**Stranger Things Spoilers Ahead**
This Thanksgiving while most of you were stuffing your faces with
delicious meals and probably dismissing blatant gender biases in the kitchen,
my day was spent contemplating gender discrimination thanks to my mom who
decided to make (force, really) me to binge watch Stranger Things, a Netflix original series that took the internet
by storm this year.
Now, I’ve heard some great reviews of this show and one thing I kept in
mind while observing the show was how many social implications about sex and
gender the show actually highlighted. I found that the series made remarks on
gender discrimination in the law enforcement, assumptions on relationships and how
no relationship or character is ever as simple and plainly narrative as many
shows would have us believe, and I felt that the show did a masterfully
interesting way of doing just that.
First, the most noticeable gender discrimination that occurred in Stranger Things was between law
enforcement officers and women. It seemed every woman who filed an issue with
the police department or had to come in for questioning was harassed or discriminated
against for, you guessed it, being female. One character (Nancy), when
answering questions about her missing friend, was interrogated about spending
time with a boy and asked questions that were completely irrelevant to the
investigation for her friend. A mother (Joyce) whose son was the first victim
of a missing child’s case was ridiculed for saying her child wasn’t dead, then
when the police officers were questioning her, they continued to diminish her
concern by judging her for being a single mother and working full time- as if
that had anything to do with her child being kidnapped and missing. The law
enforcement officers continuously dismissed women throughout the show, calling
them hysterical, emotional, and making off handed remarks about their bodies.
Women were not the only ones suffering from assumptions made due to
their born gender. One teenage boy (Jonathan), gets into a fight with another
boy and with little context, it would be easy for one to assume that he
initiates the fight because of his love for a girl. At the police station, a
secretary gives the girl (Nancy, the assumed love interest) an ice pack for the
boy and after she says he’s not her boyfriend, the older woman tells her, “Only
love makes a guy do something so crazy.” Anyone who is a sucker for love
stories would have accepted that narrative and thought “Oh no, now Nancy is
gonna have to let him down easy. This is awkward,” however when Jonathan
engages in the fight it is only after the other boy mentions his mother and starts to trash talk his
family that he turns around and beats him up. Jonathan didn’t get into a fight
because he loves Nancy, but rather because he didn’t want his family insulted.
However, without knowing that small detail, the characters continue an awkward,
incorrect understanding of each other because Nancy won’t approach him and the
series continues with her under the assumption that he loves her, even though
there was so much more going on in Jonathan’s head. Some relationships are
platonic or simply never become sexual and this series touches on it in a
fascinating way. Rather than change the narrative completely, it seems the
writers still follow the classic love narrative but give the viewers an extra
bit of information that reveals how complex issues for individual characters
really are. People can still follow the narrative if they wish, but they have
to try harder to be ignorant to the rest of the information that alludes the
truth.
These archetype narratives that so many stories abide by are not only
dull, but also widely non-reflective of issues between different characters.
Stranger Things was able to use these narratives in a way that helps its
audience see issues in gender discrimination that do still exist in society
today. I think people become comfortable in their present-day situations and we
like to claim that we’re better, more progressive than we were 30 years ago,
but despite this claim that’s not the whole truth. There is still a lot of
progress that could be reached in the way of gender equality and Stranger
Things has played its part.
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