![]() ![]() The connection simmered in the background until 1972, when Pepsi signed an agreement with the USSR to become the first Western product sold in the country. In a move planned in advance by the Pepsi marketing team, Nixon led Khrushchev to the Pepsi display, where he took what T ime magazine referred to as a “ skeptical sip.” But the resulting photo launched a decades-long relationship between the USSR and the soft-drink brand - one that still has repercussions today. In July of 1959, then-Vice President Richard Nixon visited Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as part of a cultural exchange program, which included an exhibition of booths from American vendors. brand has intertwined its story with the Russians as intimately as Pepsi. Just as the Duffer brothers develop the narrative arc of a season of television, a brand creates a narrative to sell itself, and no U.S. To understand the importance of the iconic Russian brand in this narrative, you have to look at its relationship with another brand, this one American. ![]() (The proliferation of Cheetos references this season is certainly intriguing.) And like the toaster waffles of the previous season, one brand came to the forefront in Stranger Things 2: the Russian vodka Stolichnaya. Stranger Things relies heavily on brands to anchor itself in a specific time period entire plotlines develop around nostalgic names like Eggo and Radio Shack. It is a deliberate pivot from the previous season, and everything from the dialogue to the brands referenced supports this reading. We don’t know yet what the monsters want from Hawkins, but we know they’re laying the groundwork to get it. This season, the entire town of Hawkins is under siege from something much bigger the monster looms over the town, invisible to most residents, and at the same time, cancerous roots grow below them, spreading rot and decay. Gone are the ominous blinking lights and the focus on the familial home as a site of potential terror. Stranger Things 2, which premiered almost a year after the 2016 presidential election, is a whole different demogorgon. Stranger Things Season 1 was a stylish homage to everything about the early ’80s, down to the Cold War-era fears it embodied: the danger lurking in electrical currents was a perfect metaphor for the nuclear panic of the day, and the idea of a monster living inside the walls of the house evoked the fear of The Americans-style sleeper agents lurking in every suburban cul-de-sac. Perhaps that relative stability and faith in institutions, even as we grappled with important societal issues, is one reason why the show, set in 1983, didn’t get political. When Netflix’s Stranger Things premiered in the summer of 2016, we were living in a different world - a world that was more or less held together by rules and regulations and societal norms. ![]()
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