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FreudianSlippers posted:I'm pretty sure It and everything It creates is invisible to adults in the books. Like there is a scene where he shows up as a gigantic statue and there is a dad with a small child near It who is completely oblivious to the several story tall plastic clown monster towering over him but his toddler freaks the gently caress out. It's visible to adults, there are several scenes where adults mention seeing a clown.
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Sep 28, 2017 03:21
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I only remember the gang massacre, the hate crime and a few times It makes itself visible in order to scare specific people. Not counting the times It appears to the adult Losers because the Losers are different. But I am open to the possibility that I am full of poo poo.
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Sep 28, 2017 03:26
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isn't it more or less an adults decide to act like it isn't happening so long as it doesn't affect them personally type thing. like, obviously exaggerated beyond what'd be plausible without hell clown magic but a pretty direct metaphorical version of the way lovely little towns treat the local pedophile gym coach or the guy who beats his family
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Sep 28, 2017 03:47
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FreudianSlippers posted:I only remember the gang massacre, the hate crime and a few times It makes itself visible in order to scare specific people. Not counting the times It appears to the adult Losers because the Losers are different. Yes, in the flashbacks in the book there are definitely adults that see Pennywise and I think even experience the circus smell and sound that Georgie does. I don't remember if there are any incidents of adults seeing him in the time period when the Losers are alive though.
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Sep 28, 2017 03:53
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Only the bully kids and the other half of the gay couple I think. That's what kicks off the new cycle.
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Sep 28, 2017 03:55
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Isn't there something about Pennywise/It being part of the city itself and being able to influence the people who live there? Hence the illusions and why you forget when you leave Derry. It can go invisible if it wants to anyway so it doesn't really matter.
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Sep 28, 2017 05:26
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RatHat posted:Isn't there something about Pennywise/It being part of the city itself and being able to influence the people who live there? Hence the illusions and why you forget when you leave Derry. Yes. I don't know how much of a physical extension Derry is of IT, but they're extremely connected.
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Sep 28, 2017 05:27
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In older enounters (the fire at the Black Spot) Pennywise is mentioned to take adult victims as a bird. He starts picking mainly child victims because they're easier to scare.
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Sep 28, 2017 06:15
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I'm guessing It can be seen by whomever whenever, but restricts itself to children and whoever else won't be believed. It operates by isolating people. Kids are easiest, but insane adults or anybody who pokes into things too much are open season as well.
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Sep 28, 2017 06:23
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Sep 28, 2017 06:41
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davidspackage posted:In older enounters (the fire at the Black Spot) Pennywise is mentioned to take adult victims as a bird. He starts picking mainly child victims because they're easier to scare. This made no sense to me, by the way, because the bird form is explained late in the book as an unconscious recollection Mike had as a baby. The early scene implies there's a connection between the Black Spot bird form and the one Mike saw, but chronologically it doesn't make sense.
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Sep 28, 2017 07:14
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Mantis42 posted:Another one of IT's species shows up in the Dark Tower books and it feeds off of forcing people to laugh. Clearly they're natural born entertainers and human beings can't take a joke. This is what I always thought too, but none of the Stephen King wikis and such make the connection, and those things list connections that are barely there. Also, on reflection, I'm not sure a "species" of Its makes sense. I'm pretty sure there's a line in the book saying something like, before the universe came into existence there was only It and the Turtle. That would imply that It is unique not only in the universe but also in the macroverse. Petr fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Sep 28, 2017 |
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Sep 28, 2017 08:50
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Petr posted:Also, on reflection, I'm not sure a "species" of Its makes sense. I'm pretty sure there's a line in the book saying something like, before the universe came into existence there was only It and the Turtle. That would imply that It is unique not only in the universe but also in the macroverse. And yet it laid eggs...
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Sep 28, 2017 15:11
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The whole IT/Turtle dynamic was given a little more context in The Dark Tower, albeit indirectly. There's a thing in King's "macroverse" called Todash Darkness, which is like a big, empty void where all of his weird-rear end Lovecraftian beasts come from. It's implied that the creatures from The Mist are from Todash Darkness, for example. Anyway, the whole point is that the poo poo that comes from there is A: bad, and B: usually utterly incomprehensible. Pennywise would certainly fit that description. The "eggs" it carries is just another example for the kind of dream logic that is associated with creatures from that place. And while Pennywise and Dandelo from The Dark Tower might not be of a "species" as we define it, there's certainly a strong implication that they are cut from the same Todash cloth.
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Sep 28, 2017 15:23
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why didnt any of the adults help the kids? they should have, it doesnt make sense
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Sep 28, 2017 15:36
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Because the adults were IT
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Sep 28, 2017 16:23
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End of Shoelace posted:why didnt any of the adults help the kids? they should have, it doesnt make sense "Don't trust anyone over 30"
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Sep 28, 2017 18:03
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Petr posted:This made no sense to me, by the way, because the bird form is explained late in the book as an unconscious recollection Mike had as a baby. The early scene implies there's a connection between the Black Spot bird form and the one Mike saw, but chronologically it doesn't make sense. I kind of took that in stride, as deliberate for weirdness's sake, and a vague implication that (perception of) time wasn't the same for It.
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Sep 28, 2017 18:21
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Phylodox posted:And yet it laid eggs... Yeah, I'd forgotten about that, so I guess it could be an It in Dark Tower. On the subject, I really think the eggs didn't fit well with the established character of It. It's established that It only wants to eat and sleep, hates and fears change and new things, and finds even the idea of someone other that itself existing strange and frightful. Why would a creature like that reproduce? I think King put that in there for the standard horror-tropey "it's female!" twist.
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Sep 28, 2017 20:00
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Yeah, imagine It deliberately creating more of itself that it will either have to compete with at best or sacrifice for at worst, and then maybe have to fight later.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:03
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Maybe It was panicking because the only people to ever stop It were back and wanted to ensure that It's dying race wouldn't die out completely.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:23
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I always got the impression from the book that its children were also it, not exactly separate entities. In the book IT has 2 forms, a form thats manifested in our reality, which is just a physical extension of it's true form in the macroverse, and its natural state outside our dimentions where it was described as living light beyond any communication or understanding. What we saw in our world, the giant spider wasn't really what it looked like, just what our mind sort of twisted an interpretation into, yet they were linked. While it had a physical form, hurting that hurt its immortal form tied to it in the macroverse. From this, I always saw it's "children" as just a manifestation of the deadlights true form expanding itself, which gets represented in our physical universe as reproduction, yet each of those children would still just be same entity, tied to the deadlights, not exactly discrete different creatures.
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Sep 29, 2017 01:49
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https://twitter.com/KevChelios/status/913462760779993088
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Sep 29, 2017 02:02
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Tom Guycot posted:I always got the impression from the book that its children were also it, not exactly separate entities. In the book IT has 2 forms, a form thats manifested in our reality, which is just a physical extension of it's true form in the macroverse, and its natural state outside our dimentions where it was described as living light beyond any communication or understanding. What we saw in our world, the giant spider wasn't really what it looked like, just what our mind sort of twisted an interpretation into, yet they were linked. While it had a physical form, hurting that hurt its immortal form tied to it in the macroverse. From this, I always saw it's "children" as just a manifestation of the deadlights true form expanding itself, which gets represented in our physical universe as reproduction, yet each of those children would still just be same entity, tied to the deadlights, not exactly discrete different creatures. Yeah, this is my read as well. As I mentioned in my post above about Todash Darkness, It is very much a traditional Lovecraftian Horror in that nothing about it truly makes sense or is explained, which adds to the horrific nature of it. Just as It is described as looking like a spider because "that's as close as the mind could make sense of it," the babies likely don't exist in a way that we fundamentally understand. It is so utterly alien that they could be anything. The only true understanding that Bill, Ben, and Richie have when they discover them is that if they are left to grow they will spread It's corruption and continue the cycle. It's never explicitly stated that the fear comes from It reproducing, but rather resuming its reign of terror.
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Sep 29, 2017 02:06
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The book makes a big deal about how It's ability to manifest Itself physically cuts both ways: It can look like anything, but it's bound by the limitations and vulnerabilities of whatever form It chooses. It manifesting as the spider, a living, mortal being means that It can be killed. But the other thing living, mortal beings do is reproduce and create offspring. So It laying eggs isn't so much a conscious choice on Its part as a consequence of Its physicality.
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Sep 29, 2017 02:47
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The book has a line in it (somewhere) about how IT basically IS Derry, since it was always there. There are good people living in Derry, but wherever there are cracks and gaps in that goodness, IT will fill them in with ITself. In the movie, this is exemplified by the curfew sign we see at the beginning, or the missing poster signs people are putting up. Because the people have apathy to actually do anything to stop the disappearances (something something "Bystander Effect"), IT makes them forgetful to the point of being docile. IT doesn't let everyone forget everything about IT entirely, however, because those missing kids and urban "legends" also are a source of fear. The children of Derry are aware of the danger, don't want to go missing, but are being picked off anyway. It's probably like an Everlasting Gobstopper. In the book its hinted that, just as assuming a physical form makes IT vulnerable from weapons that a person genuinely believes can damage that form, the goodness and concern of adults can be used against IT. The Irish police officer (the same one who catches the Losers building the dam in the Barrens and is more impressed than angry about them almost flooding everything) is shown to have genuine concern about the disappearances. Richie bases one of his voices on the cop's accent. Adult Richie invokes this same voice while finishing off IT, and the older retired officer elsewhere in town reverberates with the same words out of nowhere before dropping dead. The same can be said about Mr. Keene the pharmacist, who in the book is the one to tell Eddie the truth about his medicine (and seemed to do it out of kindness and concern for the boy, not quite like his movie daughter). Child Eddie lost his belief in his medicine and started equating it with the poison it always tasted like, which he uses against IT to deeply wound it. It doesn't work so well when he tries it again as an adult.  I really need to re-read the book. I really liked some of the concepts King played with in this book and in the Dark Tower.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:24
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I think the pharmacist was more an example of self-defeating evil than a good guy. Like the police officer who ignores the clown eyewitness accounts in the bridge murder, he tells himself he's just doing his job well, but he absolutely savors the panic it creates in Eddie. I think his actions came from the manipulative, bullying impulses from It, but ended up thwarting It's goals unintentionally.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:36
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Mr. Keene was specifically said to tell Eddie about the placebo for harmful reasons/to rock the boat/just to cause chaos. There was a line that was intended as a descriptor of intent where Eddie thought something like, "the worst thing was 'why would he tell me'" or something like that.
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Sep 29, 2017 16:04
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Darko posted:Mr. Keene was specifically said to tell Eddie about the placebo for harmful reasons/to rock the boat/just to cause chaos. There was a line that was intended as a descriptor of intent where Eddie thought something like, "the worst thing was 'why would he tell me'" or something like that. Christ what an rear end in a top hat
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Sep 29, 2017 17:25
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's important to avoid 'CineD Subtext Game' pseudo-critique where you take the basic plot and then play a mad-libs substitution. Like, the good kids are friends and murder a bad clown, so let's say the clown represents adulthood - or the opposite: let's say the clown represents immaturity. That the clown can be made to represent anything, in this way, is what bamboozles people ITT and gets them thinking that it's all a postmodern game (to be reacted against with a 'return to values'). I haven't seen this version yet, but this is sort of King's explicit point with the character. The name gives "It" away; the creature is all the "others" which the adults of Derry (America) imagine to be threats to their children rather than identify the threat with themselves, or even as themselves, seen through the eyes of those children. The closest thing to a single referent for It is moral panic. The threat to America's children is *checks notes* Satanic ritual abuse! Of course It is a shapeshifter. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 17:40
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Punch Drunk Drewsky posted:Not that I'm in any particular hurry to write about how terrible I used to be, and I get that you're using "nobody" as more of a broad point for your analysis, but I'm curious if it's some failure on IT's part that the effect results in the 'CineD Subtext Game.' It's really simply that IT, despite having a racist villain character, is not an antiracist film. That leads to the question of why it has a racist villain at all - why does the film evoke racism and then sidestep the issue? There are lots of reasons/excuses: IT is a liberal film, arguing that racism is not an ideology but a form of harassment caused by 'toxic people'. Or IT is a childhood-simulation and kids don't know what racism is, therefore the film must exclude antiracism in order to better immerse the audience into the synthetic childhood. Or IT is technically just the first chapter, so perhaps the racist is just world-building for the next chapter. Or IT takes place in an alternate universe where racism doesn't exist, and what we see instead is "clown sickness", a psychic illness caused by Killer Klowns From Todash Space. And so-on. These explanations are all true to some extent - but, in every case, those talking breathlessly about how the kids overcome their fear and triumph miss the point that we have parallel images of IT and Henry being repressed. They're flushed down the toilet so that they can inevitably resurface later, like Beverley's hair. I mean, Henry's tossed down to the bottom of an old well, with a dilapidated house built overtop. Has nobody seen The Ring? The film does literally end with an ad for Chapter Two, but that is not a cue to delay interpretation, putting thought processes on hold 'til late 2019. The truth is that IT, the film currently in theatres, is a film with a BAD END. IT presents a false solution to problems it barely articulates. Even the miniseries had dialogue about how Beverley and Mike lived in the Derry ghetto. 2017 doesn't even have that. The overall point is that, because it says nothing specific about racism, the film can only declare racists to be repugnant rape-murderers who do things for no reason. And, as we all know, actual racists don't perceive themselves as being racist. Actual racists see themselves as The Loser Club, battling this objective, corruptive alien threat. From the racist point of view, Mike is 'one of the good ones', and they can easily disavow Henry's actions because he's obviously mentally ill. Hodgepodge posted:The closest thing to a single referent for It is moral panic. The threat to America's children is *checks notes* Satanic ritual abuse! Of course It is a shapeshifter. When IT plays out in reality, you have the story of the 'pizzagate gunman' - the North Carolina man who took hostages in a pizza parlour, wielding an assault rifle, because a creepypasta urban legend led him to believe there was a secret basement full of enslaved children. There's your bizarre shifting architecture, doors and tunnels appearing no out of nowhere.... SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 18:51
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IT's racist
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Sep 30, 2017 00:42
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Darko posted:Mr. Keene was specifically said to tell Eddie about the placebo for harmful reasons/to rock the boat/just to cause chaos. There was a line that was intended as a descriptor of intent where Eddie thought something like, "the worst thing was 'why would he tell me'" or something like that. Mr. Keene is not a good guy. The book implies that he is looking out for Eddie's best interests, but, once he starts explaining the situation, Keene becomes very malicious. quote:Mr Keene waited until the door was shut and then smiled his dry sun-on-mica smile again. "Loosen up, Eddie. I'm not going to bite you, or hurt you."
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Sep 30, 2017 01:27
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I didn't get the impression that he was doing it to torture eddie. It was a placebo, he had his aspirator there to prove a point. He also mentioned the reason he told Eddie was because his doctor was too weak to do it himself and that 'This has gone on long enough'
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Sep 30, 2017 12:53
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I think he was doing the right thing for mostly the right reason, but was also being at least a little bit sadistic about it. I don't think Eddie is the most reliable narrator in that scene, but the guy clearly is being pretty cruel and it reads as intentionally so. The point where he crosses the line for me is where Eddie says he's not crazy and Keene doesn't correct him. That scene was pretty familiar for me growing up. I was a fat kid and I remember a couple of Drs with interesting ways of communicating that. Turns out the secret to losing the weight was college for gym accessibility and control over my own schedule, not being asked if I knew what a carrot was, who knew? (Not bitter  )
Eifert Posting fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 14:18
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All of the adults in the movie "torture" and hassle the kids.
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Sep 30, 2017 16:36
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QuoProQuid posted:Mr. Keene is not a good guy. The book implies that he is looking out for Eddie's best interests, but, once he starts explaining the situation, Keene becomes very malicious. That quoted passage is entirely the kid's rambling internal dialogue, as Eddie switches between the third person ["Eddie nodded"] and the first ["oh, I've heard that bullshit before"]. Objectively, Mr. Keene is just smiling and telling Eddie to calm down. King is, however, using this grammatical switchup to show how Eddie's mother raised him poorly. The third-person perspective is aligned with that of the mother ("his mother taught him that"), and shows just how much influence she has over Eddie, despite not actually being present. Only one sentence uses the first-person: the sentence where Eddie detects bullshit. And this is just a brief glimmer of autonomy, because all the subsequent speculation about "torture" and "terrifying reappraisal of the world" is also from the mother's perspective: "It wasn't even to be considered, because consideration of such an idea might necessitate a terrifying reappraisal of the world as Eddie understood it." (Not 'as I understand it'). Eddie's mother, despite saying that he should agree with grown ups at all costs, has ultimately instilled into him this belief that the world is incomprehensible terrifying and that adults are out to get him. She is repressing Eddie's first person perspective, in the guise of protecting him. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 19:08
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The trouble here is that this dichotomy of youthful irreverence vs adult authority crumbles in the face of irreverent authority. Bart Simpson politics can't handle a Tony Stark or, say, a Donald Trump figure. Really, you could call Trump the end-result. Despite think pieces on how Donald Trump won the presidency because of South Park and Reddit, Donald Trump mostly won because of what some perceive as law and order which they interpret as asserting fear and control over people they don't like (Including these out of control young people who don't know nothing). Go back to the Republican primary debates last year, and see how much of those debates was a bunch of flabby old men arguing who would be the scariest and toughest to America's enemies. Trump didn't break the rules, but more acted as a more literal and over the top manifestation of what the Republican Party has been since Nixon. Trump is not a disrupting force. He is just everything wrong with American politics at its most cartoonish. Pennywise originally seems like a disruptive force as all monsters in closets do. He has no respect for the rules and authority of Derry. As the film goes on, it's revealed more and more that Derry is complicit in Pennywise. As Ben reveals, he's baked into the city. The idea of him being disruptive or irreverent is a sham. He's just an adult making kids afraid to get what he wants. Bev overcomes him because she sees that, because she already won the battle when she stood up to her dad. But honestly, your jump to "Bart Simpsons" politics is kind of revealing to the sort of politics I was alluding to. Children being autonomous and not being scared into compliance does not equal irreverence.
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Oct 1, 2017 00:55
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SMG I'm glad to see you're reading and incorporating Jameson these days
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Oct 1, 2017 01:11
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The killer clown not having any respect for the rules or authority of Derry is one of the more interesting takes itt
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Oct 1, 2017 02:31
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