[Jesse Gooch]

My favorite thing about ST were the intro graphics.  Something about the red lines and music was very nice.  Reminded me of a lot of VHS rentals in the early 90s.  The show itself was good but that’s the only intro to a show I’ve paid attention to every time I watched it since I was a kid watching The Simpsons.
Can’t wait to see T2.  Read some criticisms of it that said it’s great, but is mostly great because of how well it brings you back into the moments of the original – therefore falling into the “gimmicky nostalgia” area of The Force Awakens, LaLa Land, and (some say) Stranger Things.  Either way, I really enjoyed Porno, the book that came after Trainspotting, and even though it doesn’t sound like it’s based very much on that book, I am eager for it’s American release.

From: <owner-pynchon-l at waste.org> on behalf of John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, March 1, 2017 at 3:42 AM
To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
Cc: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>, Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: <no subject>

I really enjoyed Stranger Things on initial viewing but in hindsight it's a show I dug because of the familiar beats it hits, rather than one that dragged me into its own weird world. I was sad to hear that the next season continues the same story instead of treating each season as a new chapter in a shared universe. But I reckon it also found fans who aren't already interested in the stuff it revives (and there are some great performances and scenes and everything, I'm not dissing the show).
But nostalgia always feels better first time around*
The most Pynchonesque of TV at the moment I reckon is Mr Robot. Paranoia so pervasive it alters the ontological reality of the diegetic frame, multiply unreliable narrators, the invocation of the audience as co-conspirator from the opening line, hyper-capitalism as both succubus and incubus, ones and zeroes falling apart then reforming new logics, the sense that anything can happen at any point and we'll just have to deal with it... Recommended.
* The Trainspotting sequel T2 is a rare exception. Never seen a sequel with such a profound relationship with the original (and it's original fans).

On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 12:53 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com<mailto:fqmorris at gmail.com>> wrote:
My biggest objection about Stranger Things is that the government bad guys at the beginning become the good guys at the end.  And the Monster story line is so tangential that it barely exists.  This show feels as if it were written by an improv group, with no plan.

David Morris

On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 3:31 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de<mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:

"The Montauk Project is every horrible suspicion you've ever had since World War II, all the paranoid production values, a vast underground facility, exotic weapons, space aliens, time travel, other dimensions, shall I go on?" (Bleeding Edge, p. 117)

In Bleeding Edge, the Montauk Project is a significant element whose ontological status remains unclear; considering the novel's architecture, there seems to be a mutual reflecting of 9/11 and Montauk Project.


In Stranger Things, the Montauk Project is explicitly linked to MK Ultra, which as such was real. The serial's way of telling the story, with its many Spielbergian references to the 1980s, makes the narration more fantasy-like and less political than Pynchon's novel, though.

Eleven kills the Monster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4dzQ4_MI3s


http://www.businessinsider.de/what-inspired-stranger-things-montauk-project-2016-9?r=US&IR=T

> ... We've had fun naming all the movies that "Stranger Things" is paying homage to, but it's equally fascinating to see how it's playing with decades-old government conspiracy theories ... <

Do the Duffer brothers read Pynchon?

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