I love "Stranger Things" as much as any other pop-culture-obsessed Gen Xer, but it frustrates me. It hits all the nostalgia buttons, but the 1980s as represented on TV and in movies are often foreign to me. That goes for retrospective works as well as media contemporary to the decade.
When I started working on my novel, "Sinkhole," I knew I wanted to set it in the 1980s, but not for the nostalgia factor. I wanted to talk about the social and cultural isolation teens experienced in the 1980s. I wanted to address the routine threat of violence gay teens faced at school. I wanted to show that the 1980s were not all flashy clothes and conspicuous consumption, that poverty existed in between episodes of "Dallas" and "Dynasty." I also wanted to set it in the 1980s because my plot relied on a lack of cell phones and social media. I never thought of it as being nostalgic, but it turns out that nostalgia is a tricky thing. It creeps in at the edges when you aren't looking.
