[On Stephen King's "It"]
Think of the razor-like teeth of Pennywise the clown tearing off the arm of little Georgie. That’s a powerful metaphor for the actions of an abortionist.
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I read the article and he reckons the entire film , as well as the Stephen King book it was based on, is either a deliberate metaphor for abortion...
...or an unconscious/subconscious expression on the part of the filmmakers and King of the "intuitive sense" that "children are missing" from families and communities.
Basically, he's even more of a loony than this quote would suggest.
Think of Hosea 13:16.
There's an extremely good reason why, in a past interview with film reviewer Mark Kermode on BBC Radio 5, the then head of the BBFC stated that if the Bible was made into a film - using the text of that 'Truth' as the screenplay: with no glossing over of events etc - because of the ultra-gory scenes described in such, it would be seized by the police under the Obscene Publications Act.
Think of certain scenes in a film released at the time of said interview: "The Passion of the Christ".
That's a powerful metaphor for fundie Christainity's obsession with gore, that even the "Human Centipede" films aren't as bad, never mind the "Saw" & "Hostel" ones.
IT was one of my favourite works by Stephen King. I can say emphatically your interpretation is about as far from mine as possible. If anything the emotional disassociation and willingness to completely forget about disappeared children and even deliberately blinding themselves to those who were alive and endangered right before the eyes of onlookers is a more apt comparison to how little the pro-life side cares for a child past conception now that they no longer have pain and controversy to feed on.
To be essentially abandoned, forgotten, and alone while completely surrounded by people who only acknowledge you as kind of an abstract existence until one day you're gone and it's barely noticed, then quickly forgotten. Hurting and afraid out in plain view but everyone acting like that's normal. That's fear and suffering in a form you clearly don't understand and can't let yourself see. Instead you try to equate that to people who were never born, never suffered, couldn't be neglected or abused because they never were in the first place. If they had been you'd never notice them. You still don't.
And by the way at the end of the book *vague spoilers ahead* without a certain mass abortion there would be hundreds of mind-raping baby-eating ultimate horrors running around disguised as clowns or B movies and whatnot.
Someone needs to read Insomnia .
For those disinclined, the main human villain of the book is a psychotic pro-life terrorist who plans to crash a small single-prop plane into an abortion clinic, even though he knows full well his estranged wife and young daughter will be attending a pro-choice demonstration there.
So I'm thinking, "Is Stephen King anti-choice?", to which the answer seems to be, 'No."
@ #2097667
"How do you even jump to that conclusion?"
The technical term is "Superman research". As in "jumping to very tall conclusions in a single bound".
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
So I'm thinking, "Is Stephen King anti-choice?", to which the answer seems to be, 'No."
Not only is King likely pro-choice, but considering how many of them show up at some point in his books as some sort of villain or asshole victim, it's clear he has an extreme hatred for people who use religion as a shield to cover up their own evil actions...
I mean, seriously, how many evil Christian fundamentalists are there in his books? Generally at least one per title...
>IT is basically the boogeyman fairy tale written with a hard R rating by a man who specializes in scaring the shit out of people
The novel has a pretty heavy Lovecraft influence to it as well.
Pennywise would definitely be in good company with Howard Phillip's eldritch abominations. Plus, from what I've seen of a few of the scenes in the movie, this version of Pennywise is very Lovecraftian.
Barring the cosmic horror aspects IT often seems like an allegory for neglect and child abuse in communities where people are exceptionally quick to make excuses for each other and prefer to believe what they tell themselves over any other evidence. Although through a child's eyes an abuser that intelligently uses their fears for seemingly no other reason than to keep them afraid and acts in subtle ways so that there's nothing obvious like a broken arm to point out to child services would seem like an incomprehensible monster. And when people tell themselves the obvious signs aren't there and kids are just imaginative or wrong by default it really can seem like reality is coming apart. And then when abuse crosses a line that can't be ignored people act shocked at first but then quickly push it from their minds and tell themselves they live in a nice neighbourhood, things like that don't happen here - can't happen here - and the signs they see elsewhere are just their imagination. No matter how many times it happens.
There's also the nature of some of IT's specific disguises when not going directly for scares such as Pennywise the Clown or briefly assuming the forms of lost family members. Things that to others could be symbols of happiness and innocence twisted into something that brings only fear and pain.
When you think about it every member of the Loser's club fits a stereotype for someone who society consistently turns a blind eye to and something in every member of the Losers' home life seemed off in addition to varying levels of ignored public bullying they endured. Beverly faced the most obvious abuse in the form of beatings and hints of her father having a sexual interest in her, Eddie's mother was emotionally manipulative and smothering, Ben dealt with his father's absence and his mother using providing for him more as an emotional coping mechanism for herself than strictly caring for him which manifested among other ways in pressuring him to overeat, Bill's parents lashed out at him when Georgie died before becoming completely cold and neglectful and there are hints of favouritism even before that making him feel invisible to them, Richie and Stan - while not particularly explicit - show two different behaviours that are both red flags for broken homes in Richie's constant attention-seeking antics and Stan's obsessive ordered rationale and extremely poor stress response. Mike's home life didn't seem to have any overt warning signs other than his father's infirmity and obsession with the darker aspects of Derry's history which he picked up on although his family's Baptist beliefs isolate him somewhat as he goes to a different school than his friends in addition to the general problems brought on by racism. In their adult lives many Losers had relationships that reflected their abusive parents as well. Also there's one particular thing the Losers do in the book that was... decidedly not normal for kids that age and I'm still wondering what the hell was up with that.
Overall a collection of abused and neglected kids nobody paid attention to up against a monster that takes advantage of how little attention is paid to them, almost like the anthropomorphic personification of their helplessness to stop the abuse in their lives. Killing IT would seem like symbolically killing the source of their suffering, at which point everyone save Mike moved away. But that solved nothing. Taking their confrontation with Pennywise as allegorical in a meta sense it becomes a sort of chicken-or-egg riddle when you wonder if they realize they still bear the scars of their childhood as adults after Mike tells them IT returned and is killing kids again or if IT is back because of that realization and ultimately the cycle is repeating but having it spelled out for them was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I always thought IT was mainly about childhood fears & friendship, & possibly to paint a picture of the 50s that were less than nifty.
Having said that, I loved the movie, despite the changes. It was far superior to that 1990 miniseries, which was itself an abortion.
The novel has a pretty heavy Lovecraft influence to it as well.
Yeah, I know. Read the whole thing, multiple times, though it has been years since the last time I did. And just to hint at how right you are that IT is a Lovecraftian horror, it's specifically mentioned during the final battle that the human mind was incapable of comprehending IT's true form. THAT right there is a Lovecraftian description of an Eldritch Abomination.
Actually I always thought it was a dramatization of the John Wayne Gacy case, that's what King based it on.
@DarkPhoenix
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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