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Billy on “Stranger Things”: What It Says About You
Sometimes, it’s the smallest disagreements that say the most about us. This debate divided people on social media.
The same way one’s position on whether the governess in The Turn Of The Screw is dealing with possessed children or her own sexual repression, or whether The Bride in Kill Bill is the villain because she didn’t forgive Bill and let bygones be bygones (yes, there are people who think that): both of these stances/viewpoints says something about the biases of the reader. So too does Billy’s “character” and “forgivable” rating among viewers say more about their pejudices than it does about the character himself.
White people, particularly white women were willing to overlook Billy’s racist, abusive nature because of this patriarchal, racist system and because, to them, Billy’s was breathtakingly attractive.
Billy’s Story
Billy is part of a violent home. It was made apparent in season 2, episode 8 which is the first and last time we see Billy’s father and Max’s stepfather. The father was onscreen for less than five minutes, but in that short snippet we see the toxic masculinity complete with…