Stop Using Abuse as a Plot Device

Content Warning: Discussion of Domestic Abuse

Spoiler Warning for Stranger Things, and IT

On July 4th Netflix released the third season of their popular series Stranger Things. I’m a huge Stranger Things fan, and even though I think there have been major flaws in the past two seasons, I definitely enjoy the show and would say I’ve had a positive viewing experience each season.

While the new season has been out for over 24 hours, and the pop culture discussion has moved on, there is one element of the show that I’ve had a problem with and feel the need to address.  That’s right, we need to discuss the ‘Billy’ in the room. Specifically, how Stranger Things and other popular media handle domestic violence.

Since the appearance of Billy Hargrove in Season 2, he has been my least favorite character of the series. However, let’s put that aside and examine Billy’s story and how it’s framed.  In the second season, Billy is set up as an antagonist to challenge hero Steve Harrington as the alpha male of the high school. Billy is shown to have anger issues, as he often lashes out at his step-sister Max whenever she is late. Max is terrified of Billy due to his abuse, and it’s implied that he breaks her skateboard and other possessions whenever she doesn’t follow his commands.  Early in the season, Billy tries to run over ‘The Party’ (Mike, Dustin, and Lucas) as they ride their bikes home from school.  The only reason he doesn’t is because Max has to literally grab the wheel and steer it away from the Middle Schoolers.  

Billy is also implied to be racist.  In one episode he points at Lucas, the only black primary character, and tells Max that there are certain people she needs to avoid in this world, and Lucas is one of them. {Side Note: When discussing this scene with a close friend, he said that Billy didn’t want Max to hang out with Lucas because he was a nerd. I don’t want to be the type of person to shut down alternate readings of a text, but this interpretation is… a choice.  Like I don’t believe this bully from the 80’s saw the only black kid in town and his first thought was, “Man, that kid probably plays Dungeons & Dragons.” I guess people from California are more progressive than I thought.}

Every scene Billy is in, the script and camera framing are designed to tell the audience that he is the antagonist, and you should not like him.  That is until the Season 2 Finale “The Gate”, which features a scene with Billy and his Father. In this scene, Billy’s dad yells at him for losing track of his step-sister, and forces him to cancel a date in order to find Max.  It’s a quick scene meant to make the audience sympathetic to Billy as a character.

And here’s the thing, I don’t. The series has spent 8 episodes going out of its way to make me despise this character, then wants me to feel sympathy for him.  It’s a quick shift in character that doesn’t feel earned because it happens so suddenly.

Hell, any goodwill I would have had for the character goes out the window in his following scene. Billy finds Max, and immediately starts beating up her friends and trashing a strangers house.  Yeah, this is the guy I feel sorry for because his dad slightly pushed him once.

The writers on the show want to imply an abusive childhood in order to make the antagonist sympathetic.  However, the majority of screentime is dedicated to depicting Billy as despicable as possible. The result is the audience remembers the moments of Billy yelling at Max in the car, grabbing her arm, and threatening middle schoolers.  Not the time his father made him cancel a date. You end up with a character that has little redeeming about him.

Stranger Things isn’t the only property to use this trope. IT is a 2017 horror film based on a Stephen King novel of the same name.  IT and Stranger Things have a lot of similarities. Both franchises are in the sci-fi/horror genre, take place in the 1980’s, and are aimed at an adult audience in spite of primarily featuring child characters. The two properties also use child trauma in a similar way. Henry Bowers is the town bully in IT. He is first introduced to the audience when he bullies the character Ben by literally using a knife to carve his name into him. Later in the movie Henry steals his fathers’ gun and is about to shoot a cat before his dad stops him. Much like the scene in Stranger Things this moment is meant to humanize the sociopathic Bowers, but it falls incredibly flat.  In an interview with Raw Pages, actor Nicholas Hamilton described Henry Bowers by saying, “There’s a story, there’s layers, he’s vulnerable at times, he’s not just the dick,” Which… really? Yeah, his dad shooting a gun near his son was definitely traumatic. But you were also about to kill a cat for no reason.  Statistically speaking, that would make him more dangerous than the clown in the movie.

Just like Stranger Things the scene where I’m supposed to sympathize with the villain comes right before the climax of the film.  Up to this point, the film has only conveyed to me that Henry Bowers is a sociopath, and uses child abuse at the last minute to make their villain sympathetic.

To be fair, at least Stranger Things tries to address abuse in its third season. Towards the end of the season, the character Eleven goes inside Billy’s mind.  Here we get a full backstory of Billy, how he was close to his mother, but she left due to his father’s abuse; and how his upbringing led him to become a bully. Eleven later reminds Billy about his mother, which makes Billy sacrifice himself to stop the Mind Flayer. It’s a scene that features excellent acting by Dacre Montgomery.

However, Billy’s arc still feels incomplete to me. While the show does go into Billy’s struggles, all scenes relating to his abuse are told in flashback.  Not once in the season does Billy share any screen time with his father. There is no catharsis where Billy actually confronts his problem head on. The story tells us that Billy’s actions, and need for redemption, are caused by the cycle of abuse started by his father, but not once does the audience get to see any interaction where Billy truly confronts his issues. The end result of the season feels like once again Stranger Things  uses domestic abuse as a cheap way to garner sympathy for a character.

I also get the feeling that even when Stranger Things tries to address Billy’s abuse, they aren’t that interested in it.  Once Billy realizes he doesn’t have to be like his father, he serves no other purpose, and is cast aside.  Billy’s only character trait is to be abused, and then die.

So I guess the real question is why do these two popular franchises use nearly the exact same approach to define their villains. Well, I think I know the answer.  A classic screenwriting rule is “make your bad guys badder”. The more evil your villain the more compelling your story. It will also make it more satisfying when the hero wins in the end.  Conveniently, you can see a lot of this trope in 80s movies, where the bully is always comically over-the-top in how evil they are.

However, these kinds of villains are no longer appealing in the 2010s.  People don’t want to see a bully from an episode of Goosebumps, they want Walter White. The easiest ways to make them sympathetic is to have them be a victim of child abuse.  See in the real world, it’s a common fact that children from abusive households are more likely to imitate the actions they see at home, and are statistically more likely to be bullies. At this point whenever I see a bully in media, I guess that this is probably the way the story is going to go.

And, that’s my main issue with this trope. Child abuse sucks.  Everyone knows that, and I don’t think there’s a non-troll on the Internet that will disagree with that claim. The stories of Stranger Things and IT have no interest in exploring the problems and traumas surrounding domestic violence. Instead, they try to have it both ways. Both stories go out of their way to make their villains as sociopathic as possible, then use domestic violence as a shorthand to gain the audience’s sympathy for their villains. The result is these story beats don’t feel earned in either case.  What annoys me the most about this trend is not only that it trivializes real world abuse in order to give the illusion of depth, but it’s just lazy writing.

If you’re looking for an example of a bully being sympathetic that Stranger Things season 3 could have borrowed from, a good example would be Stranger Things season 1.  The character Steve Harrington is a bully.  He’s rich, he’s popular, and he and his friends make fun of the ‘nerdy’ students.  Throughout the season the audience sees Steve’s darker side. He smashes Jonathan Byers’ camera, and slut shames his girlfriend Nancy in the middle of the entire town.  However, the script gives the audience enough time to get to know Steve, and watch him regret his actions. Yes, Steve is a bully. But, there’s enough characterization to him that the audience understands his perspective, and it didn’t need a lazy child abuse angle to make him compelling. So in the finale, when Steve makes amends with Nancy and Jonathan, then helps them kill the evil Demogorgon, his redemption feels earned to the audience because of how much time was spent with him. In the end, Steve’s story feels more complete and satisfying than Billy’s ever does. Yes, audiences want complexity to their villains; but slapping abuse survivor on top of your bully to explain their actions isn’t as nuanced or groundbreaking as some people think.

I’m not saying domestic violence/child abuse should never be written about.  However, I am saying that using child abuse as a shorthand for character depth can be lazy and cliche’d. And by using this motivation, your character may not come off as sympathetic as you think. So, if you spend the first 90% of your movie making me hate your antagonist; then don’t be surprised if I and the rest of the audience don’t give a shit when we find out they were abused.