The Strangest Thing
Last night, watching the second episode of season 4 of Stranger Things I was getting, to put it mildly, “triggered” by the unrelenting bullying being portrayed on screen towards El/ Eleven/ Jane.
Milly Bobby Brown is a superb actor and she conveys very clearly not only the pain and misery of being a victim of other people’s sadism but also the disbelief and incomprehension that others can be so mean without provocation.
The Alpha bitch of High School, Angela is constantly on El’s case and, along with her clique of ghastly friends, make it their mission to subject El to humiliation and shame. This gets taken up several notches after Angela gets blamed for wrecking El’s class project, even though she didn’t actually “snitch” on her.
Meeting her boyfriend Mike after a year of enforced separation, El has a lovely day planned with him and, to facilitate the facade of a happy life, tells him that she is popular and has many friends. This fabrication backfires when Angela and her gang arrive at the roller skating rink El and Mike are at and proceed to antagonise and degrade her, culminating in Angela dowsing her with a drink, while other sniggering friends film the whole thing on a video tape.
Miserable and hurt, El cries alone in a dark room before coming out and demanding that Angela say sorry to which she laughs and even brings up El’s dead father. Finally pushed too far, El picks up a roller skate and smacks Angela in the face with it.
And this was where my perspective got flipped….and for the first time ever I felt very different towards the aftermath.
Angela is badly hurt, a huge gash on her forehead and, with blood running down her face in rapidly branching rivulets, sits on the floor screaming in pain and crying while El looks ashamed and bewildered.
I have yet to watch episode 3 and chose to write this blog while I am still processing what I saw, without the show giving the situation any continuation or closure.
For years I got bullied. I had zero friends at high school and while I had the occasional “mate” there was absolutely no one I could turn to for solace. My parents didn’t think it was a big deal, the teachers couldn’t have cared less and the other kids at school flitted from active participation to indifference 99% of the time. I felt isolated and lonely and some of the situations I saw El experience in Stranger Things I went through (including an incident at a roller skating rink). I became very internalised and had a LOT of revenge fantasies against those that hurt me. After the age of about 12, my heroes weren't Indiana Jones or Luke Skywalker but people like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.
In my own head I have probably committed genocide in the tens of thousands by now but the problem was and is….in fantasies people who are evil react the way I want them to when they are finally facing my wrath. They may scream or struggle but, as it is my imagination fueling the scenario I am in control of everything.
Seeing Angela sitting on the floor with blood all over her face and crying on Stranger Things was the equivalent of someone swiping my feet out from under me. While undoubtedly deserving of physical pain, the force with which El hit her was disproportionate and she will probably be scarred for life. A slap? Yes. A punch? Definitely. But a roller skate in the face was too much and while it is TOTALLY understandable why El did that and Angela was a complete and utter cunt, it wasn’t justified.
For the first time ever I watched this and felt sympathy for someone who I was, 30 seconds previously, wanting to see get hurt. The girl was bewildered and sobbing, with blood pissing out of her face and I felt sorry for her...something I have never gone through before when watching a character like her getting her “just desserts”.
In another great TV show, Boardwalk Empire, a thug working for a local gangster randomly chooses a prostitute at a local whorehouse and (after fucking her) slashes her face with a knife, permanently disfiguring her. The scene is intense and horrible to watch and, a few episodes later, it was cathartic to watch the man get killed in revenge. Thing was...he was sat at a table and a sniper took him out. He was ended instantly and painlessly and went to his grave an unrepentant piece of shit.
When I was a little boy of about 8 I remember that some local boys surrounded me when I was on my bike and were jabbing and pulling at me while calling me names. When they walked off I circled the block and came back and one of them had his back to me, playing in the front garden of another lad’s house. I put my bicycle down and walked up behind him, pushing as hard as I could, causing him to fall over into a bush as I shouted “This is for you!”. I remember very clearly that he started crying as soon as he landed and that the sleeve of his T-shirt got caught on a branch of the bush. He sat there howling , with his eyes closed and the boy whose house it was said “You’re dead Lance”. I cycled off and went home and heard no more about it but I felt immense shame and sadness, not for pushing him over (because he deserved that) but for how upset he was and that what I’d done had made him cry.
I’ve always fantasised about hurting those who hurt me, partially because I ALWAYS felt like I would NEVER be able to pay them back. While I’m technically good at the techniques of Krav Maga (I have a P5 patch and qualified as a kids instructor in 2016) I have always been shit at fighting. My frustrations of a life of feeling like a punchbag meant that I became creative in a way that, unfortunately, meant I was unable to process real-life reactions when they happened. In my head, I control how people react but in reality they scream, cry and plead for help and make it quite clear that they are in fact very human. This blog by Geraldine Deruiter, that I found while writing mine, sums it up in another way.
The breakthrough I had last night was that while it is fun to watch baddies getting snuffed in films like Star Wars or The Terminator it is no fun at all to see a teenage girl crying and in pain, regardless of what she’s done to provoke a reaction.
I don’t enjoy hurting people and I never have. I thought I could be an avenging angel of retribution against the guilty, their guilt weighed on my righteous scales of justice...but at the end of the day I’m like most people. I get frustrated and I get angry but because I bottled it for so long growing up, I felt that seeing the guilty suffer would be enjoyable.
It isn’t.
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