INTRODUCTION
Sorry for the delay. I had to move out
of my castle! Fall was over and I was about to house myself from the
public to usher in the new season by talking about Stranger Things
2 when there was a knock on the drawbridge. This weird couple
shows up with a deed and it turns out they owned the place,
but they graciously allowed me to stay the night while I packed up my
stuff. Long story short, the lady died, it turned out she was the
sister to the guy, he buries her in the mausoleum but she breaks out
and kills him (because she wasn't dead) and then the whole damn
castle collapsed and sank into a bog. I got out just in time.
So here I am back in the country,
living in a house in California, and now it's time to talk about
Stranger Things 2, Eleven, The Sheriff, Will, Kali, the
Thessalhyrdra, the Mind Flayer, other dimensions, string theory,
magic, conspiracy theories, quantum physics, government mind control
programs and...wow, we have to talk about a lot of subjects. There's
so much work to do! What are we doing, and why?
THERE IS NO THEORY
I watched the entire series, had a
great time, and realized my whole conspiracy theory operation had
been blown up because there wasn't really any theories to talk about.
Stranger Things had deep roots in all sorts of scary,
mysterious ideas about the government using science to tear apart the
world and the human mind to study their contents to completely
control it all. The Montauk Project, a conspiracy theory that's pretty
big to believe, was the basis for Stranger Things, but the sequel
didn't follow that theory all the way, although the work still
transmitted other themes from the 70's and 80's regarding government
abuse and the harmful effects of technological abuse on the
individual.
It's enough to make you scream yourself horse.
Last time I talked about freaky myths
that would turn any sane person nuts including theories such as MK
Often, MK Search, The Philadelphia Experiment, etc. It's very
important to recap at this point, so please be patient if you are
already familiar with this material.
According to conspiracy theorists,
whistleblowers, former deep state operators and even military
veterans, the American government one day decided to take a large
naval warship and hit it with so much electricity it would vanish
from enemy radar. It didn't.
The story that follows is so scary even
Chronenberg would label it as body horror. People vanished, melted,
fused into the metal of the ship, and went crazy while the ship
itself reappeared many miles away, creating a hole in spacetime that
the government didn't know what to do with, which lead to Project
Montauk.
BACK TO MONTAUK
It is important to once again mention
that the original name for Stanger Things was going to be Montauk. This
conspiracy theory is freakin' nuts. Wacky. Crazy. Total sci-fi stream
of consciousness babble. What makes it worse is that the chief
proponent of the story, Al Bielbek, basically claims to be the soul
of another person transported through space and time into the past
and then mind controlled to forget everything and...yeah, it's kind
of like listening to a story about toys told by a small child who is playing with them.
One key revelation about Montauk that I
kind of believe is how the government didn't mean to teleport a ship.
They also didn't mean to carve a big battleship-shaped hole out of
reality. Using science and psychics researchers supposedly sent
people into this hole to find out what was going on, and then the
shiznit got real. I'm talking cultural appropriation on a
technological scale.
Even more Montauk for your buck.
Although the tunnel only seemed to go
so far into the future, researchers (according to books written about
the subject that have scary, ominous titles and feature images of
bronze horses that mean nothing to people unfamiliar with the occult)
found they could carve holes away from it, into the past and into
alternate realities and timelines. Some people went insane. Some
people died. Some vanished completely. The government kept going
because what they got back was worth the body count.
On the other side of the tunnel was,
decades into the future, the same operation going on, controlled by
the American government sometime in the late 80's. Scientists from
the future began to play a very strange, extremely ominous game of
ping-pong. The Montauk Project from the future began to send
technology to the past for study and improvement. This would affect
the future, resulting in improved technology, which they sent back to
the past. Over and over again, until the American government had
stuff from the future they didn't even understand.
Whistleblowers who make a lot of money
working the MUFON circuit claim that at one point, the experiment
turned evil. Some powerful, shadowy force began to manipulate the
experiment, forcing scientists to do very awful, extremely bad
experiments and dark deeds that resulted in a few heroic types to
band together and obliterate the entire place with a monster summoned
from the very depths of one psyhic person's mind which wreaked havoc,
killing people, shutting the portal down from both sides. Good times!
Do you think she could have done that in the first episode?
At the end of Stranger Things 2
(spoiler alert) Eleven confronts the Thessalhydra, shuts the portal
and basically fixes the problem that necessitated the need for the
existence of the scientific research facility. This is somewhat
similar to the end of The Montauk Project, if you believe THAT story.
Portal closed, no more tunnel, no more monsters.
Except that at the end of the last
episode, it's clear that other dimension is still there, and the
Thessalhydra is stll there, waiting to invade, corrupting the land,
haunting Will. It's clear that in the world of Stranger Things,
that other dimension is not the future, but a parallel universe.
Characters that enter this parallel reality affect the real dimension
on the other side. Christmas lights go off, they can be faintly
heard, etc. So it can't be the future, it is now, just a terrible
version of now, where everything is decaying, rotting and apparently
sentient, trying to invade, corrupt and conquer.
Now we know why The Great Pumpkin didn't show up, Charlie Brown.
What happened in Stranger Things
is obviously a rapid departure from the OG source material. Because
of this I pretty much have to drop the whole conspiracy theory bit
because it no longer applies. That's it! End of blog post. Bye!
Except that last time I did not just
talk about conspiracy theories, I also talked about themes, the
occult, string theory and on and so forth. One glaring aspect of the
Netflix series is that at no place and time does anyone say, "Hey,
I know a Catholic priest that could pull off an exorcism," or
"Let's go to the library and find out if there are any books
about the occult that can help us." No Shamans, no Wiccans, just
people yelling "Jesus Christ!" and a whole bunch of D&D
references combined with a little quantum physics.
Of course, one large reason we all like
Stranger Things is the film references, including themes other
films from the past also possessed. Hollywood has always had a dark
obsession with American government military operations that explored
other dimensions, extraterrestrials, and the occult. Do not attempt
to adjust your television, I'm about to take you to the outer limits
of The Outer Limits.
Before CGI ruined everything.
LESLIE CLARK STEVENS IV
In contrast to The Time Tunnel,
where the government knows that the military and some strange agency
was going back and forth into the past and is pretty cool with it,
the stuff going on in The Outer Limits occasionally causes the people
encountering the results of their scientific journey into the unknown
to realize that it's time to pull the plug before the experiment
destroys mankind or whatever. The origins of The Outer Limits
are scary, in fact, it's a conspiracy theory into itself.
When you watch The Twilight Show
anything can happen in that magic, The Devil, witchcraft, the occult
and the supernatural exist side-by-side with stories about aliens,
space travel, scientists and the like. In The Outer Limits, at
least for the fist two seasons, deals entirely with science and the
effects of studying other dimensions, planets and extraterrestrials,
or in some cases extradimensionals. The groups doing this stuff are
usually scientists working for the military, and therefore the U.S.
Government, similiar to the main characters of The Time Tunnel.
Over and over again, evil forces employ science to do something bad,
and the military industrial complex is right there, either causing
it, investigating it, or trying to shut the whole machine down.
Leslie Clark Stevens, IV was a lion in
the Hollywood industry with deep, deep ties to the military. He
himself was a military veteran who became a captain at the age of 20
in the Army, and his father was an Admiral in the Navy. Over and over
again in books related to conspiracy theories (check out
www.disinfo.com, it's great for
well-researched occult and alternative science wackiness), the story
is that Leslie Clark Stevens, IV was simply working for a group of
shadowy deep state operatives that were trying to get the word out
about what was really going on in the military bases funded by
taxpayers but far, far away from their awareness, understanding or
oversight.
The Outer Limits
My point is that in Stranger Things,
Hawkins is always behind the bad stuff. They caused everything, when
you really think about it. The show and it's sequel aren't just about
other dimensions, people with powers and weird monsters, it is also
about the Franz Kafka horror of a corporatist military industrial
complex entity doing what it wants, spying on people, killing
everyone and getting away with it. Paul Reisner does a great job of
(spoiler alert) cleaning up the mess and helping to control the
portal, but we still have no idea of knowing how loyal, or good, he
really is.
This theme is prevalent in many other
works in the 80's, such as The Entity, Dreamscape or
Poltergeist where science studies the occult and runs away screaming,
just as it was a theme throughout the decades shows like The Time
Tunnel, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and other
films where science encounters the dark side of reality and takes it
on...only to agree that such great knowledge is too much for the
public at large, leading to silence, secrets, rumors and finally
conspiracy theories. This was a generation that had seen thousands of
people die in The Vietnam Conflict after JFK got his head blown off.
You are probably not going to trust the government if you grew up
with that on the television, and never forget that JFK was an officer
in the Navy, too.
The Time Tunnel
By the way, have you noticed I keep
mentioning The Time Tunnel, but I'm not really talking about
it? Have you noticed the parallels between the story behind The
Montauk Project and the premise behind that show? Did you also notice
that the shows seems to take place somewhere in the desert, so it's
probably Area 51? I don't have to tell you everything, you know.
Sometimes you must think for yourself.
SILKWOOD
I watched Stranger Things 2 and
thought to myself, "Silkwood." That movie was a big deal
when I was growing up, and it is about the corporatist abuse of
nuclear power that goes so unchecked it poisons the earth and kills
people. To cover up their mistakes, the government entity kills Karen
Silkwood and silences whistleblowers. When the media or the law tries
to find out more about what's happening, the company simply says,
"National security," and the crime goes unpunished. You
can't really trust the government, in Silkwood, and you can't
really trust the government in Stranger Things. Welcome to the
80's, The Vietnam Conflict had just ended and people were still
paranoid. After all, The Cold War wasn't over, yet.
It was a hit and everybody knew it.
The nuclear power plant in Silkwood
is not too much different than the Hawkins facility. Both are
slowly poisoning the land, killing people, and Karen Silkwood decides
to spy on the company within. The power plant destroys her life, and
the government gets away with it. Of course, Will's mother is also
similar to Karen Silkwood, but the theme remains the same. Incredible
power requires incredible responsibility...and the final horror is
that the government cannot be trusted to wield that power while at
the same time respecting human life.
So that's one parallel. You can see it
in many science fiction films throughout the 80's. Hell, Alien
and Aliens also have the same theme running through them. You
can't trust the corporation, they will sacrifice you to bring forth
monsters to use as weapons of war and sell the technology to the
military. When they were creating Eleven and studying her powers at
Hawkins, it wasn't to make the world a better place through peace,
love and understanding. It was to help destroy the U.S.S.R.
Note the reptilian nature of the villain in Dreamscape.
Dreamscape is very, very similar
to Stranger Things in this way. I highly suggest you watch it.
Of course, Escape from Witch Mountain also features a simliar
theme. As does Firestarter, another book by Stephen King, who
is a huge influence on the show. "The Mist" deals with the
aftermath of a research project gone bad, and that work was certainly
a huge regerence to H.P. Lovecraft. The government is selfish,
murderous and has a monstrous hunger for knowledge. It occasionally
screws up, their mistakes escape, the word gets out, and somebody
stops the scientific program before it does more damage. Yadda yadda
yadda, etc.
Stay tuned next time (very soon), true
believers, when I delve deeper into ST. We are going to talk about
conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. You'll read about the
path of the hero and how Eleven's journey is another theme from the
past we can study to understand the present and predict the show's
future. Until then, bye kids, and have fun storming the castle!
