The TV movie’s first act takes place in 1960, the same year the FDA approves birth control pills. +5
The TV movie’s second act takes place in 1990, the year Emory University established the first Ph.D. program in women’s studies in the US. +8
Yet another item in the canon assuming only male-appearing creatures can be horrifying serial killers… -3
…But likely because we understand men are dangerous, and women would be too good at it to get caught. +4
Beverly rejects feminine fashion norms, but still grows up to be a fashion designer, because women contain multitudes! +6
Beverly is likely only accepted into a group of misfit teen boys because she doesn’t express anything that could be mistaken for traditional femininity. -5
Stephen King’s general disregard for women unless they’re scary or motherly. -7
(I haven’t read a lot of Stephen King and feminists should probably be better read. -10 for me)
In 2011 there were 5 abortion clinics in the entire state of Maine. -6
Henry and his group sexually harass Beverly. -14
Tim Curry seems generally cool. +9
We’re supposed to feel bad for Henry because he has an abusive father even though every other character’s parents are fucked up and they don’t go around using racial slurs and poisoning dogs. -10
Maine has never had a female Governor. -4
In the book Beverly apparently has sex with all the other boys to “calm them down” and “strengthen their friendship” which adds to my suspicion that Stephen King has never met a woman. -10
Pennywise the Clown’s garish makeup perpetuates the assumption that wearing makeup, a traditionally feminized act, is deceptive and inherently untrustworthy. -5
A good lesson in how men prey on your worst fears. +7
Beverly saves everyone. +10
The book is definitely heavy enough to use as a weapon against any male aggressors. +6
It’s eyebrows. +3
RESULTS: -6, officially not feminist.
I love this. Please make this a regular feature.
Second.
I had my fingers crossed that there would be a “more in this series” section as I scrolled down.
This has only further convinced me that I should never read any books written by Stephen King.
In all seriousness you could make the case that ‘Carrie’ is feminist. He did a decent job with that one.
Except he hated that book and his wife forced him to finish it and sent it to a publisher.
That’s crazy! He should have been really proud of that one!
Admittedly, he was probably coked out of his mind at the time anyway
Rose Madder is alright with the ladies. A woman with an abusive husband flees and sort of finds her own life (or starts to) and she buys this painting because she likes it, and it starts to come to life, and when her husband comes after her she goes into the painting, and there’s this whole thing with like a beast/goddess metaphor going on? It’s one of the only King books I still like in retrospect and consider vaguely feminist (though I feel like if I read it now I might find issues).
And Dolores Claiborne. All women characters in it were fairly likable.
Rose Madder is practically perfect in every way.
I love Stephen King. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad feminist but the man can write a story. It helps to remember a lot of his early stuff was written when he was a raging alcoholic and that he based the character of Jack Torrance in The Shining on himself. I don’t think he was under any illusions about the fact that he was kind of a shitty person for a while there.
I haven’t really read enough Stephen King to comment on his portrayal of women, but I do know that one of the reasons he was annoyed at the film adaptation of The Shining is that Shelly Duval’s character in the book was a lot more proactive and had more to do and more depth.
She was a really well-developed character in the novel, in my recollection so I could see his frustration.
This is true. Kubrick changed a lot of the plot from the novel. I’d have to say that Shelley Duval’s character in that movie is one of my all time least favourites. She does a lot of running and screaming but you don’t get a sense of her as the long term abuse survivor she is the novel who is forced to shed her delusions about her husband to protect her son.
I love Stephen King, too. It was the first book I stayed up all night reading. He has a lot of flaws, but is also just really compelling. I comfort-read him these days, along with the less racist Georgette Heyer novels.
Man, I love The Shining but it is so hard for me to read/watch anymore because Jack reminds me soooo much of my emotionally-abusive alcoholic ex-boyfriend and it just gives me all sorts of nasty flashbacks.
I read a lot of Stephen King when I was 14. I think my rationale was “If it’s long, it must be smart.” I was not cured of that delusion for a while, and even afterwards I kept reading his work (it’s okay if I acknowledge the dumbness/problematicity/general-not-very-goodness, right?).
I read a ton of dumb/problematic/generally-not-very-good books, and I apologize to no one. In fact, I actively spurn people who tell me to do otherwise, because who has time to be book shamed? No one. Because that is time that could be spent reading books.
HEAR HEAR
NOTHING IS PERFECT AND DO WHAT GIVES YOU JOY.
He his writing has good elements, despite its general lack of goodness. I still remember his description of the kind of garbage an off-season summer home would have and it was pretty much the perfect description of that kind of garbage. So perfect, I remember it over a decade later. So *shrug* no judgment here.
When I was 14 and wanted to be a writer, my dream job was to write for General Hospital because it was on tv EVER DAY. Not sure how this is related except by the slightly wrong-headed notions of teens.
RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS
I just read Mallory’s Villain Identification piece, and feel all ‘confess my brain darkness,’ but the Salvation Sewer Sex Scene has always made sense to me. They are leaving childhood behind, loving each other, affirming bonds, and it’s kinda magic sex.
So not the point of this piece, though–I’ll show myself out.
I’m with you. It’s a scene that, once mentioned to people who haven’t read the book, guarantees shock and horrified reactions. In the book, though, it works like gangbusters.
No, it’s still kind of weird, even to (maybe especially to?) those of us that read the book when we were roughly the same age as the characters. Because, like, I enjoyed my friends and all, but would I fuck them all, one after the other, in order to release the magic in my vagina that will protect us all from an evil clown? I’m almost 40 and I’m still not sure how to answer that because honestly, it’s a little bit weird.
I agree with all of this except the magic vagina part. I am OK with having a magic vagina.
It didn’t bother me when I read it, and I was probably about the kid’s age myself; but it does seem as an adult significant that for all King clearly trying for and the characters saying how it’s about loving each other; it is pretty inarguably Beverly healing the guys with sex, which does ping into ‘well, the one girl’s job is to tame the guys with her vagina!’
(And while all the characters are pretty well-rounded, Bevvy’s already gets a bunch of the Only Girl tropes.)
IDK if they were all touching each other (the TV series leans pretty heavily on the Richie/Eddie subtext, iirc!), maybe it would be slightly improved?
I’m very glad it’s not just me.
And in leaving childhood behind they are bolstering their immunity, since It preys on children.
As an adult, I think about an adult man writing that scene and it’s surely squicky. But when I was around that age and reading it (It!) that scene… made sense? And was hot? And maybe, contributed/encouraged/etc my soon-to-be-realized interest in group sex?
Likewise, and thank you. 😉
I mean, from a 2015 feminist perspective, it would’ve worked better if the boys had been doing each other too. (And also if Adult!Bev had served a purpose other than generic emotional support, as Kid!Bev was awesome.) But eh, 1985. I take what I can get.
It’s funny because when I read this I didn’t even understand what was happening (I read the book when I was like 10), but after the fact, it made NO sense to me. It just doesn’t seem like something kids would ever, ever do. I do remember feeling sad that there was such a fixation on Beverly as a sexual object in the second half of the book, though, particularly for the main character. Like, why couldn’t she just be their friend? Since she’s a woman, that has to be a major plot line for her? (On the other hand I thought that the “abused child becomes abused spouse” storyline was probably pretty realistic and sad.)
*incoherent flails at this excellence*
Also, Tim Curry is totally generally cool.
tim curry was responsible for at least 50% of the development of my adolescent sexuality. the other 50% was david bowie.
THIS IS THE CONTENT I WANT
Crowdsourcing!
This book was the start of my breakup with King, a great writer who no longer writes things I wish to read, and it all stems from how everyone gets a special power and the one girl in the group gets the power of The Magical Gang Bang.
Goddamn you I can’t stop laughing, and now I have a conference call
To be fair, she’s also the crack shot who can actually hurt It. To be even more fair, I have watched the miniseries multiple times but have no intention of ever touching the book, and it is not least because I don’t need the Underage Magical Gang Bang in my headcanon.
Right. (I have Feelings about this book.) I have, in all honesty, way less issue with the Magical Gang Bang than I do with the way Adult!Bev lost all the crack shot/tomboy/actual coolness and just seemed to be around to be either reassuring or scared or inspiring. Fleh.
I like Stephen King, but you can pretty well chart the development of his women/minorities/gay characters from the start*, and the earlier ones were…definitely from the time when “Three’s Company” could be a thing. On the third hand, at least they *do* evolve, which is more than I could say for a lot of authors.
“Because King didn’t wish this to be viewed as a lewd scene, the narrative explicitly states that the act of intimacy with each of the boys’ helps to further strengthen their friendship”
O rly? I dunno Stevie, I gotta be honest. I’m viewing it as a little lewd.
How on earth does he attempt to frame that as a Real Thing a Person Would Do?
(also this was wonderful and good job!)
Umm except the part in the text where he pretty much states that she comes because one of the kids “is her true love” and/or “has a big dick”. Whatever Stephen.
Looking back at it, it is amazing that my fondness for that scene as a teenager did not warp my sexual development in some hideous way.
I think the giant spider is a lady tho? +1000 feminist points for giant spider ladies!!!
Because we’re Team Shelob now, right? Is that officially the thing?
I think it might be a Toast Stance by now.
Jaya this is lovely and Toastilicious and I’m so happy to see stuff on the regular from you.
Also, “Is ‘It’ Feminist?” is the LITERALLY the best way to start an “Is it Feminist?” series.
I’d love to say that as a 12 year old it never would have occurred to me to get all my malefriends to bang me in a sewer, but the truth of the matter is that the majority of my 12th year was spent fantasizing about various life-or-death scenarios which would give me an excuse to get it on with all my crushes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
the majority of my life, if we’re being honest.
on a related note I would appreciate knowing “Is Cousin Itt Feminist?”
With all that hair unapologetically on display, how is this even a question?
And a gender neutral named baby!
My first instinct is a hard yes, but he’s also kind of a playboy, iirc…
Oops, I was so busy roiling in the turmoil of this very important question that I left out the explanation. My first instinct is to say “yes” because he marries a lady that doesn’t fit the Addams’s standard of beauty & doesn’t seem to ask her to conform to it. (She wears a Glinda costume after they’re an item, if that means anything.)
Is IT from Wrinkle in Time feminist?
Ooooo! Good question!
I don’t know I honestly feel like the preteen sewer orgy deserves less than negative ten points.
After gleefully discovering the Thrilling Adventure Hour and Beyond Belief, now when I look at a photo of It all I can think of is Paget Brewster gleefully shrieking, “Clown!” and asking the clown if she can honk his nose. I think it deserves at least +5 for that. (And now I need to go back and re-listen to Wishing Hell.)
This tells me I really need to start in on Thrilling Adventure Hour like I’ve been meaning to.
You should! I waited so long and once I started listening I was hooked. Beyond Belief is a great starting point if you just want to follow one of the shows that are part of the TAH. It’s wickedly delightful and stars Paget Brewster and Paul F. Thompkins basically doing Nick and Nora from The Thin Man, except supernatural and some how better. (And I quickly learned that there are few things in this world as delightful as Paget Brewster as Sadie Doyle listing things. Don’t ask me why, it has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.)
Nick and Nora from The Thin Man, except supernatural and some how better.
So much better, because Nick was kind of an asshole and Nora didn’t get to drink as much as he did. Frank and Sadie have an equal partnership, especially where liquor is concerned.
Yesss. You should definitely listen to Beyond Belief–Frank and Sadie Doyle are one of my favorite married couples of all time. They’re so loving and supportive and drunk.
This at the top of the page when I came to the Toast was enough to make me jump. Tim Curry, you magnificent bastard.
I have neither read nor seen “It,” but have to* comment solely due to the fact that this marks the one and only context in which “It’s eyebrows” is the correct punctuation to mean “the eyebrows that belong to it.”
* “have to”
Took me a long time to realize this was a test specifically for “It,” and not a general test for determining if any cultural product is or is not feminist. I was getting some interesting results.
Considering how many abortion clinics there are in the like five times its size state of Texas, I’d say Maine is comparatively pretty ok in the abortion department
I don’t know – after reading as many Stephen King books as I did in the ’80’s, you come away thinking anyone who gets pregnant in Maine needs to have an abortion right away to avoid giving birth to whatever monstrous horror she is almost certainly now carrying. There should be at least as many clinics as Starbucks franchises.
Yeah, but they don’t get them because FUCKING FATHER CALLAHAN. Hate that guy.
There are about five starbucks in all of Maine, so they are meeting the guideline there
…I also feel the need to point out that Maine does not have a huge population density.
I don’t… I don’t know about sex magic sewer orgy either. I think I read it when I was Beverly’s age. Also, it kinda made it seem like that was her thing, the power of the vJ to calm dudes down? Whereas that kid with asthma had his asthma medication to stick in that crawling eye or whatever. I think I’d be less weirded out if an adult man hadn’t written that scene. If a 12 year old girl wanted to experiment for real, cool. As it is, I think it just made me feel very obligated to “calm boys down.”
And I loooovved that book when I was a kid. I read it twice. And everything Stephen King. There are other obvious tropes in there (adults are oblivious and useless, the town is secretly creepy) that I was into.
ETA: Oh, so point being, -20 for feminism, for me personally
Wasn’t this in King’s “doing so many drugs I literally don’t remember books” phase?
Not that that’s an excuse, mind, it’s just an explanation.
Might we be able to do Misery?
Annie Wilkes drags Paul Sheldon through the deep snow. +10
One of her insults is just calling Paul, “Mr. Man” +5
Her use of the word “dago”. -5
I could go on.
“Misery” is the name of the embodiment of femininity viewed through the lens of the male writer’s gaze. It is also the name of Annie’s pig. +5.
I thought the sex with all the friends was somehow about IT only being able to prey on children and so in having sex they were abandoning childhood and innocence in an attempt to escape from certain death by clown….
I mean, Maine only has two malls in the entire state. 5 abortion clinics seems pretty good.
Yeah. I think Vermont’s only got four Planned Parenthoods that offer abortion, so hey, Maine’s got one on us.
Three malls. There’s one up here, near where I live. That said, it sucks.
And there are zero abortion clinics (or Planned Parenthoods) up here.
I thought there was only Portland and Augusta. Three whole malls, wow! 😉
FOUR, then! The ones on my brain were Portland, Bangor, and Presque Isle. (And the one in PI isn’t that great.)
Gonna assume the three you are counting are Portland, Augusta, and Bangor, because everyone forgets Auburn and Aroostook (unless by “up here” you really mean UP HERE and you are in Aroostook, and in that case, my sincere condolences)
And while there are only 4 Planned Parenthoods, there’s other family planning services in Maine, like Mabel Wadsworth in Bangor, which provide abortions. I imagine it’s so difficult in northern Maine because it’s hard for a clinic north of Bangor to afford retaining a doctor who can perform abortions. The population density thins out so much past Bangor.
In the book Beverly apparently has sex with all the other boys to “calm them down” and “strengthen their friendship” which adds to my suspicion that Stephen King has never met a woman. -10
… look, that scene was weirdly important to fourteen-year-old me. (Maybe it’s not the best idea for teenage girls to pass around Stephen King books as a source of sexual content.)
Thank you. You have just made me realize that as someone whose middle school friends passed around “Flowers in the Attic” for that purpose, I am probably in no position to throw stones.
Clan of the Cave Bear and the Valley of Horses for me. And then passed around all the girls in my class…
It’s interesting: I’ve found that, as a rough survey, people who read that scene around the same age (I was elevenish) are somewhere between “cool” and “huh, weird, but okay,” whereas if you read the book for the first time as an adult, it’s very much GOD NO WHAT.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize this was about “It” the movie and not like, It in general and it’s in quotation marks for sarcasm reasons.
I am now entering a place of deep contemplation about the feministiness of all the King books I’ve read.
It is not comfortable. Why did young me read so many creepy books? I had like an entire year of Dean Koontz too. Toasties, did you ever read Intensity? Jeeeeesus, Mary and Joseph.
Stephen King’s general disregard for women unless they’re scary or motherly.
Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game, Lisey’s Story. I would try at least the first one; it may not be a great feminist book, but at the very least he’s trying pretty hard to make it so. Also, Insomnia has as its villains an anti-abortion terrorist group, so there’s that.
And in general it helps to understand that there are at least five distinct stages in Stephen King’s career: Early Drugs, Later Drugs, Post-Drugs, Post-Accident, and Present Day. I define the first four in this MetaFilter comment; the last one is less-well-defined, but in general he seems to have gone back to more definite boogeymen in his work. (I think that a lot of the weirdness of the Post-Accident period has to do with the major doses of Vicodin that he was on for chronic pain.) Both IT and The Tommyknockers, which shares with the former book an excessive length and some really unfortunate storytelling choices, are Later Drugs.
Rose Madder is one of the scariest books be wrote – because it’s not a horror movie monster.
Also, I liked that really weird phase which seemed to follow Rose Madder, with the dream people in Insomnia, and nicking stuff from Greek mythology.
*reads “It”
“Man this is an enjoyable horror book! It’s a bit too long but still!”
*only main female character volunteers to have sex with all the dudes in order to… do… something
“The absolute fuck.”
See, if Pennywise was wearing makeup like a human being, I’d be on board with the negative. But he’s wearing makeup like a clown, which seems deceptive and innately untrustworthy and also creepy because *fucking clown*.
I’d be open to the argument that clowns are antifeminist, though. I mean, they’re everything else bad.
“was wearing makeup like a human being”
It’s official; clowns aren’t people
I haven’t read the shining, or any of King’s books, but a common complaint from fans of the book about Kubrick’s movie is that the mom is characterized a lot differently. She was a strong character in the book, I guess, so there’s one book that shows he’s not the worst about women?
Have you been to Maine? I am from Maine and I am surprised there are even 5 abortion clinics in the state. I don’t know where you would put any more in a state that is primarily trees and ghosts.
Also I am from the same town that It is based on, and I tell people that the story is 100% real, without having read the book or watched more than a few minutes of clips. Now that I am reading some of this I am wondering what other bizarre things I have jokingly implied about myself/town, oops
The current population of Maine is 1.33 million and Planned Parenthood has 4 clinics in the state. Assuming women are half the population, then that works out to 1 clinic for every 166,250 women if my math is correct. California has a population of 38.8 million and 112 Planned Parenthoods, so that’s 1 clinic for every 173,214 women. So maybe Maine isn’t that bad after all?
Unfortunately, all four of Maine’s are south of Bangor. Which means anyone in the north would have to travel a long distance if they need PP’s services.
There is an abortion clinic in Bangor, Mabel Wadsworth, which makes 5 clinics. There are clinics north of Bangor that don’t have abortion services, but will refer patients to the one in Bangor so they don’t need to do the pre-exam stuff when they get there.
I’ve read a bunch of Stephen King. He comes off as a well-meaning liberal, but his take on gender, race and homosexuality is pretty much what you’d expect from an older white dude. Like the broad themes are clearly benevolent, but every so often there’ll be a character or a line, and you’re just like …What. (kind of reminds me of the Harry Potter series in that, but ymmv.)
If anyone wants links, I’ve read a few critiques of his work, including discussing feminism and lack thereof generally, as well as specifically in ‘Misery’ and ‘Pet Semetary’ and homeroticism and homophobia in ‘Apt Pupil’, ‘It’ and ‘Christine’.
With Bevvy there’s a touch of the Cool Girl, like it has to be noted a bunch how she doesn’t get on with the other girls as a kid, but they’re also Just Jellus because the guys notice how pretty she is.
I think she gets more interesting as she ages (as opposed to say, Bill, who’s kind of one-note authorial insert Gary Stu), but the novel seems to lose interest in her POV then.
I would love some links to the aforementioned critiques! I have always been a King fan, but when I started getting older/smarter/more feminist-y, I started feeling more the way you do in your first couple sentences. ‘It’ was the first King I read, though, and as someone else above says – dude can really tell a story.
Yeah, I’ll always read his stuff when it comes out, although it’s funny how differently people like or dislike certain time periods (considering he has a very recognizable style in all his books) – like my sister loved ‘Under the Dome’ and ’11/22/63′, and hates ‘It’ and ‘Pet Semetary’ whereas aside from parts of ‘Revival’ and the short story collections, I don’t really rate the later books.
Anyway, I found these three essays, and as there was no online link, I shared them on Tumblr.
There’s one by Edward Madden, called ‘Cars are Girls: Sexual Power and Sexual Panic in Stephen King’s Christine; a piece by Douglas Keesey called The Face of Mr Flip: Homophobia in the Horror of Stephen King; and a piece by Kathleen Margaret Lant called The Rape of Constant Reader: Stephen King’s Construction of the Female Reader and Violation of the Female Body in ‘Misery’.
Terry Heller wrote Love and Death in Stephen King’s ‘Pet Semetary’
Jumpcut did a piece on ‘Apt Pupil’, touching on both the film and novella.
And there’s a piece by Kate Sullivan, mainly focusing on ‘The Body’ (aka ‘Stand By Me’): Stephen King’s Bookish Boys: Reimagining the Masculine .
Bookwise, Tony Magisterale has done a bunch, some of which touch on diversity and lack thereof; and although I’ve not read it yet, my wishlist includes Lant’s collection ‘Imagining the Worst: Stephen King and the Representation of Women’.
This is why The Toast is MY FAVORITE WEBSITE in the history of websites.
FOUR, then! The ones on my brain were Portland, Bangor, and Presque Isle. (And the one in PI isn't that great.)
Unfortunately, all four of Maine's are south of Bangor. Which means anyone in the north would have to travel a long distance if they need PP's services.
You are from the town Derry is based on? That is pretty awesome actually. It shows up in a lot of King's works, usually with a comment on the underlying atmosphere of evil.
Wait, are we ignoring the fact that in the book It is actually female and does not appear masculine at all in its natural form?