Episode 50: Demogorgon: On 'Stranger Things'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2019

⏱️ 96 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Duffer Brothers' hit series Stranger Things is many things: an exemplary piece of entertainment in the summer blockbuster mold, a fresh take on the "kids on bikes" subgenre of science fiction, a loving pastiche of 1980s Hollywood cinema. And as Phil and JF attempt to show in this episode, Stranger Things is also a deep investigation into the metaphysical assumptions of our times, and a bold statement on the ontology of the analog real. This, at least, was the thesis of JF's three-part essay "Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things," which appeared on Metapsychosis after the first season dropped in 2016. Here, Phil and JF revisit that essay in order to expand on its arguments and discuss how it hoilds up in light of the series continued unfolding. The conversation touches on Apple's famous 1984 ad for the first Macintosh, the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the otherworldliness of airports, the ensorcelments of consumerism, and much more. REFERENCES Stranger Things "Reality is Analog: Philosophizing with Stranger Things" available at Metapsychosis or in ebook format Samuel Delaney, Dhalgren 1984 Apple commercial for Macintosh Wild Wild Country, Netflix documentary series Tom Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent” Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture Arcade Fire, “We Used to Wait” William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody William James, A Pluralistic Universe Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity Weird Studies, episode 2: Garmonbozia Homer, Odyssey Matt Cardin, Dark Awakenings The Wachowskis, The Matrix Jonathan Haight and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to do with this.
0:52.3	Why don't you give me his number?
0:53.3	You know, Hopper, he has nothing to do with this. Trust me.
0:56.0	Joyce, 99 out of 100 times, kid goes missing.
0:59.0	The kid is with a parent or relative.
1:01.5	What about the other time?
1:03.3	What?
1:04.0	You said 99 out of 100.
1:06.7	What about the other time?
1:07.6	The one!
1:08.7	The one! The one! That's a bit of dialogue from the first episode of Stranger Things,
1:13.4	the hit Netflix show whose third season drops on July 4th.
1:17.9	In it, a woman named Joyce Byers begs the police chief of her small Indiana town
1:23.2	to look for her son, Will, who has gone missing.
1:27.2	The chief, Hopper, tries to mollify Joyce with the kind of reassuring statistic
1:32.2	that we ourselves might use to soothe the fear of a wild possibility.
1:37.7	You know the kind of possibility, I mean.
1:40.4	The possibility of being randomly shot at a movie theater,
1:44.1	or that your partner will get in a car accident on the way home from the store,
1:48.4	or that your child will mysteriously disappear after playing Dungeons and Dragons at his friend's house, which is what happens to Will.
	...

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