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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

I Take Issue With 'IT'

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Regrettable Juvenilia

13:19 / 09.08.05

SPOILER WARNING

(IS ANYONE WHO HASN'T READ STEPHEN KING YET GOING TO PICK UP 'IT' AND READ IT FOR THE FIRST TIME?)

((i mean, that's a bit 80s, innit?))

NEVERTHELESS,

SPOILERS.

The kids defeat the evil spider/clown monster by having an underage gang bang?

That's so wrong.

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:21 / 09.08.05

What are you talking about?

Laughing

13:23 / 09.08.05

That's the best summary I've ever heard of any Stephen King book. But isn't it a bit spoiler-ish? Should there be a warning?

Aertho

13:28 / 09.08.05

The book "It", by Stephen King.

SPOILERS(?)

I've never actually read it, but managed to skim into this part about celestial tortoises with stomach aches. And how its vomit made the universe. At the time, I was literally minded, and imagined the turtle being similar to Krona of Crisis. But now, I wonder if it had philosophical references ("turtles all the way down"), mixed with some of the Filth.

Yes, I take issue as well. Could someone enlighten me, discuss "It" 's merits, or explain the turtle thing as well?

Laughing

13:29 / 09.08.05

IT is a Stephen King novel, a HUGE Stephen King novel, about the typical Stephen King things -- monsters, Maine, and kids. Basically the town of Derry, Maine is terrorized every few decades by a shapeshifting monster (called IT) that changes into whatever you fear the most. A group of kids fight IT and win (mostly). I enjoyed the book, but I'd recommend The Stand over IT any day.

Sax

13:33 / 09.08.05

Children having sex is, as everyone knows, the best way to defeat supernatural threats.

Aertho

13:47 / 09.08.05

This is entirely devil's advocate here...

Isn't SEX the point of most "kid's stories"? What I mean is, isn't sexual maturation the driving force behind most folktales told to children? Red shoes, Red Riding Hood come to mind. "Awoken with a kiss" and all.

Not that underage sexual exploration is a triumphant or mythic thing, but rather the origin of the fear itself. Not wanting to grow up, etc. Do the children "overcome" IT by actively engaging and taking control of the maturation process?

Is this a lens that works?

Ariadne

13:49 / 09.08.05

Is there a purpose to this thread, Flyboy? I'm considering deleting it unless someone actually has something to say.

Ariadne

13:50 / 09.08.05

Ok, cross post - maybe Chad's going to take it somewhere.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:57 / 09.08.05

Yes, there is a point to this thread! The point is that I take issue with IT.

Aertho

13:58 / 09.08.05

That's as far as I can take it, Ariadne. Hoping others will contribute.

Sax

13:58 / 09.08.05

I imagine Flyboy was taking the piss out of the young adult thread when he started this, but to be honest I always did have a problem with IT. There may well be a good book out there with a well-written and credible conclusion that involves youngsters accelerating their maturation and bonding as a group to see off the external force that has haunted generations of children by lining up to stick it to the only girl in the group, but I'm afraid Stephen King's cack-handed treatment of such is little more than truck-stop wank fodder and totally jars with the story he appeared to be trying to tell.

_Boboss

14:49 / 09.08.05

i seen that new version of salem's lot on dur vur dur the other night. not as creepy as the tobe hooper one, but it had rob lowe in it and he sticks it to little'uns from time to time doesn't he?

Kit-Cat Club

17:34 / 09.08.05

This is a bit of a daft thread really - I never mind daft threads too much, but we could at least try and stick to books rather than film adaptations etc. ...

(This is yr nazi snobtroll service, please report any malfunctions to head office)

All Acting Regiment

20:24 / 09.08.05

So, Flyboy, do you think I should change the topic abstract on the young adult thread? I mean, looking at it now it is slightly silly- a slightly clunky, arcane phrase, and you know, saying I "taking issue" about an area of books isn't the best way of saying what I had in mind. I'm quite happy if anyone thinks there could be one that better fits that thread.

I just think maybe they could PM me with that suggestion, or put it in Policy, rather than starting this, which is, unless I'm reading it wrongly, a bit of a piss-take thread?

Regrettable Juvenilia

21:43 / 09.08.05

Well obviously this thread isn't as good as something like the overrated books thread, but I'd hoped there was some value in discussing the limitations of the Stephen King classic... Mea culpa if not!

Tryphena Absent

01:02 / 10.08.05

The kids defeat the evil spider/clown monster by having an underage gang bang?

That's so wrong.

Flyboy, can you please explain in detail why that's wrong? I mean, if that's the only way they could defeat the monster...

This Sunday

04:53 / 10.08.05

What was odd for me was that this was the ONLY thing she could add to the whole thing. Because, y'know, if a guy were used to awaken the sexuality of a bunch of other guys... or, if girls had anything to add to becoming adults other than... or, really any other option that didn't just turn her into a sextoy with a pulse (not that this couldn't be *an option* or entertaining or anything, but, still!) for the big save at the end where evil is thwarted by oncoming awareness of adulthood, responsibility, and... what girls are for - apparently.
I like 'IT' but that bit, not so much.

Cat Chant

09:11 / 10.08.05

I never got to the end of It because it was SO FUCKING BORING. The trouble with a book with... what is it, five or six main characters?... about a monster that everyone sees differently is that every five minutes you have to interrupt the narrative for five (or six) separate set-pieces of description about five or six separate scary things.

But the thing with me is that I don't read Stephen King for the horror, so I tend to get a bit bored when he goes on and on about, you know, enormous animated plaster cowboys chasing tiny boys around a small town in America, or clowns being menacing for twenty pages. I like the bits where people just pootle about being people-ish. Firestarter is probably my favourite one.

Alex's Grandma

09:51 / 10.08.05

In the interest of broadening what I still think is a valid thread in itself, who's to say that in the particular circumstances outlined in IT (scary clowns, I gather - well they are weird aren't they?) what happened to that girl wouldn't be the right solution? I mean I don't know. It's difficult to be certain.

That's what so feendishly clever about King's work in general, that highwire act between the banal and the horrific.

Sax

10:00 / 10.08.05

I can't remember the actual rationalisation behind it all, but I seem to recall that the characters felt the only way to avoid the clutches of the child-scoffing clown was to grow up, and quick, presumably on the basis that demon-thing would say: "Ah, you're adults now. Sorry for bothering you. I'll just be off." I suppose the question is whether a gang-bang is the best way to achieve maturity in the quickest way possible.

Aertho

12:13 / 10.08.05

So the sex is a means of escape. I've not seen the film. What motivates the monster IT after the children have aged twenty some years? Inner-child-awakening therapy?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:56 / 10.08.05

I think it always returns every twenty years, or something.

Haven't read this for years, but I do seem to remember the point being to do with achieving adulthood. Mind you, at the time I also seem to remember thinking "underage gang-bang? Isn't that a little... well, dodgy?"

_Boboss

14:11 / 10.08.05

i bet it's the asthmatic one who goes last, long after john boy walton and the rest. mmm, sloppy sixthses.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:23 / 10.08.05

But he was more gentle than any of the others.

Jack Fear

17:12 / 10.08.05

Ew. Just ew.

As I recall, any reflection on Bev's part about getting intimate with the two racial/ethnic outsiders (the Jewish kid and the black kid) was conspicuous by its absence—both of them utterly elided in a single clause: "Then it was Stan's turn, then Mike's, and then..."

I distinctly remember that when I read it, years ago, I went nowBACKdafuckup.

Ludicrous and anticlimactic. It is an ungainly, sloppily structured book anyway, throwing out dozens of plot-strands that never really connect—but to fall down so badly at that point turns the whole thing into an overwrought shaggy-dog story.

The only consolation I can take is that poor Stephen King was probably out of his brain on blow at the time and can hardly remember writing it. Which makes me feel better for hardly being able to remember reading it.

Aertho

19:26 / 10.08.05

So. About the turtles?

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

20:50 / 11.08.05

That's very odd. I remember it as being after the defeat of the actual monster, but when they're still lost in the sewer system - in order to "bring the group back together". In which case it would tie more into the ritual aspect of the Chud conflict between Stuttering Bill and IT, in that it's meant to be almost a sex-magic thing rather than a rite of passage. Or something. Still deeply dodgy though.
Interesting parallels between this and the end of His Dark Materials, though...

Lord Morgue

07:36 / 12.08.05

Guh- I've been haunted at work all day by the South Park version of this thread- everybody fucks Cartman in the ass to get rid of Mr Hat.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:37 / 12.08.05

Haven't read IT but I have read Needful Things, I think it was the sheer tedium of that book which got me off of my Stephen King kick to which I have not returned, save for the first Dark Tower book. I did like both versions of The Stand, The Dark Half, The Shining (better than the film), Carrie, Christine and Pet Semetary I disliked, so what do people think are the good King books, has the stuff of the last decade been another case of vastly diminishing returns or does he still have it?

matthew.

17:26 / 12.08.05

I liked Needful Things because it escalated. Sure it took its time, and sure there was LOTS of sidebars and tangents. Once one arrived at the end, it was fairly awesome.

On the other hand, It really isn't that good. But, it holds a very special place in my heart because it's the first King book I ever read. I admit, the ending was a litte... "What the fuck is this doing here?"

I recommend reading Salems' Lot, if you're going to revisit King. Unfortunately, it's hard to put our jaded cynical minds in the place and time that it was written. It's like chuckling at the Exorcist, I suppose.

And of course, The Dark Tower really turned around for me. After the shit that was Wizard and Glass, I really really enjoyed the final books; I almost cried at the end.

But without further complications, I agree with Flyboy, but I see little point in talking about it unless somebody can argue persuasively that the ending was suitable.

Bear

17:43 / 12.08.05

I used to be a big fan of King when I was a kiddo... but you really like the book version of The Shinning better than the movie Our Lady, is that because you love the book or hate the movie?

Jack Fear

18:01 / 12.08.05

Salem's Lot is about two-thirds of a decent book. There's some fine, moody atmosphere-building, but the country cornpone wears thin—"Word has it you're sparkin' with Donny Turnbull's gal" or somesuch—and worse yet, too many pages are given over to the clumsiest info-dump this side of Warren Ellis, as Mr. King (who was, to be fair, still a young man when he wrote the book) struggles to shoehorn in every last factoid he uncovered in his research into the vampire literature.

Lord Morgue

01:50 / 13.08.05

Carrie was really more of a short story, but I think all the fake newspaper articles, song lyrics and suchlike he stuffed in to bring it up to length actually added to the story- you got the feeling the little world he created for the book kept going after the punchline, instead of fading out to the Twilight Zone theme- though by necessity, he inserts were kind of a cross-genre intrusion into a horror book from a world that had aquired a touch of the science fiction, the Big Change being uncontrovertable proof of ESP, in the aftermath of Carrie White's homicidal psychokinetic wobbly.

8===>Q: alyn

10:35 / 13.08.05

You see, Flyboy, Stephen King is a horror writer, and the basic premise of any horror novel is that the thing you used to think was true but convinced yourself was not true actually is true!!!! How do you think squares with the ending of IT?

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