There is no subtext.
FWIW, I saw the movie in a theater with a trans person. If anything had felt remotely transphobic about the scene to him, I’d have gotten an earful, but he really enjoyed it.
Okay, forget That Scene, and forget possible gaybashing metaphor. There’s something else I never quite understood.
What was the significance of none of the Gang, as adults, ever reproducing? Okay, Mike and Ben were single, Eddie’s wife basically was his kid, and Bev was not anxious to bring children into an already abusive household. Still, people don’t have to plan for kids to get them. Richie had a vasectomy that reversed itself, and he still never got anyone pregnant, and Stan’s infertility was putting a huge strain on his marriage. (IIRC, nothing mentioned about Bill and Audra wanting or not wanting kids, just that they don’t have them.) At the reunion, they discuss this and agree that it’s odd, and very likely a result of what happened in 1958.
Why, though? I have a feeling that there’s a really obvious answer that will make me :smack: when I hear it. Can anyone clue me in?
The Turtle needed them ready to fight again when It returned, and didn’t want them tied down by children?
That is quite a stretch. I mean, that’s like Stretch Armstrong-esque.
This pretty much. It was part of being “marked” when they were children.
Bev had all kinds of tests to see why she couldn’t conceive, but everything was always normal, it just didn’t ever work. The book made a point to show that her husband refused to have any tests on himself, since he just knew HE wasn’t the problem.
:smack: Okay, that makes sense. I hadn’t thought about the Turtle having influence.