Ah, Stranger Things, the lovable amalgamation of everything ’80s pop culture. A hit that seemingly came out of nowhere, dumped onto our laps from the kindly, prescient overlords at Netflix. A series with something for everyone: action, mystery, coming-of-age, and most importantly nostalgia. Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone on the internet found it p-p-p-problematic?!??
Well leave it to the folks at Vox Media to spoil things worse than Ralph Nader. In two articles, the progressive pedants slap the “sexist” label on Stranger Things. All because the worst character in the series, Nancy’s wet blanket best friend Barb, was summarily killed off and no one seemed to care that much.
Really? All this over Barb? The character with such unforgettable lines as, “I don’t know, it’s a school night,” and “Don’t we have a biology test tomorrow?” Is anyone supposed to care when she got sucked into another dimension and eaten by a monster?
Is it — gasp! — sexist that she didn’t have a bigger role? “Given the national conversation on how women are treated in television and film, it’s not an unfair question to ask,” said The Verge’s Andrew Liptak. “Killing the character off effectively reduces her to a prop.”
Oh, no. An ’80s-inspired monster mystery where a minor character gets killed by said monster! It must be sexism.
And Genevieve Valentine at Vox expanded the sentiment, claiming Barb’s death represented the series’s “limited view of women.”
For the casual observer, Stranger Things is chock-full of great female characters. Nancy Wheeler, a teenage girl who sets out to trap and kill a monster to save Barb (despite Barb being the absolute worst). Winona Ryder’s character, a mother who must use wit and ingenuity to solve the mystery of her missing son despite how crazy she may appear to the outside world. And Eleven, the badass government experiment who flips cars with her mind, all while learning the meaning of friendship. Great characters, except to navel gazing culture critics, of course.
Valentine believes Ryder’s character is limited because she doesn’t have a rich life outside her missing son. What a surprise, a grieving mother doesn’t have time for Zumba classes and landscape portraiture when she’s trying to cope with the crisis of a son who could totally be dead.
The whole article reads like someone grasping onto a trending Facebook topic and performing mental gymnastics to call a great work sexist, reveling in all the hate clicks.
“More telling is how Nancy’s personal worth is framed outside romance; it’s measured almost entirely by how nice she is to her little brother’s friends…”
No, no, no. Nancy is mean to her little brother’s friends because she’s 16 and they’re 12-year-old little dorks.
“The situation gets awkward when you imagine that one of the reasons Barb perished so early is that Stranger Things‘ childhood lens simply couldn’t imagine what happened to a girl boys didn’t think was cute.”
I’m just going to come out and say it. I’m glad Barb died. I’m glad we didn’t have a spoilsport, naysayer following Nancy around on her monster hunt. I’m glad she was the reason Nancy decided to start monster hunting in the first place. I think the culture critics admire Barb so much because they like to ruin good things just like Barb tried to ruin Nancy’s social life with her absolutely draining personality.