Stranger Things heartthrobs Steve Harrington and Jonathan Byers are the new boys dividing audiences into debating teams hotly drawing the line on who’s the better boyfriend. And so we enter yet another wave of Team A vs. Team B…
Let’s be honest, we’re living in a very unhealthy world, with increased injections of every sort of social unrest under the sun. More and more actions, artworks, sentences, and images are subject to scrutinising gazes and excruciating dissection, unearthing the perversions or hidden agendas they might carry. As awareness begins to transcend into paranoia, it’s only natural that we turn to the simpler things for relief: things such as debating which boy should get the girl in the latest fictional craze we’re watching.
Debates like this have been around since Shakespeare –no doubt audiences had passionate discussions of why Paris was better than Romeo – and they will continue to be a thing until we lose the ability to read, write, and speak. It’s only in the last couple of decades that this phenomenon has evolved from friendly arguments over coffee or in book club, to all-inclusive debates between strangers over social media and ‘newsworthy’ online articles. It seems that the more tension is injected into society, the more we’re going to react with argumentative pieces about why fictional characters should end up together (between bitching about politicians running us into the ground).
Amongst the revered love triangles of Cathy, Heathcliff, and Edgar (Wuthering Heights), Lucie, Sidney, and Charles (A Tale of Two Cities), James, Severus, and Lily (Harry Potter), and Edward, Bella, and Jacob (Twilight) here’s introducing the latest targets for debate: Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve from Stranger Things. Spend a solid chunk of time on Google and you’ll unearth dozens of articles that tell you who’s the better boyfriend and why. While I admire that such discussions have not ceased – but rather expanded – with the world’s shift toward the digital age I can’t help but wonder what it says about us that we debate these characters in this way.
All’s Strange in Love and War
I cannot imagine a headline like “Team Vicomte vs. Team Phantom: Who’s Side Are You On?” popping up on my newsfeeds any time soon. How odd that would be. It might sound pretentious, but isn’t it a sort of decay when the classics can’t fit with contemporary jargon? As society changes so too does its art, language, and discussions, and over time the heavyweights of romance – those of the ilk of Bronte, Dickens, Dumas, and Austen– have been replaced with the likes of Rowling, Collins, and Meyer. This illustrates a shift from “star-crossed” to “stranger things”.
What does it mean that the most talked about fictional couples are now surrounded by inhuman fantasy? Magical, mythical, dystopic, and alien creatures from parallel realms are overshadowing modern romances – at least those modern romances being hotly discussed – and replacing the intimate depictions of human society that filled the pages of Austen and Shakespeare. Fantasy has always had a romanticism of its own, but it’s interesting that the most talked about love triangles – like that of Nancy, Steven, and Jonathan – are taking place amidst such settings, especially as more and more Weinstein-esque scandals come to light. We’re in a world where accusations are flying like Cupid’s arrows –and proving just as lethal. Giants in various industries are being toppled daily by ghosts of indiscretion’s past, and people are still scratching their heads over Trump’s election, so I guess it makes sense that we retreat to books and TV for the promise of escaping our reality and finding something worth gushing about. We’re clearly responding to romances that face even more challenging trials than we do: a sort of extreme voyeuristic escape.
I’m With …
Political, scandalous, and stranger things aside, it’s a relief that we still have the time and energy to binge watch a series, form attachments with the characters, and then enter into lengthy discussions with one another about them. The debate really became a thing with Bella’s love triangle between vampire and werewolf, and the Internet blew up with “Who’s Side Are You On: Team Edward or Team Jacob?” The Steve vs. Jonathan debate has not reached the mainstream scale of the Twilight love triangle yet. However despite being online and about characters from an exclusive show – not everyone has Netflix – as well as being slightly less exciting than “vampire or werewolf?”, it shows that our social behavior of the friendly argument is unthreatened by the digital age.
Thanks to the freedom of social media it’s nice to clock discussions about things that will not result in someone’s life or reputation being ruined. We’re taught early that expression is important and that the friendly argument is a perfect way to express opinions, collect information, and form relationships. Being able to discuss fictional things in a social setting is just as important as discussing politics or the state of the Earth, as it helps us develop our skills in collecting and recalling information, listening to our peers, and the art of conversation. It’s nicer still to see these skills being developed beyond the gates of the schoolyard or the walls of the café, and with people who we may not know as intimately as our friends or office colleagues. For all our fear mongering about the antisocial attitudes the digital age will supposedly result in, some social behaviors are strong enough to withstand the pull of our own company and that’s an encouraging thought.
The world has changed a lot since the days of women verbosely discussing the thrills of gothic romance over tea á la Jane Austen; it’s gotten meaner, tougher, stranger. But amidst all the awareness, fear, and judgment there’s resilience and a die-hard optimism about the perfection of Love, as we still manage to find time to size up the boys and debate over who should really get the girl.
Team Jonathan or Team Steve? Leave us a comment below!
