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I gave up on the Piers Anthony series because it got too uncomfortable for me, but the scene in "It" was still just too much. Like you say, I understand what he was trying to get at, but it still reads very badly (particularly when the girl's father is abusive, and may be going to be sexually abusive once under the influence of Pennywise, and her husband later on is physically abusive to her because he gets a sexual thrill out of it). Group hug surely would have been enough?
On the one hand, yes, but on other hand, no?
See, you read it "That was gross, why would you do that, Stephen King? Why, why have an underage teen gangbang in the sewers? Ewww, what were you thinking?"
That is how I see a lot of people react to that scene. And I can't really blame them. I attribute a lot of that, like I said, to King's being high at the time (most of his books written since he got sober lack the kind of raw, deranged energy you see in his earlier books), and also, honestly, King has some squirming eels in his head that he has been trying to exorcise for half a century with his writing.
But--
Yes, Becky's father is abusive, and is probably going to start sexually abusing her soon (which he may have done even without the influence of Pennywise), and as an adult she follows that sad predictable pattern of partnering with a man who reminds her of daddy. She's been traumatized and abused (like all the kids were) by her fucked up childhood. Pennywise was a metaphor for the rot in Derry, and more generally, in good old small town American society. This is a theme that is evident in most of King's books. Especially his horror books. Sure, they're about space aliens and ancient eldritch spider-demons and vampires and psychics and other weird shit, but basically they're about how fucked up some people are, and how a little pressure will really twist the insanity dial.
So Becky and her friends face Pennywise the monster who basically turns everything terrible about their childhoods and makes it explicit and violent and feeds on the blood and pain.
They are kids who were forced to grow up too early, both by their mundane life experiences and by facing Pennywise. They can't handle it. Some of them break because of it.
What we see in the sewers is, yes, a big "friendship affirmation ritual" to counter the influence of Pennywise and it would have been a lot more palatable as a group hug. But these are kids who don't exactly have healthy role models or good examples, and... they're also all horny pubescents. So this is what comes to their minds.
I'm not going to say there was no other way King could have written it, and it's fair to say "Really, Stevie, what were you thinking?"
But a heartwarming little "friendship is magic" moment just wouldn't have had the same effect. There was both a bonding and denial effect amongst the kids, a "We really did that?" that among other things ensured that when they were called back to Derry years later, they'd come. And it was symbolically the end of their childhood (something a hug would not have accomplished).
King himself has kind of made this point. From anyone else, I'd roll at my eyes at "I wasn't really thinking about the sexual aspect of it" but from Stephen King, yeah, I believe it. Especially from 1978 to 1986...
I get your point about abused kids acting out in unhealthy ways because of what they have experienced, but some at least of the little gang had stable home lives. "Let's all fuck our pre-teen classmate!" is really the first thing that is going to come into their heads in a situation of high stress facing a supernatural and magical monster?
Yeah, maybe. But it's more that however good a writer King is, and he can sometimes be very good, he was not a good enough writer to pull that particular scene off. I've read some things by writers which have left me going "That's diabolical but he or she writes like an angel". That scene had me just going "Stephen, no".
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