Wasn’t IT about the loss of innocence? Also drugs were a factor
“Buy why”
Drugs.
What was acceptable in the past is no longer acceptable. There are people that can’t accept that.
In 1986 though? Pretty sure we had our cultural view on child gangbangs locked in by then.
Unfortunately it isn’t even to this day. Just look at who is in the white house.
Most voters who support Trump are in genuine denial that he’s a pedophile. It’s ridiculous, but it doesn’t change the fact that they also hate pedophilia - they’re just being conned into thinking queer people are the pedos (also very likely some of them are pedos/complicit, but I will risk the assumption that that is the minority and the conservatives I’ve met in real life actually aren’t pedophiles).
Also, have the standards of what’s acceptable changed or not? You said they have, then you implied they haven’t. Either way, I highly doubt everyone was just fine with that scene in 1986, especially given it was not recreated in any adaptation.
Stephen King is not a good writer. He has great story ideas; but, his actual writing is poor and he does weird things that are unsupported by the narrative - like writing sewer gangbang scenes with children so that they can defeat the bad guy with the power of underage eskimo brotherhood.
You can explain that in a less derisive way that sounds a bit more reasonable, but it doesn’t make it a good narrative choice.
Another example is 11/22/63. People on reddit cream their pants over the book, but it’s literally just King self-inserting as the main character so he can (totally uncritically) reminisce over how great small town America was in the 50s/60s and have a fantasy relationship with this incredibly weak/badly-written female character and repeatedly “make poundcake” with her and drink rootbeer floats in diners or whatever. It’s an 800+ page book (paperback is 1049 pages) supposedly about time traveling to stop the Kennedy assassination (which is a cool story idea), but like 700+ pages are filled with asinine garbage and the actual plot is thin and pretty bad.
King isn’t a “writer” as much as he’s “some rando that took up horror lit as a paid hobby in college in order to fund the completion of his ‘opus’ The Dark Tower series …some numerous decades later” 🤢 Prolific =/= professional, etc.
This is pretty much my experience with King. I highly appreciate his ability to consistently create great story ideas, but his actual writing is just kind of bad. Since he has so many books, there might be some good ones in there, but from what I’ve read I’m not impressed. Not that he needs to impress me, he’s done fine for himself.
Reading the story, the “gangbang” part wasn’t like a huge orchestrated planned event. The kids were lost in the dark, loosing hope, and knew that IT wanted them to feel down and weak as alone they could be defeated by IT.
In an effort to make them feel close, Beverly took it up her self to make them all Eskimo Brothers. This brought the Losers Club back into solidarity.
I’m a big fan of Stephen Kings work. He’s deserving of respect as a writer and story teller. Your explanation is reasonable and true in the context of the story.
There is just no way to talk about, write about, discuss, etc, stuff like that, without the air in the room not going still as fuck. All of what you say is true, it’s still… off.
And that book was just a bit too long, but again, great book, great writer, questionable AS FUCK portion.
cocaine
That sounds very much like a pedophile fantasy.
That’s like saying that a lot of people get murdered in Stephen King’s stories, so he must have homicidal fantasies.
Horror writers look for ways to shock and shake up their readers, and judging from the comments here, he succeeded.
Jonathan Swift must have really wanted to cannibalize poor children!
I’ll never forget bringing that up in a classroom and realizing adults had no idea it was satire.
I assumed that there was a reason that he agrees with trump on not releasing the Epstein files.
No, King does not agree with Trump not releasing the Epstein files.
King doesn’t believe there is a document that clearly lists who is guilty of being a pedophile because that isn’t how long running and successful criminal activity works. They have lists of contacts and hints, which have already been released, but not something so cut and dry as a client list.
If you are writing a horror book, you gotta find a variety of ways to scare people. Sex often triggers a select group of readers.
What icks me out is when they make an evil character LGBTQ or kinky.
I’ve been told that cocaine is a helluva drug
Snortin’ Whiskey, Drinkin’ Cocaine.
Well, Coca Cola…
Paedophilia?
there are people being murdered in this story as well, so he must want to murder someone too right?
All characters involved were kids, so not in the context of the story.
It was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for becoming and adult or something. The editor and publisher left it in.
Weird as hell, but not like that.
Cocaine?
Maybe a fleeting dream or memory he had as a teen where he was part of a gangbang?
Really tells us all we need to know about Stephen King.
I read his crap as an older teen, and frankly it sucked.
