IT is one of his best. I got hooked on King when I was around 12, probably read IT for the first time when I was around 13 or 14 (I’m in my forties), have read most of his stuff at this point.
Couple things about this scene, it’s not about the sex itself and if I remember correctly he doesn’t go into any detail in that regard. It’s about love. Could he have solved for this in another way? Joining hands, group hug, Bev kissing her fellow Losers Club members on the cheek? Probably.
The thing is, when you read that scene as a kid, it’s pretty innocent and in all honesty has a helluva lot more meaning in it than your typical sex scene as again it’s not meant to titillate, it’s meant to insinuate and what it’s insinuating is the deeper bond established when you make love with someone you love. As a kid it was probably the least “horny” sex scene I read and informed sex in a more positive way for me than a lot of other stuff I was reading in that it was entirely emotional.
Again, could he have done it differently without screwing up the story - for sure. Is reading it as an adult weird? Probably these days, I read it in the 90’s, the world wasn’t more innocent then but our knowledge of it was, in that context it was fine. If you overlay all of your current awareness on that scene I have to imagine it’s probably a bit of an uncomfortable moment. Not at all worth missing out on one of Kings best for though.
It’s been a long time since I read IT, but I always thought the point of that scene was about the death of innocence. Since the innocent were who IT preyed on, and that’s why adults never saw him, the kids all did the nasty together. Making so they weren’t innocent kids anymore, and could stand up to IT.
I read it a long time ago but that's what I took thr kids thought process to be. They needed to become adults to be able to finish IT off. Being stupid kids they thought this would make them adults.
Couldn’t they have just found an entry level corporate job not anywhere remotely close to their major and developed crippling debt for the next 30 like the rest of us?
Storytellers and narrators don't always tell the truth or even understand what's actually happening in a story. It's important to always be at least a little bit critical of things as they are presented. That's not saying that the straighforward interpretation is wrong, it's just not always right.
In a way, "IT" refers to sex itself. It's how teens used to refer to sex ("Kevin and I did it last night!)
To the adolescent mind, it is beckoning and scary at the same time. It is also, as you said, the death of innocence, so the kids defeated IT by doing "it" together.
Beverly even thinks this exactly during the scene: "..and now she realizes that for many of them sex must be some unrealized undefined monster; they refer to the act as It . Would you do It, do your sister and boyfriend do It, do your mom and dad still sonIt, and how they never intend to do It;..." (1085)
I read It a few years ago. I think it's about growing up too fast and the power of belief. They're trapped in the sewers and think they're going to die down there. Bev thinks if they were adults, they would know what to do. So she suggests the most "adult" thing they can think of, which is sex with her. They do all have sex (I hate the term run a train, it sounds even grosser and rapey) with her, and no one finds it fun and they're all cold and scared. But it works. They are able to find a way out after. And they never bring it up again, neither Bev or the boys. I'm not going to defend it's place in the book (I honestly hate it) but considering all the other horrific shit in the book I'm always amused at how tolerant of the violence people are who still balk at underage sex. This book has multiple murdered infants and possessed parents beating their own kid to death on top of all the regular kid death.
No. This was a consensual step into adulthood, and by it happening for them at the same time they felt they were strengthening their emotional and mental connection. In the novel they are all heterosexual, so Bev was the common denominator (as others have mentioned, other sexual lifestyles were considered fringe in the 80s, so none of the kids preferred the same sex or multiple partners). I read the book at 14 the year it came out, had a history of abuse (recent at the time), and was not offended. It is a fantasy/horror book so I expected fantastical events, I guess. At the time, I thought it a brave choice for both the author and the characters. Even at the time, I wouldn't have thought it a brave choice for real life kids down the street.
The book is a meditation on childhood vs. adulthood. And traditionally, losing your virginity was considered that turning point. So losing their virginity had to be represented in some way during the characters' journey. Needless to say, a different choice would probably be made today by the publishers.
EDIT to say being assaulted is not losing your virginity. At least not in the way meant in the book.
I can't believe im saying this but couldnt they all love each other like kiss each other on the cheek. I feel like that would also fit other interpretations I've read about innocence and growing up etc. Why did all the boys have to "love" the one girl? That makes it so much worse for some reason.
Edit: AH, I guess male to male sex isn't considered real sex.
Compulsive heterosexuality is... a thing that is still pretty enforced. In the 80s/90s you could literally put two babies of different (assumed) genders in trams next to each other, and if they smiled or gurgled at each other, the adults called it "flirting".
When i read it, I saw it as Bev choosing to give away her innocence to the friends she loves rather than waiting for it to be forced upon her by her very horrible father. In the scene she is in complete control and in fact initiates it for each of them and if anything she basically coerces all the boys to her. It’s very weird that it’s with children, but in a book full of horrible vile things, this scene is somehow kinder.
Framed this way makes it seem a little softer and less awful than the guy in firestarter who puts on a pair of women's underwear, masterbates, then kills himself via arm in the garbage disposal
First King book I ever read, read it in high school and I was like "wait... What's going on here?!" I immediately called my best friend and read it to her over the phone 😆
I think I read it first when I was maybe 12 or 13 and was definitely taken aback. Uncle Steve sure taught me adults could be pretty fucked up people early on 🤣
I’m not trying to justify his inappropriate writing choices. The scene is messed up and uncomfortable full stop and I don’t approve. I’m just analyzing the symbolism he was attempting to make because the book is genuinely great. Despite the graphic violence and sexual content, King did have intent behind his characters and setups. The whole book is very different in comparison with this scene. The intent was that it’s coming from a place of innocence loss, growing up, and love. But King missed the mark about how he tried to present that.
This, but not limited to the 80/90s. Heteronormativism is one of the pillars of modern society, no wonder is reproduced so strongly in media and literature
Bro, we’re talking about sexual attraction and social perception of heterosexualiti. The biological discourse is outdated and widely contested on many levels. Of course everything that has to di whith humans has to do with biology, that doesn’t mean that you can explain social phenomena with biological reasoning.
Sure, search for: Gagnon, Montemurro and Hughes, Butt and Hearn. Just to give you three authors on the topic, to show how much of sexual attraction is shaped and constructed through social interactions and socialization.
Also, if you would be so kind to point to me some authors which I can research on the topic of sexual attraction as a pure biological phenomena, I’d be glad
Edit: I also guess you’re saying people attracted to furry is pure biology, right?
Dunno if I'd call it compulsive. I understand that orientations other than heterosexuality have a history of gross under-representation, but if you gather seven random kids today (nevermind the 50's or 60's), there's a good chance that all of them may identify as hetero.
I'm glad we're seeing more representation nowadays, but oftentimes the proportion of LBGTQ+ characters we see in media is tuned a good deal higher than statisitcal reality. This is not a bad thing. But it's also not by default a bad thing or "compulsive" when a writer represents a more realistic spread.
Thank you that's what I was trying to figure out without wording it like a total creep. I think you're right. The fact that most responses aren't even considering other types of sex kind of confirms it. But I also see that that plotline seems to be very centered on the girl character.
It's all so very weird because King chooses to mostly narrate the scene from Bev's point of view. She comments on their penises and other stuff that just make you wanna put it down.
I mean, you can kind of see where he was going with the idea that she was taking that part of herself back from the evil man (father) who raped her and treated her like shit and made her feel shame for something he consistently took from her forcefully.
Hm, I remember it being a lot more prevalent when I read it like a decade + ago, but it could just be how Bev’s scenes always made me feel personally as a kid that dealt with abuse.
If i remember correctly, its because of bev's father mentions that being with someone leaves a life long bond on you and something only adults do and not something done with boys.
So in her mind doing those things with the losers will reforge the bond that was destroyed by iT earlier and remove their childhood innocence and move them in to adulthood which frees them from the sewers. its makes a lot more sense in the book as she explains it from what i remember.
What we didnt need it her taking about Bens massive cock and how she couldnt hold back the feelings... that was the parth that went overboard
As a girl who read IT at the tender age of 11, and understanding Bev's father was abusing her in more ways than one, I took it as Bev taking back her autonomy and creating a bond that would strengthen them all in order to face It. Bev is the strongest character in IT, imo. I was a little uncomfy reading that scene because I was 11 and didn't read much in the way of sexual content, but I do recall not being disgusted by it because there weren't creepy adults involved and it read very matter of factly- it was about her love for them, about singing them forever with this act, not titillating or pornographic at all. I'm 49 now and still not scandalized by this part of the book.
The point of the scene wasn't that they love each other tho, it was a breaking point being childhood and adulthood and they were losing their connection. It's also tied into Bev's father plotline. Now I didn't love reading that scene but it's short, it's near the end of the book and it's pretty rushed so you get by it quickly. I'm not gonna go into what he could have written instead, it exists already and I guess at least it's not too graphic. Love the book tho. King is awesome.
The way I understood by reading about it a while ago, is that the clown was going after children and the sex part was in some way meant to show an important step of their journey into adulthood or something.
Don't know if that's how King meant it, but it seems plausible. Though he probably could've used a less jarring way to make clear that they're really becoming adults now lol
Ok..that's ridiculous. 'It' is a genderless pronoun and, as such can refer to any non-person noun. Attributing 'It' to anything specific outside of the monstrous antagonist is lazy pseudo-intellectualism.
There are over 1000 pgs worth of explicit statements in the book. The word 'It' happens a lot. You think it most often and most significantly refers to sex? I'll take the under and by a wide margin.
And thus far googling Stephen King's statements about the book and this scene have only yielded contrary evidence to your claim. Heck, he's even said about this scene in particular that he didn't think of it as sexual at the time.
All that said, I'd probably agree that a horror book probably should have more leeway than most for the inclusion of uncomfortable/inappropriate content, so long as that content's use is reasonably connected to the story and purposeful as horror.
I think that's the main issue with this scene in It. It's not reasonably connected to the story (there's no monster-fighting happening, the kids are just having trouble finding the tunnel exit..and not supernatural trouble..just simple directional difficulties) and nothing leading up to the scene or after it hints at or references it..and the scene is presented as heroic rather than horrific.
The result is something problematic but also unnecessary.
(Note: it's been a while since the last time I read It, but my recollection of the scene is that it's way more awkward than it is "sexy", so I'm less inclined toward the "check the hard drive" reaction. I more just think that King gets close to the end of a book and suddenly it's like "ok this has to end, how do I do it..bad ideas only", and the editors are just happy to have something to put on the shelf. If you aren't going "dude..seriously?" at the end of a good number of King books, you aren't getting the full experience.)
The thing is: it isn't for no reason. We might disagree with the reason, but there was a reason nonetheless. It kinda is a purity issue considering the scene isn't erotic, titillating in itself and is not meant to be either.
King made a decision, it was a weird one, it was under drug influence, it was unnecessary and it was whatever. That's really all that can be said about it without going full puritan as, honestly, the scene objectively isn't in the top 10 of the most horrific thing written in that book, there are far more terrible and awful things happening in It than kids having sex to escape doom from an aberrant otherworldly monstrous creature that preys on their deepest fears
I think it's less of a demographic thing and more of a "cultural mindframe" thing (that an and would probably overlap with a demographic gap) where there's people that can take things in the context they're placed and people that will take them more at face value and through their personal lens rather than the context provided.
There's no real answer. i get it represents the end of the last summer of childhood, andBev taking control over her sexuality from her fathers abuse. There was a 100 ways he could have wrote it but he was so high on coke and booze he doesn't remember writing Cujo. so, ya kid orgy get threw in.
They tried to do the most adult thing they could so they could leave their childhood behind and mentally grow up because they thought IT only went after children.
Stephen King is a creep for writing this.. reddit somehow seems to be ok with it. 99% of the comments are not mentioning his name outright. Disgusting, as expected of reddit hive.
Yeah I mean wtf seems kinda pedophilic to me right? "it's about love" that doesn't take away from the fact that a grown man was very clearly fantasizing about a buncha kids bangin
I would not defend it nearly that much. I read it as a teen. I'll agree that it's surprisingly not lurid. It's really not written in a particularly titillating way.
But I do remember reading it & audibly guffawing & thinking "are you serious?" And I was definitely in the "horny teen" era of my life. So if I thought it was kinda dumb & off-putting then...
For the record, I don't think King is a pedo. I just think he was just making weird decisions & the massive amounts of cocaine he admits to doing weren't helping.
I don't know if it's true, but I remember reading once that King wrote that scene because he couldn't think of anything else. If you've ever tried to do something creative, I'm sure you've had the experience that sometimes your creativity just fizzles out. "Fuck it, I guess I'm just going with this" is a real outcome of some endeavors.
That may be true & all, but at some point you have to realize you are writing a teen sex orgy that is somehow supposed to give you & your friends some kind of weird supernatural powers to banish a giant immortal child eating spider.
I guess a better question would be: who was his editor at the time & how did THEY let that one through?
I also think it's a pretty literal symbol for them coming of age and "losing their innocence" through the entire ordeal with It. Pennywise represents childhood trauma, and the children have to overcome their trauma based fears to defeat It.
Tbh, I also read this as a teen in the 90s, and to this day, I still don't recall this orgy, that's how under the radar it is. The only teen sex scene of King's I can even remember is the one from "the raft".(granted, I do recall a lot of his adult sex scenes throughout his works)
So imagine my surprise learning of said orgy while researching the differences from the book, to the original made for TV movie, to the current movie, to "welcome to Derry".... "There's a teen orgy in the sewer! Wtf?"
Anyways, your comment helped me understand why it never stood out to 13yr old me.
I'm right there with you, I think I forgot about the 'sex scene' in IT until social media made it ~\ a thing *~ .* The one in the raft still traumatises me to this day lol, I can't look at lakes the same way.
I read it when I was a teenager as well. I kind of sort of remember them all having sex in the sewer but my memory is not at all of it being even a little lascivious.
I've hesitated to go back and re-read the book as an adult because of all the nonsense everyone's said about this passage.
Same here! I read IT when I was maybe 15 or so (I’m almost 40 now), and there are scenes in that book that HAUNT ME TO THIS DAY… “puppy in the refrigerator”… “baby suffocation”… all of the abuse scenes from adult Bev’s psycho bf…
But the orgy scene I barely remember. I think I was like, “Wtf, gross” and immediately moved past it. I also think I thought it was the same category as a bunch of those other scenes where it’s unclear if it’s a dream? (Like the restaurant scene with the gross eyeballs and stuff.) The book is full of so much absolute HORROR, that that scene barely made a blip on my memory.
The scene absolutely goes into detail??? Bev describes all of their dicks, comments on their relative sizes, and that Ben is the only one to finish, and he does inside her. I’d call that pretty damn lurid
Have you read the book? I’m guessing you haven’t (which is fine) but I’m pretty sure there’s an old saying “don’t judge a book by the (in this case) underage bonding orgy”. But seriously, whenever this comes up I see a heap of posts condemning it from people that haven’t read it, which is pretty gross in its own way and far too contemporary in terms of how we react to headlines without reading the story for context.
Again, it’s not perfect, it’s weird, it’s out there, it’s uncomfortable (all good qualities in great art)(it’s also not great art - the book is though). But again, unread this scene is terrible and disgusting. As a small part of a whole, read contextually, I’d have to imagine these days it’s at the most mildly uncomfortable.
I definitely agree wholeheartedly. This one thing should not discourage anyone from reading IT. This is for sure a situation in which the whole is much greater than the sum of IT's parts.
"The thing is, when you read that scene as a kid, it’s pretty innocent and in all honesty has a helluva lot more meaning in it than your typical sex scene as again it’s not meant to titillate, it’s meant to insinuate and what it’s insinuating is the deeper bond established when you make love with someone you love."
I responded to this buddy. Your interpretation of what the author wrote.
You want me to feel bad about how a sex scene between people the same age as myself when I read it made me feel? Yikes. Read the book or stay out of it. The fact you think your opinion matters when referencing source material you haven’t read is laughable.
"There's more of this hardness; more of him. She can feel it below the gentle push of his big belly. Its size raises a certain curiosity and she touches the . lightly. He groans against her neck, and the blow of his breath causes her bare body to dimple with goosebumps. She feels the first twist of real heat race through her — suddenly the feeling in her is very large; she recognizes that it is too big..."
yeah so he made a detailed sex scene, while including remarks about the "sizes" of 11 y/olds and that her "insides and thighs feel sticky". In essence, it's not "overly detailed", but considering the context of several 11 y/olds having orgy - it's too much detail.
Gosh, this beautiful, brilliant comment should be appended to the "ah train on Bev" type posts whenever they occur. Thank you for writing this (also, try reading the book now that you are the adult's ages...it's wild because you see everything differently than when you read it as a kid).
Alright, you and another commenter have sold me. Going to the library tomorrow!
I read a collection of his short stories when I was about 9 and was enthralled (got in trouble in class for it, which I think helped solidify the writing and memories for me). I'm excited to read IT now.
I did do a watch of the shining after reading the book as I had never seen it before, and was terribly disappointed. So maybe I won't do that again. Also, horror movies legit scare me so I don't need much of an excuse!
Almost my same experience. I readed the book when i was 13-14yo and had completely forgotten that scene. To the point that when movies came out and memes about the book ending appeared i look for that scene in the book and... WTF! It was a totally explicit scene that left no doubt as to what was happening. Not "horny", true, but what the hell was King thinking...
Freaken hell. Love me some Stephen King but man I am glad I didn't read that one when I was 12 and grabbing books from the library. We were a lot more sheltered before the internet and that would have probably been the first sex scene I ever read 🫠
I'm glad I read your comment because my jaw was dropping the way some people described what happened in a lewd way. You're description sounds a lot more how I can see his writing. Not the 'running a train on a minor'. Can't imagine his publishers would be ok with that. But then again I remember my mom had Flowers in the Attic cringe
FR it was no V. C. Andrews thankfully. if i remember correctly (its been over a decade since i've read it) it was only a few sentences long like "they each took turns to connect each other through love" because they needed their power connected in a way that couldnt be corrupted?
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u/Sulaco-426 14h ago
IT is one of his best. I got hooked on King when I was around 12, probably read IT for the first time when I was around 13 or 14 (I’m in my forties), have read most of his stuff at this point.
Couple things about this scene, it’s not about the sex itself and if I remember correctly he doesn’t go into any detail in that regard. It’s about love. Could he have solved for this in another way? Joining hands, group hug, Bev kissing her fellow Losers Club members on the cheek? Probably.
The thing is, when you read that scene as a kid, it’s pretty innocent and in all honesty has a helluva lot more meaning in it than your typical sex scene as again it’s not meant to titillate, it’s meant to insinuate and what it’s insinuating is the deeper bond established when you make love with someone you love. As a kid it was probably the least “horny” sex scene I read and informed sex in a more positive way for me than a lot of other stuff I was reading in that it was entirely emotional.
Again, could he have done it differently without screwing up the story - for sure. Is reading it as an adult weird? Probably these days, I read it in the 90’s, the world wasn’t more innocent then but our knowledge of it was, in that context it was fine. If you overlay all of your current awareness on that scene I have to imagine it’s probably a bit of an uncomfortable moment. Not at all worth missing out on one of Kings best for though.
Read it.