Stranger Things- Representation Essay

How are different social groups represented in the sequence you have analysed? What role does the use of media language, signs and signifiers have in constructing and presenting these representations as real?

There are many social groups represented in Stranger things, one prominent one is teenagers. The group of boys (Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas) are represented as the stereotypical geeky boys. They love to play their make-believe board game Dungeons and Dragons. This is stereotypical of young children to play with toys and board games that were typical in the 1980s. As they are represented as nerds, then we expect them to be playing these games rather than doing sports, playing outside etc. Mike said to his mum that they had spent 10 hours playing the game straight in the basement of mikes house, which gives them the representation of nerdy/geeky. There is also the representation of the older teen. The Byers family clearly are not well off in terms of money, so Jonathan, the older brother, has to act as the mother when Joyce is out working. This is challenging the stereotype of old teenagers as lazy as he has to help out with the family. He has to cook breakfast, get Will up and ready for school and has to have a job to help with the family finances.

Another social group in Stranger Things is Mothers, especially Joyce Byers. Will’s mum is a very prominent character in the first episode as we see her look for will and how she is coping with him going missing. Joyce is a single mum who has to look after her two sons with no help. We can see she is struggling to cope and everything is quite frantic in the Byers household. She is struggling to get everything organised and maintain a structured family unit. Though we can see how caring she is and how much she loves her son. She reacts in a very distressed way when finding out Will is missing, a reaction we would expect from any mother if their son went missing. We can see by her facial expressions and general worried demeanour, that she is desperate to find her son and would do anything to find him. This is again shown in the scene with Hopper, the zoomed in shot of the type writer with the word ‘MISSING’ in the foreground suggests this is very serious and this increases the intense atmosphere. We can see the mum is clearly stressed and nervous as she is very fidgety while smoking, a way for her to calm down.

Another social group represented in this episode is the police, especially the sheriff. The sheriff is Hopper, who is represented as the stereotypical lazy American policeman. We see this in the first time we see him, the lengthy shots which pan across his home show a messy house, with fags and drink everywhere. It shows that he is clearly struggling, but he does not want to show his feelings and get help, which is something that is believed to be true in the media as men are not expressive like that. This is again shown in the scene of him in his office with Joyce. There are messy papers everywhere and he doesn’t look ready to hear what Joyce has to say.