Lane Scott on Stranger Things

The wonderful part of this show, the reason it's called Analog Childhood, is that it shows what middle childhood without digital life, without sticking kids in front of a screen, but actually allowing them to prove dominion over their little realm, which is usually pretend. It's some mixture of pretend and real. And it shows how an essential part of childhood is allowing children to find dominion and expertise first in their world that's not run by adults, not oversupervised, not kind of managed by adults. What they learn in that stage translates into a competent, for the boys, masculine adulthood and a real status in a group. Those skills and those interests that you have the leisure to pursue before life gets real, before you have to be an adult, those elements end up being a big part of your personality. So I think the interesting thing about the show for me was just to try to portray what it tells us about how to raise kids now and what our kids might be missing if we fail to allow them to have this kind of essential middle childhood, this analog childhood. Welcome once again to The Close Read, your official Claremont Review of Books podcast. I'm your host, Spencer Clavin, Associate Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and we are in spring. Spring has sprung, and the way you know that is that the spring 2026 issue of the Claremont Review of Books should be in your mailbox. If it's not, you're not yet a subscriber and you need to rectify that post-haste by going to claremontreviewofbooks.com. Then come back and talk to me. No, we're very glad you're here one way or another, and we're particularly glad to be talking today to our guest, Lane Scott, who is a writer living in Angels Camp, California, and she also writes the terrific — and I mean this with all sincerity, not that I don't always mean these things with sincerity — but really a great sub-stack, Matriarch Goals, where she writes about culture, I would say, and sometimes about the so-called war between the sexes, kind of gender politics, but just kind of a beacon of prudence and good sense on sub-stack from Lane Scott, who has a piece now in the CRB called Analog Kids, which is about stranger things, and I love this piece. I have so much to ask you about stranger things, but first of all, Lane, welcome to The Closer Read. Thank you. Good to be here. Yeah, great to have you a first-time guest, and hopefully not last time. We're very glad you're here. So I want to start by telling you my relationship to stranger things and just ask you for your response. So when the first season of this show came out on Netflix, I was enthralled. I loved Stranger Things season one. I had the same reaction to it that I had to Severance and Pluribus. Thank God something original is on TV, like a new story. Yes, it has all these nostalgia elements and callback dimensions, but that's kind of part of what it's saying, and I just think it's so cool that we have this new, interesting, creepy thing. We got to the end of season one, and I thought, I really hope they don't do another season of that, because what a great kind of complete—because one of my complaints about modern pop culture is constant remakes, and everything has to go on forever. I was raised in the British way of doing television, which is you tell six episodes of a story, and then you end it. So then they did another one. I was a little bit bummed, but I thought, okay, fine. I sort of assumed that would happen, and I'll go with it. I got deep into it for maybe three seasons or so, and at that point, the sunk cost is so great that you just don't pull out, no matter what. I fell right asleep halfway through the last episode of this last season. A couple weeks ago, I still haven't gone back and watched it, because at this point, I just does not care. To quote—I think it was Clarence Thomas's grandfather—I does not care, and I haven't had the motivation. It sounds like from this piece, you have had a similar kind of—you feel the show has fallen off a little bit. Tell me what motivated you to write about Stranger Things, what your relationship is with the show, and maybe we'll start there. My oldest child was born in 2007. When this show came out in 2016, I have five children, four boys and one girl. When the show started, they were all too young to view it with us, obviously. So we would put them to bed, and then we would go, and it was like escape. Part of it, for me, is remembering a pre-COVID time and a time when I was younger, and it kind of has a nostalgia for me. When I realized that there were elements in it that I wanted to write about, I watched the series over again. But this time, my three teens were old enough to watch it with me. So the process of looking at something and viewing it with your own children—a few fast-forwarded scenes, to be clear. I'm not promoting it for all viewers, certainly, but I will say that for parents who worry about their kids viewing things, it's a pretty worthwhile exercise to watch it with your kids, because it brings up a lot of stuff. We had a lot of good conversations, and it was just sort of magical to watch them go through the whole thing from the beginning. I think everybody who's a fan of the show feels the same way about the first season. It's kind of like True Detective, the first season. It's one of the greatest works of art of the last 10 years, certainly, maybe even this century. It's very complete, and it has a lot of things that we've sort of failed or forgotten to evoke in our television shows and our movies. Particularly, I think I mentioned in the piece, it has a much stronger exposition of the good than the evil. We live in a time where a lot of our art, a lot of television, is sort of enthralled with what I call despair porn. It's kind of a devotion to illustrating evil and the problem, or the evil in us, to an outrageous extent. Whatever's bad, the creators or showrunners take more time looking at that and talking about what that is. I thought, among other things, Stranger Things is a rare example of an exposition of the good, and in particular, why good defeats evil, and what sorts of things are necessary to find in potential heroes that will make them stronger. The monster portrayed in the series is very unique. The realm that the monster lives in is very unique. I thought one of the most original components of the show. The more you think about it, the more you think, how did they ever come up with that? It's so good. It's not that the monster isn't properly displayed. It's just that this show, I think, is unique among popular shows in just doing a better job and making you more connected with the good side. Watching that with my teens, it was so much richer. It's true that all the things you say about, as you go through the seasons, it's sad. Another thing that I wanted to capture in writing about it is that I think that should watch the last episode. Although, as I go into in the piece, they lose their way in modern world politics a little bit. They do stick the landing because they realize that what actually the story is about is growing up. It's actually sorrowful to paint all of childhood, including the end, including leaving middle childhood. It starts with a bunch of 12-year-olds at the center. Part of what's so wonderful about it is that it's a really good illustration of just the joy and the necessity of an ethic middle childhood. You're not a small child, but you're not a teen. It's that center part that we kind of fail, honestly, to understand and to illustrate properly in our art. You get so attached. Obviously, as time goes on, and of course, there were writer strikes and COVID, so it was delayed, completing the series. These actors grow up, and it's sad. It's sad leaving middle childhood. I think one thing to think about is how much of your disappointment that it went beyond that first series is because you are leaving childhood. You are done with the wonderful part of the show. The reason it's called Analog Childhood is that it shows what middle childhood without digital life, without sticking kids in front of a screen, but actually allowing them to prove dominion over their little realm, which is usually pretend. It's some mixture of pretend and real. It shows how an essential part of childhood is allowing children to find dominion and expertise first in their world that's not run by adults, not oversupervised, not kind of managed by adults. It shows how what they learn in that stage translates into a competent, for the boys, masculine adulthood and a real status in a group among their friends and even others. It shows how you need that step because those skills and those interests that you have the leisure to pursue before life gets real, before you have to be an adult, those elements end up being a big part of your personality. I think the interesting thing about the show for me was just to try to portray what it tells us about how to raise kids now and what our kids might be missing if we fail to allow them to have this kind of essential middle childhood, this analog childhood. What an interesting thought about my reaction to season one, that it's part of the show's melancholy. One of the things that's hard to get right about childhood is the wistfulness and the yearning combined with, as you say, the seriousness of growing up and excitement even of finding your place in the world. On your point about the good, the picture of the good, which is very Augustine in some ways. St. Augustine has this thing, good is real, evil is the distortion of it. You're reminding me a little bit, we're recording this just after this movie Project Hail Mary has had a big success at the box office. That movie and book also has something of this quality that you realize how oppressive the spiritual bleakness of so much media is. It's a very optimistic book and it also includes something you focus on in this piece, which is positive models of good guys we like, but who aren't yet fully manly becoming heroic, like learning. There are many instances of that in Stranger Things. There's Hopper, whom you describe wonderfully as an unmade bed of a man. My dad always used that phrase. I was talking to John Kinker about that. He was like, I love that phrase. I was like, that's just from my dad. He used to refer to men, you know, just not put together, just lumbering through life. That character is marvelous. Joe Keery, the character who plays Steve Harrington, is marvelous. They're so lovable. It's like any other good art. You find yourself wondering how these people are doing. Are their lives going well after you finish consuming it? Because they become such a big part of your emotional attachment to it. There's a couple of things that are difficult in modern time about portraying good. One is that obviously we don't come pre-equipped with sanctity, most of us. We will experience a time of being bad or not measuring up. It's difficult to portray a lovable character not measuring up. When you engage childhood, it's forgivable for the audience because it's like, well, this is a child. But in an adult, you run the risk of losing the connection the audience has to the character if you portray a lack. But of course, without portraying that lack, you cannot portray the arc to what they ought to be. One of the best things about this series that is so gripping... I mean, of course, the 80s nostalgia is awesome. I think a lot of people fail to engage with it because all of the other things are so strong, too. You'll see the hair and everything, and it's obviously very funny and silly. But at its core, what is so wonderful about it is that it causes you to witness what it looks like for an immature man or an immature boy to be faced with a situation where something vulnerable, either a woman or a child, needs them. It's going to meet an end that is unacceptable to the audience. To be a small, vulnerable... I didn't include it in this, but I spent a lot of time thinking about that first season finale when the boys are fighting the monster. I cry every time I see that, especially the slingshot. I cannot make it through that scene without crying. I think it's the beauty of a small child who's not strong being brave, being at the height of their bravery, and it not being enough. It's just not enough. That is what takes the heart of an immature or an imperfect adult or man, usually. It's so awful to see an innocent thing be brave and come to a bad end that a man will just sacrifice his life. He will just completely die to avoid that happening. The series kind of repeats that over and over again, but like you said, with the sadness of the seasons, it's hard to keep your focus for five seasons and ten years, which is essentially what the project is. One thing they do over and over again is engage in that. It's not that the weak characters are undeserving. They're extremely brave and deserving. Part of that portrayal shows why these beloved characters who have some muscle, who are the muscle to the nerd group, must sacrifice, must be engaged in order to save these kids and these people. We still are enough of a Christian society to where we will find that an absolute no-go. This innocent cannot perish due to lack of strength. The other, the stronger, will come in and sacrifice, which is in some ways all of Christianity. But what it does to the men is beautiful in that series. Yeah. I think there's a key follow-on from that, and that's the character of Eleven, whom we haven't really talked that much about yet. This is Millie Bobby Brown's breakout role. She's awed because she was raised under feral conditions, but she has psychic powers. We see her acclimate to society at the same time as her strengths are different from the guys. The strengths that she's trying to perfect are different from the strengths that the guys are trying to perfect. So it's not also exactly as you say, protection of the innocent is a big theme. But it's not, and this is another place where things go wrong, it's not an innocent person who is worthless. It's actually somebody who's central, crucial, and her powers are a part of the dynamic that you're indicating as well. The potential mishandling of her in subsequent seasons is a real problem. Not knowing what to do with her. She presents a lot of interesting paths. She's similar to Professor X, actually. It's the nerd whose mind is strong enough to not need physical strength, and of course that's portrayed in his paralysis. He's in a wheelchair, he can't do anything. But his mind is so strong, it's like he's beyond the physical limitations. They do look at her, they give her parts of a season without her powers, her mental strength. They do different things. Of course, she's a love interest for one of the other characters, but it's complex in that she is the biggest hero. She's the most powerful, but she's also feral. She's not socialized. So it's kind of an odd, it's also interesting to look at in terms of our analog versus digital childhood. She's the child who grew up without any friends and was strong enough to kind of not need them, but she also clearly needs them. So part of the story is her need of companionship, even though she doesn't share the weakness that the others share. No, it's interesting. One point you make in this that I had never thought about before, this piece, you point out that Stranger Things weirdly foretold a lot of modern developments. We saw a lab leak on this show before we ever experienced COVID, right? There were so many things that just got weird. I didn't realize that. I had to look up dates when I was like, wait a minute, I guess that did happen before. It's so odd. It's not exactly the same thing, but it's very similar to what we all went through. So viewers practiced ahead of time. Yeah, and you don't think of it that way. There are some works of art you think, that was really prescient. Dostoevsky, you read him and you're like, how did he know what was going to happen? But this was not one that I had thought of that way until you showed me that. I think it's related to another thing, which is your opening line. Everyone remembers the 1980s, even the people who weren't there. There is some way, and I want to know what you think about this. There's some way in which this era that we so constantly recur to, that has the deep childhood nostalgia of Steven Spielberg movies just embedded into it, is hyper-contemporary, is very urgent for us now. One of the things you point out is that the 80s we get in this show is not idealized. It's kind of drab, and it suffers from privations, and there's all sorts of things. And yet, we have a warm, cozy feeling about it that makes the show tick. Do you have an explanation for that? I do. I have a theory. I have not unraveled this theory yet in public, but I'll lay it on you. I'm a musician. My kids are all musicians. I approach the 80s, I think it's easier to see what the 80s are through music, because there's one element of late 70s, 80s. It's very playful, the music of the 80s, because you're exploring these new machines, and you're imitating computer, but you also see a lot of the arena rock of the late 70s and then into the 80s. The vocalists actually imitate that. It tends to isolate and promote vocalists who can make their voices mimic the tools. But I would say that for, for lack of a better word, white people, the 80s was the last time that we were confident in our music and in our portrayal. So the 80s music, particularly white singers and artists, and of course 70s leading into 80s, are so confident, so sexualized, a little bit of androgyny in there, but also just the music is loud, it's full-throated. It continues that way into the early 90s with Pearl Jam and other vocalists, clearly like a very strong, but gets very sad. It goes into divorce culture and just the breakdown of the happy 70s and 80s. And then in my opinion, by the time we get to the 2000s and on, we're whispering in our music. So our male vocalists especially are whispering lyrics. Everything's very cafe and we're embarrassed. We're kind of ashamed. The sound, and of course, you must say at the same time, Bruno Mars and pop and everything is very, especially in the Obama era, is very, arises confident. Like the, you know, whatever the contrary or the minority or Obama coalition art is similarly confident, loud, happy. So it's not like there's no confident music of that time, but it seems to me that the 80s Reagan culture, the big hair, and a lot of the things that we associate with the 80s were experienced differently by Black Americans. When you look at 70s style and stuff, and there are, this is a multiracial cast. It's not like they don't portray everyone. It just seems to me that the 80s culture and music is very much hairstyles that white, that more like, but that like the dominant at that time American culture, default white culture or whatever, is sort of loud. It's just loud and proud. And then for many reasons, and I think in music, things just kind of are cyclical. People get tired of it or whatever. We sort of lose the ability for men in particular to be sexy and confident and loud and all of these things, just kind of putting themselves out there confident as artists. So there becomes all these levels of what we have to do to kind of, that's my theory. No, it's great. I mean, there is a moment in Stranger Things, and I don't want to spoil kind of middle seasons for people that might go away and watch, but there is a finale, a season finale in the middle there, like three or four, which is just a giant, like glam rock, hair rock, kind of white dude on guitar set piece. So you're making me think about that as well. But yeah, like, and it's not so, I mean, in some ways you're talking about, yeah, like, I have this pet theory that American race relations peaked at precisely the moment when Avenue Q debuted the song, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist, that musical. When was that? It's like in the turn of the millennium. I can't remember exactly when it comes out, and it's this incredible expression of like, you know, carefree, confident, interracial kind of honesty, right? You're a little bit racist, but you're a little bit too, you know? The culture and the music of the 80s and 90s is certainly not white to that. Like, it's obviously rock comes from soul, and it was invented by American rock, although it's not, it's not, it's just that for a moment in time, we were all able to be there confidently and not ashamed of ourselves. And I feel like as it moves on, some, maybe the normie culture, just the normal, basic, vanilla, whatever you want to call it, culture really does kind of, in its music, kind of take a step back and self-reflect. Some of it, I do think a lot of, another really interesting thing about raising children is that my kids love the music of almost every decade, except for the 90s alternative, they hate it, and they can pick it out. So they will not know when you, you know, you raise kids and they're like, is this the 70s? And it's all like before they invented the telephone, right? Like they have no idea. Especially now, like you could just listen to whatever you want, whenever you want, and oh, is this 70s? They don't, they can't, because there's a lot of, like Fleetwood Mac is very popular now. The 90s Nirvana, Pearl Jam, not so much the Cranberries, but still, they can pick that out immediately and they don't like it. They know what it is because it's so sad. It's so depressed. It's so like lithium, like just, and I think that, that marked, I always thought that that music genre was something like divorce, you know, children of divorce, the early, like artists early portraying, a lot of, a lot of Pearl Jam songs, even, I actually think even, even Cranberry songs are about, about that culture, just so what it, what it's like to have parents sort of wreck your life. And I, and I think, you know, there, there are obviously a lot of different threads in there, but, but one thing that I've noticed revisiting the era as an adult with children is that without the context, they just, they just are like, what is that? Like, what is this? What are these people doing? What is the, you know, what is it doing? And you look back and you think, what were we doing? Yeah. We were, we were like kind of moping around. And I think like you're, you definitely have like sort of convinced me that this show is of a piece with, you know, have you seen Project Hail Mary yet? Or read the book? I haven't. My family members didn't. They're like, you got, you have to go. I just haven't had time to go. You know, I really want to know what you think about it. Cause like I did make me feel. Okay. We're searching for optimism. Like maybe we haven't found it yet, but just like, it is the return of a kind of desire for positivity. If you cannot portray yourself as a hero, if we, if we are incapable of telling stories about our culture and our American experience is as heroes. In other words, if, if allyship or just kind of, you know, the, one of the things I'm writing about for the, for the next CRB is, is the Lonesome Dove piece and Taylor Sheridan's work. Cause he wrote the foreword of the 40th anniversary Lonesome Dove kind of reissues. And he of course is the creator of Yellowstone and all these real, real recent cowboy epics. Right. And part of the problem there is like, can we tell a story about white people owning a ranch without it being a shame fest? The answer is no. You know, the answer for Sheridan perhaps, but of course we all are American. We all are still cowboys. So we want to, we will watch that. We will watch all of that and love it. But, but, but our art really shows our inability to see ourselves as the hero of our own stories, which is, which is seriously problematic. But when you say that some of the things that are really recent, like really the last six to 12 months, I do see similar things. Like you're saying, we, we were at least wanting there to be a socially acceptable way of portraying white men in particular, but all kind of normie American culture, what you would say are people who are not victims first, they're, they've got, they have a lot of advantages. They've been given a lot of, you know, society or whatever otherwise gives them a lot of advantages. Are we allowed to tell stories about them being heroes or is it, is it impermissible artistically? And so a lot of this stuff, a lot of this recent stuff is just sort of exploring that concept. But I do think Stranger Things gets away with it partly because, and you see like, you know, the Americans talks about 1980s. You see the part of our, part of our love of period pieces is because it's a, it's a device by which we can talk about heroes because we can't set things in, in our time now. So if we go back previously, we're allowed to have heroes because it's all, or at least play with that. If you set things now, it's harder because people won't buy them. What, what, why is this, why is this main guy like, you know, it's, yeah, it's all these things that kind of make it a behind the scenes of art now. And I think that Stranger Things is an excellent example of, of us just struggling to tell the story about American life. Wow. We have to stop at that. It's a great place to bring this to it, to an end, in fact. And as you said, you're writing for the next CRB about Lonesome Dove, which I'm really looking forward to. So people should go check that out. In general, if you're not a subscriber to CRB, you're missing content like this, like Glaine's essay on Stranger Things, unless we deign to put it out in front of the paywall at our discretion, but you don't need to wait for us. That's right. Exactly. And, and everybody, everyone will have moved on. No, this, this piece will remain enduring on everybody's mind for months and months, but you dear listener must become a CRB subscriber at claremontreviewbooks.com. And if you really want to get freaky with it, then you can go to claremontinstitute.substack.com and become a digital plus subscriber where you get extra episodes of this show on top of other things. Laine, it's been such a pleasure. Thanks for coming on. Thank you.