Stranger Things and the endur­ing night­mare of Stephen King’s America

For all the loca­tions the hor­ror genre has mined, from bay­ou back­coun­try to indus­tri­al ruins to arc­tic out­posts, none is more famil­iar or eerie than your aver­age small Amer­i­can town. The famil­iar sight of a flag fly­ing above the town hall, the band­stand lit with fairy lights for a Sat­ur­day night waltz, the all-night din­er on the inter­state. These are the bread-and-but­ter minu­ti­ae of Amer­i­can life, and we are hyper­sen­si­tive to any­thing threat­en­ing to rip­ple the still-waters of domes­tic bliss.

When we first arrive in Hawkins, Indi­ana on a dark night in 1983, hav­ing glimpsed a strange, unnamed gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty moments pri­or, every­thing is in its right place. There is the dri­ve­way of a cosy, white-pick­et fence home; the well-kept hedges; stands of tall pines march­ing along a wind­ing road into town. It belongs on a gas-sta­tion post­card, with ​‘Wel­come to Hawkins, home of the Roy­al Fur­ni­ture Co’ embla­zoned in red, white and blue across its vista. But with­in min­utes we know Hawkins is not a town of post­cards and tourist mem­o­ra­bil­ia; it’s a town with secrets in the woods and bumps in the night.

Few influ­ences hang greater over the Duf­fer broth­ers’ remark­able love let­ter to 1980s ephemera than that of hor­ror titan Stephen King, a man whose stock-in-trade for over five decades has been the slow dis­as­sem­bly of sleepy Amer­i­can town­ships. In his nov­el ​‘IT’, one of King’s great­est achieve­ments in world build­ing, the town of Der­ry, Maine becomes the per­fect sim­u­lacrum of Amer­i­can life. Span­ning its his­to­ry from the 1950s to the ​’80s, Der­ry is brought to life through its down­town drug­stores, the Kenduskaeg Riv­er than rat­tles beneath the drains, and a men­tal geog­ra­phy you can­not help but lov­ing­ly map out.

The his­to­ry of this fic­tion­al town is stag­ger­ing; every house has a fam­i­ly with their own skele­tons locked away; every end-of-dri­ve­way let­ter­box has a sur­name paint­ed on. King’s Amer­i­ca is so scary because it is so real; we can­not stand the thought that his hor­rors could pos­si­bly walk the same path through the park as us, or see the same faces pass­ing by on the street.

It is this spec­tre of the per­fect small town that taps into Stranger Things’ prover­bial tree of nos­tal­gia, draw­ing out the neon-coloured sap of the ​’80s and using it to glue togeth­er a per­fect homage to King’s Amer­i­can night­mare. Hawkins’ Sher­riff Hop­per, from his gruff stub­ble, pen­chant for morn­ing headaches, and brand of blue-col­lar jus­tice, is a liv­ing por­trait of a typ­i­cal King hero. His sheriff’s office is his cas­tle, and Hawkins his endan­gered king­dom. He can put a name to every pass­ing face, and gov­erns over his own pri­vate slice of Amer­i­cana with its high schools, greasy spoons, and kids out after dark. While the child actors are the beat­ing heart of Stranger Things, them­selves shaped from King’s mould, it is this por­trait of the Mid­west that makes the show so com­pelling and relevant.

For a moment, let’s map out the key areas of King’s Amer­i­ca that have been sub­tly trans­posed onto Netflix’s hit show. The base­ment of Mike’s house, a geeky hub for his friends to indulge in their over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tions, is in many ways a repur­pos­ing of The Loser’s Club’s hang­out in the riv­er bar­rens of Der­ry. The end­less walks through dusty pine groves that seem to mark the lim­i­nal moments of Mike and co.’s com­ing-of-age seem drawn straight from King’s short sto­ry ​‘The Body’ – famous­ly adapt­ed to screen by Rob Rein­er in the beau­ti­ful ode to youth, Stand by Me. The high school cam­pus, in all it’s John Hugh­es inspired glo­ry, is a place defined by social groups and sub­cul­tures that speaks back not sim­ply to King’s own child­hood nar­ra­tives but a slate of ​’80s cin­e­ma that found com­fort and famil­iar­i­ty in the squeaky-clean halls of the local school. The insti­tu­tions of small-town Amer­i­ca keep its peo­ple sane, and any unusu­al activ­i­ty with­in their ter­ri­to­ry will be react­ed against first and foremost.

Hawkins, IN is a liv­ing, breath­ing world and not sim­ply a back­drop to a bun­gled togeth­er super­nat­ur­al ​’80s dud. We believe in it as we believe in its inhab­i­tants, and the first season’s finale felt like the ​‘going away to col­lege’ from ​’80s movies past, leav­ing the places and peo­ple we knew stuck in their ways. Sea­son two promis­es a return to Hawkins and, in spite of the hor­rors that stalk its woods, a return to our new proxy Amer­i­can home­town. Stephen King cap­tured the unique atmos­phere and topog­ra­phy of small-town Amer­i­ca in his fic­tion, and now Stranger Things is the TV torch­bear­er to a time-hon­oured tradition.