[This Friday, season
2 of the wonderful Netflix series Stranger
Things will be released. So this week I wanted to share once more this
series of posts AmericanStudying 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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