So heres the skinny, I read Stephen King’s It.
Maybe there’s nothing else to say about that. Maybe I should just leave it there. If you’ve read the book, you know what I mean, and why I hesitate to talk about it anymore than the brain space I have already dedicated to this novel. When I decided to read It I really didn’t think TOO to much of it. I’ve read King’s The Shining, and it was certainly its own kind of disturbing, but I read The Shining so I could judge Stanley Kubrick’s “Adaptation.” I wanted to form my own opinion. It’s known as one of the best horror films ever made, yet King himself hated it. I wanted to know why. So I read The Shining, and it was revealing, to say the least. The first takeaway I had was that King is right. No matter how good Kubrick’s film is (as a film), how fun the behind the scenes may be, or whatever other praise you want to give that movie, it is a shitty adaptation. The Jack, Wendy, and Danny on that screen are NOT the ones King wrote about.
King’s Wendy is full of anguish and upset. She is in constant push and pull of loving her husband and fearing for her child. Her life and perspective are intensely nuanced and painful.
Kubrick’s Wendy screams and cries a lot.
King’s Jack is a troubled man full of anger and pain. He loves his family more than anything, yet still recognizes his weaknesses as a father and husband. All he wants is to take care of his family and love them the best he can, yet the hotel’s possession uses his weaknesses to destroy.
Kubrick’s Jack…I mean…Jack Nicholson is cool.
King’s Danny is determined and fearful. He loves his parents, and wants to be a good son. He is troubled by visions of the hotel that he can’t understand. He sees flashing words of warning, but he can’t read, so his obsession to learn so that he can know what’s coming, maybe even warn his parents, consumes him.
Kubrick’s Danny, I guess he acts kinda spooky at the end.
Now, adaptation is a passion of mind, so don’t be surprised when I turn into a broken record about it.
Adaptation is messy business. On one hand, if another piece of art inspires someone so much that it makes them pick themselves up and have a whack at the same thing, that’s great. Anything to get people making things. On the other hand, I can’t shake the very personal opinion I have that there is still a great big responsibility you owe to the original work.
I don’t think it’s ok to take characters like the progressive Mina and Lucy from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and turn them into moaning objects of bestial sex. (We’ll come back to this another day)
I don’t think it’s good to change the main theme of George Orwell’s Animal Farm to something that ISN’T corruption of power and control.
When you choose to adapt something, I think you should really sit back and take a look at where you want to go with YOUR work. Where did the original work go first? What did they want to do with it? What about that work inspires you to take it farther?
When looking at the changes adaptations make, I think it is important to understand that no adaptation can be a word for word recreation regardless of medium. I think it is always incredibly insightful to see what the adaptor has cut out. What did they not include? Why? Sometimes that why is a lot easier to see than others, but a lot of times there are certain elements of the original that are so integral to the original work that it should NOT have been left out.
One of the main nuances of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is how, at the end of the story (Which is the beginning of the book), the Creature has turned his back on violence. He has made peace with his maker (literally) and has decided to give up the obsession. (That action is a foil of Victor Frankensteins arc, as it is his undying obsession that ultimately kills him in the end.)
So… When Guillermo Del Toro starts his movie, titled Frankenstein, in the same setting (at the end of the story, but beginning of the book) and has the creature brutally kill ten men within the first minutes of the movie, I fear you did not read the same book I did. (Again, another post)
I believe that this action is inherently misleading and arguably disrespectful to the story called Frankenstein.
(Granted, Frankenstein is my favorite book, and I take these things incredibly seriously, so call me what you like, but I think what I think. Deal with it.)
This post is about It. Trust me, it is.
Stephan King’s It comes with every kind of trigger warning you can think of. And boy, they aren’t kidding when they say that. This book is chalk-FULL of every kind of trauma a person can go through. At first, that makes me ask why. Why would you read a book like that? Why would you write a book like that? Why would you want to remind yourself of all the pain YOU’ve been through and remind yourself of all the pain EVERYONE you know goes through? Halfway through reading It, I had to seriously sit with myself and, in a confronting way, ask, “Why?” Why am I letting myself be disturbed? Why am I letting this occupy so much of me? How am I possibly benefiting from this?
Well heres the thing that I have learned from reading Stephen King. There is a weaving thread he has mastered.
King has a superpower. One he has undoubtedly earned from a lifetime of trial and error. King writes about the horrors of life in such a specific way that speaks to everyone who hears it. From Georgie’s fear of the basement, grown women with abusive husbands, fathers with drinking problems, and so so much more of life’s turmoil. He writes about these things in such a way that you understand them. Even if you have never been that person going through that thing, you feel like you have, or at the very least, you understand why any given character may behave the way they do given the circumstance. He writes about pain in such specific and compassionate ways that are so precise, I can hardly describe it if you haven’t read anything by King.
So King can write about pain. So what? Well, this is where his lifetime of mastery comes into the picture. He takes those very real, very visceral life experiences, those real honest to God pains, and very strategically laces them with the super natural. And this is where he subverts the reader every time.
You say to yourself constantly, “Surely not,” and King smiles and says in reply, “Surely yes,” doubles down, pushes it farther, and creates something far worse than you could have ever first imagined.
He names our pain in subtle specifics, and in great big strokes.
“IT” is something we all know.
Maybe we never had a name for It, but when the lights in our childhood bedrooms were turned off, we feared It coming out from under the bed. As described in the first chapter, It is in the basement, just behind us, ready to grab our shirt collars and drag us into the dark.
It took King roughly five years to write the 1,138-page novel. After reading it cover to cover, I can’t imagine how he did it so fast. It’s endless turning and weaving can only be the result of those years dedicated to the piece.
It is widely known and recognized, and continues to influence generation after generation, giving people pause before they pass a sewer drain. (Even after time away from the book, the images and context haunt my steps and make my knees queazy when walking past drains or over manholes.) It is a novel that sticks to your ribs, and can’t be scraped off. Once you’ve read it there is no un-reading it.
In that way the question comes again: why? Why read it? Why put yourself through it? Why allow yourself to live that pain once, and re-live it, potentially forever? And what is it about King’s writing that makes it impossible to put down?
I argue, to put it simply, because we need it.
As a species, I believe we can’t just leave things alone within ourselves. Even in therapy speak, they tell you that you shouldn’t keep things bottled up inside, right? If you are grieving or going through something difficult, don’t go through it alone, right? If you can’t talk about it, get a journal. etc. etc.
For myself, as is obvious, I can hardly keep anything to myself. I’ve got to share with the people around me. I take my opinions and critique very seriously, and even something as basic as that is something I need to share.
All this being said.
We are not and have never been a singular species. Even though some of us may try, it’s just not what we are. Our life is one that needs to be shared and impacted by those around us. None of us become the person we are within a vacuum. We are a mosaic of every life that has touched us. Every teacher who has impacted us, every babysitter and family member who taught us something. I say again, there is an inherent need to share within us, and this includes our pain. Whatever it is that Stephen King has inside him is something that he needs to share, and our inherent curiosity and need for connection is what gets us to read at first. Once we have picked up that book and are now living in the world King creates, that is when we recognize that through his work we are seen.
As I have said, we see ourselves in his work, no matter what it is we may be struggle with. Substance abuse, Sexual assault, Bullying, Grief, bad weather, and terrible coincidence.
This novel gives us a name for our trauma and misfortune, and that’s It.
As of now I have not seen any screen adaptations of this story. I will update soon.
