WJEC MS4, Television, Media Studies, Stranger Things, Genre, Narrative, Representation

2. The Strange Concept of Genre
1. How does genre help audiences?
2. How does genre help companies such as
Netflix?
3. Why is innovation important for genre?
4. In what ways does the 1980s setting appeal to
younger and older viewers?
5. What could be the risk of labelling the series
as 'horror'?
6. In what ways does the narrative challenge the
audience's expectations?

3. Era
• Set in the 1980s
• Makes intertextual references to a range of
80s texts e.g. Stephen King novels, Dungeons
and Dragons, ET, Stand By Me, The Goonies
and many more
• Enjoyed by both young and old audiences
(maybe not the Stephen King novels).

4. Horror/Drama/Thriller/SciFi
How can we apply the following?
• Daniel Chandler
• Steve Neale
• Nick Lacey

5. Rick Altman’s Semantic and Syntactic
• Semantic means the way that the media is
presented i.e: what is typically expected in a
certain genre such characters, settings,
costumes & props e.g. isolated house and
creepy monster
• Syntactic explores the relationship between
the semantic elements, such as elements of
the narrative or the ideology of the genre e.g.
isolated house + creepy monster = fear.

6. The Horror Genre:
The Final Girl theory
• A cliche of the horror genre identified by Carol
J Clover
• Focuses on female characters (teenage girls)
as victims)
• Those who engage in illegal/immoral
behaviour (sex, drugs, smoking) die first
• There is a final girl who survives – the one
who resists the bad behaviour
• This trope is subverted through Barb

7. Narrative
How can we apply the following Narrative theorists?
• Todorov
• Propp
• Strauss
• Barthes
• Is the narrative linear or non-linear?
• Restricted or unrestricted?
• Effect?
• Single or Multi stranded?
• Effect

8. Representation

9. Masculinity?

10. Government workers: all men

13. Ted Wheeler
What did I do? What did I doooo…?

14. Police

15. Hopper: “Flo, we’ve discussed this. Mornings
are for coffee and contemplation…Coffee and
contemplation”

16. Boys
25.08
2.03 4.26
37.52

17. Mrs Wheeler

18. ‘Connie Fraser: Social Services’

19. Nancy

20. Joyce

21. Vulture’s Brian Moylan said it best:
• “Nancy is an archetype created through
an evil conspiracy launched by Wes
Craven, John Hughes, and Molly Ringwald
sometime during the Reagan
administration. It’s a conspiracy more
dangerous than nuclear proliferation,
because everyone is still trying to be
Nancy and hating who they really are:
Barb.”
Barb