The transmedia musical characterization of youth identities: The case of the television series «Stranger Things»

Abstract

Audio-visual productions, such as television series, use youth stereotypes that reflect reality and simultaneously construct it by disseminating simplified models that are used as codes for social labelling. Social types are characterized by a set of personal traits, social environment, clothing, lifestyle, etc. In the characterization of the characters, the use of musical re-sources has been studied to a lesser extent. The series «Stranger Things» stood out especially for the use of diegetic and extradiegetic music both in the period setting and in the characterization of characters. In characterizing characters, it offers a special case of the use of transmedia resources that humanizes them and intensifies the emotional connection with the audience. Netflix and Spotify designed and published playlists of their characters including musical styles that characterized them. We analyse here the playlists of adolescents and young people in Strange Things, exploring, through correspondence analysis, what styles characterized them and what type of adolescent and young person they described. The analysis operatively triangulates the audio-visual characterization with the musical one. The types of young people are divided into two cleavages: the first is race (defines two types) and the second is the degree of social adjustment (de-fines four types of young adolescent).