#(fully adult progeny moreso than kid)

[impuretale]

IT 2017, Reaching Adulthood, and That Completely Unnecessary Scene from the Book That Was Left Out for Good Reason (Spoilers)

I’ve mentioned before that I was cool with Cary Fukunaga losing his directorship of the project because he seemed determined to make the orgy scene from the book happen. The movie as it stands now has proven it is not necessary. I will explain why.

In the book, when the Losers Club makes it to IT’s lair (well beyond the cistern) they’re also pulled into its reality, where it can take its true form (or as close an approximation as the human mind can comprehend it, hence the spider). Afterward, the kids are left wandering the sewers, lost in total darkness, for literal days. IT has not only managed to fool them into thinking they killed it, but may very well take their lives via starvation and exposure. 

Then the entire Losers Club has sex. The reason for this is the realization by Beverly that, essentially, they can’t escape IT unless they stop being children. It’s a symbolic rite that’s supposed to represent Beverly claiming herself in a way her father attempted to violate but also initiates them into adulthood. IT does not go after adults because their fears are harder to manipulate. More on this later. The point is, I understand what King was going for but also ew. And also no, we do not ever need to see a bunch of 13 year-olds engaging in graphic intercourse on the big screen, something the original director intended. 

The 2017 IT movie achieves the intentions of the above-described scene in different ways. Firstly, Bev takes ownership of her body and her sexuality the second she cuts her hair, and we see evidence of this feeling of freedom this gives her when after this scene, the first thing we see her do is join the boys for a swim in the gorge. This is a scene in which everyone is swimming in their underwear, then (for her) sunbathing in plain view, and she feels utterly safe. This is huge when you understand that her father is all but confirmed to have been molesting her, possibly for years. This takes this achievement for her and makes it about her decisions and her owning herself and not about giving herself to a bunch of boys. The decision she makes in the book is her decision which is in itself giving her some agency, but it also hinges on something shared with all of the Losers and not something she just owns outright. The movie changes that, for the better. 

Beverly, among the other losers, is already an adult in the symbolic sense that the orgy in the book was supposed to initiate. This is evidenced by the fact that when IT tries to conjure up horrors for her, what she winds up getting is easily the most abstract attack in the whole movie. Remember what I said earlier: adults are more complicated when it comes to scaring them. Children fear monsters in cellars; adult anxieties are way more complex. Bev’s nightmare is being (fresh from starting her period and her father’s adverse reaction to that) attacked not only by a geyser of blood, but also the hair that she cut off -- hair that she cut off because it sexually excites her father, hair that only stops holding on to her and pulling her toward the drain when she relents and screams for her abuser to come help her. The only means that IT has to terrorize her is to constantly place her in situations where she’s vulnerable to her father. 

Bev is the most fearless of the Losers, and she had already grown up a long time ago. The only reason IT maintains any sway over her to the end of act 2 is because she hasn’t defeated her true monster yet -- her father. She’s the first to insist they go help Mike when they know Henry Bowers is after him. She’s the first to cast a stone -- she is the first one to physically harm Pennywise. 

Because when adults see creatures or animals that mean them harm, they are more likely than children to pick up a weapon and try to kill it.

Everyone in the Losers Club claims their adulthood in the final battle with Pennywise when they take up arms and beat it nearly to death. Everyone else also has symbolic moments in the movie before that confrontation that is meant to show their (sometimes imperfect) initiation into adulthood. For Eddie, it’s standing up to his mother, who has been lying to him about his illness. For Richie, it is that moment when Bill tells him that IT took Beverly, and he comes to help, accepting that his feelings and his fears are not the most important thing. For Mike, it is his decision to fight back when the bolt is between his eyes -- confronting his longtime tormentor and the progeny of a racist who was involved in the Burning of the Black Spot (and likely the burning of his home, which killed his parents). For Ben, it was the first stone he threw when Henry sexually harassed Beverly -- Ben, whose main response to Henry when he’s near was initially to run or hide. For Bill, it’s accepting that his brother is truly dead and he’s never going to be able to bring him home. For Stan, it was meant to be his bar mitzvah -- the traditional entrance into manhood for Jewish boys, but we’re shown that he struggled with it from the beginning and appeared to continue to during the montage showing him actually attending it. He’s the one that could be led away from his friends and attacked, so his ascension is incomplete in a way, despite his taking part in the melee at the end. This will tie later to his ultimate fate twenty-seven years later. 

Everything that the sex scene in the book was needed for, symbolically, is carried out in the movie just fine. First through character growth but second through the most righteous monster ass-beating that’s ever been committed to film -- against a creature that, as a friend of mine pointed out, has never needed to fight before. 

The Losers Club are all at least symbolically “grown up” by the time they make the blood pact in the end. Some, moreso than others. Stan’s story is more tragic than the miniseries had time to fully realize for the viewers. I’m looking forward to seeing how all of this reverberates in chapter 2.