Jonathan basically tells Nancy that he took her photo because he suddenly had this feeling that she was just like him: unconventional, just pretending to be something that she isn’t…

Jonathan is mirroring Will! Will is gay. Canonically so.

This tells you that Mike is experiencing desires that are forbidden, much more serious and much, much more forbidden than Nancy’s wish to live an autonomous life outside of her parents’ privilege and influence. Mike’s desires are unmentionable and pretty much unthinkable in the 1980s. His desires can have very serious consequences indeed.

And Jonathan figuring Nancy out foreshadows something about Will: Will will figure Mike out at some point. He will figure out that Mike is just like him. Just as, uhm, ‘unconventional’, if you know what I mean.

These descriptors – unconventional, unorthodox, free and liberated – are all just metaphors for…gay. When applied to the characters our two mirror characters are mirroring, of course.

Nancy was all alone when Jonathan surreptitiously took her picture; she undressed and then, Jonathan tells us, she was at her most vulnerable. She was herself. Not pretending anymore, not wearing the costume, the mask of conformity.

And then she turned around and had sex with Steve, i.e. conformed in the exact way she was expected to. (And the sex was bad for her, by the way. The way this was filmed strongly implies that.)

The mirroring tells you something about Mike (who Nancy is mirroring). It tells you how Mike is only himself when he is all alone. How having sex with El would mean he would be pretending to be something that he is not. And how that sex with El would probably be pretty bad for Mike. And how Will would work that out eventually. How he would figure out the fact that Mike is just like him.

It also tells you how afraid Mike is to be himself, how he would deny all and any of this just as angrily as Nancy does when Jonathan confronts her about it. This fight between Nancy and Jonathan is only a fight between Nancy and Jonathan on the surface of the text. In the subtext, this is all about Mike and Will.

One other fact I would like to point out is that the dialogue between Nancy and Jonathan during target practice sheds some light on their backstories and general core problems as characters. And here, too, I would argue that these aren’t really about Nancy and Jonathan as characters, but about the two characters they are mirroring: Mike and Will.

We are told what their core problems are:

Jonathan tells us the story about his father making him shoot a rabbit at the age of ten (!) and how traumatized he was by the experience.

Nancy tells us that whole story about her mother conforming by marrying a man she didn’t love and moving to suburbia, and how she personally doesn’t want any of that for herself.

Now, once again I would argue that this isn’t so much about Nancy and Jonathan, but actually about the characters being mirrored here: Mike and Will.

This tells us why the two main protagonists around whose love story this entire show is revolving (to the point that we even get a closet metaphor introduced right in episode one of this show), this tells us why these two boys aren’t together yet and what the obstacles to their happiness actually are:

Jonathan (read: Will) has an abusive father. And that abuse has had the effect of pushing Will deep, deep into the closet. The poor little guy is traumatized beyond belief.

Well, and Nancy (read: Mike) is struggling with the forces that want her (read: him) to conform, to have a heterosexual marriage, children and the whole kit and caboodle. Nancy (read: Mike) doesn’t actually want that for herself (read: himself).

And please pay close attention to the fact that Nancy decries the idea of her mother marrying somebody she wasn’t in love with. That seems to be the main offence here.

Nancy doesn’t want that.

Read: Mike doesn’t want that for himself! He wants to be with somebody he truly, really, deeply loves. (Hint, hint: That, coupled with his desire not to conform, sounds like the person would not be a girl.)

Note that Jonathan says his parents probably loved each other at some point. So, the main problem here is the abuse Jonathan endured at the hands of his father. I.e. that abuse is the main obstacle for Will’s coming out, not the question of whether Joyce and Lonnie once loved each other.

The story is different for Nancy, i.e. Mike: The thing that Mike finds most disturbing is the idea of being married to someone he wouldn’t be in love with. Yet at the same time there is strong pressure on Mike to conform. This pressure represents the main obstacle for him to being happy with Will.

Nancy is still struggling with all of these nonconformist desires. She shouts angrily that she isn’t pretending to be somebody that she’s not. (Read: Mike is still struggling with those, uhm, not exactly heterosexual desires. He gets very angry when somebody implies he’s just pretending to be straight and then doubles down on playing El’s perfect boyfriend.)

So, this ‘target practice dialogue scene’ between Jonathan and Nancy actually introduces us to the core problems faced by our core couple: Mike and Will.

Note, by the way, that right after Nancy and Jonathan’s ‘fallout scene’ in the woods, Nancy basically crawls through a gate into the Upside Down. This scene almost certainly exists to show us that it’s not just Will who’s trapped in the closet: Mike is, too. He crawled in there, and now he finds it very hard to escape that horrible, dark place.

At the beginning of the next episode (episode six of season one), Nancy eventually manages to crawl back out through that same gate: She follows Jonathan’s voice, and he helps her get out of there by basically pulling her out. Read: If Mike wants to crawl out of that closet, he needs to follow Will’s voice and then basically let Will pull him out of there. Cool subtext.

Parts of that scene (the shots of Nancy in the Upside Down) are underscored by the sounds of a beating heart – just in case you didn’t catch that subtextually this is actually all about a love story.

When Jonathan (read: Will) finally manages to pull Nancy (read: Mike) out through the gate (read: out of the closet), Nancy lands on top of Jonathan in a shot that has these faintly sexual undertones. (Read: Mike lands right on top of Will’s body as they embrace. Just saying.)

We see Nancy and Jonathan’s core character problems addressed once again in season two. When Jonathan and Nancy reach out to the private eye Murray Bauman for help, he tries to work out why the two aren’t actually together. ‘Why not?’ he asks, basically.

“You're young, attractive. You've got chemistry, history, plus…the real shit: shared trauma.”

Then he takes in Jonathan and concludes, “Trust issues, am I right? Something to do with your dad?”

And while Jonathan is still stammering something unintelligible in response, Murray takes one look at Nancy and says, “You, you're harder to read. Probably, like everyone, afraid of what would happen if you accepted yourself for who you really are.”

There it is! That line right there: ‘accepted yourself for who you really are’.

It’s the line that tells you that this is not just about Nancy, that this is actually primarily about the character who Nancy is mirroring: Mike.

Accepting yourself for who you really are…that’s a phrase that can be used with regards to straight people – yeah, sure. But it is far, far more often used where gay people are concerned.

Hint, hint: This isn’t just about Nancy. Because Nancy is a mirror character. This is about Mike! (Because mirror characters tell us things about the characters they are mirroring.)

So, Bauman says, “Probably, like everyone, afraid of what would happen if you accepted yourself for who you really are,” and then continues, “and retreated back to the safety of...name? Name?” he demands, snapping his fingers.

“Steve,” Jonathan mutters.

“Oh! Steve,” Murray purrs. “We like Steve. But we don't love Steve.”

Again, Steve is mirroring El (at least in this love triangle). So, this is the whole problem: Mike likes El. He just doesn’t love her.

So, in this scene with Murray, we do get the same thing stated once again; we get the reason for why Jonathan and Nancy (read: Will and Mike) aren’t a couple. We get their core problems as characters: Jonathan (read: Will) is traumatized because of his abusive father. Jonathan (read: Will) has trust issues, which obviously makes it much, much more difficult to come out to the boy he (Will!) fancies: Mike.

And Nancy is trying to conform by being with Steve. (Read: Mike is trying to conform by being with El.) Nancy likes Steve, but she doesn’t love him. (Read: Mike likes El, but he doesn’t love her.)

And remember that being in love with the person you end up with is very, very important to Nancy. It is a priority. She implied that when she described her mother’s loveless marriage. (Read: This is about Mike, too! Love, not ending up in a loveless relationship, is a priority for Mike, who is being mirrored here.) So, Nancy struggles with her forbidden desires (read: this is about Mike, too!) and yet keeps retreating to the safe option (again: this is about Mike and El).

That’s the whole problem in a nutshell. Thank you, Murray for elucidating on that!

All of which obviously leads to that almost explosive kiss scene and the implied sex scene between Jonathan and Nancy in episode six of season two when they finally, finally work out that they are really attracted to each other and are allowed to give in to their desires. (Ahem…should we reiterate here that these two are mirror characters for Mike and Will?)

But more about that moment in a second. We have to talk about one other sex scene first.

In season four we see Will’s obvious, obvious jealousy. He is suffering because Mike is showering his girlfriend El with affection (well, how much of that is just for show is a separate issue, but Will certainly takes it at face value and is suffering a lot because of that).

All of this jealousy and suffering is actually foreshadowed in season one:

Nancy Wheeler gets down to business with Steve Harrington in Steve’s bedroom, and something interesting is happening at the same time (and no, I don’t mean Jonathan being a dumb teenager and snapping Nancy’s photo without her consent).

Remember how we stated above that Barb was a mirror character for Will, too?

I mean, both of them, Will and Barb, get sucked into the Upside Down (read: closet). They’re both coded as gay from the very beginning of the show, as well. So, yeah, Barbara Holland is a mirror character for Will, too. Jonathan isn’t Will’s only mirror character in that moment.

So, did you ever wonder why the scene of Nancy Wheeler having sex with Steve Harrington at the beginning of episode three of season one was so weirdly crosscut with Barbara’s gruesome fight for survival as she is being dragged into the Upside Down?

Yeah, that ‘pool scene’. Here, take a quick look at it.

Nancy and Steve are getting it on, but each and every shot of the two of them in bed is crosscut with horror-film type shots of Barbara fighting and screaming and sobbing and scratching her nails against the pool tiles as she is being abducted and violently dragged off.

Why this weird crosscut editing here?

Scenes are never crosscut for no reason, that’s for sure. So, there must be a reason why Barb’s last breaths in the normal world, her entire desperate fight for survival, is crosscut with what is supposed to be a harmless sex scene between a boyfriend and girlfriend.

And boy, are the two scenes crosscut. I mean, even the moments in which Nancy and Steve intertwine their fingers in bed are crosscut with shots of Barb’s hands trying to hold on to the railing of the pool in desperation. It is beyond obvious that these two things are being linked to each other by the show’s creators: the sex between Nancy and Steve…and Barb’s disappearance into the Upside Down.

These two things are clearly connected. They are deliberately being linked in a visual way (crosscutting).

But how are they connected content-wise?

If you just examine the surface of the text, this editing decision makes no sense whatsoever.

It’s not that Barb’s disappearance is caused by Nancy and Steve having sex, right? The sex isn’t the reason why Barb is being targeted by the Demogorgon. The two things seem to be unrelated.

So, why this editing decision? Why crosscut the two scenes? Why mix these shots and create a very conspicuous parallel between them? At the end of the cold open, even the song that was playing during the sex scene overtly connects Barb’s fight for survival with that sex scene. Why?

Well, all of that is being done for the subtext. It’s being done for the mirroring functions of the characters.

Nancy and Steve are mirroring Mike and El, right?

So, this crosscut scene doesn’t actually exist for Nancy and Steve and Barb…it exists for the love triangle Mike and El and Will!

This scene shows us what Will would feel like if Mike and El ever had sex with each other! (At the beginning of season one, these three are obviously still too young for that sort of thing; by the time season four rolls around, though, they are arguably approaching that age.)

Will’s potential devastation at Mike and El’s relationship turning physical is foreshadowed in Barb’s utter despair, in her tears, in her screams and wails, in the way her fingernails scratch across the tiles of the pool as she is being dragged into the Upside Down (read: the closet)…

Wanna know what it feels like to be gay and in love with your best friend, who you presume to be straight? Wanna know what it feels like to even just see him kiss his girlfriend over and over again right in front of you?

Well, here’s a metaphorical visualization: Look at Barb in that ‘pool scene’. That’s the level of pain right there.

That horror scene of Barb clinging to that railing and screaming in agony as Steve and Nancy intertwine their fingers in bed. That whole horror scene exists just for its subtext, for the mirroring functions of those three characters.

It’s a brilliant scene and so poignant once you get what it means and how much it tells you about what it’s like to be gay and in love with your (presumably) straight best friend.

It’s an absolute, utter horror show, is what it is. And the pain will be so great, you will literally withdraw deep, deep into the closet because of that. (No surprises there: Barb is pulled into the Upside Down with enormous force at the end of this scene. See how all of this fits?)

If you want, you can even wonder a bit about our good old friend the ‘water’ metaphor in this scene:

Nancy and Steve only end up in bed because they both got a bit wet and had to change into some drier clothes up in his bedroom.

If water is a metaphor for feelings (and it very often is), then this tells us that both Nancy and Steve caught themselves some romantic feelings for each other, right? I mean, they are clearly fond of each other and are even crushing on each other a little bit. Nobody ever claimed Nancy didn’t like Steve or didn’t feel anything for him.

And since these two are mirror characters, this tells us something about Mike and El: It’s not that there are no feelings between these two. They did catch enough of them to get metaphorically ‘wet’, so to speak. It’s just that Nancy and Steve have already dried off and are barely wet anymore when they’re having sex, so…you know…not that many feelings going around here.

The actual horror show here is what is happening to Barb. Barb is being pulled into an absolutely empty pool. It’s horrific.

Keep in mind that at first we see Barb sitting by the pool that’s filled to its very brim. She is staring at the water as if contemplating its depth (contemplating the depth of one’s feelings…yeah, she is mirroring Will, alright? A Will who is so deeply, deeply in love with Mike). Barb is sitting there all alone. She seems lonely. And she is staring into the unfathomable depth of that pool (i.e. the depth of the water=feelings).

Then the unthinkable happens: A drop of her blood, blood from a superficial wound in her hand, drips into the water of the pool. And that’s what alerts the monster.

So, the catastrophe occurs because her blood ends up in that water, in that deep, deep water.

Barb interacts with the water in that way, and that’s why the disaster takes its course. That’s why she ends up in the Upside Down afterwards.

You understand what this means, right?

Will interacts with his feelings and that’s why he ends up so deeply in the closet.

And then we get the horror show part of the whole scene: Barb disappears into the pool. The pool is now a horror-film version of itself. It is the Upside Down version of it. It is empty! Completely empty.

Read: The horror film for a gay person is to realize that their feelings for a (presumably) straight friend aren’t requited, that there’s no water (read: feelings) there. That the pool is, in fact, empty.

The true horror is the realization that there is no water there and that the pool is completely empty.

This is also a recurring nightmare for any gay person throughout their life: The fear that you will end up all alone, with no relationship and nobody to love you. With an empty pool, so to speak. Trapped forever in the Upside Down (i.e. closet) and faced with the vast emotional emptiness of being alone forever. An empty pool with no water.

And remember: This is not so much about Barb (because Barb isn’t important). This is all about Will and his fears!

Although Mike seems to feel quite guilty about the whole thing: Remember how Nancy is shown the empty pool and a dead Barbara in a vision created by Vecna in season four? Nancy is a mirror character for Mike! Barbara and her pain mirror Will and his pain.

So, you can read this ‘water’ metaphor into ‘Stranger Things’, but you don’t have to.

I mean, we do get El’s dependence on water when it comes to her abilities, right? That’s interesting from a metaphorical point of view: El, the personification of homosexuality/same-sex love, has to climb into some bathtub or pool in order to be able to locate people in the Upside Down, read: closet. Interesting, that!

And keep in mind that the gate to the Upside Down is literally hidden at the bottom of a lake in season four. You know…underwater! (Oh, and what’s the lake called? Lover’s Lake. Bingo. Yeah, fun metaphor.)

The number of times we get an emotionally charged scene between Will and Mike, and there’s water, so, so much water everywhere (sprinklers in the Wheelers’ garden right in episode one, for example; a thunderstorm and rain at several pivotal points in the story) is also very conspicuous.

So, I’m just saying: Don’t forget our good old friend the ‘water’ metaphor. Water represents feelings very often, and this is arguably the case on this show, as well.

Oh, and since we’re already at it: You did notice the ‘music’ metaphor, I presume? I mean it was kinda hard to miss.

We have discussed the scene in which Will tries to communicate with his mother Joyce (‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’) while he is trapped in the Upside Down (the closet).

In another scene, Mike (of all people) picks up on Will’s song together with El. Because El (Mike’s love for Will) makes it possible for Mike to hear this song about Will staying or leaving the closet. This is a frightened Will in the closet reaching out, asking what to do…

And that’s not even mentioning the season four scenes in which Max’s love for one specific song by Kate Bush saves her from possession by Vecna.

Music on TV is always interesting. And not just because of the lyrics…

What I want you to take away from these long ramblings of mine is: Nancy and Steve and Barb mirror Mike and El and Will. And interestingly Will gets two mirror characters for the price of one in this ‘pool scene’ where Barbara’s horrific abduction is crosscut with a sex scene between Nancy and Steve: There are both Barb and Jonathan in this scene. Both are mirroring Will, the third wheel, the outsider to a couple that seemingly love each other very much.

Why do we get two mirror characters for Will here instead of just one?

Well, to show us two alternative outcomes, of course: There’s the Barb outcome (dragged into the Upside Down and slowly dying in there, in that closet). And then there’s the Jonathan outcome (get your love interest and become said love interest’s boyfriend).

Which one of these two outcomes do you prefer for Will?

Well, I know which one I like more.

Note also that Nancy and Steve’s sex scene kinda starts out as nice-ish, but Nancy seems distracted already. (This, too, looks like it’s about Mike!)

Then the ‘morning-after shots’ pretty clearly hint at the fact that the sex was great for Steve, but at the very least not very satisfying for Nancy. (It is implied that this is her first time, and while we never get any vibes in the text that this turned into something abusive, she clearly seems upset about it later on. And the whole framing of the ‘morning-after scene’ makes it clear that this wasn’t great for her.)

Should I remind you once again of the fact that Nancy mirrors Mike?

I mean, I don’t know if we will ever get a sex scene between El and Mike in season five (my money is on we won’t, for what it’s worth), but this, the show’s writers are telling us, is what a sex scene between Mike and El would look like.

Ironically, with the male-female constellation of the two protagonists flipped around: It would be great for El, but not very satisfying for Mike. (Lo and behold, boys can find their first time, uhm, ‘not so great’, too. That’s not an exclusive ‘privilege’ of the female population. If said boy is either gay or bisexual but more in love with his male best friend than with his girlfriend, an unsatisfying sexual experience is even more likely. Just saying.)

Now, compare that Nancy-Steve sex scene at the beginning of episode three of season one with what we’re being told about what happens between Nancy and Jonathan in season two…you know, in that scene where the private eye Murray Bauman pretty much tells Nancy and Jonathan to give it a shot instead of sleeping in different rooms, with Jonathan on the couch (*cough* the pull-out *cough*).

Nancy and Steve’s sex scene was implied to be…less than ideal for her in season one. (Read: A sex scene between Mike and El would be less than ideal for Mike and would probably greatly upset him.)

But when Nancy and Jonathan look at each other in that certain way…oh, boy, the sparks are literally flying, and then, at Murray’s place, after Murray has taunted them about their problems (trust issues for Johnathan; and Nancy being afraid to make the nonconformist choice), the two of them finally give in to their desires and share an explosive kiss and finally, finally have sex with each other.

This is a scene that doesn’t just exist to tell you something about Nancy and Jonathan, you know…

As we have seen above, these two are mirroring Will and Mike really, really hard in that scene with Murray, so this, ladies and gentlemen, is actually the writers subtextually telling us just how strongly attracted Will and Mike are to each other and how (eventually, at some point when they’re older) Will and Mike will come to this very realization about each other.

This, the writers are saying, is how it would go if (and when) Will and Mike finally work out what their feelings for each other are: Just watch that Jonathan and Nancy scene and substitute the straight couple for the same-sex couple of these two boys in your mind’s eye, and you’ll get it right.

And note that the wonderful Billie Holiday song that plays in the background for this scene between Jonathan and Nancy features the line, ‘The night was gay with you’.

Obviously, in 1945 this didn’t mean what it means nowadays because the meaning of the word ‘gay’ has gone through quite some semantic shift since then.

But still I’m willing to bet that the creators of this show chose this old love song specifically for this one line:

This is to subtly tell us that, in the subtext, this scene is actually not about Jonathan and Nancy; in the subtext, this scene is about a gay couple (Will and Mike). It’s about a, well, gay night.

‘The night was gay with you.’

That whole crazy chemistry that the two actors playing Jonathan and Nancy have in that scene, that whole suspense, the electrifying kiss and your sudden sense of relief as a viewer when you think, “Finally! They’re finally doing it!”...all of that you should think about Will and Mike and then some. Because Jonathan and Nancy’s function in the text is to mirror these two boys.

And if you want to know how precisely the writers envision this sex scene between Mike and Will playing out, well…trust the mirroring: Jonathan goes in for the kiss first. (Tells you something about Will right there. Will is going to go in for the kiss first.) I mean, just look at how Jonathan holds Nancy in his arms, then grabs her face. (Yeaaaah. Just imagine that this is Will, and he’s doing that to Mike. There you go. You’re welcome. I hope I’ve just made your day a little brighter there.)

Mirroring is great, isn’t it?

You would like to have something more subtle?

Well, look no further than the aforementioned scene in which Mike covers Will’s hand to comfort him in episode five of season two. It is a reassuring gesture with at least some subtly romantic undertones. (And as we have discussed above, this is the very same hand that will escape Will’s quasi-demonic possession by the Mind Flayer later on. The part of Will’s soul that was touched by Mike is the one that manages to wrest itself free and communicate with the outside world.)

Do we get another hint that this scene in which Mike covers Will’s hand in episode five of season two is important?

Sure we do!

Jonathan and Nancy (Will and Mike’s mirror characters) are connected through their hands, as well. As they prepare to fall asleep in a motel room and notably discuss their romantic prospects (albeit in a veiled way), Jonathan and Nancy compare scars: They compare the scars on their palms, i.e. their hands. These scars are about their shared trauma (the trauma of season one). Their hands are, in a sense, connected in that way. And we get a beautiful shot of both Nancy and Jonathan’s palms right next to each other.

Now, remember when this ‘motel scene’ happens: It’s in the same episode that gives us the scene of Mike covering Will’s hand and thus giving that hand the power to escape the possession. It’s episode five of season two, too. So, definitely not a coincidence.

Mike and Will’s hands touch in a scene in the cold open before the opening credits of that episode. And Jonathan and Nancy touch hands in the scene right after the opening credits.

Both Jonathan and Nancy and Will and Mike are connected through their hands.

By the way, guess whose scar is bigger!

Nancy’s! (Read: Will’s trauma runs deeper. No surprise there. And yet their hands are connected. That’s what counts.)

Both scenes are essentially ‘sleepover scenes’, too, you know. So, you can practically see how strongly these characters mirror each other: Nancy and Jonathan are both sleeping in the same room in a motel. And Mike is sleeping in Will’s bedroom on the floor.

The Jonathan and Nancy scene ends with the camera zooming in on the darkness between the two motel beds (zooming in on that darkness that separates the characters, basically). And then we cut immediately to Mike and Will again, with Will having a nightmare in his bed while Mike is asleep on his bedroom floor. The level of mirroring between these four characters is really insane there. And it’s so obvious, too.

Do you want more signs of the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) mirroring going on between these two couples?

How about this one:

We had discussed that scene in episode two of season two in which Will tells Mike (in confidence) what it’s like to be ‘caught between two slides’. The two boys agree that they will go ‘crazy together’ in that scene. But it’s essentially a scene in which Mike takes care of Will. Will has just experienced something awful, and Mike is looking out for him.

We cut from this scene directly to a scene of Jonathan driving a drunk Nancy home. Here we get the same constellation but the other way around: It’s Jonathan (Will’s mirror) who is taking care of Nancy (Mike’s mirror).

Both scenes are very intimate, and they’re even both connected by the same soundtrack (that soft humming voice).

I think these two scenes are supposed to tell us that both boys actually take care of each other at times. It’s not a one-sided thing. It’s often Mike who’s got to take care of Will. But sometimes it will be the other way around, too…

Season four gives us the much tougher stuff, of course: Both Will and Mike and Jonathan and Nancy are separated from each other.

It’s an official long-distance relationship for Jonathan and Nancy. And a long-distance friendship for Will and Mike.

And both couples are experiencing problems because of that: alienation, jealousy, frustration, misunderstandings, etc.

And lo and behold: El has (seemingly) lost her powers!

El is a personification of same-sex love, remember? Her losing her powers in season four is no coincidence for that very reason.

But of course, she will get her powers back. And how!

So, that’s all you should know about Mike and Will’s relationship at this point: El gets her powers back.

At the end of episode three of season four, she literally asks Dr. Owens, “What if I’m not good? What if I’m the monster?”

Again: historically, homosexuality hasn’t just been ‘othered’. Historically, it’s been ‘monstered’! And to really be free, El needs to understand that she (i.e. same-sex love) isn’t a monster, that she’s not guilty, not to blame, not horrible, not some weirdo, not some beastly, violent thing.

Which is exactly what Dr. Owens tells her at that moment in that ‘diner scene’, “I don’t know you that well, kiddo, but I’m betting the fate of the planet that you’re one of the good ones.”

Powerful stuff. (And note, that tiny little ironic hint here: Dr. Owens says he doesn’t know same-sex love all that well. Dude is straight, don’t you know.) But hey, love will win the day. Love will save the planet and all that. El (read: same-sex love) is one of the good ones. Yeah. One. One of the good ones. Because there are many good ways to love. Duh.

Then he adds, “But you’ve spent too much of your life being told what to do by people like me. I know that.” (Yeah, same-sex love has spent a lot of time being told what to do by straight people. Super-obvious subtext right there.)

Long story short: Yeah, of course, El will get her powers back! She needs to get her powers back. And that’s all you need to know about Jonathan and Nancy and their relationship. And ultimately, about the characters they are mirroring: Mike and Will and their relationship.

Of course, to really understand what is going on with the Upside Down, you need to understand Vecna and who he is. And no, I don’t mean literally; the show tells us who he is literally. I mean subtextually: What is his function in the subtext? How is he subtextually connected to El? What does all of this mean? But maybe that’s a topic for another day. This post is too long already, as it is.

For now, just remember that El gets her powers back in season four. That’s what counts. Same-sex love gets its powers back. (And in case you point to Nancy low-key flirting with Steve again a little bit in season four, please keep in mind that Steve literally tells her he wants six children. Nancy has told us right in season one that that’s not the kind of life she wants. Read: That’s not what Mike wants. Because Mike…wants Will, his unconventional choice.)

But enough about Jonathan and Nancy for now. I wanted to talk about somebody else today…

Now, there are many, many interesting characters on this show. Each and everyone serves a specific function in the text, and all of them tell you something about the core problem this show addresses and the core couple (Mike and Will) this show is all about. But I simply cannot go into each and every individual character here.

So, I have decided to conclude this post with a look at one of the most unusual characters. He’s a mirror character, too. And I think he tells us so much about how the writers of this show approach their text.

I’m talking about Billy Hargrove.

Yes, an antagonist. A villain, if you will.

The hot baddie, basically.

This guy.

I think we had already briefly mentioned him when we had talked about the ‘Cinematic Language of Sexual Desire’ and how the camera treats his body in a way that, on screen, is usually reserved for women (this includes the tilt shot here, but also the running commentary by the girls, these observers who make us, the audience, into observers, nay, voyeurs checking out Billy’s arse in the same way that they do).

Now, I could just come out and tell you whose mirror character Billy Hargrove is, but you wouldn’t believe me. You would almost certainly call me insane. The character he is mirroring seems so, so unlike Billy Hargrove (who is after all a major antagonist and a dislikeable arsehole at that) that this will be very hard to believe. I acknowledge that this claim will seem crazy.

And yet…I think I’m right.

I really think that Billy’s whole function in this story is to mirror this one particular main protagonist. And the writers actually achieve something really cool by introducing Billy as a mirror character in season two.

Anyway…since I risk being laughed out of the room if I just disclose who I think Billy is mirroring, we will take the slower, more scenic route for this, and I will introduce you to this idea slowly, so you can get used to it and wrap your head around my reasoning step by step, okay?

Okay. Here we go:

Billy Hargrove has a flirtation going on with Mrs. Wheeler, the mother of Mike, Nancy and Holly, right?

And we have already been introduced to the idea of what Mrs. Wheeler’s life is actually like:

She married somebody she didn’t love because of his cushy job and connections. She did the conformist thing, gave in to convention, moved to a suburban home, had three children and is now…well, bored with her life. Basically.

All the romance and passion she can get now is lying in a bathtub by candlelight and reading bodice-ripper novels while her older and rather unattractive husband snores his way through the evening on the couch.

Nancy has told us all about her mother in season one, so we know what Mrs. Wheeler’s life is like, right?

What we thus have is a Wheeler character (again!) who has done the conformist thing, has made the conventional choice and now leads a dull existence within a loveless, boring, heterosexual marriage, right?

And then…another character appears on the scene. An exciting, very good-looking, downright hot and flirtatious guy who is tempting Mrs. Wheeler into doing the naughty thing…

That’s Billy Hargrove.

Isn’t this just another love triangle, you ask. And you would be right!

We’ve got Mrs. Wheeler, trapped in her loveless marriage to Mr. Wheeler (Nancy, Mike and Holly’s dad).

And then there’s the romantic rival: Billy Hargrove.

We have another triangle here, my friends.

Another triangle that involves a Wheeler, at that!

Now, the flirtation with Billy that starts at that moment when he rings her doorbell and compliments her by asking if she is Nancy’s sister, this flirtation is very, very forbidden, right?

There is the age gap. (He is just nineteen!) There is the fact that she’s an older woman and he’s a much younger guy, which is the more unusual constellation where these things are concerned. There is the fact that she is married. There is the fact that she’s got three children. And last but not least, he attends high school together with her daughter, thus being part of her children’s social circle.

In short, everything about this flirtation screams wrong and socially unacceptable. It’s all very much taboo.

So, we’re getting a love triangle here:

Between a Wheeler character (again!) who’s made the conventional choice and lives a traditional life within your typical, heterosexual norm, i.e. is married to some guy she doesn’t love.

Then there’s the husband who’s potentially at risk of being cheated on, Mr. Wheeler.

And then there’s the romantic rival.

The romantic rival is not a Byers character this time. (So, this isn’t exactly a carbon copy of the Nancy-Steve-Jonathan triangle).

But just as with the other triangle, we get an element of ‘socially unacceptable, forbidden desire’ here.

Now, please consider the fact that this romantic rival’s name is…Billy.

Billy!

We know that Billy is not a name in and of itself. I know it. You know it. We all know it.

Billy is short for William.

Just like?

Will!

Tada!

Yes, I really think Billy Hargrove’s entire function in the text, the reason why he exists in this script, is to serve as a mirror character for Will Byers, a.k.a. the other William in the story.

(Now, hold your horses! Before you scream, “But Billy Hargrove and Will Byers are nothing like each other! They’re not alike at all.” I know. I know, okay? That’s my whole point here. Just wait for it, okay?)

So, we’ve got another love triangle:

Mrs. Wheeler mirrors Mike, obviously.

Mr. Wheeler (although largely not even present throughout these scenes) mirrors El.

And Billy Hargrove…mirrors Will Byers.

The flirtation between Mrs. Wheeler and Billy is so forbidden…because a relationship between Mike and Will would be very, very much forbidden (at least in the context of the 1980s).

Don’t get me wrong, please: Being a mirror character doesn’t mean that said mirror character is exactly like the character they are mirroring. Billy and Will don’t have that much in common. They are very different people.

Mirroring is a writing technique. It’s incredibly useful, and you can hide a ton of subtext by employing it. It does not however mean that one character is a carbon copy of another character. That’s not what is being achieved by employing this technique. It’s a tool to hide information, not a Xerox machine to draw mindless parallels or anything like that.

And look how much we can deduce about Mike’s feelings for Will just by looking at his mother, Mrs. Wheeler:

Mrs. Wheeler is shown to be insanely attracted to Billy’s body. She is practically salivating over him. I mean, their scenes are often a bit comedic, but that tends to happen in mirror scenes. Nothing unusual. And we are clearly shown that she is checking out Billy’s arse when he walks away here, right?

That’s what we find out about Mike! About Mike and his wandering eye where Will’s body is concerned!

Wow! (Yeah, I know.)

Oh, and yes, this is the way in which women are typically shown on screen. So, this is actually unusual. And very conspicuous for that reason alone: Mrs. Wheeler stares at Billy’s arse and gives a little sigh or even a moan.

Anyway…so, this is the way in which Mike (!) stares at Will’s (!) backside, just so you know. (You’re welcome. I hope I’ve just made your day right now.)

(The fact that Mrs. Wheeler literally takes off her wedding ring for Billy is one other point in the ‘Mike-is-insanely-attracted-to-Will-yet-not-to-the-heterosexual-option’ column, by the way. Mike doesn’t want a heterosexual marriage. But he’s oh-so-conflicted about his desires.)

The attraction between Mrs. Wheeler and Billy is not by any means one-sided. This isn’t just an older woman perving out on a hot nineteen-year-old.

Billy might be a baddie; he might be an utter arsehole. But that doesn’t mean he’s not sexually attracted to Mrs. Wheeler. In fact, he is actually attracted to her more than to anyone else on this show. It is very obvious.

Just look at the scene in which he’s doing his lifeguard duty and staring at her breasts, as she swims in the pool. Like…he’s is so into her; it’s insane. (Sorry, can’t find the whole scene on youtube right now.)

And this, ladies and gentlemen, tells us something about how much Will is, in turn, attracted to Mike. Short answer: A lot.

By the way, did you notice how ‘swimming lessons’ are used as a thinly veiled metaphor for sex in their interactions: Billy is offering Mrs. Wheeler, ahem, swimming lessons, and she is surprised because she thought he doesn’t ‘teach adults’.

You get it, right? She thought Billy just had sex with girls his age, not with proper grown-ups, i.e. the mum of a schoolmate…like her.

Why am I saying this? Swimming is something you do in the water. Just saying: A ‘water’ metaphor is definitely on the cards, my friends. We just need to examine the text a bit more closely, and we can see it emerge.

So, Billy offers Mrs. Wheeler, uhm, swimming lessons at a private and secluded motel (ahem). And he even tells her she just hasn’t had the right teacher so far (implying that Mr. Wheeler isn’t very good at sex). Oh, boy.

All of this is obviously played for laughs a little bit, but still…seeing as these two are mirroring Mike and Will, we are getting some interesting information here. (Again: Sex with El wouldn’t be very great for Mike. And Mike and Will are insanely attracted to each other.)

But what I actually wanted to talk to you about is the following little insight: Why is Billy actually a baddie?

Because, you see, when an antagonist (like Billy) mirrors a main protagonist (like Will), this usually happens for a very good reason.

Whenever you see an outright villain mirror a main protagonist, you should sit up straight and start to take notes because there is definitely something going on.

To understand what that is, we have to take a look at Billy Hargrove’s origin story. I.e. why is Billy such a bad guy in the first place?

Well, what we do find out pretty quickly is that his parents are divorced, right? That is, after all, why he and Max ended up in Hawkins, Indiana.

That is also another thing he’s got in common with Will, who he is mirroring: Will, too, is a child of divorce. (Pay close attention now, please! This is what the writers are doing with their text.)

Now, here comes the important bit, though. We do eventually find out that Billy Hargrove’s trauma stems from the fact that his father is abusive. And here comes the kicker: Billy lost his mother because she left his father. She basically just left Billy behind with an abuser.

You see what happened there writing-wise, right?

Will Byers did notably not end up in the custody of his abusive father Lonnie. Will got lucky. He lives with his lovely mother Joyce now, a mother who literally moved heaven and earth to drag him out of the Upside Down (!), a.k.a. the closet.

The opposite happened to Billy whose lovely and warmhearted mother left him behind. This abandonment issue, compounded by the fact that he was left with an abusive father, is what his whole trauma and thus his horrible personality and identity are built on.

Billy is the opposite of Will because the opposite happened to him.

Will stayed with his mum after the divorce. Billy stayed with his dad after the divorce.

Which is why Billy Hargrove exists in this universe at all: The writers introduced him into their story in order to show us what could have potentially happened to Will if things had gone sideways and he had ended up with his dad in the divorce.

Billy is that alternate-universe version of Will. Billy is what Will could have turned into.

Will would have turned into an awful, awful person. The thing that prevented that…was the fact that he ended up with his wonderful mum.

Note that when Billy’s father comes home in season two and physically abuses his son, he does so in a very specific way: He literally pushes Billy into a closet!

There is a closet right behind Billy, and he is getting pushed into it…by his father! (Okay, it’s a shelf, but you get what I mean. It’s a visual metaphor.)

This isn’t a scene about Billy Hargrove, this is a scene about Will Byers! In the subtext, we are getting a ‘what if’ version of Will here. This is how horrible life would have ended up being for him if Will had ended up with his dad instead of his mother in the divorce.

Pushed into the closet. A closet with the picture of a naked woman on it, as we can see in that scene. (Yeah, because Will, who is obviously gay, would have ended up dating women, pretending to like them. A closet with a naked woman on it. And a father literally calling his son a ‘faggot’. That’s what we see in that scene with Mr. Hargrove and Billy. Just like Lonnie, who canonically called Will exactly that in the past, as we know from Joyce who told it to the police chief in episode one of season one.)

Billy Hargrove is an ‘alternate-universe-Will’, basically. He tells you what Will would have become if things had gone sideways. (Well, considerably more sideways than they did, in any case.)

Note that his love interest, Mrs. Wheeler, is basically a negative alternate-universe version of another character, too. She is what Mike should avoid turning into. And Nancy has already told us all about that: Mrs. Wheeler is trapped in a loveless (heterosexual) marriage.

Mrs. Wheeler is alternate-universe Mike. And Billy Hargrove is alternate-universe Will.

Here’s another interesting detail that shows us that Billy Hargrove really does mirror Will:

Who ends up being possessed by the Mind Flayer in season two?

Will Byers.

And who ends up being the Mind Flayer’s next host in season three?

Billy Hargrove.

With Billy Hargrove, things don’t turn out well, however. Will Byers gets saved from the Mind Flayer by his mother, who does the right thing and manages to rid him of the Mind Flayer at the end of season two, and by Mike! Because Mike is the one who gently touched the hand with which Will then manages to communicate with the others despite being possessed.

In other words, Will Byers has got people on his side. People who protect him and love him and would do anything for him: his mum and his best friend/love interest Mike being the first and foremost among them.

Billy Hargrove is a ‘what-if’ version of Will. And by his very existence in the text, he asks us: What would have happened if Will hadn’t had anyone on his side?

Billy Hargrove ends up possessed by the Mind Flayer and ultimately dies because of that. Not before turning a ton of other people into victims of the Mind Flayer and literally into meat puppets to be turned into a giant, fleshy biomass in this horror story.

And yes, that’s a metaphor, too.

Gay guys who end up with an abusive father and who don’t have anybody on their side will often end up loudly trumpeting the most homophobic stuff imaginable. They will become ‘possessed’, so to speak, i.e. follow horrible people and become immersed in awful political movements (which is what the Mind Flayer and his meat puppets represent, after all). Ultimately, this is then their demise.

(I mean, do we really need to go into people like Roy Cohn here? I hope I don’t need to go into his professional and political activities, his sexuality and his ultimate demise from HIV/AIDS. But that’s the type, basically.)

Gay. A horrible homophobe. And ultimately doomed.

Will Byers would have been on track to become somebody like that, had he ended up with his father Lonnie instead of his mother…is what the character of Billy Hargrove is supposed to tell us.

Note how Billy Hargrove is introduced as a hottie who all the girls (!) fall for (because compulsive heterosexuality and all that) and how that scene then cuts away to show us Will opening a locker (!) of all things. Nice visual metaphor there. This is the moment in which Will discovers that he is being called ‘zombie boy’ now, if I recall correctly. So, all of that is very fitting for a season where alternate-universe Will (Billy) is introduced to us.

Being the ‘what-if’ Will is clearly the reason why Billy Hargrove exists in this script.

Once Billy is possessed by the Mind Flayer (by that homophobic worldview, so to speak), he actually shuts Mrs. Wheeler out, just so you know: If Will had turned into a full-blown, self-hating homophobe, then he sadly would have shut out Mike, banned him from his life, for sure.

By the way, I remember reading somewhere that there is a fan theory going around according to which the Mind Flayer is a metaphor for the bipolar disorder, and I seriously have to ask…why? Why would anyone think that? It doesn’t fit the rest of the subtext at all? Was there a bipolar liberation movement back in the 1980s that I don’t know anything about? Are there any bipolar characters on this show fighting for their rights? Will is gay. It’s right there in the text. The political subtext is incredibly obvious.

Anyway…

So, Billy is the ‘what-if’ version of Will. The very, very dark version of what Will could have potentially become.

And well, now I hope you will all get a different perspective on those epic fights and battles Billy Hargrove has with El of all people.

Because what did we say about El?

El is a personification. She represents homosexuality/same-sex love.

Of course, Billy is fighting her to the death. What else would he do?

Billy Hargrove (as a mirror character of Will Byers, the alternate-universe version of Will, basically) is struggling mightily with El (homosexuality). He cannot bear the idea that she might win in the end. He cannot let her win. He has to destroy her.

And now look at that scene where the friends have managed to lock Billy into that steam room in episode four of season three: As Billy is choking El, who comes to El’s rescue and defeats Billy?

Mike!

Yes. Billy (read: alternate-universe-Will, i.e. closeted, homophobic Will) is struggling with El (homosexuality). And who is setting El (homosexuality) free?

Mike!

Mike hits Billy (dark-Will) so hard that Billy loses the fight against El (homosexuality).

Do you understand what this tells us in the subtext? Closeted Will doesn’t stand a chance. The moment Mike shows up on the scene, closeted Will will always lose that fight in which he is trying to hold homosexuality/same-sex love at bay. Mike will always make Billy (i.e. closeted Will) lose against homosexuality/same-sex love. Mike is the reason.

What a brilliant fight scene! What wonderful subtext!

(Did we ever talk about the fact that fight scenes usually have a deeper, subtextual meaning? I think we did. Well, there you go. Another example.)

How tragic that whole Billy story actually is is once again encapsulated by our good old friend the ‘water’ metaphor, by the way:

Billy grew up in California. And as we see the flashbacks and memories of his mother, we get a ton of ocean imagery in these shots. Billy and all of that water, all of those emotions. So many feelings where his mum was concerned.

Then he moves to Hawkins, Indiana…and suddenly he is a lifeguard at the pool, i.e. somebody who regards swimming as something that is highly regulated and follows very specific rules. Swimming is something you do in strict lanes, not outside of them, not freely out in the ocean, in the waves. (As I said, this is alternate-universe Will. A Will who wouldn’t allow himself to love freely the way his identity was built, i.e. to love a guy. Subtextually, Billy is closeted, homophobic Will who follows tough regulations where his love life is concerned and who enforces those rules very strictly.)

The contrast between the free and wild ocean with his mum…and the strict and overly regulated swimming pool where you’re not allowed to run around or you will have Billy yell at you is rather telling, I think. (I.e. that’s the metaphor right there.)

Note that it’s specifically El who manages to break into Billy’s memories and find out why he is the way he is. Yes, homosexuality/same-sex love can break into his memories and find out what went wrong with Billy and his father, etc.

Ultimately, Billy has to die. Of course, he has to die. That much is clear from the moment you realize who he represents in this show’s subtext: Billy cannot stay alive. That alternate timeline for Will has to be aborted. Will simply cannot become a closeted, homophobic arsehole. Thank God he’s got his mum.

And so…Billy dies. He has to. But since he is Will, essentially, it is also a sacrifice. He does find that last shred of humanity in himself and help our favourite guys.

Honestly, I could write about this show for ages and ages. But you’re all waiting for a post from me (and you’ve been waiting for far too long already), so I have to stop typing at some point.

‘Stranger Things’ is filled to the brim with wonderful subtext. With clever and unexpected writing ideas (like Billy Hargrove being a mirror character for Will, his alternate-universe version).

There are many more interesting character functions in this script. (Can you spot the other allegorical characters in it? Because there are more. Try your hand at this show sometime, and I’m sure you will find them.)

In short: So much subtext, so little time.

And the writers are actually crying out for us to notice their subtext, too.

They are practically shouting it from the rooftops: Season three introduces an actual code (in the text!) into the mix. This code needs to be cracked by the characters of the show (by Dustin, Steve and Robin). It’s almost as if the writers were taunting us, telling us that their entire show is essentially one big, giant code that wants to be cracked.

The (literal) code on the show is eventually cracked by our intrepid friends…and shortly after cracking it, they are literally sucked down an elevator shaft and go down, down, down – deep down underground. Into the subterranean.

Get it?

As a viewer, you have to crack the code and then you can enter the text underneath the text…deep, deep underground. The subtext.

Cracking the code requires Dustin, Steve and Robin to understand what blue and yellow actually mean, and that blue and yellow have to meet! It’s only once they have figured that out that they can descend into the underworld.

We, too, have to work out what blue and yellow mean – just, you know…not literally, in the subtext. (It’s not actually that difficult. I’m sure you can work out the colours on your own.) Once you know what blue and yellow are all about on this show, you too can descend deep, deep down into the subtext of this show.

I’m guessing there is just one question left at this point…

And no, it’s not, “Who is the most eligible bachelor around?”

Because we’re all agreed on that, right? We know who the hottest guy is, correct?

It’s Mr. Clarke, the science teacher, and I won’t accept any objections when it comes to this. Full stop.

No, the question that’s still left is the following one:

You are probably all wondering if I believe that Mike and Will will become a canonical couple in the final season of ‘Stranger Things’ (i.e. in season five).

Honestly, there is no way to tell.

And if I’m completely honest…I don’t think they will.

That is not to say that the subtext isn’t there. Oh, no. There is a ton of subtext underscoring exactly that: The core couple of this show are Mike and Will. The core metaphor of ‘Stranger Things’ is a metaphor about the closet, with all its political implications. The most important allegorical character in the story (El) represents Mike and Will’s feelings for each other. This is literally what this whole show is all about.

So, yes, I think we are reading the subtext exactly right here. (And remember that by ‘subtext’, I don’t just mean details. I don’t mean costume choices or posters on walls. I don’t mean a look one actor gives another actor. I don’t mean a little innuendo here and there. I don’t mean any of that. What I mean by ‘subtext’ are structural writing tools: mirror characters, mirror scenes, allegorical characters, entire narratives that run parallel to each other. This is subtext. Not a look full of yearning. Or the right prop in somebody’s hand or on some wall somewhere. I mean the structure of the text itself.)

So, yes, the subtext is definitely there. Mike and Will love each other. There’s nothing else in this story that’s as clear as that.

The thing is just…

Writers very often introduce subtext into their scripts that they then don’t follow through on. There are so, so many shows and movies where anyone with even just the slightest experience with screenplays could tell you what the subtext says and does, and yet those same shows and movies don’t bring that subtext up to the surface and never pull the subtextual information out into the light.

I’m not saying subtext never sees the light of day: I had told you all about the show ‘Harrow’ on this little blog here. ‘Harrow’ weaves a very intricate subtextual story about the daughter of the main protagonist. You can look at all the typical writing tools (from metaphors to mirror characters) in that story and practically see what happened to this girl long before it is textually, canonically revealed to us. It is all there in the subtext, and then…the writers take it out of the subtext and turn it into text in the last episode of the first season. There’s a huge payoff that way.

Sometimes shows do that.

And sometimes they don’t.

Recently ‘Young Royals’ wrote a very elaborate (and completely subtextual) backstory for one of its main protagonists…and then never followed up on that subtext. If you just understand the surface of the text, if you don’t know how to read subtext, you won’t see that Simon on ‘Young Royals’ was sexually abused in the past because the writers never make that explicit, never follow through on the extensive subtext they wrote to that effect. You will just see the surface story and nothing else.

What’s more: Stories where the subtext hints at a protagonist being gay or bisexual, stories with a subtext that gives us a same-sex love story like that, almost never follow through on that subtext. Unfortunately.

Am I convinced that the subtext is there for Mike and Will?

Absolutely!

I mean, what do you think Nancy and Jonathan’s storyline is for? What is the deal with that attraction between Mrs. Wheeler and Billy Hargrove?

It’s subtext. Plain and simple.

And I am absolutely convinced that we’re reading that subtext right.

Mike and Will really are the central story of this show. That’s what it’s all about.

But House and Wilson have about the same amount of (actual, structural) subtext between them on ‘House M.D.’. (Not talking about languid looks and double entendre here. What I mean is actual hardcore mirror character subtext. Structural stuff. Parallel narratives, that sort of thing.) They have all that subtext going for them. And yet textually…nothing ever happens between them. The writers just leave all of that hidden underneath the surface of the text.

By now the audience will have also become very invested in Mike and El’s story. It would be difficult to convince people who have never understood how to decipher subtextual information that Mike doesn’t really love El, that El is just his safe choice (mirroring Nancy and Steve and Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler). It would be extremely difficult for the writers to drag Mike out of the closet.

So…all in all. I don’t think the writers will textually, canonically go there (i.e. on the surface of the text).

But hey…I might be wrong. Just because I’m pessimistic doesn’t mean I can’t be harbouring a tiny spark of hope inside of me, right?

So, who knows…let’s see how this goes.

For now, we can just enjoy the four seasons we were given and keep on deciphering the subtext therein. And there is so much to find.

You can take each and every single shot apart. Just…you know…don’t just look at the details. Look at the big picture, too: What is this show actually trying to tell us? What is it all about.

There are people who are huge fans of ‘The Sopranos’. Yet as they watch it, they never understand what it’s actually about. They think this is a crime drama, a show about how the Italian mob operates in the US.

It never occurs to them that Tony Soprano’s family, his children seem in the dark as to where their wealth is coming from. Here the guy is literally murdering people with his bare hands and then dismembering their dead bodies with a brutish force that makes your blood run cold, and yet his kids don’t understand why it is that they are living in such luxury and splendour.

You can just watch this as a story about the mafia and some mob boss’s clueless children…

…or you can understand that this is a parable. The mob boss is the American government and the clueless children are the American people who don’t understand why they live in luxury and what is being done in their name to finance that luxury…because their government is hiding that aspect of their own identity from them.

You can either see the big picture or not.

A good story always has a big picture, not just a few cool symbolic details.

And as for the monsters…

…don’t be afraid of the monsters on this show.

In a slightly tongue-in-cheek scene, Mr. Clarke even explains to his date how monsters are typically created for a film shoot like that: “Melted plastic and microwave bubble gum.”

Don’t be afraid of those monsters. Be afraid of the ones in real life.

~fin~