Scheherazade's Room

Writer | poet | creative. Storyteller based in HK. Site revamped on 15 May 2018.

[scheherazadean]

I.

I buried the tree sapling my uncle gave me last spring It could not live past its first winter, succumbed to the confines of its planter and recycled soil and the love of a gardener who gave sparingly in water and attention until stems and leaves turned dry and skeletal All that remains now is a husk of its former vitality leaving behind a body as worm-food on my windowsill

II.

The sun is coming out again, days growing longer in spite of April's moody showers I examine every one of my clover's roots, comb for rot and mould with a keen eye I sieve through my surviving relationships, sorting those not yet succumbed to decay from lost causes It's spring again; I send a prayer to the powers that govern growth and renewal After all, the succulent I beheaded last November crawled out of its shallow grave too

III.

The seabirds at my windows argue over who gets the afternoon worm They wake me up in the morning sometimes, before the sun has even woken up with loud goo-goo-goo's like a firstborn's cries They've built a home and nest into my apartment building's facade, between the A/C units and the brickwork All around us, nature and the city come together as one: Snakes hiding in the public park's flowerbeds, boars shopping in the supermarket The streets are not yet reclaimed by vines and barking deer, but maybe it's just a matter of time Fact: there's a thousand brown cows roaming free from the hills to the sea, and twice as many wild dogs and monkeys invasive species brought into the city by well-meaning farmers Maybe we too are invasive species to the local flora and fauna of the subtropical rainforest this land used to be New life grows in the ashes of forefathers, evolves with the passing of eras; life persists, as long as there are nutrients in the soil

This piece was first conceptualised as a series of 3 short poems. It was written to be performed at the OutLoud Hong Kong open-mic night of April 2023, for the theme of ‘Rebirth’. With the Wednesday being Ching Ming Festival followed by Good Friday this week, it seemed topical to pen an ode to death, burial, and new beginnings amidst Hong Kong’s rainy, foggy April weather.

The image used for the cover artwork is by Peter Lam CH @peterlamch on Unsplash.

[scheherazadean]

You forget what fresh air tasted like Sweet oxygen that isn’t clogged with terror, tear gas, and grief To stroll down the food stalls and eat roadside snacks without worry Teenagers still in school uniforms go window shopping in the evening Small children running and laughing freely in the streets I had a vacation that reminded me of Hong Kong - made me homesick for what home used to be

The atmosphere here chokes me everyday I feel a constant clawing in my throat, begging to be coughed up in dead cells and bloodied particulates This seeping sickness strangles my lymph nodes, blooms blisters on my feet I wonder if one day it will silence my vocal chords completely If they’ll stuff words into my paralysed mouth, when I no longer have the means to defend my character

There’s something in the water here It makes the devout drinkers go rabid, see half-truths that aren’t there They replaced the reservoirs with a new kind of poison It coils beneath our skin, triggers a slow extinction No more waters flowing freely No more laughter from loitering schoolchildren on the streets There’s dead fish in the harbour by the thousands There’s dying kids in detention centres by the hundreds

I have no illusions about my health I’ll be another statistic in the collateral damage If it doesn’t sink the real estate market, all else is dispensable New settlers will settle this land And bulldoze and build over our corpses for more capital flow

I saw all of this in China’s well-built ghost towns And that is why I must scream while I’m still breathing

This poem was written in November 2019 in light of the tear gas pollution in Hong Kong, as a result of the ongoing protests. It has since been published anonymously in Seen, a zine dedicated to political issues in Hong Kong, which was included as part of Burning Ixxues, Zine Coop’s 2020 showcase at Booked: Hong Kong Art Book Fair. 

Read more below for notes on the context of the poem.

The idea for this poem came to me as an exercise in writing body horror at first. A colleague of mine lives in the city centre district where the protests most often happen in, and where tear gas is most often used to disperse crowds, and he reported to me firsthand how the air pollution has caused him to cough up blood (among other side effects) after months of exposure to the stuff. Around this time, I took a brief vacation out of the city to Taipei, where the general vibe and aura was so much more peaceful and carefree. There was a moment when I returned and touched down in the Hong Kong airport, when the oppressive feeling of the stress and the negative energy came flooding back in to almost smother me. Everyone in Hong Kong was weighed down by months of anger and upset from witnessing on TV and/or experiencing the violence, the chaos, and injustices on a daily basis. Thus, the idea was born: utilising the body horror of tear gas exposure’s impact on physical health as a metaphor for the impact of the protests on mental health. 

The line about China’s “well-built ghost towns” stems from the industry knowledge I have of China’s development of various second or third-tier cities, at a speed that far outstrips the demand of rural-to-urban migrants. These cities are all installed with the infrastructure befitting of a developed city, but which are often done so more for the goal of selling stocks in the real estate market than to actually provide housing to inhabitants and create a community with jobs and a functioning market economy for them. They are essentially gentrified neighbourhoods left uninhabited.

The image used for the cover artwork is by Joseph Chan @yulokchan on Unsplash.

[scheherazadean]

In the era of the Cold War, walking down Xinsheng South Road He remembers that fiery war, a furnace, of resistance remembers Marco Polo Bridge, roaring, all the lions on the bridge, at Samurai swords, sakura Samurais across the waters “The Great Wall is ten thousand miles long, outside the Great Wall— is the old home”[1], remembers how, a nation, grinded and exiled in the same melody from Shanhai Pass to Shao Pass[2]. His home is in the Great Wall, no, south of Changjiang, but that ditty, every time, it leaves his heart soured, his nose sore “The Great Wall is ten thousand miles long, outside the Great Wall is—” song, was an ordinary song; extraordinary was the era of singing, a people that sang together was exiled together, in a little town at the back one thousand reminders, one thousand drumbeats whose reminders was the postmark beating against? Two faces to the years in exile the front, a postage stamp, the back, a train ticket An old song, an illumination flare a memory from twenty years ago, suddenly, spotlighted In the era of the Cold War, walking down Xinsheng South Road He remembers, in that concert, barely just seventeen years of age, at most eighteen, that girl who was not yet born, in the era he had sung in Tonight those listeners, half of them, were not yet born They have no idea the British concession, Japanese concession, Burma Road, Youth Army, straw sandals, cheap rice grains, straw sandals empty and hollow, years spent in shelter hollows, “bright moonlight illuminates his hometown”, moonlight aside, the foreign bombs' firelight power cut night, the night before the blitz, was like that also that one gala night, was like that also Such a cute, such a clever girl singing the same song, sang it badly, still it moved him to tears “Don’t be sad”, smiling, she said, “The moon is really pretty, I want you to walk me home” Later she wore his ring a pair of eyes that loved smiling, like stamps, pressing upon Tingting and Yaoyao’s cheeks That was somehow— recalling details of many years ago July 7th in the Heavens, July 7th on Earth[3] her grave on Mount Guanyin, across freshwater shores last year’s Qingming Festival, and the Qingming before that Walking down Xinsheng South Road, in the era of the Cold War He remembers, a cold and empty apartment an old double bed waiting for him to go home “The moon is really pretty, I want you to walk me home” Remembers how, the ancestors’ graves are on the Mainland the wife’s grave is on the island, Yaoyao and Tingting both gone, leaving him all alone three generations segregated into three, no, four worlds Ten thousand miles of Great Wall, ten thousand miles of solitary drift, the moon is really pretty, he says as he walks down Xinsheng South Road, in the era of the Cold War 

Read more below to see my translation notes and a transcript of the original Chinese version of the poem.

Translation notes:

This is the Ballad of the Great Wall, a song sung by patriots during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Shanhai Pass and Shao Pass are both gates in the Great Wall.

July 7th is the Chinese Valentines Day, in the origin story the lovers that die on 7th July are canonized, living forever “in the Heavens”. July 7th also refers to the July 7th Incident, also known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

I drafted the first version of this translation as part of one of my portfolios submitted under the Warwick Writing Programme. It is based as faithfully as I can manage on "在冷戰的年代”, poem by my favourite late Chinese poet, Yu Guangzhong.

When I translated the poem, I aimed to maintain its major characteristics: the overwhelming sense of melancholy, and its purpose as a stream-of-consciousness memoir illustrating the speaker’s experiences in and after the Second Sino-Japanese War. The use of enjambment is carried over from the original poem, which helps to ease the transitions between memories of different time periods. Nevertheless, some elements of the poem are lost in translation, as the Chinese language is much richer with implications. Each word consists of two or more characters, and each character on its own may contain several denotations. As such, a single word in Chinese may contain a lot more emotive implications than in English. Therefore, the subtle air of self-pity present in the original poem is watered down to mere melancholy after translation. 

Still, at the suggestion of my course tutor at the time, I tried to keep the translation literal, so that elements like repetitions and polyptotons can be carried over via the construction of unconventional imagery. To this end, I have recently revisited my translation and updated some of the phrases to keep it even more literal and stripped down, so as to let the content speak for itself. In the line, “Two faces to the years in exile,” an earlier version of the translation I used the word “sides” instead of “faces”; but, the original poem really used the words “面貌”, which means “appearance” or “face”, so I kept that. As another example, the phrases, “it leaves his heart soured, his nose sore” are more or less literal translations of two common Chinese expressions associated with grief and sadness.

The image used for the cover artwork is by Diego Jimenez on Unsplash.

The original poem:

在冷戰的年代  余光中

在冷戰的年代，走下新生南路 他想起那熱戰，那熱烘烘的抗戰 想起蘆溝橋，怒吼，橋上所有的獅子 向武士刀，對岸的樱花武士 “萬里長城萬里長，長城外面—— 是故鄕”，想起一個民族，怎樣 在同一個旋律裏咀嚼流亡 從山海關到韶關。 他的家 在長城，不，長江以南，但是那歌調 每一次，都令他心酸酸，鼻子酸酸 “萬里長城萬里長，長城外面是——” 歌，是平常的歌，不平常 是唱歌的年代，一起唱的人 一起流亡，在後方的一個小鎮 一千個叮嚀，一千次敲打 郵戳敲打誰人的叮嚀 兩種面貌是流亡的歲月 正面，是郵票，反面，是車票 一首舊歌，一枚照明彈 二十年前的記憶，忽然，被照明 在冷戰的年代，走下新生南路 他想起，那音樂會上，剛才 十七歲，最多是十八，那女孩 還不曾誕生，在他唱歌的年代 今夜那些聽眾，一大半，還不曾誕生 不知道什麼是英租界，日本租界 滇缅路，青年軍，草鞋，平價米，草鞋 空空洞洞，防空洞中的歲月，“月光光 照他鄉”，月光之外，夷燒彈的火光 停電夜，大轟炸的前夜，也是那樣 那樣一個晚會，也是那樣 好乖好靈的一個女孩 唱同樣的那一只歌，唱得 不好，但令他激動而流淚 “不要難過了”，笑笑，她說 “月亮真好，我要你送我回去” 後來她就戴上了他的指環 將愛笑的眼睛，蓋印一樣 蓋在婷婷和么么的臉上 那竟是——念多年前的事了 天上的七七，地上的七七 她的墓在觀音山，淡水對岸 去年的清明節，前年的清明 走下新生南路，在冷戰的年代 他想起，清清冷冷的公寓 一張雙人舊床在等他回去 “月亮真好，我要你送我回去” 想起如何，先人的墓在大陸 妻的墓在島上，么么和婷婷 都走了，只剩下他一人 三代分三個，不，四個世界 長城萬里，孤蓬萬里，月亮真好，他說 一面走下新生南路，在冷戰的年代

[scheherazadean]

Thus far, I have been mum about my personal interests on this blog. And though I first intended for this blog to host all-original content, I figured it can be a platform for my translation pieces too. Literary translations can be itself a creative exercise, after all, perhaps generating new content in the process, to paraphrase Ezra Pound and his contemporaries. 

Now, Ivana Wong is actually one of my favourite artists of all time. It is an occasional pastime of mine to translate the lyrics to her songs. This particular track is simply bursting with wonderful imagery, and so, in celebration of her latest album dropping earlier this year, I present to you a translation of the track, “我們他們”. The original lyrics can be found on the official channel of her record label.

The gull sees the upper half of the sky’s colour1 The bat remembers the lower half of the hill’s shadow 

The figure expresses dissatisfaction in the body also Light and shadow, how do we differentiate from the other half? What are “we”? What makes “them”? 

Even if I opened my eyes, Gazed at that moon that is only half of itself, Differences2, let us not mind them first, Let us enjoy the full moon together 

Could we exchange our feelings with each other? Assuming that our positions are swapped with one another?

The morning flower is grateful for the first half of spring’s sights3 The red maple regrets the second half of autumn’s tears4 Looking back at “us”; understanding “them” What are “we”? Who is knocking on the door? 

Even if I opened my eyes, Gazed at that moon that is only half of itself, Differences, let us not mind them first, Let us enjoy the full moon together 

Could we exchange our feelings with each other? Assuming that our positions are swapped with one another? 

The paper crane moves to reside in the upper half of the sky The bullet buries itself in the lower half of a sea of flames Understanding “us”; looking back at “them”

Grey hues, how do we judge shades of black and white? In the centre5, how do we criticise the left and the right? Who are “we”? What makes “them”? Who is knocking on the door? Who is willing to answer the door?

Notes:

(1) “天色”:  although the phrase is usually taken to mean the time of the day (as evidenced by the colour of the sky), or the weather (again, as evidenced by the sky’s colour), I chose to transliterate it into “sky’s colour” to maintain the imagistic parallelism between this and the "hill’s shadow” in the next line.

(2) “偏差”:  I translated this into “differences” as it flows better tonally, but I am aware that it generalizes the original denotation a bit. A more precise translation would yield words like “deviation”, “divergence”, etc. 

(3) & (4) “春光”; “秋水”:  A literal translation of “春光” would be “spring’s light”, but “光” (light) can sometimes be taken to mean sights or scenery, as in “風光”. And as was the case with the first couplet in the first verse, I wanted to punctuate the parallelism between “春光”, and “秋水” in the next line. Now, you may question why I did not simply translate “秋水” as “autumn’s waters” and be done with the parallelism of two pieces of natural scenery, “spring’s light” and “autumn’s waters”. But, I realise that “秋水” can at times be used idiomatically as a metaphor for clear, limpid, feminine eyes, as in “望穿秋水”. I am unsure which denotation the original songwriter intended, so I mashed the two denotations together to produce the current translation, “autumn’s tears”, in order to preserve the both potential denotations.

(5) “中間”:  Originally, I translated this as “in the middle”, but then I remembered that this line is almost certainly referencing political strife, and that in English, the “centre” and “centrism” is the designated terms for those that abstain from both left-wing and right-wing stances.

[scheherazadean]

Visit Original Link

Context.

A transcript of the poem is as follows.

Jade, traded for Bricks

Yves Saint Laurent had a new perfume to sell

with an Oriental Twist: Haggard young thing lost 

among neon Chinese, chasing down dark streets on the hinterland, 

wild eyes searching for the next fix: 

Black Opium, it was called, packaged prettily by a corporation

ignorant of the history embodied 

in the quaint black bottle. The story of an imperial body 

faltering before industrial upstarts founded upon sale

of human bodies. 4,000 odd years of tradition cornered by several corporate

nations. Ring around the daisies, wrung about She lost 

robes and jewellery, so contemporaries agreed on fixing 

Her with a dose of modernity. Yet still Her lands 

could not be saved from affliction. First there was England 

and its Greater Empire. Four port cities opened to a body

of traders, and gradually demographics

turned to drug trading. Callous of morality they sold

us depressants, so my country was to lose

millions in silver and in corporal

faculties. Poison inhibited livelihoods, poison incorporated

lawful merchants into a prohibited business. Thus British fleets landed

on Cantonese shores; national delegates co-signed Her loss

of dignity; and the French would turn Cixi's abode

into embers, all twelve zodiacs beheaded, their skulls now sold

and auctioned at the price of basic human decency. But to simply re-affix

heads onto marble ruins won't fix

history's mistakes. If their textbooks documented corpses

they've made of other nations, designers today might know not to sell 

models all decked out in glorified gores; that my homeland 

was once stripped bone-bare, Her body 

amputated by subsequent Great Wars - none of this might be lost

on their customers. Yet something tells me they'll capitalise on our losses,

regardless, one-hundred-fifty more years later, so fixated

as they are with the "Orient". And they'll salivate over her image and body,

her edgy litheness masking histories of once living corpses 

enslaved to opiates flooding homes on a faraway land. 

They'll disregard it all for this bit of fantasy YSL is selling.

In the heartland of Victoria's former empire I have a kindred somebody 

who mourns also, for ancestors lost to sales and exploits of the corporate.

But moving here has betrayed our fixation with the West, 

                 like we can never love our history, can never love our own country.

A few notes:

This poem was originally composed in the fall of 2015, in response to a problematic YSL ad a friend had brought to my attention earlier that year. It was written for a module at the Warwick Writing Programme: the weekly assignment had been to write a sestina, which may explain the irregular form of this piece. The original sestina did have breaks between the first 6 stanzas, and that version was ultimately included in the portfolio I compiled for the module’s assessments. 

I was never particularly satisfied with the last 2-3 stanzas of that version of the poem, however. Having unearthed this poem again, I decided to revise it a bit. I altered a few words in the earlier stanzas, heavily edited the fifth stanza, and reconstructed the last two stanzas entirely. Unlike the case with some of the other poems in that portfolio, my views on this subject matter - of orientalist fetishisation and sanitisation of colonial atrocities - have not changed in the last 2 years, so it was not too difficult for me to get into that headspace again and rewrite those stanzas.

I do feel like there is a newer sense of postcolonial awareness injected into the last stanza, however. The poem was originally written whilst I was situated in the heart of England - i.e. the ruling country of the British Empire which yes, was the former coloniser of my hometown. But I don’t recall being as conscious of my cultural identity dissonance - and hence the hypocrisy in the criticisms that I was making in the poem - back then as I am nowadays. I don’t think 2015 me would have admitted to internalised Anglophilia, never-mind the disingenuity of my proclaimed connectedness to a Chinese national history, as is implied in the tone of the first six stanzas. Because, even though it is true that the Opium Wars did sever Hong Kong from its motherland at the time, I have grown up in a cultural environment far too detached from modern China to claim that I do identify today’s China as my motherland. And I certainly don’t want to spread false representation of how disenfranchised ethnic groups such as HongKongers relate to the Mainland government - at least, on a personal level, I’m not patriotic like that. 

But I do believe that sometimes it’s more powerful to confront our own internalised racisms. They’re perhaps the most poignant consequence of the colonialism our societies have faced.

(On another note: after all this revising and editing I’m still not entirely satisfied with what I have, to be honest. It reads a lot less clumsier and perhaps less repetitive than before, yes, but I may come back to this and edit it some more in the future.)

[scheherazadean]

Click on the images for higher quality.

(Context.)

Here’s a transcription of the poem:

From I, Ava, to the James Camerons of the Industry

Immortalise me, like a summer's day S'the only way you want me, a cliché On a page, on a screen, and in a skirt with smiles and sorrows crafted by your words

You want me pretty and not quite silenced, only alive in so far as scripted In your imagination I am strong turn a thousand heads with my defiance

But never strong enough to defy your pen So when others come along you cry foul play These newer heroes that don't serve your ends

But from one narcissist to another, Listen, for godssake, listen to the women, Lest we write you off as another Bateman.   

This poem was first performed at a local Poetry OutLoud open mic night. There were no recordings of my performance, unfortunately.

On the writing process: 

I deliberately chose the sonnet form with which to gradually deviate from throughout the poem so as to subvert it. For the same reason, the first line is a subtle call back to Shakespeare’s line, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”. “Ava” refers to the character from Alex Garland’s 2015 sci-fi feature “Ex Machina”. Bateman was also meant to be a character reference to the same film (i.e. Nathan Bateman), but it is open to interpretations as I think referencing the other famous Bateman in film (“American Psycho”) works, too.

To be fair, by the time I got around to writing this poem, I had already expanded my target in mind into an amalgam of Cameron and Joss Whedon. And the latter has a worse reputation in writing women characters.

Update:

A copy of this poem is cross-posted on Instagram. As of April 2023, the updated graphic is sourced from Martino Pietropoli (@martino_pietropoli) on Unsplash.

[scheherazadean]

IT (2017) forecasts a hopeful future for Hollywood remakes and the horror genre

A critical review with mild spoilers

(Photo: IGN.com)

The day after it opened in local theatres, I went to a showing of Andy Muschietti’s long-awaited summer horror, It. I will not pretend that I am familiar with the original novel, nor will I pretend that I have seen the TV mini-series from the 90s in its entirety, starring Tim Curry and inspiring childhood nightmares aplenty for my peers. I can, however, say this much: it must not have been easy to reintroduce canon in a cultural landscape where clown horror has become about as saturated as your average demonic possession waiting to be exorcised.

            But the creative team behind the film has taken measures navigating said cultural landscape, and it shows in the marketing alone. The theatrical trailers1 did not bother hiding the jump-scares, probably relying on Pennywise’s split-second appearances to drive the hype, even. Likewise, the film wastes no time on building up the premise of the evil clown. The extent of this exposition is confined to the lulling dialogue in Georgie's encounter with It, which in itself marks a stark departure in tone from its predecessor in the 90s classic: Skarsgård’s voice-acting is an excellent balance between the whimsical and the sinister, and the exchange ends on a gory crescendo promising fatalities to follow. With Pennywise thus characterised, the rest of the film’s treatment of the monster mostly focuses on amplifying the sense of dread accompanying every instance of Its arrival rather than the uncanniness of Its makeup. (Although there is plenty of that, too, in the camera’s attention to too-long claws extending out of a gloved hand, or the dissonance between Its dance-like gait and its grinning maw.)

The new Pennywise retains a sense of uncanniness in the camera’s attention to too-long claws, extending out of a gloved hand. (Photo: comicbook.com)

            Indeed, Skargård’s Pennywise is a different animal from Tim Curry’s iconic rendition, and for all the uncertain initial reactions towards the first look of the character’s design, its vintage costume and visibly deranged facial expressions never become overbearing within the context of the film. But the entity’s flair for the dramatic and its twisted brand of humour do at times veer into the territory of the absurd, which may not be for everyone. Even now, I still hold a degree of apprehension towards the convulsive movements Pennywise makes whenever it pounces on its preys, as they somewhat shatter the audience's immersion in such scenes. (The same can be said about the little dance sequence it does towards the end of the film – which has been generally received as too absurd to be taken as part of an integrated scene designed to scare, if the flood of memes is anything to go by.)

            But to return to the topic of Pennywise's aura, one undeniably commendable feature of the film lies in its use of setting to characterise the sense of neglect and danger befalling the children of Derry. The devil is in the detail: in Georgie’s death scene, two shots of a lady neighbour bracketing Georgie's disappearance from his spot by the storm drain already highlight an indifference towards missing children. This indifference is mirrored to different degrees in some of the Losers’ parents’ dialogue later on in the film, as well as in the overall lack of adult supervision for the children of Derry despite all the disappearances in the neighbourhood. All of this hint at the adults’ collective complicity in Its malignant activity, thus when Ben Hanscom shows up to deliver his expository monologue about the statistics of missing persons versus that of missing children in Derry, it doesn't come as a heavily expository moment meant to incite cheap surprise. Instead, this piece of information comes as another addition to the steady build-up of a pervading feeling of one too many skeletons in the closet.

One of the many missing children in Derry. (Photo: IGN.com)

            Another commendable aspect that sets It apart from other modern horror films is that it actually crafts individual emotional journeys for each of the main characters, so much so that one could argue that Pennywise is an add-on feature in a Coming of Age story. (Of course, that would be an unfair assessment of the film, which really presents an inseparable correlation between the activities of It and the ill-fated occurrences in the children's lives.) Most notable is Bill, whose story is as much of a monster slayer’s journey as it is an allegory for overcoming grief, denial and loss. Here, there is a delicate balance between the terror-inducing and the touching whenever Bill stars in a scene with the ghost of Georgie, which is in large part thanks to Jaeden Lieberher’s ability to tug at the heartstrings with micro-expressions and tremors in his voice. Hence, the film draws Bill’s arc to a satisfying conclusion once he is able to accept that Georgie is dead in the final scene in the sewers.

            The film also does a good job of providing visual markers for other such developments in the characters’ respective arcs. Henry Bowers aiming the bolt gun between Mike’s eyes in the basement of Pennywise’s Neibolt Street lair impressed me in its clever echo of a much earlier scene regarding Mike’s hesitance in shooting the sheep at the barn, and Eddie’s first step out of his hypochondriac comfort zone, underlined by his rejection of his mother’s placebo pills, is symbolic of his and the children's rejection of the adults' willful ignorance towards the existence of Pennywise and other more apparent social horrors. Director of photography Chung-Hoon Chung’s work is praiseworthy as well, from the placement of an aerial shot of Georgie running down the street with paper-boat SS Georgie just to show how small and vulnerability he is, to the corresponding transition from Beverly’s bloodied bathroom to the water dripping onto Bill’s coloured drawing of Beverly, smearing the red on her hair in such a way that it resembles blood dripping onto the page. There is also a fantastic use of diegetic elements to engage the audience in a specific character’s point of view, such as adorning the opening scene with creaks and other sound effects to show Georgie’s childish and irrational fear of the basement, only to subvert it in the next immediate scene with the clown in the gutter. Interestingly, the atmosphere of the basement as a falsely-scary location is also quite neatly paralleled and subverted in Bill’s first encounter with It. Such bookends gave the film a touch of masterful storytelling that would not normally be expected from a summer horror flick.

            Where the film really hits it out the ballpark in terms of genre expectations and subversions of them, however, lies in its characterisation of Beverly Marsh. Despite being the only girl in the group, she is never rendered an empty token girl, nor does she become a Manic Pixie Dream Girl after the film makes clear of both Ben and Bill’s attraction to her. She is never mystified, a welcomed departure from her characterisation in the controversial orgy scene in the novel, where she is delegated the role of utilizing her sexuality to light the group’s way out of the disorienting sewers. The film also spares significant screen-time on the boys showing solidarity towards her gendered troubles via a relaxed bathroom-cleaning montage. (There, the blood is not only visually symbolic of the onset of womanhood, but also shares contextual connections to the gaslighting she suffers under her abusive father.)

There is a precarious balance between occupying the diegetic standpoint of the boys, and the accidental objectification of Beverly as an underage character. (Photo: IGN.com)

            Unfortunately, there is a precarious balance between occupying the diegetic standpoint of the boys and the accidental objectification of her, Beverly, as an underage girl. The camera does not offer voyeuristic shots of Beverly’s body – one can see in the few shots that do take the stand point of the boys admiring Beverly’s beauty that they always focus on more romantic aspects, like her eyes, or her hair, as if testament to Ben’s poetry. However, the idea of a lipstick-wearing, sunglasses-clad young girl has become so synonymous with the image of the Lolita that the scene of Beverly sunbathing in what might as well be a bikini could contradict the message the film is trying to send about her abusive and implied-paedophilic father. Also, one might argue that the very existence of a love triangle in the plot puts an unnecessary focus on heteronormative teenage drama rather than the bond of friendship between the seven Losers. The idea that a kiss would break her out of a cosmic trance is certainly a bit too Disneyesque for a film whose core demons are about murder, neglect and abuse. Thankfully, Beverly’s fleshed-out storyline revolving around her fear of her father keeps her character from being relegated to a mere object of desire in the film.

             However, the level of detail in Bill and Beverly’s respective character arcs does highlight the lack of character development in some of the other Losers’ character arcs, namely that of Stanley, Ben, and Mike. (Mike may have been given symbolic visuals, but no real character development can be seen in the storytelling for any of these three boys.) Stanley, in particular, is exposited to have been preparing for a bar mitzvah at the start of the film, but we never witness nor hear of the outcome of the ceremony that should have been most symbolic of his coming of age, and the only sort of emotional development one can conclude from Wyatt Oleff’s appearances is but a mere escalation of fear and hysteria, which doesn’t say much about Stanley as a character. There is also a technical error in the film’s editing regarding Stanley’s character in the final sewers sequence, where one second he is waiting with the rest of the gang for Mike’s descent down the well, and in the next breath of the same line he is wandering all alone in a completely secluded part of the sewers system. Although, such flaws can be overlooked, seeing as the film is an adaptation of a thousand-page novel, and must undoubtedly have been pressed for time.

             In any case, the film is good at balancing moments of heart-racing terror and emotional revelations, and it has comedic moments aplenty, too. (Finn Wolfhard’s performance as the loudmouthed Richie won rounds of hearty laughter in the theatre.) 

            Verdict: worth buying tickets for theatrical screenings for sure.

(Article last updated on 1 Oct 2017.)

Notes:

The linked trailer is not a local one but the UK one, but it is the first theatrical trailer I ever saw for the film, and it’s made the most impression on me.

[maluah11]

A drunk guy came up to us when we were installing my found poetry. He seemed to like it a lot. #pavedpoems #leamingtonspa