Death, Nostalgia, and Relationships: Psychological Defenses against Existential Terror and the Appeal of Stranger Things

• Published in: PSYART (Gainesville, Fla.) p. 124
• Main Author: Bassett, Jonathan F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Gainesville University of Florida 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Anxiety; Duffer, Ross; Film adaptations; Genre; Mortality; Motion pictures; Nostalgia; Seasons
• ISSN: 1088-5870

Special attention is given to the intensification of the horror elements that occurred in season 4, most notably in the character of Vecna, who evokes the requisite emotions for the experience of art horror (fear and disgust) by his macabre appearance and the gruesome way he kills his victims. Keywords: Stranger Things, existential psychology, death anxiety, nostalgia, Terror Management Theory, horror This paper presents an existential perspective that views horror as confronting people with typically suppressed concerns about mortality and the animalistic aspects the human condition, while also providing the opportunity to evaluate beliefs about existence that are potentially palliative towards those concerns. [...]the scene takes place in the diegetic setting of Pennhurst Asylum, the name of which is an allusion to an actual defunct state-run psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania that now serves as the location for a popular haunted attraction (Tarabay, 2010). Upon discovering that Henry is the source of the strange torments experienced by the family in their new home, his mother is planning to have him sent away to a psychiatric hospital.