- Collection:
- Spelman College Faculty Publications
- Title:
- "We're all patriots in this house": American Fantasies of Colorblindness and Border Control in Stranger Things
- Creator:
- Kumar, Rebecca, Spelman College
- Date of Original:
- 2019-02-26
- Subject:
- Spelman College--Faculty
African American scholars
African Americans--Education (Higher)--Georgia
African American universities and colleges--Georgia--Atlanta - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
- Medium:
- articles
- Type:
- Text
- Format:
- application/pdf
- Description:
- The decade in which Stranger Things is set was a crucial turning point in post�civil rights African-American history. For many, the Reagan-era is associated less with halcyon suburbs like Hawkins, where America was once "great," and more with the virulently racist War on Drugs, which targeted and criminalized black Americans, constructing them as monsters who must be disciplined and jailed. The events of the era continue to impede genuine racial integration in the United States today. This essay argues that the series' historically amnesic approach to representations of racial difference result in a problematically colorblind portrayal of Lucas Sinclair, the only black child in The Party. And its deployment of horror's core genealogical convention - the substitution of "the other" with monstrous bodies - reinforces, however unwittingly, ideologies of segregation. As a result, Stranger Things is a telling political palimpsest that overlays Reagan-era nationalism with that of the contemporary Trump-era.
- External Identifiers:
- Metadata URL:
- http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/sc.fac.pubs:2022_kumar_rebecca_1
- Rights Holder:
- Spelman College
- Original Collection:
- Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media
- Holding Institution:
- Spelman College
- Rights:
-
