Stephen King’s IT novel delivers a much different experience than the movie – especially when it comes to the ending.
In the IT film, The Losers Club defeats Pennywise the Clown and comemmorate the victory with a big group hug. In the IT novel, however, the kids celebrate their victory a different way: by engaging in group sex.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Indeed, after defeating Pennywise in the sewers under Derry, and trying to find their way out, The Losers female member, Beverly, realizes that the bond that helped the Losers conquer evil needs to be revitalized. That “revitalization” takes the form of Beverly having multiple pages of preteen sex with each of the boys in the group, ending with Bill Denbrough.
As the new IT movie has brought Stephen King‘s story back into mainstream focus, there’s been some renewed discussion about the author’s decision to include that controversial, descriptive, (and frankly, weird) sexual moment in the book.
In King’s Defense…
Stephen King has heard the controversy over IT‘s sex scene before, and recently told Vulture:
“It’s fascinating to me that there has been so much comment about that single sex scene and so little about the multiple child murders. That must mean something, but I’m not sure what.”
King also re-iterated that stood by a more extensive defense of the scene, which was first posted in 2013 on his Stephen King Forum:
“I wasn’t really thinking of the sexual aspect of it. The book dealt with childhood and adulthood – 1958 and Grown Ups. The grown ups don’t remember their childhood. None of us remember what we did as children–we think we do, but we don’t remember it as it really happened. Intuitively, the Losers knew they had to be together again. The sexual act connected childhood and adulthood. It’s another version of the glass tunnel that connects the children’s library and the adult library. Times have changed since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues.”
King doesn’t seem to express any personal feelings of regret or even levity in either of his defenses; he certainly singles out those perturbed or offended by the scene and/or ‘the times a changing’ as reasons for that part of IT seeming weird. But a writer choosing to put that scene in the story? Not weird at all, in the world of Stephen King.
Influential Reserves
In a recent interview with Variety, King actually admitted that he (equally thankfully) had very little to do with this version of IT that made into theaters.
As the author described it:
“I wasn’t involved at all. I wished them well. Geez, I don’t even think they sent me any swag from that one! But maybe that’s a good thing. I’ve seen it, it’s fabulous.”
…And one thing that made it “fabulous” is the fact that we didn’t have to sit through that awkward and disturbing groupsex scene in the film. Thanks but no thanks.
IT Chapter 1 is now in theaters; Chapter 2 is already greenlit and headed for production.
