Common Sense Reborn

“Stranger Things” Part 1

¹³The Lord is like a father to his children,

tender and compassionate to those who fear him. (Psalms 103:13)

Blessed Monday to y’all! I hope you had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend celebrating your Dad and spending time in worship of our Good, Good Father. I was blessed with my second Father’s Day weekend off in a row, and my family and I traveled down to Florida to spend three days with my good Father. During that time, we spent as much of it with my Dad as possible. Our only time away from the Z estate was to help celebrate my youngest niece’s birthday at a really fun trampoline park in Bradenton, Florida. This marked two years in a row we did the same activity, the only difference was last year, I was preparing to be away from my family for my Poland “Deployment”, so the bitterness of my upcoming departure loomed in the background. This year, there was no impeding separation, only the joy of reunification, and we had a wonderful weekend together.

On Friday night, we all sat down as a family and watched the season finale of “Stranger Things” Season Four. I try not to get wrapped up in too many streaming shows, but “Stranger Things” has captured me since Season Two, when I had the time to binge Season One and Two during an Annual Training event for my unit in the Georgia Army National Guard. I fell in love with the show for several reasons, the largest was the nostalgia the show brings up. As a child of the ’80s, the feel of the show, from the music to the costumes, to the way the kids live and act, brought back all of my fondest memories of my childhood. Another reason I love the show is that the main characters are kids battling some of the greatest villains ever created in film. The third is the music. “Stranger Things” soundtrack is always full of the greatest hits from the ’80s decade. And, now, I truly love the show because our oldest child became a fan while I was away in Poland. She had finally reached an age where we thought she could watch the show, and much as I hoped and figured, she fell in love with it. Surprisingly, and Mrs. Z and I are not sure how good of an idea this has been, even our youngest has enjoyed watching the series. Our middle child, our seven-year-old son, finds the show a little too scary, but the toddler loves watching it, and in the scariest scenes she just looks at us and goes “uh-oh”. We have noticed that on the nights after watching an episode of the show, she has a hard time sleeping, most likely haunted by nightmares of the hellish landscape that is “The Upside Down“.

The more I watch “Stranger Things”, the more I see the parallels in the story to mankind’s existence with God and God’s main antagonist, the devil. This week, depending on how exhausted I am after going back to work, I want to explore these similarities, especially in analyzing some of Season Four’s most memorable characters. Taking pop culture and extracting Biblical Truths is a fun activity for any wise church leader. Our home church, Compassion Christian, does this every year for their “At The Movies” series, which starts soon, and I know that as you will see this week, “Stranger Things”, is a fantastic pop culture phenomenon that easily points us to Jesus.

Today, in honor of Father’s Day, I want to look at the Father Figures in the show, primarily “Papa”, “Hopper”, “Steve”, and quickly one of the main characters dads. *Warning*-if you have never seen “Stranger Things” stop reading this post and start watching the show on Netflix. These next few days will include many spoilers. Most of the hyperlinks in these character analyses will come from the Wiki Fandom page for “Stranger Things” (which I will abbreviate as ST going forward). Second warning, what you are about to read will also reveal the true depravity of the human being, even within our own government.

Papa

Dr. Martin Brenner, played by Matthew Modine, is the head of Hawkins National Laboratory, a secret government program to enhance physic abilities within “different” and gifted children. The creators of the show, the Duffler Brothers, were inspired by the CIA’s real-world program called Project MK-Ultra that existed from 1953-1973. If you click any of the links within this paragraph, you can easily fall into a rabbit-hole of horror, to learn what our government is capable of as they sought to develop a “truth serum” and picked up on the horrible war crimes committed by the Nazi’s to perform on our own citizens.

But back to Dr. Brenner, and the few biblical truths we can extract from his character (ST is such a complex and rich show I could spend hours pulling parallels about the storyline for analysis, but neither of us have the time for that). Despite all the bad Dr. Brenner does, his one underlying thread of good is that he wants the best out of his “children”, however, what he does to bring that out of them is horrific. So, one biblical truth we can see in Dr. Brenner, is that we should do all we can to push our children to excel, find the things they are brilliant at, and really help them shine in the world with those God-given talents.

Hopper

Jim Hopper, the Police Chief of Hawkins, Indiana, is played by David Harbour, who has become one of my favorite actors and characters in popular culture. Hopper stands for all that is good in the world of ST. Driven by the haunting loss of his daughter to cancer, Hopper’s character is complex and you see him develop as an alcoholic, depressed has-been, to being the father figure to the show’s main protagonist, El. At the end of season three, viewers are led to believe that Hopper gives his life to save El, but then we learn in Season Four that Hopper is alive and somehow in a Russian prison (the Russian’s, just like in the world now, are another main antagonist and the focus for Hawkin Laboratory’s MKUltra program). Hopper teaches us that, like a good, good father, we should do everything in our power to protect our children, and Hopper demonstrates the unconditional love of God in his pursuit to get back to El to help keep her safe, although most of the time El is perfectly capable of protecting herself.

Steve

Steve Harrington, played by Joey Keerey, has increasingly become my favorite of the “Young Adult” characters of the show. He has garnered the comedic title of “the babysitters” of the kids, but displays more of a good, good father ethos as he seeks to also protect the younger characters in the show, and is willing to constantly put his safety and life on the line to battle the evils of “The Upside Down”. Steve’s character development is also rich as he goes from the popular senior to not getting accepted into college, struggles with finding romance, and reveals he is still hung up on his high school sweetheart, Nancy Wheeler. But once again, we see the love of a good father reflecting off Steve’s character, as he, like Hopper, will do everything in his power to protect his “children”.

The Other Dads

For the rest of the father figures in the show, we are seen what not-good fathers look like, but I will only spend time to look at one. The boring and never-present-in his kid’s lives Ted Wheeler, who always seems oblivious to the challenges his two children, Nancy and Mike, are facing. These challenges range from normal teenage life, to the life-threatening battles they face dealing with the monsters from another dimension. The main truth we can extract from Ted’s character is that we should always strive to be involved in our children’s lives, to find out what we can do to help them navigate the challenges of life as a child and teenager, do our best to protect them from the evils of this world, and go to no ends to help harvest their God-given talents and help them become adults that seek to change and save the world.

Buckle-up readers, this week is going to be a lot of fun (for me at least, and I hope for you as well). We are just getting started and I cannot wait for the forthcoming days as we look at some of the major characters in Season Four and the Biblical Truths we can extract from this amazing series.

This week, I will also be veering away from the current releases in the Christian Music world to share my favorite 80s tunes from the show. Beginning with this gem below and running towards the two singles that became the baseline for amazing cinematography in Season Four.