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Stranger Things and the Upside Down World • Teaching From Here

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Stranger Things and the Upside Down World • Teaching From Here

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I had an interesting conversation with one of my good teacher friends from Atlanta about the Netflix show - haven't seen it? Scroll to the bottom for the teaser trailer. Our conversation really resonated in a way I did not expect and got me thinking about what Jenny said. If you have not seen Stranger Things, don't worry - this will all come together.

Stranger Things

This series takes place in the early 1980's, complete with music we love, clothes we can't believe we wore, hair styles that seem to be coming back and all other things 80's. Do you remember the rotary phone? And that if you were on the phone, there was no call waiting? People calling you, while you were on the phone, got a busy signal. They had to call you back. Did you have a boom box? One that took 8 "D" batteries and weighed 10 pounds? Did you record your favorite songs from the radio onto your mix tape? Remember a life with no text messaging or email? Did you ride your bike around the neighborhood from the time you got home from school until it was dark? How about the open concept classroom design, or the terrible home decor - all of these wonderful things are recreated in this Netflix series.

Stranger Things: School

My friend commented about how similar the school portrayed in Stranger Things is to the schools we teach in today. There were the desks in neat rows, facing the front chalkboard. The metal lockers. The different groups of students: the nerds, the smart kids, the socially outcast, the bullies. So many of these things are still visible today.

I know that getting all students to get along every day is a tough task, but there are ways to break down some of the barriers that our students have erected between themselves and the staff. People are different - we can help our students celebrate the diversity that exists in our schools, rather than create silos and animosity. Have discussions about the difference, recognize that we all think differently and that all of our voices are important.

Why is it that a teacher from the early 1980's can walk into our classrooms and feel right at home? Why is this acceptable practice? For those of us who went to school before AOL introduced us to chat rooms and email, the only place we could get information was from the library or a teacher. If our parents had made an investment in Encyclopedia Brittanica or the World Book Encyclopedia we were lucky. We did not walk around with the entire world in our pocket. With the ability to find information on demand and with the political slant, we prefer.

As teachers, we should be seeking ways to reach out to our students, to meet there where they are. They are on social media. ALL THE TIME! Let's meet them there. One example: create a professional Snapchat account and have your students follow it. Then use your Snapchat t o teach your students. Give them a teaser about something coming up. Show off the brilliant things they are doing in your classroom. Use it to encourage them. Send possible homework options. Reach out to Kas Nelson - she does a great job with her school.

Stranger Things: The Upside Down

In the show Stranger Things, there is the Upside Down world. This world is a dark and shadowy version of reality. Scary things live there. Death lives there. The danger is constantly lurking around every corner, behind every tree.

Some of our students live in the Upside Down world. Their lives are overloaded with dark and shadowy things. Students who are homeless, or who struggle to find food, or a safe adult to live with - these young people are constantly living in the Upside Down world. When children are hungry, learning becomes difficult. If students do not have a safe place to sleep at night and are hyper-alert to their surroundings, learning becomes difficult. When students have learned through their life experiences that adults are not to be trusted, learning becomes difficult.

We should stop a nothing to rescue our students from the Upside Down world. Nothing. The education that students receive is determined by the zip code of their address. Think on this for a minute. Look at the current metrics that are used to evaluate our schools. Schools that struggle are typically located in economically challenged neighborhoods. What are we doing to help these students? Are we attacking the poverty our children live in with the zeal that we cheer on our favorite sports team? Are we working to craft policy to help our least fortunate students have the opportunity to focus on education?

What exactly are we doing to pull these students out of the Upside Down. According to a newsok.com article, almost 25% of our children are living in poverty, with 30% of children who have parents without secure employment. Compare that to Finland, where childhood poverty is one of the lowest in the world at 4.3%, according to a UNICEF study. Apples and oranges I know. But Finland has figured out a way to pull their students out of the Upside Down. We may not be able to replicate what they have done, but can we not pull some of their ideas into our thinking?

One thing that could be a contributing factor is the educational system. Finland's is vastly different than the American model. Again - what can we borrow from their system and tweak into ours? We will probably need to re-evaluate policy that guides education. Here is how we do that:

1. Include teachers when crafting policy, use them and research for guidance.
2. Repeat step 1.#oklaed https://t.co/iKil8QKCtd

- Scott Haselwood M.Ed (@TeachFromHere) October 10, 2016

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Stranger Things and the Upside Down World * Teaching From Here

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I had an interesting conversation with one of my good teacher friends from Atlanta about the Netflix show - haven't seen it? Scroll to the bottom for the teaser trailer. Our conversation really resonated in a way I did not expect and got me thinking about what Jenny said.

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Lesson Plans from Short Subjects and Clips of Films, Movies and Videos

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Lesson Plans from Short Subjects and Clips of Films, Movies and Videos

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snippets and short subjects; science lesson plans

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Lesson Plans from Short Subjects and Clips of Films, Movies and Videos

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Lesson Plans from Short Subjects and Clips of Films, Movies and Videos -- TeachWithMovies.com - Create lesson plans from movies, films and video; Inspire and Motivate Students; 425 Movie Lesson Plans

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Pop Music: Top Pop Songs Chart | Billboard

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Pop Music: Top Pop Songs Chart | Billboard

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© 2019 Billboard. All Rights Reserved. Billboard is a subsidiary of Valence Media, LLC.

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IMDb's advanced search allows you to run extremely powerful queries over all people and titles in the database. Find exactly what you're looking for!

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Genius is the world's biggest collection of song lyrics and musical knowledge.

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The Demogorgon | Stranger Things Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

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The Demogorgon | Stranger Things Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

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The Demogorgon

Aliases

The Monster
Man with No Face

In November 1983, a predatory humanoid creature entered Hawkins, Indiana. The creature originated from the parallel dimension known as the Upside Down. When Eleven, a psychic test subject from Hawkins National Laboratory, made inter-dimensional contact with it, a gate between dimensions opened at the lab.

The creature passed through, terrorizing Hawkins for approximately a week. It abducted various residents and took them back to the Upside Down, usually killing them. The friends and family of Will Byers, one of the creature's victims, slowly began to uncover the truth about the beast, with the help of the escaped Eleven. They gave it several nicknames, including "the Monster" and "the Demogorgon". The creature was finally defeated and destroyed by Eleven in a showdown at Hawkins Middle School.

Background

The monster had the ability to travel between dimensions on a whim, creating temporary portals in the fabric of reality. The monster arrived at a road near a local forest, where it stalked Will Byers on his way home. The monster chased Will as he entered his house, forcing Will to run to his garden shed. Will hid in the shed, loading a rifle in self-defense, but the monster simply appeared behind him, taking him into the Upside Down.

Once in the Upside Down, Will managed to evade the creature for almost a week, and began attempting to communicate with his mother. Joyce and Will had some success, with Will manipulating the electricity in his home dimension, although these attempts would sometimes attract the monster. In an early attempt, Joyce saw her house wall become warped and distorted as the monster started to break through, terrifying her. In a later attempt, the Monster broke clean through, although Joyce managed to outrun it.

Will eventually succumbed to exhaustion, lying in his makeshift fort. The Demogorgon found him, breaking through the fort wall and taking him to the Upside Down library.

Nancy and Jonathan Byers later exploited the Demogorgon's attraction to blood to ambush it. With the aid of Steve, they severely injured the beast, setting it alight - however, it survived and slipped into the Upside Down. The Demogorgon left the Byers house and headed to the library, leaving a trail of blood.

Eleven killed a large number of government agents at Hawkins Middle School, defending herself, along with Mike, Lucas and Dustin. The Demogorgon was attracted by pools of spilled blood, breaking through the wall. The Demogorgon began began a spree of violence, attacking Dr. Brenner as surviving agents opened gunfire.

For a while, the four kids outran and evaded the creature, hiding in their science teacher's classroom. Eventually, the Demogorgon found them, breaking into the room and attacking them. Eleven confronted the creature, pinning it against the blackboard with her mind. After wishing farewell to her friends, she proceeded to disintegrate the beast, vanishing as well in the process.

Appearance

The Demogorgon is tall and thin with a humanoid figure. Its head has no facial features and opens like a flower to reveal nothing but teeth. It bears clawed feet and hands, and its skin appears to be coated in fluids.

After being set on fire by Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve, the Demogorgon's body was covered in burns.

Most knowledge on the Monster is highly speculative - even Dr. Brenner admitted that he and his peers had limited understanding of the creature. That being said, the behavior of the beast is "predictable" as Brenner remarked, comparing it to a typical predator. Nancy made similar associations: she compared the creature to lions and coyotes due to their shared tendency to hunt at night. She noted that the solitary nature of the creature was similar to that of a bear.

Nancy also theorized that the Monster was attracted to blood, comparing it to a shark. This ability to detect blood appeared incredibly potent; it was aware of small quantities of it, even when separated by dimension. However, the creature was not exclusively drawn by blood; Joyce and Will Byers, as well as various Hawkins Lab scientists, were attacked by the beast despite seemingly not bleeding. It is unknown if the creature was attracted to anything else, though one distinct possibility is sound: when Nancy ventured into the Upside Down, the Monster was unaware of her presence until she made noise. Since sound from the human dimension was audible from the Upside Down, the ability to hear these noises would have greatly aided the creature while hunting. It is also possible that, like many predators, the Monster simply took any opportunity to hunt and acquire prey, and wasn't drawn by any specific stimuli.

The Monster had the ability to travel between dimensions on a whim, creating temporary portals or wounds in the fabric of reality. How or why the Monster possessed this ability is unclear, though it only became aware of and started traveling to the human dimension after the moment of contact with Eleven. Mr. Clarke, the boys' science teacher, remarked that interdimensional travel would require "a massive amount of energy, more than humans are currently capable of creating"; going by this logic, the Monster must have wielded a great deal of energy while dimension-traveling. Nearby lights and electricity would constantly flicker on and off while the Monster did so, which suggests that creating these portals did indeed involve huge volumes of energy.

The Monster was hostile every time it was encountered, immediately pursuing anything which took its attention. It generally used instinct and brute strength, rather than intelligence, to get through obstacles; the main exception to this being the use of telekinesis to unlock the Byers' front door (an act which was remarkably similar to Eleven's use of her abilities). The Monster generally hunted in close proximity to Mirkwood, with the Middle School being the furthest it ever traveled in pursuit of prey. The reasons for this are unclear, though this was potentially motivated by Mirkwood's close proximity to Hawkins Lab and the Gate.

The Monster would take captured victims to the alternate version of the public library, which housed something resembling a nest. The Monster was not the only creature inhabiting this supposed nest - slug-like creatures could be seen emerging from the corpses of the Monster's victims, while Will was found with some kind of tendril extending down his throat. Although it is unclear if these creatures are related to the Monster in any shape or form, their presence in this supposed nest is suggestive of some kind of wider ecosystem within the Upside Down.

The motivations behind the Monster's hunt for prey were neither straightforward nor easily explained. On some occasions, it devoured prey, such as the wounded deer. However, it did not devour Will Byers upon catching him, instead taking him to the nest in the library. Though it is possible the creature intended to devour him at a later time, it is also possible that it sought him out for other purposes, such as reproduction. These possibilities are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Furthermore, the Monster could be seen hunkered over large, yellow eggs, feeding off them. It's not clear whether or not these were the creature's offspring, or if they were even the same species.

It is unknown how, when, where and why the Monster was born or created. While it potentially hatched from one of the aforementioned eggs, there is currently a lack of evidence to support this theory.

The Monster possessed several unique abilities:

Strength - The Monster is a creature that has an outstanding and extraordinary strength. It can break through solid walls and is able to easily overpower and carry a fully grown man.

Durability - Due to its durable skin and tough body, the Monster can withstand massive amounts of bullets from several firearms and several beatings from a baseball bat with nails. However, not even its durable skin can withstand Eleven's power of biokinesis, which seemingly killed the Monster.

Regenerative Healing - After being beaten and burning in a fire, the Monster manages to heal its injuries after a certain period of time.

Blood detection - The Monster is strongly attracted to blood and can even sense the tiny droplets from different dimensions.

Interdimensional travel - The Monster is able to pull individuals, such as Will Byers and Barbara Holland, into the Upside Down and can enter Hawkins through temporary tears in space time. This creates a spatial distortion similar to a wall bending outward and eventually ripping open.

Telekinesis: The Monster appears to have some form of telekinetic power. It unlocked the hatch on the Byers' front door while pursuing Will. It is also possible that it used this power to pull in the deer, however, this has not been made entirely clear.

Behind the scenes

The Duffer Brothers described the monster as "an interdimensional being that has more in common with the shark from Jaws than Pennywise from It. When the monster enters our dimension, it's like a shark breaching the water. Very much like a shark, it drags its prey back into its home, where it feeds."

Many of the scenes with the monster were done practically, with Mark Steger portraying the monster in a suit with an animatronic head. CGI was used for scenes that required the monster to do things a man in a suit couldn't possibly do.

Conception and design

The Duffer Brothers had a lifelong dream to create a monster for the screen.

The artists at Aaron Sims Creative were given the task of designing the look of the Monster, with the description of a "humanoid creature with no face, just a mouth." From the very beginning, the Duffers wanted the creature to be humanoid and grotesque, with the creature designs of H.R. Giger, Clive Barker, Guillermo del Toro and Masahiro Ito being influential to the Monster's appearance because of their "strangeness."The artists went through several early concepts, some of which were "more monstrous in shape, even more asymmetrical." Ultimately, they were inspired by nature when they came up with the flower petal-like mouth in the first week, a design which really resonated with the Duffers.

Production

Having grown up on genre films before computer graphics, the Duffer Brothers wanted to go back to using practical horror elements and using a person in a suit that could interact with the actors in real time. "There was something about the effects being so tangible in those films that made them especially terrifying to us when we were kids."

Spectral Motion, a makeup and creature effects studio which has worked on productions such as Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, was given the task of building the Monster. They only had a span of two months to complete the project, leaving almost no room for error.

The process began with a scan of Mark Stegar's body, from which a full-size form was created that the body of the Monster was sculpted onto. Animatronics were installed in the head and arms, which had to be operated with a remote control. Stegar often had to wear metal stilts that elevated him nearly ten inches. Despite the suit's complexity, it only took half an hour to 40 minutes to put on and only weighed approximately 30 pounds.

The animatronic head consisted of 26 motors, and the noise they produced often made hearing directions difficult for Stegar. The animatronics were also designed in such a way that the "petals" would move uniquely each time they opened. When the Duffers first saw the Monster's mouth open, they were blown away, saying "It felt organic. Creepy. Real." For the shots where the creature's mouth was open, Stegar's exposed face would be removed digitally and replaced with a mouthpiece that was also created by Spectral Motion.

The CGI enhancements and effects were handled by Aaron Sims Creative.

The Monster received its nickname from Eleven using the Demogorgon game piece to show that Will was hiding from it.

In D&D lore, Demogorgon is a demon prince with two heads that strive to dominate one another, but are unable to do so.

In mythology, Demogorgon is a god or demon associated with the underworld, and whose name is taboo.

It is currently unknown how exactly the Monster can sense blood, as it appears to only have a "mouth" and no other visible orifices that could be used for scent.

Though the Monster can use telekinesis, it only exercises this ability twice: when it unlocked the Byers' front door and presumably when it pulled in the deer.

While the Monster exclusively hunted at night, Nancy saw it at daytime as she looked for Barb. This was done for storytelling purposes.[4]

The Monster was killed in Mr. Clarke's classroom.

It was hinted that the falling ash-like spores present in the Upside Down have a possible direct connection to the Monster. [4]

The Monster's open mouth somewhat resembles a Rafflesia arnoldi, a flower with the odor of decaying flesh, earning it the nickname "corpse flower." Furthermore, its teeth are similar to those of the leatherback sea turtle.

In the original pilot script, people would bleed from their nose and ears when in contact with the Monster, similar to how Eleven bleeds when using her telekinetic powers.

In the Dungeons & Dragons game in Chapter One, Will uses fireball against the Demogorgon, possibly foreshadowing Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve setting the Monster alight in Chapter Eight.

The twin toddlers who portray Holly Wheeler, as well as Millie's younger sister Ava, were initially frightened by the practical Monster suit. To calm them down, a crew member told them that it was a benevolent monster from the Disney/Pixar film Monsters, Inc.[2]

If one looks closely, it can be seen that the shot of the Monster attacking Barb in "Chapter 2" was reused in "Chapter 6", when the Monster notices Eleven's presence. This was possibly done because of budget limitations or time constraints.

When asked if the Monster was some kind of plant due to its appearance, Mark Steger responded that it was a fair speculation, adding that he feels it's "more mushroom, which is kind of between plant and animal. "[7]

Click the above image to view the gallery for The Monster.

References

1. The Duffer Brothers said in an ↑ interview that "Obviously something happened to [Eleven] when she destroyed and killed that monster," effectively confirming its status.

2. "↑ Netflix's Stranger Things: Shawn Levy interview" Den of Geek!. July 15, 2016.

3. ↑ "Exclusive 'Stranger Things' Art Reveals 'Upside Down' Secrets and Barb's Alternate End" Screencrush. August 22, 2016.

4. ↑ "'Stranger Things' Finale: Duffer Brothers Talk Cliffhangers, Death and Season 2" Variety. July 18, 2016.

5. "↑ Meet the man behind Stranger Things' terrifying monster" The Verge. August 14, 2016.

6. "↑ 'Stranger Things' Demogorgon: Meet the Man Behind the Upside-Down's Faceless Monster" IndieWire. August 27, 2016.

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In November 1983, a predatory humanoid creature entered Hawkins, Indiana. The creature originated from the parallel dimension known as the Upside Down. When Eleven, a psychic test subject from Hawkins National Laboratory, made inter-dimensional contact with it, a gate between dimensions opened at the lab. The creature passed through, terrorizing Hawkins for approximately a week.

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Demogorgon - (PART 2 of 2) Anatomy, Abilities, Science, Reproduction - YouTube

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Demogorgon - (PART 2 of 2) Anatomy, Abilities, Science, Reproduction - YouTube

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Demogorgon - (PART 2 of 2) Anatomy, Abilities, Science, Reproduction

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Watch PART 1 HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6I2V9vbabM&t=10s Let's getting even deeper into the sticky crevices of the science behind Stranger Things' DEMOGORGON. In this second part we take a close look at its ecology, personality, physiology, anatomy, abilities, weaknesses, reproduction, power level, and similar beasts. Be brave my friends!