An ode to Eerie, Indiana and all the things that kept me weird

Jul. 18th, 2020 04:11 pm
froodle: (Default)
[personal profile] froodle
Do you remember being 7 years old and looking at the « Black hole sun » video by Sound Garden and your jaw just dropped ? Or being scared when X-Files was airing, running through the corridor being scared of extraterrestrial beings, ghosts, vampires, the whole lot.
Watching Marshall and Simon biking through Eerie, Indiana (the show aired in 1993 in France and, without any kind of logic, reminded me of my small industrial town in southern France). Growing up through the spooky 90’s, reading Goosebumps, and watching countless tv shows about ancient mysteries, identifying with witches and vampire slayers growing up. How much my childhood was filled with American references is pretty mind boggling, but I guess french TV and french children literature couldn’t provide me with the weirdness I needed at the time. On a side note, to give credit to french TV we also had a pretty weird cultural program called « L’oeil du cyclone » on Canal +, that I was probably too young to have watched (the perks of being the last child).

Theses days, I’ve been feeling so nostalgic of the time all my neighbors thought those lights in the sky were UFOs. Even the adults, even the elders thought they were UFOs ! Because they saw them while fishing very early in the morning ! Oh my, did I run faster than usual in the corridor that night (they were actually lights on the roof of a nearby mall by the way). I’m also nostalgic of that time when every crazy story about UFOs did not lead to a new conspiracy theory on Facebook but, oh well, that’s another story.
I guess all the weirdness then led me to liking underground music, starting with Marilyn Manson, making all my way up to extreme metal music. And even if it’s not what I listen to the most these days, I feel like there’s a continuity of cultural influences that made the person I am today.

What hit me when I watched episodes of Eerie, Indiana or Goosebumps much later, is the fact that the young protagonists were the only ones seeing the weirdness and trying to investigate it and/or fight it. Of course it can be a good depiction of the weirdness happening in your mind and body at that age and the fact that « NOBODY GETS YOU ». But I actually think it’s more than that.
You always hear you shouldn’t lost your inner child, who is cute AF I reckon but also very adaptable to its surroundings. Your inner teen is something else. What you can see in Eerie, Indiana, and to some extent in Goosebumps (even if characters were less defined), is adults being caught up in lives society traced for them and teenagers being the only ones noticing the weirdness of this kind of surrender to fate. They’re the only ones actually keeping track of their individuality. The acute sensibility we get acquainted with (or not) during teenage years is our compas to an independent adult life. So I would encourage you not to lose your inner teenager either.
And every time your adult self freaks out about the good way to conserve food in the refrigerator, or about trying to be the « have it all » business woman, mother and everything else without a glitch, just watch the first episode of Eerie, Indiana. You’ll see there’s more to living than that so-called ideal life everybody still craves for.
Tags:
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry

Profile

eerieindiana: (Default)
Eerie Indiana

June 2025

M T W T F S S
      1
2345678
910 1112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 23rd, 2025 09:57 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios
OSZAR »