Fear as a coming-of-age tool in “It”
Visual-media of the eighties seems to have a stranglehold on coming-of-age pre-teen films, don’t they? For some reason, when I think of filmic metaphors for coming-ofage my mind immediately wanders to visions of children on bikes, emotive film scores, and the pre-internet age. There’s something particularly eighties about the genre that always stands out. It’s likely part of the reason that the producers of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” were drawn to the aesthetic. “Stand By Me,” another Stephen King adaptation, understood and this new adaptation of King’s “It” seems to follow on that eighties revival in effective ways. The thing is, though, as much as the eighties seems to represent American fiction on screen and its relationship with coming-of-age, horror does not immediately appear as a genre to which childhood development is ascribed. It’s usually comedic (see any John Hughes film), and fantastical (see Spielberg’s “E.T.”). And that makes sense. The awkward meanderings of the subspace between childhood and adulthood with its bathetic fervour and its looseness fits the unformed nature of (eighties) comedy. And childhood as something we must grow out of has its fantasy roots. Watching “It,” though, the idea of using horror as a genre worthy of grounding the profundity of adolescent maturity is compelling.
And, yes, all this amidst a film where there’s a dancing Victorian-era clown.
“It,” in its presentation of a cursed town, Derry, Maine, loomed over by that clown, presents itself firmly as the story of a coming-of-age. The eponymous “It” (a.k.a Pennywise) is not merely a curse and not merely a clown but a shapeshifting savant who takes on the guise of everything which brings fear to our band of protagonists. The feat that runs throughout them differs from character to character. At first, their fears seem disparate but as the film builds to its climax, the septet of growing children learn to adapt to a world that is arbitrary, dangerous and terrifying and they soon find there is little solace to be found in adulthood. Instead, adulthood, and things that come with it, present the most visceral symbols of fear throughout.
“It” concerns, unsurprisingly, a hodgepodge of misfits. The closest thing to a protagonist we have is Jaeden Lieberher’s Bill, a generally straightforward preteen who opens the film with an unnamed illness. (He’s been vomiting blood.) The only thing that gives the generally congenial Bill loser status is his stutter, and he is the victim of the film’s earliest tragedy when his younger brother is abducted by a