“How about . . . We Watch a Scary Movie Together”
Chapter 1 explores serial drama’s affectionate relationship with cinema through the concept of homage. Homage has historically been thought of as a gesture of unconditional love; in cinema studies, it is meant to visualize one auteur’s affection for another. But this chapter turns to more recent treatments of homage, which tend to balance admiration with critique. Chapter 1 reads Stranger Things (Netflix, 2016–present) as an act of homage to the 1980s. Unlike the nostalgia-driven interpretations of homage, however, here it is read as an act of critical reflection. What this implies is that the series devours its cinematic love objects, thus demonstrating how televisual homage might manifest itself as a desire to embody and replace cinema.