Jealousy (not a very nice trait imo) had taken hold of him long before RF came along.
My internalized Guilt for liking Pennywise as a character
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Jealousy (not a very nice trait imo) had taken hold of him long before RF came along.
That is one heck of a good essay, and is almost something that might be delivered by a character talking about the creature.
I think one's viewpoint of a villain depends on age and villain in question. As I get older, I know horror does tend to scare me more, and therefore the villains tend to perhaps irritate me more. As an example, someone brought up the Governor from Walking Dead -- I really wanted to see his comeuppance because I know now, more so than when I was young, that there are people like that in real life who get away with doing what they want to do (and we as a society essentially allow it), and it is frustrating. And when you're younger, you think you know it all and will not be fooled by that type of thing...but then you realize you've been fooled all along, by everything. You realize you actually can't fight the world, you just have to stay away from it.
A villain like "It" is mostly different because of the degree of fantasy involved. Liking that villain and being fascinated by it is probably fine. In fact, I liked the It scenes the best myself. I will say this, though: taking your analysis and metaphor, maybe It is a jerk because it is no different in the way it feeds than we are when we send animals to the slaughterhouse -- there is horrible abuse at abattoirs, no matter what the stupid politicians who support farmer interests say, and while I have no problem eating meat, I want animals to be killed painlessly. I don't like bowhunting, I don't like steel traps, I don't like what humans do to chickens to get eggs and what they do to pigs; in that sense, is It like a crazier version of Ted Nugent? I would say It might be. It probably doesn't have to feed in the way it does.
If you take Hannibal Lecter, he is undeniably one of the most interesting villains out there. Yet, if I recall correctly, in one of the books he rationalizes his evil by saying, hey, God does worse, and he has done worse to me (what happened to his sister)...does he really care about his indiscretions? That is fascinating to contemplate, and I think it is quite allegorical, just as It may be allegorical of our distasteful way of producing meat -- if you think about it, no matter what humans say, life is cheap, people die every day, and no one seems to care, except to use the dead sometimes as martyrs.
So, as I get older, and I start to realize all this, the villains start to become scarier, especially based on how realistic they are. But I agree: when reading about them in books, they tend to be fascinating.
Again, that was a great essay you wrote...
I think one's viewpoint of a villain depends on age and villain in question. As I get older, I know horror does tend to scare me more, and therefore the villains tend to perhaps irritate me more. As an example, someone brought up the Governor from Walking Dead -- I really wanted to see his comeuppance because I know now, more so than when I was young, that there are people like that in real life who get away with doing what they want to do (and we as a society essentially allow it), and it is frustrating. And when you're younger, you think you know it all and will not be fooled by that type of thing...but then you realize you've been fooled all along, by everything. You realize you actually can't fight the world, you just have to stay away from it.
A villain like "It" is mostly different because of the degree of fantasy involved. Liking that villain and being fascinated by it is probably fine. In fact, I liked the It scenes the best myself. I will say this, though: taking your analysis and metaphor, maybe It is a jerk because it is no different in the way it feeds than we are when we send animals to the slaughterhouse -- there is horrible abuse at abattoirs, no matter what the stupid politicians who support farmer interests say, and while I have no problem eating meat, I want animals to be killed painlessly. I don't like bowhunting, I don't like steel traps, I don't like what humans do to chickens to get eggs and what they do to pigs; in that sense, is It like a crazier version of Ted Nugent? I would say It might be. It probably doesn't have to feed in the way it does.
If you take Hannibal Lecter, he is undeniably one of the most interesting villains out there. Yet, if I recall correctly, in one of the books he rationalizes his evil by saying, hey, God does worse, and he has done worse to me (what happened to his sister)...does he really care about his indiscretions? That is fascinating to contemplate, and I think it is quite allegorical, just as It may be allegorical of our distasteful way of producing meat -- if you think about it, no matter what humans say, life is cheap, people die every day, and no one seems to care, except to use the dead sometimes as martyrs.
So, as I get older, and I start to realize all this, the villains start to become scarier, especially based on how realistic they are. But I agree: when reading about them in books, they tend to be fascinating.
Again, that was a great essay you wrote...
Kansas Police Find Stolen Clown Robot in Sex Offender’s Home | Washington Free Beacon
Wichita is quite the town, eh?
Wichita is quite the town, eh?
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Gotta love the bad guys, nothing wrong with it at all. They're usually the best characters in the book. Tell ya I loved me some Big Jim Rennie in Dome, he'll, loved Junior too. Loved to hate em, guess you'd call it, but still. They cracked my arse up.
Pennywise, do ya. Can't beat em. Walkin creature-feature, million monsters for the price of one.
Pennywise, do ya. Can't beat em. Walkin creature-feature, million monsters for the price of one.
I also like pennywise but cant say this has caused me any guilt I enjoy allot of SK villain's they are every bit as important and interesting part of the stories for me as the other character's.
I also enjoy some of the character's who pass through some of the stories and may never be fully explained are explained in another story or are simply making a kind of cameo appearance from another novel or story.
this could just be me off coarse and I'm the firs to admit I am often guilty of cheering on the bad guys!
I also enjoy some of the character's who pass through some of the stories and may never be fully explained are explained in another story or are simply making a kind of cameo appearance from another novel or story.
this could just be me off coarse and I'm the firs to admit I am often guilty of cheering on the bad guys!
this could just be me off coarse and I'm the firs to admit I am often guilty of cheering on the bad guys!
I found that when I was reading 1922 in Full Dark, No Stars. I even do that in many movies and TV shows. But I think it's all on how the character is written. I don't ALWAYS cheer for the "bad guy" - some are written so well you want them to die the most horrible death imaginable!
I'm almost done with my second read of It and decided to come check out what the forum goers had to say... so hi there, folks!
While I do like Pennywise as a villain and believe It's potentially SK's most frightening, I can't say I agree that It deserves any empathy. If it simply consumed humans indiscriminately for sustenance, I could perhaps empathize, but It is far more cruel than say a python consuming a rodent or even a cattle rancher. It plays with its victims and teases and frightens to "salt" the meat with flavor.
There's actually a fairly analogous situation occurring right now in Yulin, China. Their annual dog meat festival just started. Dogs, as well as cats, are kept in small cages and often skinned and boiled alive. These animals, while not as intelligent as humans, are very perceptive, and it's commonly believed that the hormones dumped into their blood stream due to their fear improves the flavor of the meat.
(I must warn anyone who searches for more information on this particular festival and practice that they will come across extremely disturbing imagery. Please proceed at your own emotional peril.)
Most living things must consume other living things to survive. It's nature. That's life. However, something intelligent enough should understand cruelty and suffering and the distinct difference between concepts like "light" and "dark", right and wrong.
Pennywise takes pleasure in being cruel. It goes far above and beyond what it requires for survival and has no true respect for Its prey. Therefore, I enjoy reading about this monster as an antagonist, but I hate It for what it does.
/edit... Also, I must own that t-shirt immediately.
While I do like Pennywise as a villain and believe It's potentially SK's most frightening, I can't say I agree that It deserves any empathy. If it simply consumed humans indiscriminately for sustenance, I could perhaps empathize, but It is far more cruel than say a python consuming a rodent or even a cattle rancher. It plays with its victims and teases and frightens to "salt" the meat with flavor.
There's actually a fairly analogous situation occurring right now in Yulin, China. Their annual dog meat festival just started. Dogs, as well as cats, are kept in small cages and often skinned and boiled alive. These animals, while not as intelligent as humans, are very perceptive, and it's commonly believed that the hormones dumped into their blood stream due to their fear improves the flavor of the meat.
(I must warn anyone who searches for more information on this particular festival and practice that they will come across extremely disturbing imagery. Please proceed at your own emotional peril.)
Most living things must consume other living things to survive. It's nature. That's life. However, something intelligent enough should understand cruelty and suffering and the distinct difference between concepts like "light" and "dark", right and wrong.
Pennywise takes pleasure in being cruel. It goes far above and beyond what it requires for survival and has no true respect for Its prey. Therefore, I enjoy reading about this monster as an antagonist, but I hate It for what it does.
/edit... Also, I must own that t-shirt immediately.
Robert Gray
Well-Known Member
I'm not certain anyone in this thread is arguing that the entity sometimes calling itself Pennywise, sometimes Robert Gray, and often a thousand other names besides deserves empathy. That isn't the right word. I should also state, for the record, that to me Pennywise is a sideshow, not the story. He is a force of nature, i.e. the situation which shines a spotlight on the Losers about whom the actual story is told. Still, as Sai King would say, "tell the truth and shame the devil." The big bad wolf always fascinates. When done masterfully, as I'm sure we all agree was done in the case of Pennywise, the monster will always have fans.
It isn't empathy. Consider this quote from Blake:
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
We love monsters out of a sense of awe. They remind us that we aren't the center of the universe or even the biggest fish. We need our monsters and even go to great lengths to hold on to those who significance has long since passed. For all the horror and terror they provide, we understand on an intrinsic level that the world would be a smaller, duller place without them. We need our monsters, and we want them potent and terrible, because it is against monsters by which we measure ourselves. It isn't empathy but rather desire. And while that might seem a strange thing to contemplate, that we are like moths drawn to unhealthy lights, we want what Shakespeare said to be true.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
Well . . . it's easy enough to like the bad guys (and it does my heart good to see my man Harold Lauder getting some love in here). The bad guys get to do most of the cool stuff in stories like these.
I guess if you were going to feel any guilt over your Pennywise crush, it might be because Pennywise has that unique ability to be whomever he (you) pleases.
Who am I?
Why, I am what scares you.
Whatever that may be.
Yes, I could see myself getting very down with that if I were a certain kind of person.
Of course, Pennywise suffers a common affliction among King villains.
He only looks tough.
I guess if you were going to feel any guilt over your Pennywise crush, it might be because Pennywise has that unique ability to be whomever he (you) pleases.
Who am I?
Why, I am what scares you.
Whatever that may be.
Yes, I could see myself getting very down with that if I were a certain kind of person.
Of course, Pennywise suffers a common affliction among King villains.
He only looks tough.
Robert Gray
Well-Known Member
Hrm. I'll have to think about that Pucker. I'm not certain I agree that King's villains only "look" tough. Many of them have an Achilles heel, but I'm not sure that means they are all smoke and mirrors. The entity commonly referred to as It or Pennywise by the Losers was the apotheosis of all monsters. It didn't just look like what you feared, it became what you feared. That is, of course, why it would become vulnerable to silver if/when it turned into a werewolf. Reality and belief are kissing cousins when it comes to metaphysics. Most of the villains, at least in my opinion, were dangerous, powerful and/or cunning. Heroes are only measured against the strength of the calamity they face, so it doesn't do our heroes any service to say the things they fought really weren't that tough. 
I think you have to at some level find the villains appealing. I've got a pretty high tolerance for gore, violence, and evil in fictional works, but a much lower one for the same stuff in real life. Currently reading a book called "The Devil in the White City" about a seriously creepy awful person in Chicago in the late 1800s, and having a hard time with it despite the explicitness of the descriptions being FAR less than you'd get in King, Koontz, etc.
I also think you have to "love to hate" characters. When you think about characters in fiction that are the villains, you want to see the comeuppance come along.
And I also think people are spot on with their insights into characters like Trashy and Harold. Many of the "human" villains in King are somewhat condemned by circumstance, although King is never someone to utterly take away the power of choice from people.
I also think you have to "love to hate" characters. When you think about characters in fiction that are the villains, you want to see the comeuppance come along.
And I also think people are spot on with their insights into characters like Trashy and Harold. Many of the "human" villains in King are somewhat condemned by circumstance, although King is never someone to utterly take away the power of choice from people.
I first noticed this phenomenon in 1986 (I believe it was) when the space shuttle Challenger (do I have that right?) exploded shortly after takeoff. You know that scene in Star Wars where Alec Guinness feels a great disturbance in The Force? It was like that. I had seen things blow up on TV lots of times. Fake stuff. Movie stuff . . . but even though what I was seeing was just a tape of something that happened to a few people I never met, it made my stomach hurt worse than any torture-porn (can I say that?) like Saw or Hostel ever could, if I were inclined to watch that sort of thing.
I think a more sociologically-minded person than me could make some hay pondering why we love to go watch the crazy killer at the movies so much but, whenever it turns out he was living right next door, nobody ever seems to notice him.
Then again . . . I could be over-thinking it.