Nostalgia is a strange and wonderful thing

Posted 7/18/19

The Netflix show “Stranger Things” has been a cultural phenomenon. When the show’s third season was released on July 4, Netflix claimed 824,000 of its subscribers streamed all eight of its …

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Nostalgia is a strange and wonderful thing

Posted

The Netflix show “Stranger Things” has been a cultural phenomenon.

When the show’s third season was released on July 4, Netflix claimed 824,000 of its subscribers streamed all eight of its episodes in the first day. On July 8, Netflix said the show had been watched by 40.7 million subscribers.

My son, who just turned 12 wanted to watch, and I finally let him. He’s always been pretty squeamish about anything even remotely scary, but he wanted to keep up with his friends who were veteran watchers of the show. So a few weeks before the season three premiere, I started to watch it with him.

In full disclosure, I’m a big fan of the show. I’m particularly fond of its first season. It’s a very well written and acted show, but beyond that, it touches a very real nostalgic nerve center for me. I grew up in the same time period as the setting of the show. I was in third grade in 1983. I also rode a bicycle to my friends’ houses to play Dungeons and Dragons.

The world of “Stranger Things” is a lot like the one I remember, minus the parallel dimension and monsters, of course.

Watching the series again with my son was even more interesting, however, because that world is so foreign to him. In some ways there are similarities. He’s got a close group of friends who all live within a short bike ride from each other. They hold regular sleepovers and spend days hanging out at each other’s homes.

But the difference is that the most common form of entertainment for them is electronic. When they get together, they’re most likely to play Super Smash Bros. or Fortnite on their Nintendo Switches (the most popular games on Nintendo’s latest game console for those who aren’t familiar). They are also in constant communication with each other through group text chats. Nearly every one of my son’s friends has had a smart phone since at least 4th grade.

I explained to my son while we’re watching that, yes, when I was a kid, I spent hours with my friends without any electronics whatsoever. It was one of the attractions of a game like Dungeons and Dragons. We would spend hours creating characters, drawing pictures of them and designing campaigns. Sure, we had video games, but they were mostly for days when you couldn’t get outside or to a friend’s house.

After a season of “Stranger Things,” my son, too, developed a nostalgia for the time, even though his exposure was purely fictional. The idea that you could be creative to stave off the inevitable and plentiful boredom of a childhood summer was appealing.

So last week, he left his Switch in its dock for a day or two while he spent time sketching and recruiting several of his friends to start playing Dungeons and Dragons with him. He has a few takers, probably similarly struck by the same sense of curiosity and wonder for the lives of the kids in “Stranger Things.”

We’ll see how long it lasts.

Pete Mazzaccaro

opinion