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kali-prasad · 8 years ago

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Kali, Eleven, and White Feminism

By now, I’m assuming everyone who watches Stranger Things has seen the second season. But just as a precaution, this post will contain spoilers :)

Okay so season two opens up with a burglary scene featuring masked teenagers. The teens get sucked into a high speed police chase, cutting corners and creating chaos in the streets in hopes of escaping. But to their dismay, the police continues to trail them. One of the teenagers who rides in the passenger seat seems to have a map of the city engraved into her mind, because she she possesses an odd ability to guide the driver with ease. The scene starts to come together and make sense when one of the teenagers in the back of the van instructs the passenger to “do something”. The passenger, who we know now as Kali, leads the driver towards a tunnel, where she uses her mind control powers to make the policemen hallucinate that the tunnel has collapsed. The scene closes with a familiar gesture that we’ve seen Eleven do a thousand times: With the sleeve of her jacket, Kali wipes blood that is dripping from her nose and reveals the number tattooed on her wrist, “008″. Like Eleven, she is another child who has been victimized, tortured, and experimented on in the Hawkins Lab.

Being that the season opens with Kali, it would seem to some viewers that she would be a major character. However, we don’t really see Kali again until episode seven. I’d like to point out that Max Mayfield (Mad Max), who is also introduced in the same episode has way more screen time, thus making her more of a major character of the season.

In episode seven, Eleven finds out about Kali after her mother shows her images of her as a child in her “dream circle”. With the help of Eleven’s aunt, they search her mother’s file for anything on Kali, whom Eleven notes as being “different” than her when her aunt asks what she looks like. Though in Eleven’s defense, she does not possess the language skills to explain what she means when she says Kali looks “different”, let’s be honest, Kali’s race is not minuscule in this storyline. So far, Eleven is very used to being around white people, with the exception of Lucas. Considering the bigger picture of the show, before Linnea Berthelsen, Caleb McLaughlin is the only person of color in the main cast. Therefore, Kali’s brownness plays a huge role in the way her character is portrayed and consumed by the audience. It would be completely valid to say that Kali’s first introduction to the audience sets her up as the polar opposite to her white counterpart, Eleven.

There is one scene that sticks out between the magical pair. Kali and El hunt down one of the “Bad Men” El sees in her mother’s dream circle. The man is one of the employees at the Hawkins Lab that tortured Eleven’s mother. When they encounter him, Eleven begins to choke him with her mind, with Kali encouraging her from behind. However, Eleven stops when she notices a picture of the man and his daughters, which for her, humanizes him. She decides against killing the man for her own reasons, however, when Kali decides to seek out her own revenge, Eleven takes that choice from her. A few scenes later in the van, Kali tells Eleven “if you wanted to show mercy, that is your choice. But don’t you ever take away mine. Ever.” This seemed like a poignant moment and one that the writers could have dived into. But instead, it was glossed over.

Son of Baldwin writes “there was a moment to really dive deep in the complaint of women of color against white feminism. But what the show does instead is make Kali/Eight the villain and Jane/Eleven the righteous one. The series was sure to start off with showing Kali/Eight in the midst of committing a crime, just in case you didn’t already associate dark skin with criminal activity. As a friend of mind said, “The episode’s message was that there is no abuse PoC can suffer at the hands of white people that would justify retaliation or revenge.”

And of course, many fans of the show have fed into this narrative, bashing Kali and elevating Eleven over her, completely disregarding the fact that Eleven has killed many people in the name of revenge and defense as well.

Kali’s character should be equally celebrated. She is no less of a hero because of the way she chooses to deal with her oppressors. For most of their scenes together, Kali helps Eleven hone and control her powers. She teaches her to harvest her anger and trauma and use it to her advantage. Sadly, this also adds to the mistreatment of her character because she is arguably only used to further Eleven’s character arc. After episode 7, Kali disappears. But of course her legacy is long lasting. Eleven closing the gate to the upside down? Yeah that would not have been possible if it weren’t for Kali

I love Stranger Things as much as anyone. I think it’s an amazing show with immensely talented kids, who I have sworn to protect. But my hope is that as consumers and fans, we don’t turn a blind eye to the silent but very obvious issue of race in the show. For the show’s sake and for the sake of proper representation, I hope we see more of Kali in season three. I hope her character is more developed and humanized and I hope her methods are shown to be valid. She is a kick ass brown character and she deserves praise.

#'there is no abuse poc can suffer at the hands of white people that would justify retaliation or revenge'#perfectly encapsulates fandom's attitudes lol #kali #kali meta #kali hate #racism #misogyny

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kali-prasad · 8 years ago

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I’m not sure if anyone has done this yet, but I thought I’d just throw my own Kali headcanons out there (featuring El and other characters because they should all be one happy family), and into the void that is this site, because I love her and she deserves it.

- it’s after a year of El being back that Kali comes back; she shows up at the Byers house one day and asks for Jane, and Hopper and Joyce are reluctant to show her until El walks in after hearing her name, and spots Kali arguing with them to just let her see her, that she really means no harm; El then runs in and they reunite, hugging and crying; Kali lets her into whats happened, that their leads ran dry and they ended up getting in a bust that while she escaped from, her friends didn’t; with no where else to go, she said she had to find her, to make sure she was alright and to make things alright; El takes her hands and tells her “You, live here now. With me. With my family.”; El tells the tale of woe to her family, that Kali was locked up and abused just like she, and Joyce, hearing it and hearing from El all of what happened to her, is more then welcome to let her in, to give her a stable home; Hopper is more reluctant, but he also knows that there’s no changing Joyce’s mind when she makes it up, and that turning Kali away would probably make El hate him forever, so he gives in; Kali is also unsure, having no knowledge of these people, but El practically begs her to stay, promises they were good people, and as she sees how much they care about her sister, and have in fact been able to protect her after all that terrible stuff, eventually agrees, at least to look after El, and the young girl is nothing short of ecstatic.

- Hopper helps build a bunk bed for them, where El takes the top bunk; however both parents know it was probably going to get crowded, so Hopper starts working on a spare project to expand the room, which El helps him with; they spend the free time they can, hammering nails and putting up plywood, and El enjoys the time with her father, and likes having built something of her very own.

- Hopper remains skeptical of Kali, thinking she wasn’t a very good role model for El, and Kali doesn’t really like him either, thinking of how he kept El locked up in that cabin; but in the end, they both see how very protective and caring they are towards El, even if it’s in different ways, so they both agree to keep from stepping on each other’s toes for her sake.

- now that she has her sister, Kali sort of realizes she can’t necessarily do crime anymore; that doesn’t stop her from small things though, like occasionally shoplifting some gummy worms or chocolate bars for El, and sometimes even getting Will his favourite Reese’s Pieces; Hopper eventually has to confront her, and Kali doesn’t really listen until El talks to her too (“no Kali that’s illegal”) and only then, does Kali promise to stop (though, not completely, as maybe once a month Kali might give her a couple bags of candy out of nowhere and El just doesn’t tell Hopper, figuring this was better for him)

- turns out she really likes music, especially rock, and her and Jonathan get into long discussions about it; El often sees them in Jonathan and Will’s room, record player on and in deep talk about the nuances of this band verses another, getting her to grin (although she says, that while she likes David Bowie and the Ramones too, his taste are far too male, and brings records for Joan Jett and Patti Smith as well as many other female led punk bands); their music extension grows, and often the four of them will jam out in the car to it, the two older siblings in the front and Will and El in the back, head-banging and all; they both agree that being different is much better then normalcy, and are doing their best to teach this to their younger siblings.

- she even picks up guitar too, spending time in the bedroom atop her bed learning the chords; she plays mostly covers but also writes her own lyrics too, writes about her life and starts churning her internal pain to make it into music; El watches this practice of healing and it makes her happy, and she sits on the bed with her and reads her many books, the low strum of guitar and Kali’s quiet voice making her feel calm inside.

- she also enjoys art, having practice with street art when living in Chicago (though she doesn’t spread this around the house); she’ll occasionally doddle and cover them in a mesh of colour, and Will sometimes comments on how good they are, leading them to sometimes give the other tips on art style and the complications; Will lets her use all his art sets and Joyce and El have found her guiding him in how to shade better and which colours suit the other best.

- El is eager to show her to her friends, and they all immediately fawn over her, thinking she’s the next coolest thing after El; Kali doesn’t really love them, finding them loud and rather annoying, especially Dustin who keeps begging her to recreate Star Wars characters for him to see in real life; and even though she appreciates how kind and wonderful Mike is with El, she’s still skeptical of him, no matter how many times El tells her the story of how Mike helped saved her, housed her, and was kind to her when no one else was, she’s still the big sister, and therefore must be skeptical; their first meeting was very interesting (“so you’re Michael?” “..y-yeah, I’m Mike..” “Hm. Jane really likes you, do you like her?” “Yes! Y-yes, I do, a lot. She’s amazing.” “Mm.” “…” “…If you break her heart I’ll break your neck.” Mike just nods furiously, and makes sure to keep his distance, because it was one thing to be dating a girl who has a grumpy police chief for a dad, and an older brother, but now has a very powerful and very scary older sister).

- the only ones she likes are, one, Will, mostly because he’s the quietest, but also because she sees a very gentle soul in him, someone who needs protecting, as well as someone who was also hurt for being different, and in turn becomes rather protective of him too; she also takes to Max, seeing the same spark, the same spitfire she was when she was younger in her, and also relates to her background of abusive older men in her life, so she’s always a bit kinder to her when El has her over for sleepovers (El literally had to hold her back from going over and beating the shit out of Max’s step-father and Billy herself after she learned what was going on)

- (It’s seen as a very cool honour in the party to be liked by Kali; El is kind of excluded because she is her sister, but the others can’t help but be a little jealous of Will and Max; Will only shrugs it off and says it’s just ‘cause they live in the same house, but Max gets a bit boastful and smug about how Kali talks with her, and lets her sing along to The Runaways with her and El while in the car as she preaches to them how important it is for them to know that it wasn’t just men with bad hair who contributed to music).

- she also takes to Joyce rather well, grateful to her for how kind she’s been to El; Joyce knows she can’t necessarily treat, smother in a way, this much older girl who’s probably seen more then her age indicates the same way as El, so she’s careful with her actions because even still, she wants to do well by her; and Kali sees it, notices the way Joyce buys her favourite kind of snacks and had gotten her a notebook to write in for her song-writing, even the small things like pats on the arm and calling her “hun”, Kali notices and appreciates it in her own way (“Ms. Byers is very kind..” “Yes. She’s Mama now.”)

- (Joyce even finds her one time in the middle of the night, sitting on the porch visibly freaked out from a nightmare – she doesn’t get them often anymore but they’ll creep in on occasion, of cold faces and confining white walls and throbs of pain – and she doesn’t ask her to talk about it, because Kali wasn’t really dying to, but she does bring her a blanket and some hot chocolate, and sits with her in the dark until she’s ready to go back inside, telling her the stories of the first time El went swimming and her big ballet recital, and Kali can’t help but smile at the first gesture of genuine kindness she’s seen in a long time).

- she’s the only one who calls El Jane. Her family and friends had asked her if she wanted to change over to Jane, but El wanted to stick with the name they gave her, that Mike gave her, that was her first real identity outside of the lab, a real identity that wasn’t tied to being a weapon; Kali then asks if she wants her to change over, but El tells her to keep it because Jane is a part of her too, and she thinks it’s kind of special that only her older sister gets to use that one.

- she calls everyone by their first and full name, always. Michael, William, Jim, Steven, even Maxine (until Max told her she doesn’t like it because that’s what her step-father yells and then Kali stops right away). No one knows why this is. On the flip side, El has taken to calling her Kal, (“short for Kali!”) and she pretends to hate it (“It’s already only four letters, is it really that hard?”) but it’s very clear she doesn’t.

- both her and El seem to be in a competition for who can be the most blunt; they both stick to their short and obvious words.

- her and El were sitting on the porch one night, star-gazing (Kali saying that you can’t see the stars in Chicago), when the younger asks what really made her sister want to come here and make this big change in her life; Kali said she really did want to find her, and she does think they should stick together; but also to rectify what she did wrong, apologizing for making El see Brenner, that even though she was trying to make her see the truth and confront the past that she couldn’t ignore, she realizes El wasn’t ready and it only hurt her in the end; El accepts with a smile, saying she did know what Kali was really trying to do even if it was misguided, telling her that it was only by her teachings of how to harness her powers was she able to close the gate

- also that in just a short time, El had managed to change her world view entirely; that maybe that man didn’t deserve a chance but his daughters didn’t have to suffer like that; that they were only kids like they were once were, and that they didn’t deserve to have their family ripped from them, just like they didn’t; that when she saw El turn her back on the whole thing, she saw that she couldn’t change what happened to her but she also had the chance to stop the violence that was enforced on her and cut the cycle of suffering; El sees the glossy eyes and shaking hands and her sister who’s trying desperately to heal herself in the right away, and wraps her in a big hug, both holding tight with the sting of tears, knowing that despite what they lost, they have each other.

- just like El, Kali tries to find out about her background too, trying to connect to her culture; she does plenty research to learn what she can and at one point, does her best at cooking a traditional Indian dinner for the family (El helps), and despite it being slightly burnt, they eat it all anyway; she’s also trying to learn Hindi, but that’s a work in progress.

- she pretty much can’t cook in any regard; when her and El are left to their own devices one night, Kali just cuts a roll of frozen cookie dough in half, and then they both chew on their half and watch El’s terrible soap operas even though Kali complains about them the entire time though.

- (headcanon that the women of the Byers household are tiny badasses who cannot cook to save their lives.)

- she doesn’t love a lot of traditional girly things, so El usually gets Nancy’s help with that, but the one thing she can do is hair, and likes to style El’s, creating stylish updos with hairspray and sometimes wash-out, spray on dyes; one night, when El has Max over and their hanging out with Will, El convinces her to do their hair, and despite acting in her indifferent manor, she actually enjoys it; she gels El’s all the way up and sprays bright pink, her favourite colour, along the underside with bright pink lipstick, styles Max’s so it falls over the side of her face just like her own and gives her bright luminescent green stripes with neon eyeshadow, and sprays Will’s back, puffing it slightly at the top and painting a red and blue lightning strike over the side of his face to look just like Ziggy Stardust (which is then later also his costume to next years Halloween party); Joyce and Jonathan laugh and takes pictures of it all, of them surrounding the older girl and grinning up at the camera.

- given her backstory though, it can’t always be happy times; trauma takes it toll and sometimes Kali will lay in her bed all day, or even a couple days, in between sleep and listlessness; Joyce doesn’t say anything, but she will leave her food, and when she can’t even eat that, cups of hot tea or water; El notices it too and knows she can’t always fix it, so instead she sits on the bed with her and reads her books to her; Kali will often just listen in silence, but on the rare occasion El is having trouble pronouncing a word, there will be a small, sleepy peep telling her how; “‘She had tried to a..accu..acc..–’” “Accuse, Jane..” “Oh. Accuse..?” “Yes.” “Accuse..” “…” “Keep going..?” “Yes.” and El will smile to herself.

- she never has to formally come out to El, the younger girl just kind of figured it out herself; but she does see Kali’s look of uneasiness and how she wont meet her eyes, so she takes her hands and smiles at her reassuringly, “Sisters. Always.”; “also I think I knew the reason you wouldn’t talk to the pretty blonde at the grocers wasn’t because you were allergic to her perfume.” “Yeah, and you will stop looking so smug if you know what’s good for you.”

- (besides El, it’s also Kali who Max comes out to first as she’s kind of become her (faux) big sister too, plus Kali has made it no secret about who she is and that she never lets anyone ignorant enough try to shame her, so if it was anyone who’d get it it was her; Max trembles through her words and tears pour down but Kali, usual stand-offish Kali, takes her hands and tells her she has nothing to be ashamed of, that she should be very proud of herself, smiling at Max’s surprised though very relieved expression; “there’s a much bigger world outside this ignorant town Max. Being who you are isn’t a means to any end – there is love out there, I’ve seen it, and you will find it. Living truly as you are is nothing to ever be ashamed of, and don’t let anyone take that away from you.”)

- (Steve’s her big brother, but it’s Kali Max goes to when she’s older and trying to figure out girls, and like, how the hell do you date them, and Kali basically has to sit her down with an “alright listen up,” and give her the full run-down)

- El loves having the two women, Nancy and Kali, as her older sisters, in spite of their differences; Nancy is the girly sister, the one El takes to go dress shopping, who lets her sit on her bed and flip through teen magazines and listen to Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, while they grin over and who’s the better looker, John Stamos or John Travolta, “Nancy some girls were mean to me in class today..” “Aw, El, I’m sorry about that – here, sit with me and you can tell me all about it”; whereas Kali is like having a brother but not a brother at the same time, there’s no giggle-fits and she doesn’t like to talk about who the cutest new male star is, but she’ll paint El’s nails in dark violent and metallic silver, unlike Nancy’s baby blue and soft yellow, and gives her neon eyeshadow much brighter then the pink glittery ones Nancy tries, and El learns all the words to Cherry Bomb and Barracuda, and her and Max continue to try to beat her in an arm wrestling match despite their constant defeat (although they remain hopeful), and while they hug most of their interaction is them poking and ruffling the others hair and occasionally seeing who can push they other off the couch first, “Kali some girls were mean to me in cl –” “Get them.” “No –” “I’ll do it then –” “Kali no –”

- for El’s sixteenth, Kali gets her a leather jacket akin to her own, grinning at El’s gobsmacked face and saying she thought she was “about the age for it, don’t you think?”; El loves it and wears it over her bright tees and flowy, girly dresses; Hopper does not love the leather jacket.

- Kali’s the one who, after Will ties to open a jar with no success, and then El tries, and then Jonathan, will walk in, take it from his hands, pop it open without effort, put in on the counter and leave wordlessly.

- Kali wants for El to turn eighteen before getting her tattoo removed, instead the two of them doing it together; they make a day and go down to Indianapolis, to a hole-in-the-wall parlor that necessarily wasn’t going to give you some transmitted disease but had a man gruff enough that he didn’t bother with enough small-talk to ask the story behind the black numbers and why the girls wanted them gone; he doesn’t even ask when the other sits beside her sister and holds her hand through it, both knowing that the glossy eyes weren’t really duo to the pain of the needle; after it’s all done, they sit in a park that overlooks the city, shows the millions of lights, and all the buildings and all the people and all the possibilities spilling out as far as they can see and then even further, and they both stare at their newly blank wrists under the street light, and neither of them have to speak to know, it’s the last step to finally get rid of their chains, the final clip that’s removed their tags, and they wrap into each other’s sides and cry quietly (there’s still a small scar leftover, so it’s El who suggests they get something over it; they both get a matching, blooming lotus flower, which is the symbol for rebirth, coloured in with a light and gentle green, the colour of healing and new beginnings).

- though El has been receiving a lot of help dealing with her past, her friends are more then willing to hear about the stories of hurt and comfort her and even if she’s getting older she still finds great relief when Joyce pulls her into a comforting hug after she wakes up crying from a nightmare, no one can really understand what it was truly like, until Kali comes into her life; even Kali didn’t really have anyone close to her to divulge in, learning to just pull herself up and shake the terror off, but now it’s different; it’s hard but there’s an odd healing factor to it, because when Kali squeezes her hand and listens after a nightmare, she knows those cold faces that haunt the back of her mind and she remembers the burn of the straps against wrists meant to hold you against the metal chair; in the quiet, fingers tightening around each other’s, they ask do you remember, all the icy hands dragging you down halls and the stone voices that didn’t call to stop even as you sobbed, how El remembers darkness closing in around her to swallow her whole and Kali can still feel the electric prod searing into her skin as she screamed, and eventually tears flow down and they cling to one another, promising, never, never again will they have to go back

- while El is still very close with Will, and Jonathan has always been kind to her and looks out for her the same, she still can’t help but be slightly jealous of how close the two of them are, how protective Jonathan was over his little brother; that didn’t really stop until Kali comes on the scene and in turn, El gets to be close with her, an older sibling that she can have her own separate relationship with, who gets her like no one else and will watch over her (she might be more passive then Jonathan, but when El had doubts because she doesn’t think she can be as smart as all her friends, Kali sits her down for about two hours and preaches to her that she’s far more capable then she thinks, and El knows she’ll twist the necks of anyone who dare come too close)

- Joyce finds the girls very different then raising the boys, in the most backwards ways; whereas her boys were gentle and mostly quiet, the girls were far more boisterous; like when grocery shopping Will will be polite and stick by her side, but then she’ll see the girls roaring down the aisle with the cart, Kali racing it and El, clinging to the side, trying to grab as many items as she can; she’s caught them multiple times dangling upside down from the couch to see who will bow out from the blood pressure first or during morning eggo making, who can swallow as much syrup as possible (no matter who wins, though it’s usually Kali, there will be a squabble for a rematch); the times Will comes home beat-up thanks to Troy, Jonathan will console him, and then the girls will mysteriously disappear, only to come home later scuffed up with pockets stuffed with bloodied tissues, and holding a backpack that just happens to have T. H embroided inside of it despite denying any involvement in Will’s redemption (Kali also takes the kid’s bike, but Joyce, withholding some amusement of her own, makes her take it back).

- despite sort of being the guiding voice in El’s life, Kali is surprised to see how much she learns from El too; she’s wrapped herself in pain and sharp edges for so long, had associated herself for so long with people who carried vengeance and were made of grit and desire to destroy, she’d forgotten what she could have outside of that, but El shows her; when El laughs with Will at the morning cartoons and the funny comics, when she plucks the cotton weeds out of the garden and hands one to Kali so she can “make a wish”, when she desperately drags Kali off of the couch just to show her the rainbow out of the window, when she makes a side-project of building friendship bracelets for everyone and makes Kali’s purple because she knows that’s her favourite colour, El is teaching her how to live again; she can feel herself, ever so slowly, start to open up from the shriveled and guarded way she was before, pushing back from all the heartbreak and learning that she could live without the harsh pain of vengeance and her heart could fill with light instead of dark instead.

- it had been hard, learning to trust again; to allow herself to open up to people, another family, and just pray that she wouldn’t have to experience the wrenching pain of losing another yet again; it took a while, to get used to warm sheets instead of dirty ones, to hearty meals around a dinner table then scraps scavenged from wherever she could find it, to a loud house with almost no personal space but was filled with love at every corner; but she does, finds she loves sharing records with Jonathan, how Will’s eyes fill with such amazement when she recreates his D&D character to stand in front of him in his very own living room, her odd admiring of Ms. Byers and how she duels both kindness and strength so well, and even the cop wasn’t completely awful (they hold a competition and it turns out she can shoot at longer distances better then he can, and even when he lost, he just chuckled and slapped the five bucks he promised her in her hand); that she even likes the movie nights even though El and Ms. Byers always pick cheesy rom-coms and they always run out of popcorn anyway, and that the dinner table conversations are filled with laughter and chatter that didn’t wield sneers or even escalate to arguments like she previously knew; that with it all, with her favourite person, her little sister, her missing piece, by her side, and this time in the right way instead of within white walls and under watch of cold gazes, she might learn that allowing herself to be happy and to live after all she’d endured is the biggest revolution she could make.

basically Kali deserves to have El in her life and a family and a chance to heal thank you good night

#queens #we belong together #kali #eleven #ensemble #headcanons

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