#also this got me all kinds of hype for s4 lemme tell you its gonna be JOYCES SEASON

[baldrambo]

On Joyce Byers....

Joyce Byers is a bad ass.  So why is she handled with kid gloves by everyone?  This is a bit of a companion discussion to my Hopper post from a few weeks ago. Like my prior meta, I will discuss what I believe to be truths about Joyce and her arc, which don’t appear to be aligned with most analyses of her character that I’ve seen elsewhere. I will make 5 assertions and address each of them below the cut because (as per the norm) this got really long and I am not trying to clog up people’s dashboards.

Assertion 1: We have no canon evidence that Lonnie was physically abusive and making Joyce his victim does a disservice to her characterization

Assertion 2: What Bob represented to Joyce was more important to her arc than Bob himself (aka Bob/Joyce were not really a good match)

Assertion 3: Making fun of/being frustrated by Joyce’s magnet obsession misses the point of her arc in S3, which was about her pro-activity rather than reactivity

Assertion 4: Joyce inappropriately attempts to compartmentalize Hopper (aka Joyce needs to let Lonnie and Bob go if she’s to ever move on)

Assertion 5: Joyce is not a delicate cinnamon roll in need of our protection she is a BAMF and should be treated as such.

Assertion 1:

Our first introduction to Joyce is as a small, mousy, anxious, chain-smoking single mom who….can’t find her keys.  And not because she is is careless. She has literally SO much on her plate at any given moment that the location of her keys is trivial until it’s not.  She works long hours at a low-wage job to support her boys.  She really has no life outside of work, paying bills, and cleaning house.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  She is just barely scraping by. 

And yet we learn through flashbacks fairly quickly after Will’s disappearance that despite working long hours, despite the constant stress….she still manages to find time to parent her boys.  And not just be any old parent, mind you.  Joyce Byers is a good parent.  When Will is out in Castle Byers she doesn’t just barge in.  She respects his personal space, remembers a unique nerdy password, and waits for him to tell her that she can enter.  She then trusts his judgment when he says that he can handle watching Poltergeist. This is later juxtaposed by the scene in Nancy’s bedroom with Jonathan where Karen attempts to enter the bedroom after Nancy has had to lock it.  Jonathan looks at Nancy, a little shocked, and says “she doesn’t knock?” Which is weird to him, of course, because Joyce would always knock.  Now lets contrast Joyce, who is Mother of the Year, with Lonnie Byers who is a Grade A Piece of Shit™. He abandoned the family and hasn’t seen them in years.  And when he was around, he spent his time being a deadbeat, calling his son a faggot, and trying to force his boys into being “manlier” and more mainstream.

We first meet Lonnie in 1x2 when Jonathan drives out to Indianapolis to confirm that Will is in fact, not with his father.  When Lonnie’s girlfriend answers the door, Jonathan pushes past her and into the home, shouting for his brother.  Lonnie then comes in from outside, grabs Jonathan, and pushes him up against a wall.  Only then does he realize it’s his son.  Lonnie hadn’t seen Jonathan in so long that he almost didn’t recognize him, and initially thought him an intruder. Jonathan angrily shoves Lonnie back, who steps back and laughs. Notably, Jonathan does not appear to fear Lonnie and Lonnie makes no attempt to otherwise assert any other type of physical control over Jonathan. Lonnie talks to him like he’s an adult.

When Lonnie returns in 1x5 for Will’s funeral, he is an immediate negative influence who has Joyce up drinking all night, calls her crazy, and starts sniping at Jonathan about some stupid poster in his bedroom being inappropriate.  However, there is no real confrontation until Joyce finds the flyer in his belongings and realizes he is attempting to collect on Will’s “death.”  She screams at Lonnie and holds her ground when he shouts back.  She shoves him. She gets in his face and throws his bag at him.  And then little 5′2 Joyce Byers successfully throws a grown ass man out of her house.  He never raises a hand to her.

This is not a Lonnie Byers apology piece.  Lonnie Byers is a shitty dad, shitty partner, shitty person.  I think an entirely separate piece could be written on the emotional abuse of his boys (although in the 80′s Midwest much of that would be considered normal, but that’s another essay).  But there is nothing to suggest that Lonnie ever hit them, or Joyce.  If the Duffers wanted Lonnie to be physically abusive, they would make it obvious, no?

The most clear example of this? Neil Hargrove. When he enters Billy’s bedroom in 2x8, he has complete control.  Over Billy, his wife, the conversation.  He overtly strikes Billy, humiliates him, and it’s clear that Billy fears him.  Susan Hargrove also fears him, and she stands in the background for the entire confrontation, avoiding eye contact, saying nothing.  The only time she attempts to intercede is to diffuse the situation, diffuse Neil, when he commands that Billy apologize and quickly shuts up when it’s clear her efforts didn’t work.  She then exits the room, first allowing him to leave the room before her. The dynamics here are light years from Joyce/Lonnie/Jonathan.

Ok so.  Why am I bringing all of this up? Because, imo, turning Lonnie into a physical abuser cuts at the heart of Joyce’s characterization.  Joyce Byers is a fighter.  That’s what Bob loved about her.  “You fight back,” he told her, in a somewhat awestruck voice.  Joyce is not a Susan Hargrove. None of this is to suggest that Susan is to blame for what she has gone through, or that somehow Joyce is better for not being like her. I contrast them because the Duffer brothers do. Joyce will steamroll anyone and anything that gets in her way to protect her boys.  If she’s on a mission….if she is trying to save someone…watch out.  Making Lonnie a physical abuser so he can be a plot device, or because it makes it easier to hate and villainize him upsets the core of Joyce’s character. And it changes the entire show.

Assertion 2:

Much of Joyce’s inner strength shines through in S2.  When S2 begins, Joyce can’t leave Will’s side and still worries about him incessantly.  She’s overbearing and “struggles to function” whenever she is not with him.  She is forced to re-live the horrors of what her and her family went through every time she goes to Hawkins Lab and worse…she has to place her trust in the very same people who nearly ripped her family apart.  Yet, she doesn’t give up, she soldiers on for Jonathan and Will.  But so much like S1, S2 Joyce is helpless.  She is unable to control what is happening around her.  The events of S1-S2 make her reactionary, she gets dragged along by the plot instead of driving the plot.

But there is one bright spot of happiness for her…..Bob.  He is the exact opposite of Lonnie in every way.  He is kind, thoughtful, hardworking, honest, and trustworthy.  He put Joyce first, he tried to bond with and be a parent to Will and Jonathan. And he was willing to jump in to the fray when he had no idea what was going on to save her, save everyone despite being absolutely terrified.  Bob Newby. Superhero.

There are some early warning signs that perhaps….we as the audience are not supposed to view this as the perfect match? Jonathan, in particular, doesn’t seem to approve at all, in fact, it downright confuses him.  He confides in Will that he doesn’t understand what Joyce sees in him and later gets agitated when he learns that Bob has stayed the night.  Hopper, too, seems to struggle with it. And while a lot of that can probably be chalked up to the early signs of jealousy, his forced “I’m happy for you” appears to be at least somewhat tied to his inability to take her dating “Bob the Brain” seriously.  Why drop all these hints if it doesn’t mean anything?

It’s the conversation she has with Bob in 2x2 on Halloween that really cements Joyce’s arc and Bob’s central purpose.  While they’re dancing to Kenny Rogers, he starts prattling on about moving to Maine.  He’s in love with her, he knows being in Hawkins is hard for her.  So why not start over again and be a family? “We aren’t a normal family.” She tells Bob.  His response is simple: “It could be.” And that moment plants that seed for Joyce.  What if they COULD be a happy, nuclear family?  What if they COULD leave all that trauma behind them and finally find safety and security?  She starts thinking on it so much that by the end of S2 when Bob brings it up again, she’s all but ready. And the Duffers have confirmed, if Bob had survived she would have gone with him to Maine.

But here’s the thing: what if someone else besides Bob had planted the idea in her head? Would she have wanted it any less?  Or consider, was it really Bob himself that drove her desire, or was it always lying dormant there waiting to be activated?  If she had started dating Hopper after S1 instead and HE had been the one to make the suggestion, would she have desired it any less?  Did she really love Bob himself, or the idea of him?

It’s easy to romanticize Bob because he seemed perfect, he represented the happy ending that Joyce wants, that WE WANT for her, but here’s the thing.  There is no perfect guy.  You can’t move a few states away and leave behind Demogorgons and another dimension that nearly killed your son.  That stays with you wherever you go, and you have to face it and deal with it.  You can’t run away from trauma, and Joyce has to realize this.  Joyce is chasing a mirage. Perhaps Bob was kind of a mirage, too. 

Assertion 3:.

The Joyce we see at the end of s2 seems….like she’s going to be okay.  She has her boys, Hopper’s friendship.  She’s lost Bob but the Gate is closed now, everyone is safe (or so everyone thinks).  But then there’s S3 Joyce.  She’s lonely, isolated, sad, discontent, and restless.  The kids are trying to move on from the events of S1-S2.  But she’s unable to.  She’s unable to move on from Bob, from her fear that her boys could still be in danger, from the feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong again and she won’t be able to stop it. 

So Joyce preemptively reshapes her arc.  She decides she is going to put her own house on the market.  Bob may not be coming with her but goddammit she is going to move anyway and find safety somewhere else.  When she notices the magnets fall off the fridge she is not going to wait and see what happens, SHE is going to go research magnets and solenoids and weird science stuff she doesn’t understand and SHE is going to figure it out and SHE is going bring it to Hopper before shit hits the fan.  And when they call the military, SHE is not going to wait around for them to show up and save her kids.  She’s going to take action herself.

Thus, Joyce is driving much of the plot in S3, rather than being dragged along by the plot as she was in S1-S2.  She is not focusing all of her time and energy on Will and his safety, and reacting to where he is and what he’s doing, she is able to focus on Hopper, El, the Party, the bigger picture.  Will kept her focus narrowed, magnets expanded them.

And perhaps most significantly, the magnet obsession is what ultimately saved the day.  Joyce is the hero of S3.  Think about who saved the day in S1-S2.  Who were the heroes?  El and Hopper.  In S1, El sacrificed herself to kill the Demogorgon and save the Party and Hopper resuscitated Will.  In S2, El and Hopper closed the Gate.  In S3, who saved the day? El?  She had no power.  She wasn’t even the one fighting the Meat Flayer. Hopper?  He was trapped on the platform.  Who closed the Gate and killed the “Meat Flayer?”  Joyce.  By herself. This ended the threat, this stopped the “Meat Flayer,” this saved El and the Party.

I think it’s easy to miss all of this due to the tonal shift in S3, which added some silliness to the plot lines that didn’t exist in S1-S2.  On the surface, obsessing about magnets instead of your son seems ridiculous.  But this shift gave Joyce’s character a chance to breathe, a chance to grapple with her own feelings, what she wants, it gave her a chance to just be Joyce instead of Mom™.  So S3 is about her, instead of what is happening to her. 

And i think, ultimately, this tonal shift in S3 is what allowed that to happen.  If the circumstances in S3 were the same as S1-S2, then the Duffers wouldn’t have had this freedom.  If we want to see Joyce grow as a character, there has to be time and energy spent on her away from her kids and away from the same closed loop of S1-S2. Which brings me to my next point.

Assertion 4:

Jopper.  You can’t expect me to write this long ass meta on Joyce Byers and not talk about Hopper, right?

In early S3 there is obviously a marked shift in her relationship with Hopper.  There are no longer secrets (El) or other relationships (Bob) that they can use to hold each other at arm’s length anymore.  There are no other adults in town now who understand what they’ve been through.  Joyce is effectively co-parenting El with Hopper and it’s clear that he not only asks her for advice often but that they spend a lot of time together.  This did not happen between 1 and 2.  It’s made fairly clear upfront that Hopper is hopelessly in love with her, but what of Joyce?  She’s more difficult to read.  And this is due in large part to the fact that she is more complicated than Hopper and her feelings are more complicated than his.

I am not here to argue about whether I think Joyce loves Hopper.  This entire analysis is based on the assumption that she does because I think the Duffers and Winona have given us more than enough to go on to draw that conclusion.  What I AM here to argue, however, is that Joyce is still grappling with what she wants and (inappropriately so) is attempting to compartmentalize Hopper.

Adult relationships are complicated and particularly for a character like Joyce, who has been to Hell and back a few times, there is added complexity that has to be dealt with and worked through.  She’s been in prior relationships before.  She knows what it’s like to be in love and she’s felt the pain and grief that comes along with it.  She’s been divorced already, had a spouse that abandoned her, children  to prioritize over her own love life, and trauma stemming both from the events of 1983-1985 and separate from it.  Joyce, especially, is fresh off the train of losing a love interest who she got close to very quickly.  You can imagine her hesitation about leaping forwards again with someone else who could die.

There’s your backdrop for Joyce in S3.  Throw a healthy dollop of she has feelings for Hopper and then point blank ask her: “What do you want, Joyce?”  She could probably tell you that she wants to feel safe again.  That she wants to be free of the pain and grief of losing Bob and what happened in S1-S2.  If you really can get her to open up (or if you are a mind reader like Murray) you would also find out that she is still holding onto that desire to have a normal, happy family which includes a “nice guy to settle down with.”  The thing about Hopper is that he fulfills all of this for her, just messily.  Joyce is still looking for that coloring book of life to be filled in by an artist (Bob). Hopper fills it in like a 3 year old with disorganized scribbles that cover the picture but can’t quite stay in the lines.  Lonnie is easy: he never even filled in the lines to begin with.

Hopper shares personality traits with both Bob and Lonnie.  Like Bob, he makes her feel safe, she can trust him, she knows he cares about her, feels more than friendship for her.  But he’s also brash and loud and argumentative and after spending a decade of her life screaming with Lonnie….she doesn’t want that again.  He probably at times DOES “remind her of a bad relationship,” but Hopper is not Lonnie.  He respects her, treats her like an equal, trusts her judgment. But she can’t escape the constant comparisons.

And what I’ve seen from a lot of the fandom are the same attempts to shove Hopper into the “Lonnie” box or the “Bob” box that Joyce keeps trying to do.  S1-S2 Hopper is in the “Bob” box.  We like S1-S2 Hopper. But S3 Hopper, man.  He is in the “Lonnie” box.  He yells and stamps his feet.  This Hopper isn’t “good enough” for Joyce.

But here’s my radical proposition: Hopper IS good enough for Joyce if he is who she wants.  And he is what she wants.  But she needs to let Lonnie and Bob go first.

Lonnie and Bob still have a hold on her and if she is going to be able to take that leap forward with Hopper she needs to put their ghosts to rest.  She couldn’t save Bob, but maybe she can save Hopper.  Maybe Hopper isn’t perfect and has a temper, but that is ok because he loves her and respects her unlike Lonnie. I think if we see Joyce work through this in S4 and join her on her journey of making the decision to be with Hop and making that choice FOR HERSELF rather than the plot or some other force making that decision for her, the payout is gonna be huge.

Assertion 5:

Finally, I wanted to touch on the common theme of this whole analysis: that despite this inner strength, despite the growth and change her character has undergone, she is still largely handled by the ST fandom with kid gloves.  Like she is someone that can’t take care of herself, and who we need to step in and defend and protect against….the world.  Here are a few examples I’ve seen over and over:

1) Mischaracterizing S3 Hopper as an “abuser” that Joyce needs “protection” from, much like she needed “protection” from Lonnie. 

2) Attempting to turn Jonathan into her protector/her keeper.  

3) Defending her when she is in the wrong because she is Mom™ (see i.e. standing Hopper up for their date and being non-apologetic about it.)

4) Analyzing “what is best for Joyce” without thinking about her canon feelings or what SHE wants

As I dissected above, Joyce never needed protection from Lonnie. She doesn’t need protection from Hopper. Or anyone.  She doesn’t need Jonathan stepping in for her and she does not need us the fandom, to decide FOR her what she wants and what she can and cannot do.  All this does is, ultimately, build her arc around men and strip her of her agency as a character.

All the canon evidence suggests that she is a bad ass.  She curb stomps assholes on the regular and saves the day, multiple times.  So why is it next to impossible to find any discussion of Joyce that doesn’t involve complaints of what man (Duffer or otherwise) is wronging her at any moment?  Is it because it’s just easier to pidgeonhole characters, particularly female characters, into villain/oppressor and “the good guy?”  Because if we open her up into complexity outside of being our cinnamon roll mom we worry she could disappoint us? Because we cannot accept that a good female character doesn’t need protection?  What happens if Joyce is just a complex person who is both mom and badass? Focused on her kids and herself? Deserving of her own life and respect for her autonomy? Is both selfish and selfless?

Joyce, imo, has one of the most compelling arcs on the entire show.  We are introduced to her as a Mom who is barely holding it together already and then loses her son, sending her into a spiral that her inner strength alone carries her through.  After nearly losing her kid again, she loses her boyfriend horrifically, and just when she thinks they may have finally escaped it all permanently she has to single-handedly close the Gate, torching the only other man she loves in the process. So she packs her shit up and moves her family away from the danger.  She goes from the most reactive character on the show to, perhaps, the most proactive one.  

She may not have “powers,” she may not be able to effectively wield a gun, but she can knee an asshole in the crotch and that makes her a hero to me. I say let her be everything she is, allow her to explore her own wants even if they are imperfect, let her make mistakes and stand up for and protect herself, and let her be her own person outside of the character arcs of other male characters.

Andddddd end scene.