Stranger Things: a structural mythic analysis

A couple months ago, I posted a video essay all on the general thesis of Incidental Mythology as well as me as an academic: our popular culture is our mythology. The video actually didn’t do too bad, so I thought I’d take a bit of time to give a little more detail and complication to the topic. So today, I want to dig into what it means to actually study pop culture as mythology, what we can learn about ourselves through pop culture, and provide a little bit of an example of a type of analysis we can do to our narratives to get at the answer to these questions. If you need a primer on the general idea of pop culture narratives as mythology, go check out my previous video which I’ll link in the description below.

But for now, let’s first talk about mythology more generally. As an anthropologist, I understand myths as cultural artefacts. Myths can tell us about people in the same way that looking at their other arts can. They are parts of a culture or a society, and as such are reflections of this. So by studying and analysing myths, we can also get into the heart of the dynamics of the people who tell these stories.

One of my preferred ways of digging into pop mythology is through structuralism. Now, when I talk about structuralism in this essay, I’m referring specifically to structural anthropology. Like many things, there are a lot of different forms of structuralism, like in linguistics and literature. That being said, structural anthropology is actually inspired by linguistics.

Structural anthropology was founded by Claude Levi-Strauss. Yes, Levi-Strauss. In fact, this Levi-Strauss was cousins with the jeans Levi-Strauss. But our Levi-Strauss was more interested in mythology and anthropology. He saw something familiar in linguistics. Ferdinand de Saussure argued that linguistics should spend less time focused on speech acts, and more on the grammar and context. Sassure was the one who established a differentation between “the signifier” (i.e. the word) and “the signified” (i.e. the thing).

There was an idea that there was an inherent connection between the word “dog” and the thing that we call a dog. In other words, there is something doggy about the word dog. Sassure, on the other hand, thought differently. He believed that the word “dog” did not necessarily relate to “dog” as a thing, but as a concept.

For anthropology, Levi-Strauss understood that the ways we think about the world is more based on concept and organisation of thought than the things themselves. The way we categorise and think about the things we interact with are not inherent in the things themselves, but are socially and culturally based. As we grow in this world, society tells us what things are and how we should think about them. We look at a dog and are told its a dog. But later we see something that’s way bigger than that original dog but it’s still a dog. This is something taught to us, rather than something we feel inherently.

Dogs are obviously an example here, but we can apply this to more complicated conceptions. Instead of dogs, let’s think about people. We have people who are “like us” and people who are not, and this is also something which is taught. Some people are categorised in different boxes, and some humans are not categorised into the people category at all, depending on the social world you grow up in.

An important aspect of this is that the way one culture or society categorises the things they meet is not the same as another. This can result in a lot of miscommunication or issues between people. Because sometimes we take for granted that these are learned categories, rather than inherent categories. There is nothing inherently doggy about the word dog, it’s just a word. There is nothing inherently “like me” that someone else is, but rather aspects which are socially learned and labelled.

In Structural anthropology, we understand these social categories are embedded in a lot of what we do. If this is what our worldview is based on, then the things we produce are going to also reflect this. This means that a society’s mythology also reflects these categories, and by analysing mythology we can get a detailed view of what this categorisation looks like.

So, by analysing our popular culture, we can understand the society that made that media’s form of categorisation.

Alright, now that’s all detailed out of the way, let’s talk about how we actually go about doing that. In this video, I’m going to explain how it all works, but in the next one I’m going to give an actual structural analysis of a piece of pop culture: the first season of Stranger Things. But for now, I want to explain a little about how the actual analysis works.

The structural method starts with finding mythemes, which are the smallest units that make up a myth, inspired by the phoneme in linguistics. Mythemes are the smallest element of a myth, and one that cannot be broken down any further. Each mytheme functions based on relations. Mythemes don’t live in isolation, but are directly related to other mythemes, and through this relationship builds the foundation of the myth.

The structural method is basically like an archeological excavation, but one through a myth. We start at the uppermost level, the narrative level, which is the most surface level and the most culturally and contextually specific. This is the story itself, the written, or spoken word, that we are given.

Under that is what we call the S3 level, one step removed from the narrative. This level uses the mythemes and element of the myth while understanding their context, and we begin to cateogrise and understand the relations between them.

And then we get to the S2 level, which is the next step abstract. The S2 level is as deep as I typically go, even though Levi-Strauss believes there to be an S1 level which he thinks is biologically based. I disagree with this, along with a few other structuralists who have come after him, but that’s probably a whole nother conversation for a whole nother time.

The key elements, the mythemes we are looking for, are found in narratively significant roles and relationships, which can be found through both action and inaction. For example, silence and noise are both possible mythemes. These can often be represented in a key character, a theme, or location. Once we find a few mythemes, we can look at how they relate to one another, and see how they are categorised through their relationships with each other.

Essentially, structuralism can be seen as somewhat similar to a textual anlaysis. The narrative is relegated as a text, and analysed as one. The point of a structural study, like the one we will be doing on Stranger Things, is not to assess the text as text, but as a cultural artefact that reflects cultural cateogires.

One last thing on the structural study, Levi-Strauss’s S1 level, and his understanding of the biology of myth, shows that he truly thought of structure as somehow biologically derived. However, social scientists have since shifted to see a difference between biology and society. This is pretty much the nature/nurture argument but in the social sciences.

Essentially, Levi-Strauss did not really give enough space for storytellers, and actors in society, to have any kind of agency. Structure was something that just happened to them. However, we can look at societies over time and see how ideas, worldviews, and social ideals can change over time. This means that a society’s structure can change - we are not the same as we were several hundred years ago, at least I would hope.

And because of that, I follow the way of neo-structuralists like Seth Kunin and Jonathan Miles-Watson, who have moved beyond this biologically derived aspect to one which is more socially based. This means that there is also more focus given to social agency. I want to give space to the community who tells stories - the writers, the actors, the audience - they each have their own relationship to the text and their own meaning within it. These individuals have an agency over the way their story is being told, shared and related to.

Alright, now that the boring explanation stuff is out of the way, let’s show you what this actually looks like through the first season of Stranger Things. We’re focusing on the first season because otherwise this would be a whole book instead of an essay.

The first season of Stranger Things is focused around the disappearance of Will Byers, a child from the town of Hawkins. While Sheriff Hopper, Will’s friends known as “the Party” and his mother and brother hunt for him, the true culprit is a figure from an alternate universe called the Demogorgon, accidentally brought to the town of Hawkins by a local government facility. Here, we can dig into a few major mythemes, including characters, figures and locations.

Let’s start with locations. While there are a variety of different set pieces we see through the season, including two of the kids’ houses (Mike’s and Will’s), their school, and the government facility, most of the settings can be considered either Hawkins, the village, or the Upside Down, the name of the alternate universe. Two of the locations are associated with both the village and the Upside Down. Mirkwood, the forest near Hawkins close to where Will lives, and the government laboratory are both locations in some way associated with both the Upside Down and the village itself.

Mirkwood is associated with both the Upside Down and Hawkins because it’s the location Will disappears, and where Mike’s sister Nancy crawls into the Upside Down. Similarly, the government lab is where there are rifts, and the ability to create more rifts, between the world of Hawkins and the world of the Upside Down. While there are forms of Will’s house in the Upside Down, it’s not a location in which the transition is possible in quite the same way that it is with Mirkwood and the lab.

Mirkwood is an interesting location to consider in the show. The forest is a common symbol and location found in folklore, legends, and myths. In Germanic folklore, as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, the forest was seen as a transformational place, a location in which society’s conventions cannot hold. Mirkwood is similar here. It’s a location in which people are transformed and moved to new categories and revealed to hold new relations. It’s where Will goes missing, but it’s also where Nancy has a realisation about Will’s brother Jonathan and begins to see him in a more positive light. Even though Barbara, the other victim of the Demogorgon, gets taken while at someone’s house, the house backs against the forest, and it’s from this forest the monster comes.

The laboratory, while not a traditional forest, has a similar functioning to the forest. It’s a transitory place, a location in which there are transformations in worldview as well as transformations in world. It’s the location for physical shifting, between Hawkins and the Upside Down, and where Sheriff Hopper first gets a glimpse of the possibilities of the Upside Down, transforming his perspective.

The locations in the season are interacted with by the characters, and each character has specific relationships with particular locations. One of the important groups of characters is The Party, or Will Byers’ friends Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. The show opens with the group playing Dungeons and Dragons, and the three remaining characters refer to their group dynamics and their game-character dynamics even when not playing. Will’s family, his brother Jonathan and his mother Joyce, are also characters who are actively working to find Will, at first separate from the friends. Mike’s sister, Nancy, and her friend Barb, begin as separate figures not relating to the missing boy, but become embroiled in it when Barb also goes missing. Sheriff Hopper, an alcoholic, also fights to find the boy.

The government officers, primarily that of Dr Brenner, is an ominous figure in the show and one who frequently hinders the investigation into Will’s disappearance, or actively hunts the Party. Eleven is a child found by the Party who has mysterious powers, and who is actively running from Dr Brenner. Eleven wishes to help the Party find their friend but is often conflicted about how to do it without potentially harming them or herself. Last is the figure of the Demogorgon, the monster prowling the world, taking individuals.

We can categorise these characters based on their relation to landscape. Most of them are more closely related to the town of Hawkins. They are residents of the town who happy to embody the quiet, middle-America town from the 1980s. The characters who fall into this category are the Party, Nancy, Jonathan, Joyce, and Sheriff Hopper. Initially, Barb is also in this category, though does not remain there because she gets moved to the Upside Down.

This leaves Dr Brenner, the Demogorgon, and Eleven. These characters a little more complicated. The only one that is directly associated with one of the locations we have discussed is the Demogorgon, a figure directly from the Upside Down. Even though it moves between Hawkins and the Upside Down, it’s primarily associated with the alternate universe.

Dr Brenner is a more complicated figure. While Brenner is not a monster from the Upside Down, he’s not really associated with the figures from Hawkins. Even though there are clearly issues between the characters in the Hawkins category, there is still an inherent community feel to the connections between them. They know each other and understand the connections and contexts of each of the community members, even if they don’t like each other. Brenner, on the other hand, is a clear outsider, a figure who doesn’t belong to the community. That being said, he’s still a human, not one from the Upside Down, and therefore wouldn’t be suitable to associated him directly with the Upside Down. Though the Demogorgon, and the relationship between the Upside Down and Hawkins was made due to Brenner’s interactions.

Eleven is also a figure hard to categorise. Like Brenner, she is not an actual member of the community in season one. She is an outsider to Hawkins, and from the same location as Brenner as she sees Brenner as a parental figure. However, she’s not really like Brenner either. She has compassion for those around her and harbours a great fear toward both Brenner and the world of the Upside Down.

For now, let’s put Eleven and Brenner to the side and think about the type of structure we can sketch out using our other mythemes and their relations. We have Hawkins, and all its associated characters, on one side, and the Upside Down and its related characters on the other. Two characters move actively from Hawkins to the Upside Down: Will and Barb. This means that there is a positive correlation between the two categories, as there is room for movement. By positive relation, we mean whether or not there is combination or possibility for transition, rather than the two categories viewing each other as positive. It’s more of a functional understanding rather than a value judgement.

Essentially, our structure so far could be sketched out as such:



The overlapping circles are drawn to demonstrate a positive relationship between the two groups which means there is possibility of movement.

Before we move on to thinking about the movement between these categories and how that movement occurs, we first should come back to the two figures we have yet to place. Eleven and Dr Brenner still have no place in our structure yet. The solution may be to reconsider the naming and consideration of what the categories are. Hawkins and the Upside Down served as viable categories due to demonstrating the relationships had between mythemes of locations and characters, but these locations are themselves mythemes.

We can rethink of the Hawkins vs Upside Down as the Inside vs the Outside. Hawkins is the community of the story, the central group in which there are hierarchies and prejudice, but can recognise threats from the outside world at the same time. If we reconsider the categories as simply in group vs outgroup, most of the relations stay the same with the exception of the addition of Dr Brenner to the world of the outsiders. This relegation actually makes a bit of sense, as Dr Brenner is often seen as just as monstrous and scary to the Party, and even to Sheriff Hopper, as the Demogorgon.

However, this does not resolve our issue with Eleven. Eleven is initially an outsider to the community and viewed with suspicion from several members of the Party. However, as time progresses, and Eleven demonstrates her willingness to help the community and her wanting to be part of the loving friend group she finds herself in, the community gathers around her to protect her. However, her appearance not fitting with typical styling of female children of the time, and her reluctance and difficulty in speaking, still paints her regularly as an other.

Eleven is a complicated figure because she is both of the inside and the outside at the same time. Like the Demogorgon, she has the ability to manoeuvre through and between categories, and is simultaneously fitting into both categories while not really fully belonging to either. Eleven is therefore a mediator, a figure which exists between categories, and can at times facilitate their movement between.

It is Eleven who brings the Demogorgon to Hawkins, even if the action was forced upon her by the government agency and Dr Brenner. She is also able to traverse aspects of the Upside Down in order to find Will and Barb. While she has difficulty bringing Will back, she is still able to traverse enough to find out he is still alive and where he is.

However, I would venture to add an addition to the mediating figures: the Demogorgon. I know we associated the Demogorgon with the Upside Down, and the Outside, category. However, like Eleven, the Demogorgon travels. While it is mostly associated with the Upside Down, it is also a figure which moves categories – travelling to the in-group to prey upon the individuals there. It is not just a figure which remains in the Upside Down, but one which moves, and seemingly with agency.



Levi-Strauss’s understanding of myth is tied to how myth moves from establishing an awareness of oppositions and progresses towards their resolution. For Stranger Things, we have to categorical problems to resolve: the mediatory figures of the Demogorgon and Eleven. The problem of the Demogorgon is solved with its death. The problem of Eleven is more complicated. It is evident Eleven is not fully able to settle in the worlds of the Inside/Hawkins because of her extraordinary abilities. So her separation is resolved by a feigning of death, though one that is left as potentially open at the end of the series when Sheriff Hopper is seen leaving Eleven’s favourite food of Eggos at her supposed grave site.

In order to understand what Stranger Things is saying about fear, and what to fear, we should first consider the context of Stranger Things. The show takes place in middle America in the 1980s. While the show replicates filming aspects of the era, and even draws on popular films of the time such as Jaws and E.T. However, despite drawing on the 1980s, the myth of Stranger Things is a reflection of the time period it was written and produced, around 2016. That being said, there are a lot of similarities between the United States at the time the show is set and the time it was made, which is reflected in the way the structure of the show is understood and reflected.

First, we should talk about the nature of a monster. In Jeffrey Cohen’s seven thesis of monster studies, one of the ways a monster is understood is as a “harbinger of categorical crisis”. Structuralism can demonstrate this type of monster well, as it functions on the understanding of categories and finding elements which do not fit.

Our two figures who do not fully fit into categories neatly and cleanly are Eleven and the Demogorgon, both of whom are viewed as monstrous throughout the show. Eleven is consistently viewed as monstrous from those who are more related to the government agency, including “patriotic” adults who follow the government figures’ orders regardless of what it means more solidly for the other characters involved. Eleven is a tool, a thing to be used in the same way the Demogorgon is.

On the other hand, some characters do not see Eleven as a monster, but only as a mediatory figure who is more vulnerable than terrible. Sheriff Hopper in particular views Eleven as a sympathetic figure to be protected alongside the town, rather than a figure to be despised and rejected.

Stephen Prince notes that the United States of “today” is “an extremely conservative nation” and that its attention on “right-wing policies began in the eighties” (Prince 2007, 1). The Ronald Reagan era America is being reflected in Trump’s America, as noted by Trump’s insistence on “making America great again”, a slogan used by Reagan in his 1980s presidential campaign. It is precisely this xenophobia and racism that Stranger Things seeks to alter.

When the show is beginning to get closer to hitting its climax, the town of Hawkins is not being run over by supernatural forces like Eleven, but rather the government. The government sees Eleven as a test subject, one that needs to be controlled or neutralised. Despite this, the mediatory figure of Eleven does not act as a monster for the other characters of the show, but rather as a unifying force, and one that connects others to the central aim of the show: to save a child.

The structure of Stranger Things as painted in our structure can be understood in two different ways depending on the characters in question. For the government figures and the “patriotic” adults (primarily noted by Mike’s father who calls himself a “patriot” to the government officials in his home), the maintenance of the structure should come at the destruction of those who are not “like us”. This is seen in their treatment of Eleven as a something needing controlling and neutralising. Eleven is a social Other who are not seen as vulnerable and fleeing persecution and brutality, but rather as a the monster that threatens the society she comes to.

On the other hand, there are characters who have different viewpoints. Sheriff Hopper, for example, sees Eleven as a vulnerable and marginalised figure. He sees the same for Will Byers, a child from a low income home whose disappearance does not seem to be fazing the town.

In fact, there is a level of consideration regarding homophobia as well, where those in the LGBT+ community as social others not worth of protection. When the police are questioning Joyce on her missing son, she comments he had few friends and was bullied a lot for people thinking he was “queer”. The police interject and ask “And is he?” To which Joyce responds that does not matter. He’s missing. This interaction shows the social constructions of society, and that the in-group and out-groups of Hawkins in the structure are more controlled for some in the society than for others.

This shifting is not necessarily a shifting of structure, but rather of interpretation of structure. For Sheriff Hopper and the Party, Eleven is still a transitionary figure who is both inside and outside the community at the same time. This aspect of the structure does not change from character to character, but rather the perspective on the figure who is mediatory does. While some view her as monstrous, other as vulnerable.

Anthropologist Seth Kunin demonstrates how structure can change over time, typically from a privileging of some elements of the structure of others. Some elements are emphasized and other de-emphasized depending on the needs of the individual and the goal to achieve (Kunin 2001, 2009). This means that structure is not necessarily as biologically derived as Lévi-Strauss suggested. The agency given to storytellers means that individuals or groups of individuals can work to try and change the structure of the societies they are a part of. This is what eventually leads to revolutions, or other alterations of worldview over time.

For Stranger Things, they push for the monster to not be considered as such because of it’s inability to fit into “normal” society. In fact, the great fights in the show are not between the monsters, either Eleven or the Demogorgon, and the town of Hawkins. The revolutionary figures are the primary fighters in the show: the children bullied because they are nerds and friends with “a queer”, the outcast and low-income Byers, and the alcoholic distrusted Sheriff. These are the individuals who take up arms, not against the monster, but against the government and the forces that seek to continue to persecute the vulnerable.

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards in January of 2017, Stranger Things won the award for “Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series”. Upon accepting the award, David Harbour, the actor who plays Sheriff Hopper, said the following:

“In light of all that's going on in the world today, it's difficult to celebrate the already celebrated Stranger Things. But this award from you, who take your craft seriously, and earnestly believe, like me, that great acting can change the world is a call to arms from our fellow craftsmen and women to go deeper. And through our art to battle against fear, self-centeredness, and exclusivity of our predominantly narcissistic culture, and through our craft to cultivate a more empathetic and understanding society by revealing intimate truths that serve as a forceful reminder to folks that when they feel broken and afraid and tired, they are not alone.

We are united in that we are all human beings and we are all together on this horrible, painful, joyous, exciting, and mysterious ride that is being alive. Now, as we act in the continuing narrative of Stranger Things, we 1983 Midwesterners will repel bullies. We will shelter freaks and outcasts, those who have no homes. We will get past the lies. We will hunt monsters.”

David Harbour’s speech demonstrates the resistance given to storytellers who reject the nature of some aspects of cultural structure given to them. The shifting nature of fear is not due to outside forces, but rather are formed to resist the notion of a culture telling us who to fear, when we reject such forces entirely. It is a different perspective on a structure, one which sees most transitory figures as monstrous. Instead, they privilege a different understanding, one where the vulnerable are supported, and the monsters are those who monstrasize the vulnerable. In other words, its attempting to change the cultural worldview the show is brought into, one to change the perspective on our structure, and to bring fear to those telling us to ostricise the vulnerable, and to protect those who are caught in between.