Watching the new version of "IT" is a strange experience for gen X-er such has myself. Much has been said about Steven's King's ability to evoke the experience of childhood and adolescence and that talent can hardly be overstated. He demonstrated it in his first novel, Carrie, and it is one element of his writing that has remained intact through his more recent work, whatever other deficiencies he may have suffered in the last two decades.
If death is the undiscovered country, then childhood is the island of lost boys where adults cannot go and which children forget when they are no longer children. This is where the title of King's anthology, "Hearts In Atlantis" comes from. The past is a lost world, not just because we cannot return to it, but because as we change, we often lose recall of how it felt to experience that past, even if we can imagine what it looked like in vivid perfection. And yet it may not be lost forever. In the hands of a skillful archaeologist, we can discover that those neural pathways are still there.
King says in "On Writing", his memoir and writing guide, that he remembers his childhood in little patches rather than as a continuous reel, comparing it to a murky swamp full of trees that might reach out and grab you. And yet he manages to summon forth this lands with frightening physical and emotional clarity. That is what his skill is all about. At times you may be rolling along in some narrative about evil twins or evil dogs or evil cell phones or whatever the hell and come to a dead halt when King pulls some slight of hand, dropping an artificial memory that nonetheless peels pack all the years and makes you live the experience of a ten year old - just as it would have felt you when you were ten. There it is: Atlantis, the country of your childhood that you thought was familiar but is exposed as strange and unfamiliar and then suddenly transformed into the most familiar thing you ever experienced.
This is the strange thing. This what it all has to do with the new "IT". As baby of the Carter administration, the magic effects are somewhat incomplete on me. While I do feel that nostalgia, it sometimes requires a bit of translation. Atlantis is not just childhood in general, but the Boomer childhood specifically. And yet, the experience of reading Steven King at the height of his powers is not the experience of Boomer youth. The Derry of that Pennywise first appears in may look like 1955, but it really a dreamscape that lives in 1985. The kids in the novel grow up and forget what happened to them. Survival depends not only recovering the events, but the eyes through which they saw them. The movie understands this.
The most significant decision the writers made was to move the first part of the story forward to 1985. Those kids aren’t Boomers anymore. Perhaps this was bound to happen. Every era indulges in nostalgia for somebody’s Atlantis. In the mid 90’s the best example of such indulgence was Forrest Gump. But the nostalgia goes where the money goes and it seems people of my general vintage are in the midst of their prime earning years. So now we indulge in Stranger Things, which among other things pays homage to the heyday of Steven King. Why shouldn’t It take a self referential turn and unify the horror in the lives of its characters with the horror of the real kids who first soaked up that special brand of scary. That is the best effect this movie had on me: resurrecting my own Atlantis, the worlds of fantasy that so defined my early years. I guess it's our turn. Tag.
fyi, I am aware that the picture is not Pennywise. It is his non-union equivalent from Pixabay, however
