Stranger Things: The Strange Depiction of Lucas & Erica Sinclair Season 3

Black Characters Without Culture

For those who have been reading my critical analysis of Lucas & Erica Sinclair seasons one and two, you’re well aware of the criterion used to evaluate these characters at this point. However, for those who are first-time readers, I view all content involving Black characters with a racial socio-political lens that involves the examination of Black characters’ ability to operate autonomously in their Blackness independent of the white gaze. The white gaze often acts as an intangible impediment that circumscribes the agency of how Black people operate outside the confines of eurocentric standards. Simply put, I measure to what degree are Black characters uninhabited by tropes, that otherwise make them limited in their cultural awareness. This encapsulates the character’s depiction of cultural values, clothing, hair, music, language, etc. Ultimately, I dissect the capacity to which Black characters are shown within a cultural context that affirms the authentic idiosyncrasies of Blackness separate and apart from whiteness.

Inclusive of this examination is what I call “The 4 I’s”, intent, impact, influence, and implications; these elements contribute to how we understand and properly contextualize the use of Lucas and Erica. The aforementioned metrics help reveal tropes, stereotypes, and microaggressions otherwise hidden by the concept of “entertainment”.

Lucas & Erica Characterization Season Three:

It’s the summer of 1985 from the outset of season three, we’re introduced to 10yr old Erica Sinclair in the mall with four other Black girls who are unnamed and unmonitored by any visible parental authority(in episode one). Once again, this establishes the trend of Mr. & Mrs. Sinclair as negligent parents who disregard the whereabouts of their children. It’s late at night at the time in which Erica is shown, as in scenes before we see Lucas waiting outside in the dark of night along with Max outside of the mall. The significance of seeing Erica with Black friends can’t be understated, as it marks the first time either Lucas or Erica has been shown having a Black friend group. The impact of this depiction indicates Erica has somehow aligned herself with Blackness in a way that evades Lucas and connects her with intracultural interactions that provide support for her Black experience. We also see Lucas enter the mall and make contact with Erica asking “ isn’t it past your bedtime?”, he says this as if he’s surprised to see his 10-year-old sister at the mall late at night unattended with four of her friends. The implications of such a depiction highlight the display of Black parental neglect, by showcasing five Black girls 10 yrs old or younger without parental supervision in the middle of the night.

In response to Lucas’s question, we see Erica respond in a cruel manner stating “Isn’t it time you died”

Such a callous response underscores much of the depiction of Erica, in that without provocation we see her respond in ways that influence the normalization of Black women as irritable and inherently combative even in the innocence of youth. As many of Erica’s interactions with Lucas are contentious, without relief or demonstration of closeness. Of course, sibling discord is natural, however, the regularity of contention between Lucas and Erica(often initiated by Erica) creates a continuous disconnect between them as functional allies. As episode one continues, we see Lucas with his friends gathered in Dustin’s house to surprise him, in doing so Dustin is startled and turns around and sprays Lucas in the eyes with hairspray. This scene sets the tone for a series of exchanges that depicts Lucas as a dunce, who ultimately becomes the butt of many jokes which relays on his obtuseness to create humor for the audience. The implication of this is salient, as this is a stark difference in the characterization of Lucas from season one, who was mostly defined by his wit and courage.

In scenes later, we see the compounding effect of Lucas being used as comedic relief. Lucas is seen washing his eyes after being sprayed, he clears his eyes and notices Max has a zit and in her anger, she pushes his face back into the running water which causes Lucas to scream in pain. Once again using Lucas’s pain for comedic relief, is a trend seen throughout this season. Lucas has secured Max as his girlfriend, although much of her positionality to him feels like “tolerance” rather than an organic affirmative “appreciation” of Lucas. This is a point I shall elaborate on later. While traveling Dustin mentions his girlfriend is “Mormon”, to this Lucas responds “oh shit she doesn’t have electricity” to which Max responds “that’s the Amish”. Normally, this response by Lucas is just a common misnomer, however, when combined with the previous events made to paint Lucas as halfwitted we begin to see these occurrences as characterization. This is typified when we see Lucas pull out a canteen of water and drinks it profusely in front of Max (without offering any), to which Max says “did you seriously just drink the rest of the water?”.

Lucas like a cartoonish buffoon spits the water back into the canteen and offers it to Max, furthering his court jester regression, and then gives this big Sambo minstrel show smile.

Such displays as this highlight the resurrection of racial socio-political propaganda akin to stepin fetchit, which perpetuated the notion of Black people as slow-witted. The intent is clear, depict Lucas as foolish and hair-brained to produce laughter for the audience. As mentioned before Lucas isn’t appreciated by Max, instead he is “tolerated” and Lucas is mostly depicted as ceaselessly unwavering in his pursuit. This is evident when Lucas brags about Max dumping him five times and not being discouraged and marching back to get her every single time, Lucas is inevitably pursuing a character who never displays a mutual desire for him to the level of his efforts. This incessant pursuit highlights the continual propositioning of token Black characters’ pursuit of white approval and acceptance romantically, as we see Lucas's dignity diminish to gain Max’s attention.

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Erica: Sapphire Stereotype

We see Erica’s role expand this season, which was great to have another Black character have a prominent role. However, this expansion came at the expense of Erica being pigeonholed into the stereotypical Sapphire caricature, otherwise known as the Angry Black Woman trope. The Sapphire caricature is defined as the following:

The Sapphire Caricature portrays black women as rude, loud, malicious, stubborn, and overbearing. This is the Angry Black Woman (ABW) popularized in the cinema and on television. She is tart-tongued and emasculating, one hand on a hip and the other pointing and jabbing (or arms akimbo), violently and rhythmically rocking her head…She is a shrill nagger with irrational states of anger and indignation and is often mean-spirited and abusive.

This trope serves to adultify Erica in a way that robs her of innocence, thusly relegating her to a one-dimensional truculent and sassy character whose abrasiveness overshadows her positive traits. The implications of such a depiction align her with bitter characters akin to “Aunt Esther” from Sanford and Son, shown as the resolutely irritable, belligerent, and “Angry Black Woman”(ABW).

The impact of this depiction is insidious in that Erica is perpetually fostering a historical trope that impedes her from being seen as a child with a range of emotions beyond a seething bitterness. This influences the standardization of the “Angry Black Woman” as being pathological, which facilitates the continuous misrepresentation of Black women culturally. In episode three, we see Erica trying to get more ice cream samples, this shows her intelligence in seeing to what degree can she manipulate store policy. Erica is shown with three other Black friends, however, we never actually see them converse nor are their names addressed. Lack of agency aside, we see Erica connected with Black people in a way Lucas is disallowed from doing so. Again, we see Erica and her friends with no adult supervision in any capacity.

The problematic element of Erica’s characterization is how her character’s occurrence on screen routinely necessitates a combative interaction which is often unprovoked, and generally never seen as hospitable, kind, or personable in any capacity. Her persona is interminably rude, pugnacious, and beholden to an oxymoronic nice-nasty personality. We see Erica routinely using curse words, once again contributing to adultification, align with this is the lack of compassion for her as a child and the criminalization of her actions as that of an adult. The influence of this normalizes the real-life issue of Black children being seen and treated as adults rather than children. Although Erica is anchored by the ABW trope, we see glimpses of her other characteristics that show her more favorable qualities. There’s a scene in episode four, in which Dustin, Steve, and Robin need Erica to assist them in gaining access to a Russian fortress through an air vent.

We see Erica’s brilliance on full display, as we see her moxie demonstrated by her foresight in thoroughly using her skepticism to navigate and dissect the plan laid out by Dustin, Steve, and Robin. We see Erica asking questions regarding preemptive plans for boobie traps, Erica swiftly decodes the faulty plan as “child endangerment” due to its lack of efficiency. A very insightful deduction for her age to weigh the risk of her involvement and determine it to be “child endangerment”, a term most 10yr olds aren’t aware of.

Erica demonstrates an unyielding resolve in knowing what she knows, despite their attempts to dissuade her, which I loved about Erica. Dustin attempts to use patriotism to encourage Erica to help, by suggesting the country could be in trouble and asks Erica “Don’t you love your country?”. A loaded question to proposition and typical of white people to leverage against Black people to conscript loyalty to America, regardless of its disloyalty to Black people, I digress. To this question Erica responds with the following:

An answer that holds a complex duality, on one hand, displays an incisive play on words that holds true. On the other hand, it shows the insidious ventriloquism of whiteness in which Erica is puppeteered in a way to articulate white ideologies that promotes Americanism. This in effect puts a Black face on white power, the puppeteering power of white paternalism(Duffer brothers) uses a 10yr old Black girl to demonstrate allegiance to America. Dustin proceeds to suggest Erica help the country, and to this Erica says “you know what I love most about this country? Capitalism”, in the video below from 3:20-3:37 time mark we see Erica explain what capitalism is.

Erica states:

It means this is a free market system, which means people get paid for their service depending on how valuable their contributions are

Erica at the ripe age of 10yrs old has been used as a neo-colonialist vehicle for transmitting clandestine socio-political support for the single tool responsible for fueling the systemic socioeconomic oppression of Black people. The intent is to use Erica to reinforce the idea of capitalism to the Black audience, this is propaganda at its finest. The definition she provided is a warped idealistic interpretation of capitalism that doesn’t exist, as capitalism has never favored Black people as a group. This is best explained by Dr. Amos Wilson:

America has never had a free market, It has never had an open market, never. Black people have never been apart of an open market or free market or a market system. A free market or an open market would be a market where trade and exchange takes place purely on the basis of value, where the buyer trades and with the seller purely on the basis of price and worth of those things that are being traded. Nothing else is taken into consideration. In other words, in a free and pure market economy you have an impersonality, "Only Money Talks", but as soon as someone decides to sell or not sell because you are a different color, or raise the price, because you're a different color or deny loans, because you're a different color or deny access to the market and so forth...You're not in a free market at all and you've never been in one.

Erica is being used to support an economic practice that has historically been unscrupulous, by underpaying Black women and men for their contribution whilst white capitalists feed off the value of Black contributions. Black people have routinely been “shortchanged” on their value due to the greed capitalism engenders, which makes this deceit by the Duffer brothers particularly malicious.

Erica shows a genius in knowing her worth, but it’s subdued by the white paternalistic agendas that stricken her into a mouthpiece for capitalism. Later we see Erica going into the air vent, it’s pitch Black outside by this time and she gets trapped in the mall overnight with Dustin, Steve, and Robin. Erica states she’s supposed to be at “Tina’s house”(who was never visually identified) spending the night as a cover, however, the details of this cover aren’t fleshed out. How is Erica getting to the mall while also deceiving her parents into believing she’s at a friend’s house? Erica was stuck in an elevator at the mall for over 8 hours, at this point she would have been going back to her parents. Unprocessed elements that ultimately perpetuate parental neglect.

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We saw the continuation of the Sapphire trope with the unnamed hospital receptionist pictured above, Nancy is seeking to check in as a visitor and as the picture displays the Black receptionist has an agitated facial expression. This receptionist without provocation has a rude demeanor followed by an unyielding attitude, it’s one-dimensional portrayals like these that facilitate an agenda to stereotype Black women as angry.

In this third season, Lucas has the least amount of screen time compared to his screen time in seasons one and two, most of which is seen in unfavorable depictions. However, he was seen saving Eleven from Billy with his slingshot, giving us a glimpse of the Lucas of season one. We simply don’t see Lucas enough to appreciate this heroic moment as he’s seen as half-witted much of the season. Lucas in episode seven comes up with the idea of getting fireworks to fight off the Mind Flayer, however, when Max sees this she feels it’s a waste of time and mocks him. This highlights just a lack of support from her regarding Lucas. Lucas later in episode eight has another heroic moment in which he uses his slingshot to misdirect the monster and buy time for Max, Mike, and Eleven to escape. Lucas’s idea about the fireworks is very successful in defending against the monster, to which we see him get no recognition from his friends.

Ultimately Erica is a precocious math wiz with charisma, unfortunately, much of this is overshadowed by her incessant irritability which becomes insufferable due to the saturation of this Sapphire archetype. An archetype that’s tethered to a combative persona, that maintains racist tropes. One of the most disturbing elements of this season is the continued absence of Mr. & Mrs. Sinclair, not once did we see them in this season. Furthermore, we saw no indirect mention of them attempting to check on the whereabouts of Lucas or Erica. Particularly in the case of Erica who’s 10yrs old we see her independent of Lucas and her parents at the mall, once again contributing to the adultification.

Cultural Influence

I’ve discussed the erasure of Black cultural influence in my previous review, and this is still an evident issue. Musically we still don’t hear the Black excellence of the likes of Lionel Richie, DeBarge( Rhythm of the night was huge in 85’), Grandmaster Flash(Hip-Hop in general), or Whitney Houston on the show’s soundtrack. A major hairstyle of Black culture was the Jheri curl, and yet we saw no Black characters in the background with the style. We still see Lucas completely detached from any Black friends or Black cultural trends of the time, it would’ve been great to see him watching or reference the A-Team with Mr. T or The Cosby Show. We get a glimpse of Mr. T on a cereal box as Lucas walks down a cereal aisle but at no point does he even acknowledge it, a cultural reference underutilized.

In closing, this season didn’t advance Lucas’s character development one iota, instead, we received a regression and reduction of his character involvement. Lucas became a jester this season for the majority of comedic relief moments, with glimpses of heroism. Erica’s role blossomed this season, however not without it coming at the cost of perpetuating the Angry Black Woman stereotype. Ultimately, this season did more to sully the depiction of Lucas and Erica in ways that left a “Strange” impression, as the brilliance of Erica could not usurp the tropes reinforced by the writer’s room.