ABOVE: A scene from Stranger Things screening on Netflix.
Susanna Freymark
There is an overrun of apocalyptic films running on streaming services.
You know the kind of films …the world is going to end and everyone except the chosen few have been turned into zombies with blistered faces. Contagious global infections run riot. Or a mystery virus kills millions and, hang on … this is starting to get a little close to call.
Covid, mutant covid, monkeypox? The World Health Organisation today declared monkey pox a global health emergency — the highest alert they can give. The same one they gave for covid.
I’ve binge watched The Mist based on a Stephen King story, (a malevolent mist hides creatures who bite and turn everyone into zombies), Resident Evil (a virus created by scientists runs amok and turns animals and people into beasts that eat and kill humans), the survivalist drama The Rain (where a rain-borne virus kills people) and if all that wasn’t enough I succumbed to the hype of Stranger Things.
This was a relief. Set in the 1980s, there was a simplicity to the lives of the characters. They rode bikes, played games like Dungeons and Dragons – oh, and they saved the world in nearly every episode.
This time it wasn’t a virus or monkeypox threatening humans — it was a darkness, deep in the bowels of the earth filled with unconscious desires and threats.
Fortunately, there was that one girl with superpowers.
The kids in Stranger Things spent an inordinate time away from home. Rarely did anyone ask – ‘Where’s Mike? Has he been eaten? Or taken by the darkness?’
At first, watching one or two of these series was a relief. Like viewing the worst version of the world.
Then I numbed out. I could predict who was going to be killed next. The good ones always survived – and the ones with guns too although the baddies always got their comeuppance.
I craved a bit of Pollyanna, the innocence of Wizard of Oz or the cuteness of ET. I wanted a less-real escape.
Remember when we stuck up a finger to 2019. Good riddance, we collectively said at the end of that year.
Then came 2020. Get lost. Then 2021. Lockdowns, mask wearing, fear of the virus, fear of vaccinations, fear of each other. Good riddance to all those years.
Unbelievably 2022 proved to be the hardest yet. While covid restrictions had eased, the flood hit us like a bomb.
And it ain’t over yet.
The news, the films, the world have a harshness to them. The end of the world movies feed into the edges of staying apart, of expecting the worse.
I won’t be stocking up on guns or grenades in case the world becomes its own disaster movie, instead I’ll sit longer by the backyard fire drum, burning broken branches with the dogs chewing bones nearby.
I’ll watch the stars above me, seemingly unchanged even though science tells me some of them no longer exist, the light years just haven’t delivered their end yet.
What the disaster films have is closure. They deliver bad news in a disaster so distressing I can barely watch, but I do watch, I cringe and cheer and even cry at the happy ending. The world is saved. I’m okay, you’re okay.
I want to believe in happy endings, in superpowers and the good of humankind to survive.
And in that survival I want the best of us to be there. The best in us.
Whatever the remaining five months of ‘22 deliver, I’m here.
I’m ready to be one of the good ones.
Stranger Things Easter Eggs That Have Us Excited For The Upcoming Season
Bring it on.
and then