{"id":43301,"date":"2022-07-25T05:33:14","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T10:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=43301"},"modified":"2022-07-24T15:37:33","modified_gmt":"2022-07-24T20:37:33","slug":"stranger-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/07\/stranger-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Stranger People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Season 4 of Stranger Things<\/em><\/a> took a detour inside an exotic world it had never explored before: a Latter-day Saint home in mid-80s Utah. While Stranger Things<\/em> is a fine show, it doesn\u2019t really understand any location outside the small town of Hawkins, Indiana. This includes Utah, and it very much includes LDS families. Consequently, just like the Soviet gulag in the first 8 episodes, the foreign setting is played for laughs.<\/p>\n

The show doesn\u2019t quite know how to set the scene for an LDS family home. Suzie, the teen hacker long-distance girlfriend of one of the main characters, has two BYU posters on her wall. Otherwise, the show tries to indicate \u201cLDS family\u201d by showing a household filled with a lot of children doing interesting things \u2013 producing and acting in a homemade movie, playing Indian dress-up with a bow and arrow, repairing a rooftop TV antenna, or (in the case of the oldest sibling) swearing and seizing the chance to smoke marijuana. The father, like all the fathers in the series, is an oblivious killjoy, while the mother is mysteriously absent. So the show opts to depict the LDS family setting not as oppressive, but as \u201clots of kids doing interesting things.\u201d Thanks, I guess? In a media landscape where my faith is only allowed to exist either as a backdrop for jokes or as a pathology to be overcome, I guess I\u2019ll take the humorous option.<\/p>\n

Some details were off. Suzie\u2019s devotional literature isn\u2019t from Deseret Book, but general Christian lit instead. Her father has confiscated her computer for dating an agnostic, rather than the actual transgression: underage dating (and Dustin, her main character boyfriend, is anything but agnostic; he has a perfect knowledge that the supernatural is real).<\/p>\n

But the real sin of Stranger Things<\/em> is having Dustin\u2019s friends Will and Mike lie to Suzie about what they\u2019re really doing. Because in mid-80s Utah, you can go ahead and say out loud that you\u2019re fighting an evil demon \u2013 especially one who\u2019s in league with the Soviets and a cabal in the U.S. government \u2013 with a combination of firearms, battle axes, and a mysterious supernatural power. Suzie, her family and her neighbors are ready to believe you. Give them time to make a few calls, and they can probably have a battalion ready to set out for the Nevada desert in station wagons. Or if your party is limited to four members, I\u2019d go with the 13-year-old Eagle Scout, the 7th Year camp counselor, the level 1 elder unsure of his powers, and the slightly deranged survivalist uncle. That\u2019s<\/em> a show I could watch for 10 episodes.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the problem with not taking LDS characters and environments seriously. You waste the narrative potential that\u2019s sitting right there<\/em>, just waiting for you to do something with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Season 4 of Stranger Things took a detour inside an exotic world it had never explored before: a Latter-day Saint home in mid-80s Utah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43302,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43301\/revisions\/43302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}