Stranger Things and Magical Minds
The last time my husband and I obsessively binge-watched a scary dark show was over four years ago, probably around the time our now-five-year-old twins started sleeping through the night. Back then we lived for Breaking Bad, as evidenced by this very popular blog I wrote about Breaking Bad-related reading way back when. Since then we’ve binged on a few others including Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Good Wife, Entourage, Unreal, Girls, Transparent, and The Sopranos, and as much as we enjoyed those, none of them followed us into our dreams the way Breaking Bad did. But in the last few weeks, we’ve been going to bed with the Netflix series Stranger Things, and this show has opened a can of worms inside my brain. I haven’t thought about writing another novel since I had kids, but suddenly it’s clear to me that if I ever do I’ll have to include telekinesis in the storyline. It’s just so–compelling.
If you’re not familiar with the show, Stranger Things is set in 1983 and begins with the disappearance of a young boy. His mother’s conviction that he’s still alive leads their small town into a mystery involving secret experiments, a frightening alternative universe, and a little girl named Eleven with supernatural powers. Part of what makes Stranger Things so endearing is the show’s love and attention to its time period. The first thing I said to my husband after we watched the first episode was, “This is going to be exactly like Firestarter by Stephen King.”
Firestarter was published in 1980 and told the story of a little girl named Charlie with pyrokinesis (the ability to spontaneously set things on fire). It was made into a movie in 1984 starring Drew Barrymore. That movie used to run regularly on television on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid, so I watched it more times than I can count. Both Charlie and Eleven from Stranger Things came to be after their parents participated in weird government-run drug experiments and then hooked up with each other, and in both cases the government went to great lengths to capture the offspring and cover up their stories. As a child, reading and watching another kid with that kind of power over adults was intoxicating.
The early Stephen King novels had many similar supernatural elements and often empowered the misfit kids (It and Carrie, anyone?). Worried my parents would confiscate them because of the adult content, I usually read those under my covers with a flashlight after I was supposed to be asleep. Two of my favorites were Firestarter and The Dead Zone because they weren’t exactly horror novels. In fact, if they’d been told from a different point of view the protagonists in those two books could actually be the bad guys, but through King’s telling, they were the heroes. Just seeing the retro covers–which I still have on my bookshelf although the new editions are different and fresher–fill my heart with nostalgia, and the creeps.
When I googled Stranger Things it immediately came up that Firestarter was one of the primary inspirations, right down to the font in the title art. Go on, compare the fonts from the King retro covers with the Stranger Things ad. Now in its third season, they are even releasing a Stranger Things poster that looks like the old movie poster from Firestarter. Clever.
There was another book like Firestarter I recall reading and loving as a preteen. The Girl With the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts is a young adult version of the misfit girl who can move things with her mind. The Girl With the Silver Eyes also has a mother exposed to weird drugs, a lonely and endearing kid named Katie, and adult authorities with evil intentions. I loved The Girl With the Silver Eyes and spent hours staring at my books, trying to turn the pages without touching them just like Katie.
Our beloved Marni also used to watch Stranger Things. Since Marni and I used to like all the same books and authors, it figures we were drawn to similar television shows. Cindy tells me Marni pushed her to keep watching the second season. I only wish Marni were around to share some snappy comments in this blog post. Something tells me she probably tried to turn book pages with her mind once too.
The other night after watching an episode of Stranger Things I asked my husband, “When you were a kid, did you ever go out in your backyard and try to fly?”
“You mean, like a paper airplane?” he asked.
“No, I mean like a superhero.”
He looked at me like I was nuts. Am I the only one who remembers trying to do this as a child?
It didn’t work, of course. None of my supernatural power experiments did. I didn’t want to be in a Harry Potter world; I wanted to walk around my daily life with a good secret.
And if I couldn’t do it, at the very least reading about kids with extraordinary powers gave me an immense feeling of satisfaction. Watching Stranger Things reminded me of that and brought back some childhood longings I can remember with great pleasure, like reading Firestarter. It’s back on my nightstand now.
