Stranger Things' Newest Season Pushes Child Predator Symbolism and We Are Numb

Full disclosure, I’ve never watched the “hit” Netflix original series, Stranger Things. Based on what I read in Human Events, I likely never will. 

In a piece in Human Events, journalist Jack Posobiec saves us the trouble of watching what can only be described as a piece of vile filth. Now, I’m sure I’ll be accused of being a neanderthal “boomer” who doesn’t appreciate the “art” of the 2020s. That is a badge of honor I will gladly wear. Posobiec saved me (and countless others) the trouble. 

Posobiec informs us that the opening scene in Season 5 of this program jumps straight into a scene that is “drenched–absolutely soaked–in sexualized horror symbolism, to a child. And that is the goal of Netflix and the series producers, hoping that people have become desensitized to such vile filth.

They’re probably correct.

American society has become numb to garbage like this, as we’ve become desensitized to women being stabbed to death on a commuter train, lit on fire inside a Chicago CTA train, or two National Guard members being shot at point-blank range in Washington, D.C. Instead, they criticize those tasked to protect us. 

In the opening scene, Posobiec describes a flashback involving a young man, Will Byers, and a supervillain, Vecna, “that is unmistakably charged with a heavy, uncomfortable sexual symbolism,” similar, he says, to the “same dark, invasive, body-horror tone that defined Alien.” That film’s creators admitted that the so-called “face-hugger” design was intentionally created to represent “themes of oral rape and forced impregnation–a deliberate use of violent sexual metaphor.” 

Posobiec accuses Netflix of taking that imagery and symbolism and applying it to a child hero in Stranger Things, which he says is not an accident. Yet, he says, many people are defending the “pedo content” in the Netflix show. 

The fact that content such as this is acceptable to many people, including those with children, shows how far American society has fallen. Recall that back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, showing a married couple in the same bed was verboten. In the 1970s, when Mike and Carol Brady of The Brady Bunch appeared in the same bed, it was considered “controversial.” Now, “Fetish-coded horror symbolism aimed at a boy who’s been a child character” since the show’s first episode, is considered “acceptable.” 

The pedophiles that populate Hollywood, Posobiec wrote, would excuse the graphic content, explaining it away as a “metaphor,” “horror language,” or “it’s all in your imagination.” This is what we’ve come to expect from Netflix, Posobie warned. Oh, their grooming is not always in your face…it is usually much more subtle. He explained:

“Netflix has been playing footsie with grooming and predator aesthetics for years. They never do it openly–they’re too corporate for that–but they drip it into the culture through implication, tone, symbolism, and repetition. They rely on plausible deniability, and they rely on viewers being too dulled and exhausted to push back.” 

The producers of the show have set this up, with a wink and a nod from Netflix. Again, Posobiec explains:

“From the beginning, his [Will Byers] character has been written as a vulnerable, isolated, emotionally targeted boy–and every time, Hollywood leans into predatory symbolism around him. They frame Vecna not just as a monster, but as the classic psychological profile of a predator: isolating, manipulating, whispering, grooming. His father has left, he has trouble connecting with his family and friends, it’s all the classic signs.” 

With Season 5, ostensibly the final season of this garbage, they’ve taken it to another level, using “imagery lifted straight from a movie [Alien] about sexual violation.” The sad part? Nobody seems to care. Posobiec says (and we agree) that “Netflix crossed a line, but [that] Netflix knew the audience wouldn’t care.” 

Netflix bet that a public that doesn’t care about children being trafficked by illegal aliens across the United States wouldn’t care about a little bit of sexually-charged horror aimed at children. And guess what? They were right. Posobiec writes, “The lack of outrage proves them [Netflix] right. 

Will Byers' character has not evolved; rather, it reflects on an “unknown” trauma that “he can’t name, trauma he can’t shake, trauma the show keeps linking to is identity and isolation.” Only if you’ve watched the series since season 1 do you know that it was because he was raped as a child. 

“And Hollywood has a long, ugly history of connecting marginalized identities to narratives of exploitation and victimization,” Posobiec writes. “It’s a cynical, manipulative trope. And Stranger Things just doubled down on it.” 

There can be no other explanation than the fact that Netflix purposefully allowed the “symbolic language of sexual violation” and attached “it to a child character ‘accidentally.’” 

“They want you to see it. They want you to internalize it. They want your kids to grow up thinking this imagery is normal.” That, Posobiec writes, “is how cultural boundaries erode.” Push-push, nudge nudge, just like the boiling frog experiment. 

The creators of Stranger Things may have accidentally said the quiet part out loud. According to a 2022 Vanderbilt University study, LGBT adults are 3-4 times more likely to report child sexual abuse than their heterosexual peers. What were they implying by depicting the openly gay main character as being the victim of child sexual abuse? 

“What did the creators of Stranger Things mean by this?” Posobiec asked rhetorically.