Rose-coloured Rear View: 'Stranger Things' and the Lure of a False Past

Popular culture seems determined to endlessly recycle the tropes and icons of past decades, and the 1980s is often the era of choice. The latest expression of this nostalgia obsession is Netflix series Stranger Things. In looking at the way the show embraces and reconstructs the past, writes Myke Bartlett, we can see how we use nostalgia to make meaning of the present – or simply attempt to escape its horrors.

Additional keywords: New and Notable, middle years, senior secondary, US politics, Donald Trump, Stephen King, bingewatch, Steven Spielberg, John Hughes, soundtrack, queer, gender representation, Duffer Brothers.