Remember Things: Consumerism, Nostalgia, and Geek Culture in <i>Stranger Things</i>

Abstract

Stranger Things is one of several contemporary popular media texts that is celebrated for its homage to 1980s genre film. Stranger Things evokes "geek culture" not only through its science-fiction elements, but also through its young protagonists, who are coded as archetypical geeks. This paper analyzes emerging scholarship on the geek archetype in media and geek culture in practice, nostalgia theory, and the first season of Stranger Things to theorize how consumerism is at the intersection of geek culture and nostalgia for the 1980s as mediated past.