Note: This article contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 4.
Stranger Things is back, and it’s bigger and better than ever. The arrival of Joseph Quinn’s Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson, the leader of Hawkins High’s Hellfire Club marks the Netflix show’s deeper dive into the turbulent cultural politics of the decade.
The Duffer Brothers have always strived to include the sociocultural climate of the 1980s, including folding in the surprisingly hot Cold War conflict into the battle against the Upside Down – however, in this season, a new war has emerged: the war on Dungeons & Dragons.
Eddie’s arc as the falsely framed ‘satanic ritualist killer’, corrupted by the role-playing game, strongly reflects two real-life cases in the 1980s: James Dallas Egbert III and Irving Lee Pulling.
In 1979, 16-year-old Egbert disappeared from Michigan State University and was discovered to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot. William Dear, the private investigator hired to find him, concluded that D&D was the likely cause, disregarding evidence of possible mental health issues at the time.
Soon after, in 1982, Irving Lee Pulling also died from a self-inflicted gunshot, with his mother Patricia Pulling concluding his suicide, much like Egbert’s, to be caused by D&D, again ignoring clear complex psychological factors at play.
This led Pulling to form the activist group BADD in 1983 – Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons. This group was dedicated to fighting the roleplaying game, claiming it featured “sex perversion, satanic type rituals, sadism, demon summoning [and] insanity”, among many other sins.
BADD’s activism was heavily entwined with right-wing conservatism and Christianity, affording it a wealthy bedrock to produce an intensive media campaign across print, broadcast, and radio press much like the magazine article read by Eddie in season 4’s debut episode.
This campaign resulted in a strong debate on 60 Minutes between Pulling and D&D co-creator, Gary Gygax. Despite the heavily biased structure against the game and creator, Gygax’s analogy remains one of the strongest and simplest arguments against BADD’s ideology: “Who is bankrupted by a game of Monopoly? Nobody is. The money isn’t real.”
Much like how basketball captain Jason Carver claims Eddie to be “a vessel for Satan”, in 1985 Jon Quigley of the Lakeview Full Gospel Fellowship decried D&D as “an occult tool that opens up young people to… possession by demons”. In spite of extensive research involving the Centers for Disease Control that established no clear link between the game and violence, because D&D was the single factor connecting these cases, for Pulling, Quigley and BADD, it became the only possible explanation.
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D&D became a simple scapegoat for the myriad of complexities within 1980s adolescents, particularly within the eyes of conservatives both political and Christian – it allowed them to shift blame for whatever they could be responsible for, especially when the true cause appeared to lie within those demonising the game like Pulling.
In his 1984 book The Dungeon Master, William Dear would eventually conclude that Egbert’s family pressures and his struggle with his own sexuality were likely among the factors that led to his eventual suicide, dismissing the initial claim of D&D’s responsibility.
Ironically, like an embryonic Streisand effect, the moral panic around D&D led to a significant boost in its sales, jumping from $2.3 million in 1979 to $8.7 million by the end of 1980 – and this was long before the heights of BADD and Patricia Pulling’s campaigning.
Likewise, there are a number of studies which suggest roleplaying games like D&D contain educational and therapeutic benefits, building cooperative and problem-solving skills alongside developing the socio-emotional skills and freedom of expression that conservative communities feared so greatly.
Others have also noted D&D’s primary skills (role-playing, character development) are central functions of cognitive behavioural therapy, and in fact, the game provides an outlet for ‘outcasts’ like Stranger Things’ Hellfire Club to form close-knit friendships and develop individuality in a healthy and welcoming environment.
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Jason’s world-shattering encounter with Vecna’s existence and consequential doubling-down on the supposed ‘satanic’ nature of Eddie serves as a powerful metaphor for conservative America’s desperate need for control over 1980s American adolescence, with the moral panic over D&D a terrified response to the possibility of losing that power.
The power to control is a thematic thread-line sewn throughout the fourth season of Stranger Things – as Vecna gains it over Hawkins, so does the town descend further into the panic fuelled by Jason’s belief in ‘the satanic will’ of the Hellfire Club.
In many ways, the very moral panic that fuelled Patricia Pulling and BADD is what strengthens Vecna, allowing him to manipulate those at their weakest point, warping their minds into ignoring everything else but one single belief. Fighting that battle alone can be near-impossible – you need someone to guide you through the darkness; someone like a dungeon master.
Stranger Things 4 part 1 is released on Netflix on Friday 27th May, with more coming on July 1st. Stranger Things seasons 1-3 are now available on Netflix.
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