[Like most of my
fellow humans, I spent a good bit of the late summer obsessed with Netflix’s Stranger Things. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of topics linked to the
Duffer Brothers’ nostalgic thriller, leading up to a Guest Post from an
expert on supernatural cultural texts!]
On the
stigmas and the benefits of D&D and other role-playing games.
As I’ll
write a good bit more about in later posts this week, Stranger Things is chock full of references to 1980s culture, so
much so that there is already a
great deal of work dedicated to finding
every such reference. Many of them, as I’ll argue in Friday’s post, are
more about engaging with the audience’s expectations and emotions, and don’t necessarily
contribute in any direct way to the show’s plot or themes. But the first episode’s opening
scene (after a brief prologue as you can see) offers an ‘80s reference that
is both more straightforward and far more crucial than most of those that
follow it. The four middle school boys on whom much of Stranger Things will focus are taking part in what seems to their
chief leisure time activity: a role-playing campaign in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. The monster
who concludes their campaign offers one overt moment of foreshadowing for the show
that this scene introduces. But I would argue that Dungeons & Dragons also
helps us see two other sides to these young protagonists: their status as
outcasts; and their imaginative power.
On the
first note, I’m ashamed to admit that I (a former role-player myself, although
I spent more time with Middle-earth
Role Playing [MERP] than D&D) hesitated a bit in deciding to make
role-playing one of this week’s focal points. The reason for my reluctance is the
enduring
social stigma that comes with the subject, and really with any reference to
Dungeons & Dragons. You’d think that the widespread popularity of video
games (including many, such as Skyrim and World of Warcraft, that owe quite a bit to D&D and its ilk), of fan
conventions like Comic-Con, of fantasy literature, films, and television shows,
and the like would have changed these narratives, but I don’t believe that it necessarily
has: to my mind, and in my experience, cultural references to D&D almost
always entail the same tired clichés of socially awkward nerds in their parents’
basements (which is, not coincidentally, where the Stranger Things kids are playing their campaign), creating fantasy
worlds to escape the tragicomic circumstances of their realities. Moreover, the
broader and even more damaging social
narratives and fears, of D&D turning teenagers into suicidial or even
homicidal outcasts, have likewise remained in play, at times virtually
unchanged from the first
such stories when D&D was new.
There are
a variety of ways to push back on those stigmas and argue instead for social,
communal, and individual benefits to role-playing games (including some
exemplified by the pieces at those last two hyperlinks); here, I’ll just highlight
two that are also illustrated nicely by Stranger
Things (in specific ways that I won’t spoil if you haven’t had a chance to
check out the show yet). For one thing, role-playing games require consistent
leaps of imagination in a way that differentiates them from many other toys or
games—on the part of the game-master, the person in charge of creating the
world and scenarios and guiding the other players into and (to a degree) through
it; but also from all those players, who have to both respond to what’s
unfolding in front of them and yet create their own stories and futures. And
for another, the specific experience of being the game-master—of creating that
world and its different narratives, of conveying it to the players, and yet
then of being required to adjust and shift it as the game plays out, and even
to scrap any or all of it in favor of where the players are going and of
producing the most fun and meaningful experience as a result—offers vital
preparation for a number of adult roles and responsibilities, including both
parenting and teaching.
Next
StrangerStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other responses to the show?
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