This is Part V of an exploration into the nature of
Demogorgon (or The Monster, as I prefer to call it) in the Netflix
sci-fi/horror masterpiece, Stranger Things. You can read Part I here, Part II here, Part III here and Part IV over here. Spoiler alerts will follow.
MKSEARCH
Early on in the show, Eleven is tracking Russian agents with
her mind while scientists study the results. This whole scene is a
reference to Project MKSEARCH, which was another program that came out of
MKULTRA. It was primarily intended to program people to have ESP, telepathy,
and all that other psychotropic funky mind trip stuff. Just like the Russians,
the American government wanted to make sure they could either do it themselves,
or that it couldn’t work.
What they found, according to conspiracy theory investigators who give more a fuck about it than we do, is pretty horrific. Dr. Cameron was involved, once again, but so was a new mad scientist, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Together they performed more than 150 experiments using chemicals to control the minds of “expendables,” homeless people, children from foster homes, etc. that the government had found to test the chemicals. In 1972 the CIA destroyed all files related to this project. What exactly they discovered, we will never know.
What they found, according to conspiracy theory investigators who give more a fuck about it than we do, is pretty horrific. Dr. Cameron was involved, once again, but so was a new mad scientist, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Together they performed more than 150 experiments using chemicals to control the minds of “expendables,” homeless people, children from foster homes, etc. that the government had found to test the chemicals. In 1972 the CIA destroyed all files related to this project. What exactly they discovered, we will never know.
You’ll notice that in the show there is mention of how
Eleven’s mother took drugs as part of the government’s investigation into
psychic behavior. This is one of the common threads that runs throughout the
horrifying story that is our government’s investigation into psychic behavior,
according to the conspiracy theories…that the government is testing a drug that
will give a person psychic powers, whenever the government wants them to.
Sure, having a mind controlled, programmed wind-up toy is
fun, but the ability to give a person, any person in the government psychic
powers is something that any government would have to be insane to not want to
have. Imagine the potential if you could give a diplomat, politician or spy
telepathy or the ability to kill with their mind. It would certainly be better
than mind controlling a person who already has psychic powers naturally. You could affect politics on a global scale.
COMMON CONCEPTS
Running through all of the MK programs that deal with the
study of mind control, paranormal and psychic behavior are two important
concepts that explain what the government was up to, if the conspiracy theories
so many people have written about are to be believed. One is drugs. Over and
over, drugs are used to induce behavior, control minds, etc. Go ahead and
research all of these programs for yourself. From the Nazi’s to the modern era,
you will find that the Powers That Be apparently really want to study drugs,
almost as much as the human mind.
The other common concept is systematic sexual abuse,
especially in regards to children.
MORE MKOFTEN THAN NOT
I have already mentioned MKOFTEN, and don’t worry…all the
usual evil mad scientists end up involved in this conspiracy theory. What is
very important is that authors who have worked on the subject like Peter
Levenda mention that in this project, and other projects, people with psychic powers
were locked in copper lined Faraday cages. Science often uses these cages to
block out electromagnetic energy in order to sterilize the environment for
outside influence in order to work on very precise, sensitive electronics. Apparently, Faraday cages also increase pyschic power.
When Eleven is forced to hide inside a closet, she has a
flashback to when her own father had scientists drag her away from him,
traumatized and screaming, into a dark room of sorts. Look over her left
shoulder as the image fade to black. The wall is copper. She is in a Faraday
cage…a reference to all of the conspiracy theories we’ve just gone through to
figure out The Monster.
At one point in the series, Eleven is told by the scientists to kill a cat
with her mind, but she doesn’t do it. Think carefully…we are given precious
little information about the experiences the little girl had in the lab, so that
scene is important. It shows us she won’t take innocent life. But a fragment of
her personality, a shard of her psyche, a splinter personality, based on
brute-force survival programming, fight or flee psychological instinct…maybe
that would. When she first contacts the psychic Russian agent, she walks up to
the man and then turns around when she hears The Monster, becoming aware of it.
In the next scene, an obviously upset, traumatized
Eleven is alone in a room with her father, a stuffed lion and tulip (tulip/tulpa) flowers.
He tells her it chose her, whatever that means. After that, she finds it,
touches it, and screams, opening a wormhole into time, space and her own mind,
pulling The Monster into the real world, where it destroys and kills with
bestial abandon.
By the way, did you notice the time gap at this point? When
Eleven summons The Monster, she is wearing a strange, flesh-colored diving
suit. When she escapes, she is wearing her hospital gown. Right after she
screams, and the massive crack opens in the wall of the lab, we don’t see
anything else for a while. The Monster escaped, later. Eleven escaped, later.
Time passed…but we don’t know how much. I think we are all going to see more
from this missing section when we watch Stranger Things 2.
You have probably figured out by now that the flesh-colored diving suit is a nod to the audience that The Monster is her. Even the helmet makes her head look bulbous and strange. If she had been put in a blue diving suit, The Monster would have been a different color.
You have probably figured out by now that the flesh-colored diving suit is a nod to the audience that The Monster is her. Even the helmet makes her head look bulbous and strange. If she had been put in a blue diving suit, The Monster would have been a different color.
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY
Modern psychology believes that a human personality is
comprised of three sections, the ego, the superego, and the id. The superego is
the idealistic part of your brain. That section handles ethics, conscious and morality.
If you feel bad because you betrayed an old friend, your superego makes you
feel that way. The ego is you, your personality…your self. The id is all of
your basic instincts. Anger. Sex. Hunger. Fight. Flee. When you were a little
baby, you were basically a screaming id. The ego and the superego came later.
I find it very horrifying, but equally important, that
Eleven is always seen with a hospital gown. She doesn’t ever seem to wear
normal clothes when she is inside the lab. A hospital gown isn’t exactly a
great thing to wear for a long time, seeing as how it doesn’t protect or cover
up your body, south of the belt buckle. It is also eerie that she is so willing
to strip naked in front of the boys, when she thinks she has been told to strip
and change. What kind of terrible environment did she grow up in?
There is also something else…the strange absence of images
and visual influences around Eleven in the lab, especially in her cell. Aside
from her father, the tulips, the stuffed lion and a few other things, she
really doesn’t have a lot to look at and influence her imagination. This was
probably done on purpose.
Right before she is dragged away from her father, she is
wearing a hospital gown and has been traumatized. Right before she is told to
contact The Monster, Eleven seems traumatized, wearing a hospital gown, alone
with her father. Even her father’s behavior when he finally gets Eleven is odd.
It doesn’t exactly seem like a healthy father/daughter relationship.
There is another thing. Eleven’s father’s skin tone is
the same skin tone as The Monster. During the fight with The Monster inside
Will’s house later on in the series, when the teens attack it with fire,
bullets, a bear trap and a phallic baseball bat, the teens aren’t as tall as
The Monster. Compared to it, the teens are almost half its size. Compared to
her father, Eleven is almost half his size.
Because The Monster is a reflection of her id, and it looks
like things that are in her imagination, combining the images of a tulip, a
naked man, sexual imagery, a stuffed lion and raw, animal biology. Was there
ever a conspiracy theory that featured a rampaging id monster conjured from a
person’s mind, like a scientific tulpa? Of course there is…everything is on the
Internet, even pure evil. Maybe if we can find a conspiracy theory about an,
“id monster,” for lack of a better term, we could prove my wacky theory…
To be continued!
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