Stranger Things 2 went live on Friday, and much to my surprise, the Duffer Brothers pulled back from the tale-telling of the first season, seeking safe harbor from the superstorm by immersing themselves in the warm glow of other people's nostalgia.
But they chose the very worst time to do so.
Stranger Things was almost certainly a limited hangout, but Stranger Things 2 is just a trip to the video store of Generation X's salad days. Nearly every major cinematic tentpole touchstone of the 70s, 80s and 90s is referenced in the sprawling, unfocused plot.
The first season of Stranger Things was about the Eighties, including its pop culture but also its politics and culture. This new season is about Eighties movies and nothing much else at all. Well, maybe a few Eighties comic books and TV shows too.
Off the top of my head I spotted The Exorcist, Raiders of the Lost Ark (David Harbour has fully morphed into the Millennial's Harrison Ford), ET: The Extraterrestrial, The Goonies, Gremlins, Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, Jurassic Park, Aliens, Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostbusters, John Carpenter's The Thing, Pet Cemetery, The Outsiders, The Watcher in the Woods, Cujo, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Firestarter and on and on.
And it also seems to be very much of a piece with Stephen King's IT, counting the novel, the miniseries and this year's blockbuster hit. Stranger Things even lifts the giant interdimensional spider creature. But it all could not have come at a worse time.
Today, the big news is Star Trek: Discovery star Anthony Rapp accusing House of Cards star Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him in 1986, when Rapp was 14 years old. Spacey's House of Cards is on Netflix, and it and Stranger Things are arguably the streaming service's crown jewels.
Which doesn't exactly bode well for Stranger Things.
Like Harvey Weinstein-- whose fortunes were linked in many ways to Spacey's in that both were potent symbols of the 90s arthouse boom-- Spacey's predations were a long-held open secret in Hollywood, earning a punchline on Family Guy several years ago.
But do note that Rapp and Seth MacFarlane are starring in this double-pronged Space Command conditioning program with their concurrent Starfleet programs.
Spacey.
But it gets worse: Tony Podesta, long a prime target of the "Pizzagate" contingent, was forced to resign his post at the immeasurably-powerful lobbying group he established with his brother today, in much the same way Weinstein was forced to resign from the company he and his brother build into a Hollywood power.
It's all being blamed on Special Prosecutor Mueller's probe but I don't think that's the end of it. And neither do you.
There's something else going on here. There are subterranean rumblings, like the echoes of a secret war being fought deep underground. The stakes could not possibly be higher. Tony Podesta didn't just resign a lobbying firm, he surrendered the very basis for his power, his reason for being. It's like castrating a porn star. Maybe that's a telling analogy.
Podesta has been the target of scrutiny for his questionable tastes in art, much of which seems to focus on the victimization of children. The John Podesta email scandal- which morphed into Pizzagate- ripped the lid of a world few are familiar with, a world in which provocative art, occultism and an alarming cavalierness towards the safety and well-being of very young children all cohere and metastasize into a toxic cultural carcinoma.
Stranger Things can't divorce itself from the nesting place where it incubated and hatched. And you can't ignore the obvious mingling of the streams here when it makes such major headlines. If I didn't know better I'd almost say all of this was being coordinated in some way, and that Stranger Things is going to be be the worst off for it.
But then again I'm not sure I do know better.
Man-Thing. Really?
What makes all of this even worse timing for Stranger Things is that former child actor Corey Feldman-- who starred in a lot of the films Stranger Things openly references and pays tribute to -- is on the warpath against Hollywood pedophilia.
He's taken a lot of flak for this- more recently for his attempts to crowdfund a major documentary on the topic as well as an arrest on a minor drug offense- but has raised the profile of child predation in Hollywood to an all-time high. I'm seeing a lot of people take shots at him but what exactly are they doing to fight the problem?
He's taken a lot of flak for this- more recently for his attempts to crowdfund a major documentary on the topic as well as an arrest on a minor drug offense- but has raised the profile of child predation in Hollywood to an all-time high. I'm seeing a lot of people take shots at him but what exactly are they doing to fight the problem?
What we're seeing here is a hat trick - Feldman, Spacey and Podesta - which may be enough to catalyze a critical mass on the topic, though I have my doubts that the dam will well and truly burst. The fallout could Fukushima the atmosphere for the entertainment industry for many years to come and there is way, way, way too much money at stake for such a thing to happen. It's why the checkbooks come out whenever the issue is raised.
And it raises an even more troubling prospect; was that hazy warm glow of nostalgia all based on the cloaked fantasies of sexual predators? Looking back on the "good old days" of Eighties pop culture you really don't have to dig very deep until you hit the gas main of pedophilia, implied or explicit.
It being case in point. A controversy erupted over the bizarre and entirely egregious orgy scene in the novel, which inspired a very odd and rather troubling reaction from author Stephen King.
But it leads you to wonder about other plotlines in King's work; the weird relationship between Bobby Garfield and Ted Brautigan in Hearts in Atlantis, for one instance. And the more explicit implications of the relationship in Apt Pupil, which was echoed in the real world when Bryan Singer was accused of impropriety in a lawsuit related to the film adaptation.
But I couldn't help but wonder why no one was questioning the fact that the It movie seems to spend an awful lot of time focusing on prepubescent children in their underwear during the quarry scene. It was not only entirely unnecessary it didn't even make sense. Why?
First of all, it's extremely unlikely that they'd be jumping off such a high drop at that age and they certainly wouldn't be stripped down to their tighty whitey's. They'd almost certainly swim in something along the lines of cutoff jean shorts.
Quarry reservoirs are very dangerous places to swim and there's all kinds of shit floating in the water. Believe me, you want some denim barbed wire between the vitals and whatever's in there.
Quarry reservoirs are very dangerous places to swim and there's all kinds of shit floating in the water. Believe me, you want some denim barbed wire between the vitals and whatever's in there.
This is the kind of issue that goes back a very long way in our culture. But this focus on the Eighties - and the horror stories that we heard with child actors from that period - may not be what Stranger Things - or Netflix- wants to be tapped into, especially right now.
One example: The boatload of Goonies connections in Stranger Things- and It- can't help but call but call to mind the very weird symbolism at work in that film, or the ultimate fate of the Coreys, as Feldman and Haim came to be known.
And once you start pulling on that thread, it won't stop there.
You can pull down the whole damn Oz curtain that cloaks a world most people are not going to want to fall into, I guarantee you that. I'm not saying it won't and I'm certainly not saying it shouldn't, I'm just telling it like it is.
This is why we saw such a visceral reaction to Pizzagate outside the Voat-Reddit-4Chan-YouTube quadrangle. It most certainly is a kill-the-messenger kind of thing but that's what happens when you have a message people really don't want to hear.
This is why we saw such a visceral reaction to Pizzagate outside the Voat-Reddit-4Chan-YouTube quadrangle. It most certainly is a kill-the-messenger kind of thing but that's what happens when you have a message people really don't want to hear.
Because once people start looking at this problem, they won't be able to turn away from it. From looking more closely what's become of America's child stars. And has for a very long time.
Take 90s superstars Macaulay Culkin....
Take 90s superstars Macaulay Culkin....
...and the Olsen Twins.
I hate this shit, personally. I hate reading about it, I hate writing about it. I have an issue with people who wallow in it.
But at the same time, it really has to stop. The real question is strategy and tactics. Because the bad guys are masters of strategy, if nothing else. And the last thing you want to do is numb people or normalize the issue.
The thing with both pedophilia and the child star system is that they are both about the fetishization of a very temporary situation. Both entirely judge a person's value on something that person cannot possibly sustain. This is why both pedophilia and the child star system are so immeasurably destructive.
But at the same time, it really has to stop. The real question is strategy and tactics. Because the bad guys are masters of strategy, if nothing else. And the last thing you want to do is numb people or normalize the issue.
The thing with both pedophilia and the child star system is that they are both about the fetishization of a very temporary situation. Both entirely judge a person's value on something that person cannot possibly sustain. This is why both pedophilia and the child star system are so immeasurably destructive.
Little Spacey- Whales' Tails
But there's another layer here and that's the fact that all of this ties directly into the weird symbolic spiderweb that seems to be emerging here. And like the rest of it, it's front and center if you only take the time to look.
None of this is accidental, spontaneous, or meaningless. This all plays into the new reality we are entering into, believe it.
Take the fact that Spacey is from South Orange, New Jersey. Part of the same township that split up and gave us West Orange, home of NASA's Kelly twins.
And there's the 58-59 dichotomy we saw with NASA and the Grammy's vis a vis Las Vegas.
So Space. Fall. Orange. 58. Leo. Yet again.
And since Elizabeth Fraser seems to be one of the codebreaking keys in all of this, do note that she warbled "Little Spacey"...
...and that it and Victorialand were released in April 1986...
...smack dab in the middle of the same time period Rapp claims Spacey assaulted him.
Victorialand being the album we looked in conjunction with the death of sexual assault survivor Chester Bennington.
We're going to be looking at the importance of time codes in relation to all of this in the near future so note that "Little Spacey" is 3:28....
... and 3/28 was the release date of film co-starring Kevin Spacey...
...set and filmed in Las Vegas.
Whose poster features the same Jack-Ace sigil we saw in the wake of the October 1st incidents...
...21 also starred Cohasset's own Kate Bosworth...
....who broke into stardom with Blue Crush in which she played a Siren of sorts.
...and played against Spacey in Superman Returns.
Directed by Bryan Singer.
Superman being a Fallen Vega.
I know this all still seems crazy to people but it keeps coming up aces. And in the near future I'll explain exactly why.
But for the time being remember that the entire world you knew is being recreated by code and symbol.
CODE AND SYMBOL.
Why exactly would you expect anything else in Meatspace? I'd really like to know.
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