Stranger Things and The NeverEnding Story of Being Out of Touch With Reality
Okay, I finally watching The NeverEnding Story. I never knew it was a meta story within a story where the audience is in on it, did you? 🧐
Stranger Things' NeverEnding Backstory 🥀
The 1984 adaptation culminates in the audience's power to suspend disbelief, which is what defeats "the Nothing," the grounded realistic viewpoint symbolized by dark clouds, grief, and a no-nonsense father. Our imagination helps stops the Nothing from destroying the fantasy world, Fantasia, which exists within the story that Bastian, the main character, creates.
There is also the theme of hope, if all hope is gone then it gives the Nothing power over you. But what is interesting is that hope is symbolized in a rose-shaped ivory tower, which acts as a dual symbol of being out of touch with reality. It's where the Empress with no-name resides.
Meanwhile, the fate of her fantasy world rests on the imagination of Bastian as he reads the story. He must give the Empress a name in order to save the world.
Thunder cracks when Bastian finally believes enough to break the fourth wall and yell out his deceased mother's name—we don't here it, and that's the point, as the audience is supposed to imagine it ourselves. However, in the book this film is based on, her name is Moonchild.
What's the most interesting to me is the meta part. There is a line of dialogue where they explain that Bastian feels what the story's protagonist Atreyu feels. The Empress explains, "He has suffered with you, he went through everything you went through." Bastian's effectively the audience's surrogate.
Creating cracks in their reality, she name drops the title of the book and film, going on to say, "Just as he is sharing all of your adventures, others are sharing his...own story right now." Others, as in, she is aware of the audience and now we're aware of ourselves.
Mr. Whatsit's "Heart and Soul?" 💔🎹
This fourth-wall break is very similar to the Mr. Whatsit scene where he asks the children to use their power to "bring the darkness into the light." He asks the children, but also the audience, to use their powerful imagination in a filmic technique called the direct address. It's used in the climax of The NeverEnding Story as well, the Empress and Bastian directly face the camera staring at us.
Then a montage of another song "Heart and Soul" plays (that Ella Fitzgerald made famous, alongside "Dream A Little Dream," a leitmotif of false hope in the show). The sequence ends with a shot of the rose door.
Before, the start of this montage was a close up of the piano keys and a heart-shaped ring with the letter "M." In the previous season, Mike was called the heart of the party. In season three, "getting to Mike" was said to be "the key." In The NeverEnding Story, the earthling child was the key to defeat the Nothing.
By using the rose symbol inside Camazotz, or Vecna's mind, it draws a parallel to The NeverEnding Story with it's rose-centered fantasy world. Using his first initial, the suggestion of who is actually keeping the Upside Down alive is Mike, the storyteller, or the "heart and soul" (we're the soul).
There are many other ways in which this film is layered inside the show. For one, how the Mind Flayer works as an antagonistic force is like the Nothing. Another, the way in which the Upside Down is destroyed mirrors Bastian's "all is lost" moment. There is even mention of "gates," and the pain tree design is similar to the sequel. Interestingly, Mike names El, just like Bastian names Moonchild, and both boys share the struggle of disconnecting with their practical fathers and being bullied.
Here are the lyrics of "Heart and Soul," a piano duet:
Heart and soul, I beg to be adored, Lost control, and tumbled overboard, gladly, yeah. That magic night we kissed, there in the moon mist.
Magic, moon, mist, losing control, overboard. This is more meta as it relates to Patty Newby and Henry Creel's play, which is essentially about a moon child and a mist that spawns a rose of love eternal. The lyrics are about losing touch with reality. Meanwhile, this song outlines what magic represents, love, and underscores the innuendo of Mike's line, "we could use a little magic up here."
In a bit of a tangent, after now watching the film and it's meta properties, it also draws a parallel to when Will says "him" or "he," in references to Vecna/Mind Flayer, as the characters in Fantasia do when referencing Bastian.
Here is one instance of this, where Mike and Will are looking directly at the camera, while we're looking at them from the POV of the shadow monster drawing. Essentially, we're being called the spy, or the shadow monster, while the show confirms it is also spying on us. We're aware of each other in this direct address.
Moreover, "he" and "him" refers to Mike, as he is a mirror to Bastain, and so now whenever Will refers to Vecna or the Mind Flayer in the show, he is essentially talking about Mike—who is constantly juxtaposed to the Jaws poster, an ominous sign.
This scene is a lot more disturbing when viewing it through this lens.
The Rest Remains Unwritten in the Clouds 📖⛈️
Behind the scenes, the book's original writer, Michael Ende sued the production for "butchering" his story as the movie only adapts the first half of the novel. In the suit he stated they impaired the logic and failed to convey the actual meaning of the story, calling the movie a "gigantic melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic."
Interesting to how illogical the film's theme song was used in Season 3, and how Ende's complaints mirror the capitalist, kitschy Material Girl mall-sequence. No doubt he'd say the same thing about Stranger Things, which borrows heavily from his story.
What's more is that the 1984 film only tells half of the story as it ends when Bastian saves Fantasia by giving the Empress a new name and makes his first wish. The movie finishes at the midpoint of the book to create a money-grabbing cliffhanger.
In the book, Bastian actually enters Fantasia to become a powerful prince. Remaking it with his wishes, he loses a piece of his real-world memory with every one he makes, eventually forgetting who he is and nearly losing his mind to power.
The cautionary tale is to not lose oneself in grief or corruption, which can make you lose touch with reality. The book's storyline also delves into Bastian's arc of corruption, where there is a darker side to his wish-fulfillment. Once a bullied, overweight kid, he becomes a powerful, handsome prince. In arrogance, he creates terrifying monsters just to prove he can fight them, betrays Atreyu, and attempts to overthrow the Empress.
The conclusion has Bastian lose himself entirely in order to gain the capacity of self-love through the Water of Life, where he regains his memory and returns to the real world to reconcile with his father. Water of life... like Mike's unfinished quest to find three waterfalls?
The original version of the book was made with red and green ink, where the red represents the real world while the green is the fantasy. The Mind Flayer is like the Nothing is the film; however, El's void sequences is actually closer to what the Nothing is like in the novel, where it symbolizes the fear of death.
Where the novel is more existential and European-minded, the film, and consequentially Stranger Things, is more American-minded focused on fantastical heroism and ignores the caution against escapism.
Though there is double meaning to the cartoonish villains and monsters, with the use of satire like the scene above, the show's crystal clear on relating to one particular theme in the novel—acceptance of what cannot be changed and the grief of losing one's childhood (where if El and the Empress are related, that is a… interesting Oedipal comparison to being a surrogate for the main characters' mothers).
There is also a ouroboros infinity symbol, the Auryn amulet, that is a faustian tool that trades memories and humanity for wishes. This is like the tales of the "Holy Grail" Will mentions, or the snake Dustin uses to scare the bullies, pairing it with "Hellfire Lives." Interestingly, one of the reasons for the suit, was because the film has a revenge-style ending getting back at Bastian's bullies.
Conclusion
So it's a question of if Stranger Things was faithful to the novel's themes or the out-of-touch movie version. As it stands, it follows the film's out-of-touch version when it ends on the "I Believe" scene that leaves it up to the audience to decide their own reality. As it is now, this and the final monster battle is just like a "gigantic melodrama of kitsch."
Mike also never discovers his capacity for love or overcomes grief—his story is half-finished, incomplete. Though he learns about "accepting reality," leaving his childhood behind, the Duffers totally miss Ende's true meaning—appreciating the loves ones and memories that you have now, and loving your imperfections through radical self-acceptance.
At the end of the day, their overt cynicism in their whitewashed epilogue and belittling of the audience is what Ende's text would deem as being out of touch with reality too.
