White Men: The Real Monsters Of Stranger Things
Like the rest of the internet, I’ve been spending the last two months thinking about Stranger Things, and I’ve got the incredibly cool and not at all lame t-shirt to prove it. Season 4 bought the gang a whole new bunch of trials and tribulations and a brand new set of villains to root against. There were the evil Russians, the evil Vecna, and the most horrifying of all: the evil basketball jock????
Jason is the latest introduction to the Stranger Things canon of “normal people can be monsters too.” Following the death of his girlfriend Chrissy, and the dissolution of the picture-perfect Aryan couple, Jason goes on a vigilante rampage ready to kill drug dealer, person of interest and my new boyfriend Eddie Munsen. In a town hall meeting, he uses his social clout, white privilege, and some good old-fashioned bible bashing to rally the town in his favour, creating a town-wide psychotic fervour against a group of teenagers who play Dungeons and Dragons. Having lived in a society where as a white upper-class Christian jock, Jason genuinely believes that whatever he says is correct, despite overwhelming evidence towards the contrary — like a terrified Eddie as Vecna takes another victim, or Lucas begging for his life while Jason comes at him with a gun, then beats his face to a pulp.
Jason's final scenes involve him and his mob stalking and beating up black children, Lucas and Angela, in the name of “justice.” Like Kyle Rittenhouse and countless other white vigilantes, Jason likely would have faced zero repercussions for his actions; he might have even been viewed as a hero. Stranger Things 4 showed that, while mind flayers and Demogorgons are all terrifying, there’s nothing scarier than a white man on the hunt.
Jason is just the latest in the Stranger Things canon of terrifying real-life villains. While he’s a major fan favourite, in part for how damn pretty Dacre Montgomery is, Billy, first introduced in season 2, was Hawkin’s new resident bad boy. “Bad boy” is probably an understatement; in his first few scenes, he’s terrorising his step-sister and threatening to run over a group of teenagers. Things escalate further when he finds out that his stepsister Max is friends with Lucas. “There’s a certain type of people who you stay away from,” he says about Lucas. The Duffer Brothers don’t quite have the gall to actively spell it out, but it’s clear that Billy’s unfounded hatred is racially motivated. At the first possible opportunity, he takes out his anger on Lucas, and probably would have beaten him to death had Steve (my other boyfriend) not intervened.
Billy puts on a charming facade; he’s immediately popular at high school, a hit with the ladies (especially the older ones), and is a star on the basketball court. Yet despite the hairspray and surprisingly attractive mullet, we see Billy being an abusive piece of shit towards Max. We see glimpses of him being abused by his father, and he’s determined to continue that cycle towards Max; even when he’s not possessed by the mindflayer, he’s violent, needlessly cruel to her and seems to relish in exerting power over her. Much of season 4 has Max dealing with the trauma of Billy’s death; though he died a hero, he lived as an abusive piece of shit, and Max is shown struggling with the duality of this. “He made my life living hell … I would pray that something would happen to him,” she admits in the final episode. Even though he had a big heroic death, the show thankfully never shows Max forgiving Billy for all the torment and abuse.
While Billy got the big heroic death, thankfully Jason never did; one of the more satisfying parts of the extremely long final episode was seeing his body get snapped in two while Vecna opens the portal to the upside down. What’s concerning, however, is that both Jason and Billy have their share of apologists online. According to a fairly large swarth of internet users, Jason was just doing what any loving boyfriend would do (by starting a mob and trying to shoot an unarmed black boy), and as a for Billy? Well, he’s so hot that he can basically do anything.
Billy and Jason don’t just exist in the upside-down - they exist in the real world. The Jasons of the world go on to be charismatic politicians or pastors, continuing to spread their message to anyone who listens. The Billys go on to have their own families and perpetuate the cycle of abuse even more. Throughout four seasons we’ve seen children getting killed by monsters, demons who can possess your mind, and some real HR Giger-esqe gore. The scariest monsters of all however aren’t the ones who can attack you whilst you’re trapped in an alternate dimension; they’re the ones who exist in the real world — charismatic white men with a vengeance.