now i’ve heard in recent times they literally dressed up a nazi prison camp as a soviet gulag, but after watching it with my sisters, (they had a party for their graduation, because they’re in highschool) the shit is so liberal. Why they make some cops mean, the message is that they’re so great, and they even downplay MK ultra as some fantasy thing. It’s garbage.

  • Kind_Stone@lemmygrad.ml
    27·
    2 years ago

    It quickly escalated from being okay-ish in Season 1 to being absolutely trash by Season 3. I can’t even imagine how worse it gets in the latest one, honestly, have no wish to see it whatsoever.

  • B0rodin@lemmygrad.ml
    20·
    2 years ago

    Although in fairness, they do touch upon US torture of suspected ‘communist sympathisers’ as well as war crimes on Vietnam. Even so, it is still very one sided - the crimes of the US are barely touched upon in comparison to the incessant stressing of the false soviet gulag bad narrative.

  • ComradeCobba@lemmygrad.ml
    17·
    2 years ago

    It’s funny because interest in the show is partially caused by 80s nostalgia, including red scare propaganda. It’s certainly an ideologically western liberal show though (which I will not apologise for enjoying)

  • simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml
    14·
    2 years ago

    Lol don’t forget how their scary communist gulag is in Kamchatka, which didn’t have any gulags. Literally braindead.

    I still enjoy the sci-fi, and I want to find out what happens, but there’s a lot of trash in it.

    • Anatolianin@lemmygrad.ml
      8·
      2 years ago

      Do these guys even know that the GULAG camps needed logistical support and supplies?

      Not to mention the fact that they needed a way to somehow deliver the results of the prisoners’ labor to the center

      • simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml
        6·
        2 years ago

        The show’s worse than that. It shows them extensively hammering railroad spikes, into frozen ground, inside the labor camp, at a location that has a tool shed. Like, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t stay in the same spot. They also claim peanut butter was illegal in the USSR. It’s just trash.

        I’m still enjoying watching it, but it’s trash.

  • Kirbywithwhip1987@lemmygrad.ml
    14·
    2 years ago

    Never watched it, it caugh my eye and I know it very well, but never watched it. Jez, even when the show is about monsters/aliens from another dimensions it must be big scary USSR bad bullshit…

  • Munrock@lemmygrad.ml
    11·
    2 years ago

    There’s definitely a lot of tongue-in-cheek 80s Red Scare memery happening in the show, and some of the stupidity is because of that. The trouble is, red scare is still a thing and we just know that there will be viewers out there who will unironically consume it.

    My Latvian-Australian friend watched Death of Stalin a few weeks ago and her comment on it was “it’s really good, there’s probably a lot of historical inaccuracies in there but it’s probably not far from the actual truth so it sends the right message.”

    And this is where the problem with Stranger Things lies, too. Probablies confirming other Probablies; assumptions given credibility by the confirmation bias of other assumptions. It’s like a circular logic, except it’s fuzzy logic and it’s a spiral.

    And that’s why, as much as I enjoyed the nostalgia trip and wholesome young adult style fantasy of Stranger Things, it’s fucking toxic and I will never speak of it positively in front of anyone that isn’t cognizant of red scare and class conscious (unless it might help them achieve those things).

    Everyone here should watch it, though, if you have any lib friends. Be capable of joining in the conversations about it because they are so easy to turn into educational opportunities.

    • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
      5·
      2 years ago

      Good point about education. That’s half the reason I watched “Don’t Look Up.”

      I don’t know if I buy that the creators are, in the words of somebody else, knowingly exaggerating as a continuation of their campy 80s style, but then again I haven’t seen this new season so I can’t really say. Either way, even if the creators secretly think the USSR is okay the end result in the real world is exactly as you describe. People might know logically the Soviets didn’t try to summon hell demons but in their subconscious, their id, they still feel like they might as well have.