The WSQK, The Matrix, and propaganda
With this post, I want to delve deeper into one of the parallels to The Matrix I posted about here — the WSQK and its radio head.
Quick recap: In 501, when the WSQK signal is sabotaged, we are provided with a very clear reference to The Matrix: The signal being down is indicated by a red light, and once the fuse is connected again it switches to a blue light. this is in spite of the manual (which Dustin told us to read) stating that the lights should be red and green.
In The Matrix, the red pill wakes you up from the simulation; if you swallow the blue pill instead, you forget everything you knew about the existence of the matrix (i.e. that it’s a simulation) and go back to living your (simulated) life as usual.
As pointed out by @lavenderlatte222 in this post, the WSQK being up and running reinforces the theme of Stranger Things that music keeps you trapped in the mind prison. In season 4, the asylum has a music room because music “calms the broken mind”, and in season 5 Henry offers Holly a cassette player and her favorite record when leaving her alone at the Creel house in Camazotz. Even Max’ arc somewhat supports this because as she tells us, it was never about the music; her actual tether to the real world was her connection to someone who means a lot to her aka Lucas.
But why does music keep our characters trapped?
While our characters may not live in a fully simulated world, think about what the WSQK actually represents: Propaganda!
Consider Robin’s broadcast that introduces us to the Hawkins of season 5. She’s playing down the mysterious events going on, “encouraging compliance” as she states herself. Media is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful tool for propaganda. The WSQK indoctrinates the residents of Hawkins day in, day out.
But it’s not just the moderation; Stranger Things teaches us how music can be used as ‘propaganda’, too. Think back to the examples of the asylum and Camazotz I gave above: In both cases, music is used to keep people happy and stop them from questioning their realities; to stop them from realising they are imprisoned.
So it makes perfect sense that the WSQK being up an running is symbolised by a blue light because it keeps whatever version of a mind prison/altered reality/simulation/… the characters are in up and running.
I don’t think we should treat Camazotz/the radio head lights/flayed Hawkins as analogous to the Matrix (because i don’t think the Duffers would just rip off the concept) but I do think that we can establish that blue represents some sort of propaganda/simulation while red represents the truth/reality. You may think now that this contradicts the WSQK tower as a metaphor for the signals between Will and Mike — hold your horses, I'll get back to that!
So why did the signal go down?
As the characters state, Robin was encouraging compliance so the military doesn’t have a motive to cut her off, right? Well, although Robin was reiterating the military’s rules she stopped complying right after, when she was openly talking about her queer relationship live on the radio. While she didn’t directly state that she was going on a date with a woman, she wasn’t exactly censoring herself either — people could very easily put the pieces together if they
hear Rockin’ Robin talking about her date
see Robin and Vickie at Enzo’s that evening
And given that Hawkins is a small town, Rockin’ Robin isn’t exactly anonymous, and it isn’t exactly unlikely for someone to actually piece it together.
Right after Robin is so transparent (considering the time and place) about dating a woman is when the signal is interrupted; the propaganda machine is sabotaged and the red light on the radio head symbolizes that the truth got out/that the Matrix was disrupted in some way. Robin’s queerness is censored.
The metaphor of the WSQK as a propaganda machine also ties in with readings of the Mind Flayer: Both are metaphors for how queer people — especially queer men — were villainized, discriminated against, and censored in the 80s. And, at large, they are metaphors for social conformity or even fascism (i.e. the ultimate version of conformity). In case you’re not familiar with that interpretation of the Mind Flayer, here are some snippets from TVmicroscope’s analysis of Stranger Things subtext:
The end of season two sees Dustin compare the Mind Flayer and the Demodogs to the Nazis in World War II, for example. He sees these monsters from the Upside Down as racial supremacists convinced of their superiority as a master race and the inferiority of all other living things, trying to take over the world. […]
So, the Upside Down is more than just a metaphorical closet for the gays, yeah? The show seems to be saying, “It started with the gays, but they were just the first victims. In the 1980s, this movement [the ‘Reaganite Revolution’] was coming for everyone in the US. The gays just happened to be its first targets, which is why they could see this more clearly than the rest of society still blissfully unaware of what was to come.” […]
Season three in particular ratchets up this whole angle: Here we now get the Mind Flayer controlling people through a type of hive mind. […] The Mind Flayer strips people of their ability to think for themselves, their agency, their whole identity and turns them into empty and controlled meat puppets, essentially. [..]
You don’t need any special subtext-reading skills to understand what you are being told here about the Reaganite flavour of American conservatism, about its followers and fans, and about the evangelical Christian Right taking over both domestic and foreign policy in the US in the 1980s: Mindless meat puppets, completely controlled by a dark entity from an alternate dimension just about covers it.
While the Mind Flayer presents this to us in the form of something supernatural, the radio broadcast is the non-supernatural analogue to this. Where the Mind Flayer enforces conformity by controlling its puppets through the hivemind, propaganda achieves conformity by imposing curated content on citizens. They become part of the hivemind by tuning into these broadcasts that determine the Overton window (i.e. the range of subjects politically acceptable to the mainstream). Whatever is presented to them as acceptable and even desirable creates pressure on the individual to conform to those norms and ideals.
The show actively ties the Mind Flayer/hivemind to radio signals, too: Will’s connection to the hivemind is described as an radio antenna receiving signals. And when they fry the demogorgon in 505, the hivemind particles go up the radio tower.
All of this teaches us another important thing: In order to avoid censorship, Robin has to speak in code over the radio when talking about Vickie; or when giving the party instructions for the next crawl, for that matter. The marketing concept of the real-life WSQK maps onto this, with easter eggs and encoded messages being hidden in it; and with the entirety of the broadcast likely holding deeper meaning through the WSQKsync. There are also instances where the moderators censor themselves, e.g. Vance Goodman making this comment after the tower is hit:
Stay right were you are because I’m about to hand over the mic to the Hawkins Update guy who can shed some light on all the goings on across Hawkins and, uh, man, it’s been… eventful, is one of the words I’d use, uh, some of the other ones you can’t really say on the radio.
Communicating in code is exactly what Robin teaches Will and it is historically (and contemporarily) what queer people have been doing to find each other. She tells him to look out for more subtle non-verbal signals to figure out if another queer person likes you, and speaks in code herself when calling Vickie her “good friend” after being caught by Will.
Does this remind you of anything? Or anyone?
Mike shows the three physical signs of attraction Robin taught Will — a brush of the knee, a bump of the elbow, a shared look. He also speaks in code: He calls Will his “best friend” to set him apart from his other friends. He uses D&D terms to express his admiration for Will (honest-to-god sorcerer), and he is our storyteller after all. He censors himself by saying that there’s a story he can never tell. But he does tell that story if you read between the lines. Just like our character speaking in code, the Duffers are speaking in code to tell us a story within a story, as I explain here.
And finally, if we assume that they are under Vecna’s spell or flayed in the epilogue, then how would they communicate without Vecna/the Mind Flayer finding out about it? They would have to talk in code, and D&D is the perfect language for that. Not only to tell the real story of the mage (his love for Will) but also to communicate that this, perhaps, isn’t a happy ending (Vallaki not being a happy place). It’s signals that the party (or at least Will as our radio antenna) would pick up on but Vecna/the Mind Flayer wouldn’t.
