People are always comparing parts of it to other shows, movies, and books, but taken as a whole Stranger Things isn't quite like anything else. In some ways it resembles Stephen King's printed works though, where child characters are common. These characters are typically confronted by situations and horrors no adult should ever have to face. The stakes are deadly serious and yet King's children tend to rise to the occasion and display a maturity beyond their years because they have no choice. Much like what happens with the kids on this show. Broken children and broken adults coming together to form a new family like Hopper and Eleven have done is another common Stephen King theme. He also, interestingly enough, has a fascination with parallel worlds.

ST is the only program I know of that not only features multiple generations of actors but appeals to multiple generations of fans. It can be watched and enjoyed by the whole family - buzz words that usually mean great for kids and not complete torture for their parents, but in this case it's the literal truth. Very young children may be frightened by it. Certainly poor Bob's fate this season was as gruesome as any character death on The Walking Dead. You'll have to use your judgment as a parent on whether or not your kids are old enough. But its runaway popularity comes from the fact that teen, young adult, and adult characters are all critical to the story and the plot doesn't condescend to any age group. I know people at work who are huge fans and watch it with their grandchildren who are also huge fans. They've managed to thread a needle that conventional wisdom has long held was impossible.

Apparently when the Duffers were shopping around for a network to pick up their project, the suggestions they kept getting were either to make it a real kids show, something like the Goonies, or a paranormal procedural centered around Jim Hopper. Network executives posed the very same question you asked: who is the intended audience for this thing, kids or grownups? Gotta pick one or the other. Thankfully Matt and Ross Duffer held out for a sponsor who'd let them go with their original concept!

Yes it is, American people should stop being so overprotective over their children and let them develop critical thinking skills early.

@MrRadical said:

Yes it is, American people should stop being so overprotective over their children and let them develop critical thinking skills early.

I was thinking in terms of very young children; like say, five and under. Parts of the show might be a little too intense for them. But mostly I agree with you, kids understand a lot more than they're generally given credit for.

it's for the inner kids... for the nostalgists who want to remember when they were kids and maybe got to see a horror movie like Poltergeist ... These 30s aged (some 40) viewers feel real resonance with this series... it's a powerful experience for them

I doubt that it is anything more than a slightly above average series for those who didn't live through the 80s as children... I did, but I'm not that nostalgic about it... at least not the child-centred movies... I got to see R-rated movies like Robocop and such as a kid... Parents were too busy with their Phds to notice ;)

@MrRadical said:

Yes it is, American people should stop being so overprotective over their children and let them develop critical thinking skills early.

...while peeing and pooping their pants.

@Renovatio said:

it's for the inner kids... for the nostalgists who want to remember when they were kids and maybe got to see a horror movie like Poltergeist ... These 30s aged (some 40) viewers feel real resonance with this series... it's a powerful experience for them

I doubt that it is anything more than a slightly above average series for those who didn't live through the 80s as children... I did, but I'm not that nostalgic about it... at least not the child-centred movies... I got to see R-rated movies like Robocop and such as a kid... Parents were too busy with their Phds to notice ;)

I grew up in the 70s and we were even less watched. Even earlier in the late 60s my mom would just drop us off at the theater and head shopping. We watched whatever horror was playing. The one that affected us most was Night of the Living Dead. We were scared $h!tless.

@lantzn

I can only imagine! It must have bedn great!

I only really got into horror proper when I was in my early teens, lots of VHS rentals as the cinemas were very strict about not letting kids into horror movies... but, I did get to see a lot of Hitchcock movies when young as my parents loved those ("Hitchcock Presents" as well)...

I still love seeing even a half decent horror movie in cinema... so much better in a large dark room with strangers...

I think so! It's also for people that grew up in the 80s.

It’s also for people that grew up in the 80s.

I partly grew up then. I remember going to the drive-in to see E.T. when I was just 5 years old. There was a playground near the movie screen, and of course the place was selling Reese’s Pieces.

My nostalgia for Spielberg comes mainly from the Indiana Jones films. E.T. didn’t resonate that much with me, and I have never cared for The Goonies. I was a huge Stephen King fan as a teen, and ST also reminds me of the works of a YA sci-fi writer I used to read around that time: William Sleator. His The Boy Who Reversed Himself (1986), for example, is about high school students who gain access to a higher dimension occupied by strange, dangerous creatures. I’m surprised no one’s mentioned this as a possible influence on ST (the whole business with the Upside Down is fairly reminiscent of it), but I guess it’s not not that well known to movie and TV audiences.

Despite my being apparently among the core targets for ST (a child of the ‘80s who likes sci-fi and horror), I still have relatively muted enthusiasm for the series and have found it to be enjoyable but overrated.

@MrRadical said:

Yes it is, American people should stop being so overprotective over their children and let them develop critical thinking skills early.

Yep. I graduated high school in 1988... My entire childhood was like a prison sentence.
We weren't allowed to go anywhere except to a very few close neighbors. We never went to a movie or an arcade --- but an arcade would have been a considerable drive. People weren't allowed to come over, definitely weren't allowed to enter our house. Again, except a few close neighbors. We weren't allowed to use the phone. Well, very rarely.. if we wanted to call someone, we had to beg permission and explain who we were calling and why... and why it couldn't wait until the next day at school.
Our parents NEVER took us anywhere to drop us off. To a mall, arcade, movie theater, etc. This wasn't just my family, it seemed to be about half of the people I knew from school were living miserable like this.

But also: We didn't run through the house. We didn't steal from our siblings. We didn't yell at our parents or talk back to them - or "tell them" the way something was going to happen or where we were going. We didn't ride all over the countryside or town as we wished... because real small towns in the Midwest don't have roads where this is even close to being safe: a highway (no bike lanes in those days), a major road through town had no room for bikes... and any secondary roads were barely wide enough for two cars to pass.

@JoeZ47 said:

@MrRadical said:

Yes it is, American people should stop being so overprotective over their children and let them develop critical thinking skills early.

Yep. I graduated high school in 1988... My entire childhood was like a prison sentence.
We weren't allowed to go anywhere except to a very few close neighbors. We never went to a movie or an arcade --- but an arcade would have been a considerable drive. People weren't allowed to come over, definitely weren't allowed to enter our house. Again, except a few close neighbors. We weren't allowed to use the phone. Well, very rarely.. if we wanted to call someone, we had to beg permission and explain who we were calling and why... and why it couldn't wait until the next day at school.
Our parents NEVER took us anywhere to drop us off. To a mall, arcade, movie theater, etc. This wasn't just my family, it seemed to be about half of the people I knew from school were living miserable like this.

But also: We didn't run through the house. We didn't steal from our siblings. We didn't yell at our parents or talk back to them - or "tell them" the way something was going to happen or where we were going. We didn't ride all over the countryside or town as we wished... because real small towns in the Midwest don't have roads where this is even close to being safe: a highway (no bike lanes in those days), a major road through town had no room for bikes... and any secondary roads were barely wide enough for two cars to pass.

My condolences. I grew up in a small town in upstate New York that was a lot like the town of Hawkins in this show. Not only did my mom encourage us to go and do our own thing, if it wasn't raining she'd come in at noon on Saturday morning and shut off the TV. It's a beautiful day, go outside! As long as we were back by dark everything was cool. If we wanted to stay over a friend's house, all we had to do was call home (weekends or summers, not school nights of course). With no cell phones, you were out with your friends all day long - your parents didn't know where you were every second and couldn't call you back on a whim. We had places out in the woods where we'd hang out, including an old tree house someone else had built and we cleaned up for our own use. We were probably on the edge of someone's property but no one else ever came out there. The kids that tree house was originally put up for had obviously outgrown it.

There was a small arcade in town. Of course, none of us ever had piles of quarters. But there were usually older kids who monopolized the machines for hours and could play a long time on a single coin. So you waited for an opening to spend your handful of change and then hung out, other kids you knew from school would be there too, it was a fun way to spend the afternoon. Also the movie theater was close by. Two movies at a time; they wouldn't let kids into an R rated movie, but if the second one playing was PG you could buy a ticket for that and go into the R movie instead.

We did all kinds of crazy stuff. Sometimes got into scuffles, and other types of trouble (or would have been trouble if we were caught). Older kids jut don't need to be supervised constantly. Toddlers and small children yes, leaving them alone is a recipe for disaster. But older elementary school on up, it hurts more than it helps. Childhood should not seem like a prison sentence. In college you could always tell which of the freshman had just been paroled from a family that kept them on a short leash; they went nuts partying, like they had a lot of lost time to make up for (which I suppose they did), and were far more likely than others to wind up on academic probation by the end of the year. As much as they're responsible for their own conduct their parents are partly to blame. No one's first breath of freedom should come at age 18.

We were in a small town near Dallas TX until 73 then headed to a small town outside San Diego CA at age 13. In TX everything at the time was miles and miles of paved streets in all directions so we biked for miles. We could go to all the mom and pop stores and the new thing called a mall! The other direction was rural but still paved roads and nothing else everywhere. We were gone until dark on weekends and summer. My stepdad was very strict but as long as we did our daily choirs around the house and yard we stayed clear of him and he was fine with not seeing us. We were always looking for cottonmouth, turtles and crawdads in the waste water canals that went between the housing. We were in great shape.lol

@lantzn said:

We were in a small town near Dallas TX until 73 then headed to a small town outside San Diego CA at age 13. In TX everything at the time was miles and miles of paved streets in all directions so we biked for miles. We could go to all the mom and pop stores and the new thing called a mall! The other direction was rural but still paved roads and nothing else everywhere. We were gone until dark on weekends and summer. My stepdad was very strict but as long as we did our daily choirs around the house and yard we stayed clear of him and he was fine with not seeing us. We were always looking for cottonmouth, turtles and crawdads in the waste water canals that went between the housing. We were in great shape.lol

Why were you looking for cottonmouth? What did you do when you found them? Not capture them and leave them in places your stepdad liked to go, I take it.

@chrisjdel said:

@lantzn said:

We were in a small town near Dallas TX until 73 then headed to a small town outside San Diego CA at age 13. In TX everything at the time was miles and miles of paved streets in all directions so we biked for miles. We could go to all the mom and pop stores and the new thing called a mall! The other direction was rural but still paved roads and nothing else everywhere. We were gone until dark on weekends and summer. My stepdad was very strict but as long as we did our daily choirs around the house and yard we stayed clear of him and he was fine with not seeing us. We were always looking for cottonmouth, turtles and crawdads in the waste water canals that went between the housing. We were in great shape.lol

Why were you looking for cottonmouth? What did you do when you found them? Not capture them and leave them in places your stepdad liked to go, I take it.

These dangerous snakes were always sneaking into the housing complexes through these waterways, causing a scare. So being boys, we thought we’d play the hero by hunting them down. The few that were found were either speared or shot with high powered pellet guns. Heads cut off and buried, while the body made the rounds to show off our skills. Yes foolish, but it was the 60s.

I never understood parents who didn't let kids watch what they want. I never understood it as a kid, and still don't understand as I'm nearing my 50s. My nieces were always allowed to watch whatever they wanted in the theaters and TV and they grew up both popular and at the top of their class (one graduated Jr high as valedictorian and asked to speak at MIT, the other was just elected homecoming queen). What probably helped shape their personality more was having jobs since they were 10 (they worked as models for store catalogs), which taught them to be responsible at an early age. Also, what movies their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles watched with them (which were usually girl power films and TV shows) probably had more influence than those they saw on their own .

As a kid, I associated shows my parents didn't want me to watch as adult, therefore cool. So by nature, my parents were putting more focus on the films I wasn't allowed to watch (though did anyway) than those that they did allow. In my nieces case, the opposite happened in that they were allowed to watch anything they wanted therefore no emphasis was placed to those films, instead their focus was instead placed on the films their family watched together. Whenever the other films were discussed, we never treated as any different than the other films and talked about what we liked about it and didn't like about it. So they were never given much thought afterward. To a kid, indifference has more effect than damnation (which actually has the opposite intended effect).