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At KingCracker: in the book, they beat Pennywise (the first time) and their spirits are all really down in the dumps, so the girl takes it upon herself to make them all feel better, strips down, and tells them to run a train on her. I'm adjusting the terminology. But she asks them all to bang her. It's twisted.
When I read IT, in college, a then-friend responded with "oh, you're reading IT? Wait until you get to the really fethed up part. Don't worry, you'll know it when you get there." Yup. Was impossible to miss it.
Reality is a nice place to visit, but I'd hate to live there.
Manchu wrote:I'm a Catholic. We eat our God.
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Maybe I'm just desensitized, but I never had a huge problem with that scene. It definitely felt odd, but understandable in the context (binding/uniting ritual), but I also see why a lot of people didn't like it.
One of the better explanations I've found:
In the broadest sense, IT is about corruption and loss of innocence, and at some level the hold that Pennywise has on Derry is an amplification of the corruption of ideals and innocent belief that comes with adulthood. The adults of Derry have turned their back on the reality of the town's corruption at the hands of Pennywise; conversely the kids understand that Pennywise is the embodiment of the corruption of the town and their own elders.
Adolescence and the sexual awakening that comes with it are hugely powerful in King's world (ref. Carrie); note that the threats the Clown (and many of the indirect threats felt from the corrupted town) makes against the kids are often sexual in nature -- especially for Bev who is just marking time before her own father escalates his abuse of her.
As kids, the Loser's club can see the Clown and the corruption he represents in a way the adults cannot. At the same time, the kids' own developing sexual awareness is beginning to crack the group apart, as eventually happens to any group of platonic friends going through puberty, and as a result their ability to see and combat Pennywise begins to crumble. But the kids (especially Bev) neatly turn the tables in the only way they can by taking control of their own loss of innocence, and reaffirm their bond to each other in the process.
King takes the brave and/or foolish step of making this turning point explicit rather than symbolic.
Having said all that, after seeing this debate appear again and again I've come to the conclusion that this scene just did not succeed in the way King intended, not so much because many people have been shocked by the content but because so many have said that they were jolted out of their identification with the characters, that they just didn't believe it. Deep character identification is normally a great strength of King's, and gets him through all manner of sticking points, but in this instance seems to have been stretched beyond the breaking point.
King has never handled sexuality very well, and his overlap with children and violence in his pieces often come across as very uncomfortable.
But a lot of his spiritual elements are also clumsily handled, as are racial depictions, with several being unintentionally but still very stereotypical.
I think the better adaptations draw the good parts and junk the bad and often produce a better result than slavish devotion to the source.
jmurph wrote: King has never handled sexuality very well, and his overlap with children and violence in his pieces often come across as very uncomfortable.
But a lot of his spiritual elements are also clumsily handled, as are racial depictions, with several being unintentionally but still very stereotypical.
I think the better adaptations draw the good parts and junk the bad and often produce a better result than slavish devotion to the source.
Debatable. This new trailer is clearly taking some of the minor elements from the books and using them, something the mini series missed. A movie doesn't have to have slavish devotion to a book, but there are other times when "artistic license" becomes "whole hog re imagining of a story" a la The Hobbit films.
jreilly89 wrote:Maybe I'm just desensitized, but I never had a huge problem with that scene.
I'm not sure 'desensitized' would be the right word for being down with a tween gang bang.
I'm not "down with it" but I understand that A) it's a fictional book and B) it has it's place in the book. I think it's funny that people choose that to complain about and not Frankenstein punching a kid's head off or the other tons of violent/sexual things in the book.
It's not like everything else is totally PG and then that scene shows up.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/31 15:59:21
And that is the part that is debatable. Trying to justify it just comes across as excuses, not good reasons. Perhaps if it had been handled differently it wouldn't be such a crappy and infamous part of the book, but it wasn't handled all that well. The only reason that makes sense so far for that scene and/or how it is done is cocaine.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
And that is the part that is debatable. Trying to justify it just comes across as excuses, not good reasons. Perhaps if it had been handled differently it wouldn't be such a crappy and infamous part of the book, but it wasn't handled all that well. The only reason that makes sense so far for that scene and/or how it is done is cocaine.
A) thanks for quoting the wrong guy
B)
Trying to justify it just comes across as excuses
Whatever man, I still enjoy the book, if you don't like it, cool
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/31 16:20:56
timetowaste85 wrote: At KingCracker: in the book, they beat Pennywise (the first time) and their spirits are all really down in the dumps, so the girl takes it upon herself to make them all feel better, strips down, and tells them to run a train on her. I'm adjusting the terminology. But she asks them all to bang her. It's twisted.
When I read IT, in college, a then-friend responded with "oh, you're reading IT? Wait until you get to the really fethed up part. Don't worry, you'll know it when you get there." Yup. Was impossible to miss it.
That's really not how it happens.
After they defeat Pennywise, the mystical bond between the children dissipates. There is a lot of stuff about childhood and innocence throughout that section, including Bev's father's obsession with her hymen which Pennywise sort of runs with. The children defeat their childhood monster, go through puberty, lose innocence, and drift apart metaphorically, and the scene is about an uncomfortable transition to adulthood. It's not an erotic scene. Yes, it's unsettling. Yes, it probably should have been snipped by an exacting editor. But the scene does play a part in the story and it does flow from the themes of the work.
I read IT when I was younger than the characters in that scene and had no problems understanding what it was all about.
I suspect how one handles "that scene" in the book will directly correlate with the unconscious level of "sex = bad" in one's world view.
I would not have included it in such a graphic manner as SK did, but it's not out of place.
We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
timetowaste85 wrote: At KingCracker: in the book, they beat Pennywise (the first time) and their spirits are all really down in the dumps, so the girl takes it upon herself to make them all feel better, strips down, and tells them to run a train on her. I'm adjusting the terminology. But she asks them all to bang her. It's twisted.
When I read IT, in college, a then-friend responded with "oh, you're reading IT? Wait until you get to the really fethed up part. Don't worry, you'll know it when you get there." Yup. Was impossible to miss it.
That's really not how it happens.
After they defeat Pennywise, the mystical bond between the children dissipates. There is a lot of stuff about childhood and innocence throughout that section, including Bev's father's obsession with her hymen which Pennywise sort of runs with. The children defeat their childhood monster, go through puberty, lose innocence, and drift apart metaphorically, and the scene is about an uncomfortable transition to adulthood. It's not an erotic scene. Yes, it's unsettling. Yes, it probably should have been snipped by an exacting editor. But the scene does play a part in the story and it does flow from the themes of the work.
I read IT when I was younger than the characters in that scene and had no problems understanding what it was all about.
Thank you. I'm okay with people not liking the scene or thinking it's inappropriate, but there's a reason it's there.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
feeder wrote: I suspect how one handles "that scene" in the book will directly correlate with the unconscious level of "sex = bad" in one's world view.
I would not have included it in such a graphic manner as SK did, but it's not out of place.
I think the same about that scene in American History X. Super uncomfortable, but thematically important.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/31 16:41:31
jmurph wrote: King has never handled sexuality very well, and his overlap with children and violence in his pieces often come across as very uncomfortable.
But a lot of his spiritual elements are also clumsily handled, as are racial depictions, with several being unintentionally but still very stereotypical.
I think the better adaptations draw the good parts and junk the bad and often produce a better result than slavish devotion to the source.
Debatable. This new trailer is clearly taking some of the minor elements from the books and using them, something the mini series missed. A movie doesn't have to have slavish devotion to a book, but there are other times when "artistic license" becomes "whole hog re imagining of a story" a la The Hobbit films.
Heh, the Hobbit films neither took the best parts of the source nor added good elements. They were just awful, dull movies with occasional neat scenes. But you knew you were in for trouble when PJ thought dwarf jokes and shield surfing were somehow thematically appropriate for the LOTR.
I think the themes of the book may have flown over the heads of those who dismiss Bev having sex with each of the guys as prurience. Whether mainstream "journalism" is capable of handling it being adapted in a feature film is a separate question. It probably can't.
It's weird, but I think this one might be kind of good, as long as they don't simply default to cheap jumpscares. I think one of my favorite things about the book is the way they wrote the threat. I also like how they will divide it into two parts, to represent both time periods. I thought the miniseries felt a bit jarring with the way they flipped back and forth.
Spoiler:
Since Pennywise can turn into anything, this means he can show up at more or less anytime, without warning. That's my impression of it anyway.
I'm a bit conflicted on Pennywise though. I'm still reading the book, and finding it easier to see the Tim Curry Pennywise, than the current one. Then again, I've heard this Pennywise looks closer to that in the book.
Faithful... Enlightened... Ambitious... Brethren... WE NEED A NEW DRIVER! THIS ONE IS DEAD!
Manchu wrote: My dad got to be a big fan of Stephen King when he was stationed in Okinawa, I guess because he did not leave base too often so ended up reading a lot. He used to scare the crap out of me with stories about It. I still get a chill passing a storm drain at night. When I got to be about nine or ten and "graduated" from reading R.L. Stine, I started on my dad's collection of Stephen King and Peter Straub novels. Tommyknockers freaked me out but It was my "go to" book when I wanted to be scared. Maybe it was because of the association with my dad scaring me as a little kid? In any case, watching the trailer certainly takes me back to the pages of the novel. What little we've seen seems pretty spot-on in terms of the feeling of dread and claustrophobia and paranoia.
That was what really stuck in my mind about the book too--the sense of creeping dread as it became clear the whole town was essentially a herd for the creature and it wasn't just physically dug into the town, it was dug into the minds of everyone there. Wherever you went and whoever you talked to, it was already there.
Really excited for this, but it's going to be a hard adaptation. I think a problem the series had was that it didn't really convey how the creature worked--in a novel, you can explain why someone is terrified beyond reason of birds or dogs, but on screen, you have someone freaking out at a bad mask. Likewise, the whole power of childish belief thing needs to be conveyed for the climax to make any sense at all.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/04 22:32:53
"The 75mm gun is firing. The 37mm gun is firing, but is traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying "Driver, advance." and the driver, who can't hear me, is reversing. And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich."
Elemental wrote: the sense of creeping dread as it became clear the whole town was essentially a herd for the creature and it wasn't just physically dug into the town, it was dug into the minds of everyone there. Wherever you went and whoever you talked to, it was already there.
That's very well put! Certainly brings out the extra-dimensional peril of Pennywise.
KingCracker wrote: If thatsthe case then they need to make a movie of tthe sequel book Dr Sleep. That book was really good
Well keep in mind there was also a very mediocre made for TV version of the Shining, which King liked (he doesn't care for Kubrick's movie). That said, if IT does really well and gets a Part 2 that does really well, it is not hard to imagine more King novels getting made or remade into feature films.
Azreal13 wrote: The original mini series was two parts, split in essentially the same way, so I'd guess they're just following the same structure as it makes sense and the story basically takes place in two acts.
Automatically Appended Next Post: PS +1 membership to the "King can't write an ending to save his life" club.
Except for the Dark Tower serious...
It was foreshadowed numerous times, and he ended that series the right way.
His other books? The only one I truly liked was Stand By Me and The Green Mile.
I like his short stories. They are often pretty good.
Now you want good endings with a horror book: F Paul WIlson or Dean Koontz.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
I suppose, if I was being completely fair to King, I have an issue with the denouement of many horror books/films. All too often the author successfully creates an air of menace that the reveal ultimately fails to live up to.
It's so rare that I've read a horror that I've felt the payoff really lived up to the build up I'm struggling to recall one. James Herbert (RIP) and Clive Barker are probably my favourites, but I haven't read anything new in the genre for ages, might be worth revisiting some old favourites or looking out some new stuff.
We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't. - Frank Howard Clark
The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!” Professor Brian Cox
Frazzled wrote: Christine was nice. Salem's Lot was pretty good.
I thought the ending to IT was just fine myself.
I like his short stories. They are often pretty good.
Now you want good endings with a horror book: F Paul WIlson or Dean Koontz.
I thought The Dead Zone and Desperation had pretty strong endings, too. His first three short story collections, Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, and Nightmares and Dreamscapes, are my favorite work of his. Sadly, I think he lost his writing edge after that van nearly killed him.
I second F. Paul Wilson. Loved his entire Repairman Jack series.
For short stories, I like David J. Schow's and Clive Barker's work.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/06 00:10:53
Still curious how Pennywise actually sounds. Im sure it wont really matter in the end but Tim Curry made Pennywise kindda weird and spooky all at the same time and his voice was definitely part of that
Azreal13 wrote: I suppose, if I was being completely fair to King, I have an issue with the denouement of many horror books/films. All too often the author successfully creates an air of menace that the reveal ultimately fails to live up to.
It's so rare that I've read a horror that I've felt the payoff really lived up to the build up I'm struggling to recall one. James Herbert (RIP) and Clive Barker are probably my favourites, but I haven't read anything new in the genre for ages, might be worth revisiting some old favourites or looking out some new stuff.
One thing that I like about Herbert's novel Creed is that he does something really clever with the idea of the reveal never living up to the build-up.
Spoiler:
The supernatural forces are robbed of their power by exposing them to the withering glare of publicity and scepticism. The ending being an anticlimax is completely intentional.
"The 75mm gun is firing. The 37mm gun is firing, but is traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying "Driver, advance." and the driver, who can't hear me, is reversing. And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich."
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