I just finished watching the series for the fifth time.
/Note: if you have not seen the series, this article won’t make much sense to you./
There are few films or series that have had such an astonishing impact on me. Yes, there are the old classics, but I am talking about the 80s lifestyle and my childhood. For those of you from the Gen X generation, you might connect with me here.
Every time I watch it, I wonder why it has this effect on me. What is in there that makes me feel nostalgic and even tearful, when I usually am not?
I thought it was the music, which, I can’t deny, is a powerful tool. The actors, the plot — yes, yes and yes, but still no.
And then I realised. I went back to my own writings — where my perception of the past meets the point of view of the film — and thought of the simplicity of life, the lack of tech and social media, the purity of us as humans. Our monsters were naïve and sweet, just like our hopes and desires. There was simplicity untouched by the false idea of the total abundance of everything. The evil was coming from the stories around the campfire, and we had the skills to fight it.
Our shadows were ours only. Today, we have access to all the shadows of the world through our phone screens. And the battle feels unfair.
I found parallels in some of my own short stories, and this surprised me. Not in the stories themselves, but in the way the world was seen. Perhaps it is the connection of memory, or simply that growing up at the same time gave us a certain perception of the world. Different countries, different childhoods, different stories — but somehow the same atmosphere. The same sense that the ordinary world could suddenly become magical, that danger could live just beyond the streetlight, and that children were capable of entering it, fighting their monsters and coming home again.
Maybe that was what I recognised in Stranger Things. Not simply the 80s, but the aura of the world back then.
There is something so profound in the film that stands against most of Hollywood and European cinema — decent adults who actually protect and care for the children. Something that I remember: how sheltered and safe we felt back then, especially in communist Bulgaria.
There was more peace and contentment in the world somehow. Is this because the eye of the creators left only the good memories and the idea of a better and good world, polished by time?
The time when the clouds made us imagine the monsters lurking behind the horizon, but once you gathered with your friends in the abandoned house, you created all these powerful symbols and heroes that moved the universe to turn the good Wheel of Fortune on our side.
Oh, the sweet texts of the music then, the romantic view of the world still filled with hope. The world of protests, Pink Floyd and endless strawberry fields where we moved and flew.
Our night dreams were brighter and our mornings were less hectic and more gentle towards our inner children. The sky seemed to be less polluted and conspiracy theories were sweet tales in the evening.
Communities gathered and built new friendships, new ideas and stronger brotherhoods.
And then so many of you could say, but that’s human nature — we tend to forget the bad and romanticise the past. But look at the pictures from those years, listen to the music and texts back then, and you will feel the overall mood of the world: pure intent and warmer hearts. Hearts more open, with less fear and less propaganda.
I love the opportunity to be alive today, but also I am one of those people who lived through so much — we are the living bridge between the hippies and the transformation of the world into this advanced beast of technology, and we can see the heart being ripped from the body of humanity. We are losing our imagination and soft hearts, we are moving towards a colder, mathematical and fearful world.
The better the protagonist, the scarier the monster. I worry that today we have the heroes and the monsters equally grey and equally weak. No bold colours and no real darkness. And one of the keys here is the monster — it is the evil egregor of general human mistakes, given a face and a body. Something we can recognise, fear and fight.
Maybe this is another thing Stranger Things gives back to us: the monster is allowed to be a monster and the hero a hero. There are still sides. There is still something worth fighting for.
We are saying goodbye to one short but sweet period in human history, when we were brave believers in each of us being a superhero and a poet at the same time.
Maybe this is why I keep returning to Stranger Things. Not because I want to go back, but because for a little while it reminds me how the world once felt.