The runaway success of IT at the box office means a lot of people are also taking a look back at the original novel, which has in turn brought focus to one of the biggest changes the movie made from the book. The novel contains an infamous scene near the end where the character of Beverly, the one girl in the group, has sex with each boy of the Loser's Club, one after another. The movie skips over the scene, for fairly obvious reasons, but that hasn't stopped people from talking about it again now that IT is back in the news. While Stephen King has spoken about the scene before, he added some thoughts when he was recently asked about it once again. He's a bit surprised that this one scene is the one that gets people excited considering all the terrible things that happen. According to King...
To it I'd just add that 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.
It's a valid point that there seems to be something of an imbalance from the audience, as IT's one sex scene seems to upset so many people, while nobody really talks about the number of children who end up dead. IT the novel is over 1,000 pages long and a whole host of terrible things happen, but nobody seems too upset about kids having their arms ripped off.
To be fair, while there may be a very skewed perspective on what the worst part of IT is, It's not so surprising that people would be shocked by it. People go into a Stephen King novel with a certain expectation, which means the violence may not be as noticeable simply because we know it will happen. The sex is less predictable, and by virtue of the fact that the characters in question are all kids, not even teenagers, many will have difficulty reconciling it all in their minds.
Stephen King made these comments to Vulture, as part of being asked about previous statements he had made on the topic. The author had said that he never really saw the act as sexual, rather, it's a thematic bridge that connects childhood to adulthood, an important moment since the book deals with our main characters as both children and adults.
Ultimately, both the child sex and the child violence is fictional, which, regardless of how terrible the depiction is, should put them on similar footing in the minds of the audience. Clearly, that isn't actually the case. We don't know what it means any more than Stephen King does. If you know what it means, let us know in the comments.
