A thread for Stranger Things, the "Goonies meets X-Files" new Netflix series (with SPOILERS!)

geography of the show was weird. hard to do on budget and w/o big f/x, but i would've liked some more town establishing shots

this is v true!

Funko has gotten in on the hype, and here are their first two figures:

http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/barb-funko-480x600.jpg

http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/funko-eleven2.jpg

Goddamn it, Funko. Every time I think I've tamped down my desire to tread the dark path of starting to buy your shit...

b) kinda bummed to see so much obsession w/ catching/naming the references. quotes of famous flicks aren't pokemon, fuck. you aren't clever for finding them OR for being annoyed by them. it's part of the grammar of the show?

The big things this pulls from are major/iconic Hollywood films and nobody feels impressed with themselves for “catching” them, just maybe annoyed by the fan service/nostalgia pandering that makes up the “grammar of the show”.

xpsts

^^^ dingdingding

I wasn't patting myself on the back for recognizing super obscure films ET and Close Encounters

and it's not that quoting things or using other sources as the "grammar" for a show is an inherently bad thing, it was just irritating how obvious and slavish they were about it.

Not slavish imo

The thing is, you could be 15 and never seen ANY of those movies and still think this was a sick show

regardless i think 80s fetishism has hit peak and maybe should quietly shuffle off now

i can't handle any more of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZu5iDTtNg0

The thing is, you could be 15 and never seen ANY of those movies and still think this was a sick show

haven't met any 15yo that think this btw. it is weird to me that people keep saying "this is a kids show" and yet the only people I know who are *really* into it are 40+. The youngest kid I know that watched it (20) told me he thought the best part was the theme song/opening credits, which reminded him of Goblin's theme to "Profondo Rosso" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You've got another 20-30 years of baby-boomer style self-obsession by millennials before 80s fetishism shuffles off. At least until after one becomes President.

but the cool kids are already into the 90s fetishism, so it might be sooner than you think

First you get the money, then you get the women, then you get the right decade fetishism then you get the power

i haven't really had any conversations with 15-year-olds in kind of a long time so i dunno. maybe the 40-year-olds saying this have kids themselves?

i assumed that the "obsessed with catching the references" was more to do with all the listicles and such out there than anything anybody posted itt.

My sister's in her 20s, dug it a lot.

that simpsons one is pretty lame tho, i agree. partly cause the show itself dates from the late 80s! but also because the same basic gags were all done, better, twelve or thirteen years ago by homestarrunner.

my kids loved it to death. they are 11 and 13.

You could also be a 42-year-old who doesn't really DGAF about The Goonies or ET or Poltergeist and think this was a sick show (ding ding ding ding)

When Foster Gump rides the triceratops in Jurassic Gump and goes "jen-nay" and then gives a long soliliquy about how life is like a box of pterodactyl DNA, I look forward to people understanding the deep grammar of my show

"Ah, yes, I speak this language," all the Gen Xers will say. Meanwhile, 15 year olds will have the same reaction to Jurassic Park as we would have to Méliès' Barque sortant du port de Trouville as this cultural artifact has been lost to time

Life is like a box of chocolate: it breaks free, expands to new territories, painfully, perhaps even dangerously.

Méliès' Barque sortant du port de Trouville as this cultural artifact has been lost to time

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, August 26, 2016 12:22 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mustve been a weird 15 yr old

sometimes i like chocolate because it's chocolate

sorry, there's a chocolate reference in there

OIC you are alluding to Foster Gump and Sonny the Cocoa Puffs bird and that album by R. Kelly and the food called chocolate and Tay Zonday, I'm pretty clever yessir.

you mustve been a weird 15 yr old

― Pull your head on out your hippy haze (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, August 26, 2016 3:37 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had definitely seen 101 Dalmations and 2001 a Space Odyssey and other time-and-impact analogous movies referenced in, say, Simpsons episodes

at what age would you say you started writing poetry

I once found a used copy of the Violent Femmes solo LP on vinyl and used it for some presentation in Spanish class

Well, don't leave us in suspense. What's the next line?

regardless i think 80s fetishism has hit peak and maybe should quietly shuffle off now

I thought about this yesterday as it's the first week back at school and every year there's a poster sale in the middle of campus for all the kids to outfit their dorm rooms. Amongst all the Justin Bieber and videogames I don't know there were a ton of movie posters for Purple Rain, the original Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Goonies, etc.

Kind of weirded me out because the equivalent nostalgia gap when I was freshman would have meant a bunch of posters for Spartacus, Psycho, West Side Story, Swiss Family Robinson, etc, all of which felt so damn OLD when I was 18.

Anybody buying that shit?

Corey Feldman

in the 80's people bought james dean and jack kerouac posters and stuff.

i had a jack kerouac t-shirt in the 80s.

i saw corey feldman on a reality show about canadian customs agents recently. he got in canada. close call though. he looked good.

at least the whole 50's rockabilly malt shop stuff died out in the 90's. that's one good thing about the 90's anyway. i had to live through 20 years of happy days revisionism.

it's been over 20 years of 80's revivalism. it has to end eventually. boys and girls by blur was what, 1994? i think the chilly retro 80's synth stuff is with us forever though. like dixieland and contra dancing.

yeah I've been wondering when the 90s were gonna replace the 80s as hip nostalgia ref point for like 10 years now

the 90's has been hip!

at least the whole 50's rockabilly malt shop stuff died out in the 90's. that's one good thing about the 90's anyway. i had to live through 20 years of happy days revisionism.

― scott seward, Friday, August 26, 2016 6:26 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kemivUKb4f4

what, the diner dance scene from Pulp Fiction wasn't good enough for you

isolated incidents! the 90's went straight to the 40's and never looked back.

I agree w you actually (70s nostalgia was the thing in the 90s)

Right, and "Buddy Holly" was nostalgia for the 70s' nostalgia for the 50s

I don't think the 90s are ever going to be a cultural ground zero like the 80s (or the 60s) are for a lot of people. Like the 70s, the 90s strike me as building on (or reacting against) stuff that happened in the previous decade -- tbh, I always thought the 90s were cooler than the 80s, but too much happened in the 80s that affected (and in a lot of ways invented) modern life as we know it.

Not to say you can't have nostalgia, but I think it ends there for the 90s. IMO the 80s is "important" to a lot of people in a way that the 90s just aren't.

http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=29284019

building on (or reacting against) stuff that happened in the previous decade

come on, this is every decade

90s is peak rap, dawn of the internet, raves, the Simpsons, Tarantino, blah blah blah

it is, but I mean to say that a large part of its identity is building on things that began in the 70s. Which is different than my perception of the 60s, which is that it destroyed and completely rebuilt things from the 50s and earlier. Paradigm shift? That's pretentious, but you know what I mean. I don't really see the same kind of shift in the 70s or the 90s -- both decades seem transitional to me (as much as, like I say, I personally relate to those decades more than 60s/80s overall).

yeah, but "rap" as a phenomenon was essentially 80s-birthed (yes, I realize its roots were in the 70s, but culturally speaking, it wasn't a force until the 80s). Simpsons started in the 80s! Raves played a kind of music that, again tho actually w/roots in the 70s, didn't really happen until the 80s. I guess you are saying the events themselves are an enduring artifact of the 90s? Maybe so, in the same way festival rock concerts are (tho of course Woodstock).

Tarantino is a good example of a 90s phenomenon -- though I would argue his kind of art, that of reference (and even self-reference) and synthesis of previous works/styles is not something that began in the 90s. Not saying 90s didn't have awesome art or things that endure in our lives, I'm saying it doesn't seem to have left a cultural imprint on today in the same way the 80s did.

i'm kinda good with 1964 to 1984. like if i had to live on it. i could live on it. wait, i kinda do...

i mean its infinite as far as art goes. 20 years!