Once you start reading Stranger Things as one big allegory for child abuse, the whole thing hits real different. I have my snark about the slog of the editing and endless two-up talking scenes, but as a single piece of work, looking back on the whole thing, it’s a really ambitious show.
With that kind of ambition, your chances of perfection are basically nil. But oh, the reach! How many people never even try because they know they don’t quite have the talent to pull it off? The older I get, the more impressed I am at people doing imperfect work but doing it with everything they’ve got.
If all of us bravely buckled down and did the hardest, most ambitious creative work we could imagine, even knowing our chances of success were infinitesimal, what a fucking world that would be.
To have finished an ambitious project like this – yes, even with all the money and streamer support – is also huge win. The last 10 years have been a shit show. Keeping all these actors and creators together, rowing in same direction, getting (even messily!!) to the end is an incredible achievement
I remember relief I felt finishing the third book in my trilogy, Broken Heavens. I was 5 years late and was exhausted, and knew it was messy and imperfect, but by God, I WAS GOING TO FINISH IT. Many people don’t. People far more successful than me… Don’t finish their trilogies. For many reasons.
Somewhere in froth of performative hate bait, we forget that art is made by people, and how crushingly difficult it is to create even when you ARE privileged, let alone when you’re NOT. What a triumph, that any of us finish anything at all. What a triumph, just to get up and try again every morning.
It is breathtaking, really, that humans finish anything. I am of course thinking about this through lense of my own work, and how grindingly HARD it has been to get up and keep going the last 10 years. Giving up is easy. Most people do it. Very few people see work thru to the wild, imperfect end.
