I need thoughts and opinions from people who liked "Stand by me"

[brigidsexcitableaunt]

I see a lot of people on here have cited Stand by me as an all-time favourite and/or something they want their kids to see. I'd really like your thoughts and comments.

I watched it with 16-y-o DC because she was required to do so for school (we're not in the UK). We didn't think much of it, and I had a lot to say about how self-indulgent it was, and how it had a gun in the hands of a 12-year-old save the day. Then I realised that probably won't go down well with whoever set it as homework and that I hadn't been at all helpful.

I gathered that the themes are:

bonding (I really hated seeing 12-year-olds talking about "your mom" licking up their bodily secretions (think it was vomit) and the complacent voice-over saying that's how they talked about each other's mothers;

maturing as a writer (Gordie's friends critique his pie-eating story);

facing your unfounded fears (the junkyard dog turns out not to be dangerous); and
dealing with new ones (but its owner damages Teddy psychologically by telling him his father is nuts and not a war hero);

private moments can be beautiful and best not shared (the meeting with the deer);

the tragedy of not being the favourite child;

death is sad and scary;

you can live all your life in a small town and never hear the local animals at night?

It’s about rites of passage - growing up. It all starts off as an adventure for them. Claiming “the body” and getting the glory. And then, in the end, the have the maturity to realise it’s not for the glory, it’s about doing the right thing. And the epilogue is that Chris dies doing the right thing again, observed by his friend, the writer.
growing up is hard.
The whole bonding/gross out stuff is just things that tween/teenage boys do. Again - it shows their emotional and physical immaturity

I actually love the film and I ate up the movie and the novella. I did an English essay on the differences and similarities. It was one of my favourite bits of school ever.

@Cosycore has got it spot on.

This. Brilliant film, loved it here

It’s about rites of passage - growing up.
Yes, the film rams that message home pretty hard. But I get the impression the narrator is a self-absorbed 22-year-old, although of course he is a middle-aged man.

Anyone have anything to say about Chris, whom the narrator describes as a peacemaker, taking a gun on a camping trip, and Gordie the sensitive soul using it to resolve the boys' problems with other people?
Then when Chris attempts to resolve a fight without using a gun, he gets stabbed to death. What are they trying to tell us here?

It's important to take it in context; many aspects aren't relatable to non-Americans or those who aren't familiar with American culture.

I really think you’re overthinking the gun thing. Bear in mind this was made in the 80s and set in the 50s, well before Columbine etc. It’s primarily about friendship, and growing up, and small town life, and loyalty.

The gun was not the hero though was it? It was terrifying and too big for them.

I wouldn't get too caught up on the gun messaging. Not every piece of fiction has to be a didactic lesson on right and wrong in every way possible. Sometimes life's not fair and random things happen and stories can reflect this. And the author or narrator might just not be anti-gun.

I'd talk about death as more than sad and scary but random and part of life -- the older brother's death, Gordy's feeling he should have died, the journey is all about a boy roughly their age who gets hit by a train unexpectedly (it's important it's a kid), Chris' death doing the right thing. Finding the boy's body helped Gordy come to terms with his feelings that he should have died.

Also, one of the major developments is Gordy realising that his father is wrong (when Chris maybe calls him an A-hole?). It's a big part of growing up realising that your parents are human/ fallible.

I think you should bear in mind how hugely inappropriate many of the required reading is for children at the moment. I had to complain about one for my 15 year old which featured an awful indecent assault scene. The school agreed to take it off the reading list for next term but it shouldn’t have been on it the first place.

So compared to what she could be reading I feel that Stand By Me is not too bad. Although I agree it normalises the use of weapons in group conflicts among children, which is seriously something we don’t want to push at the moment, especially as schools keep insisting they are powerless to either recognize or prevent blatant violence and bullying in the playground 🙄

Why are you doing your daughter's homework for her?

I feel like that's what you're supposed to see: friendship, bonding, rites of passage, nostalgia, etc, with every step of the way narrated for you, and it's a much-loved film that really seems to resonate with lots of people --- men and women, North Americans and non-North Americans.
My reaction of "What? 12-year-olds resolving their personal problems with a gun?" seems to be an unusual one. It was a pretty spontaneous reaction, so I don't believe I'm over thinking it.

Anyone have anything to say about Chris, whom the narrator describes as a peacemaker, taking a gun on a camping trip, and Gordie the sensitive soul using it to resolve the boys' problems with other people? Then when Chris attempts to resolve a fight without using a gun, he gets stabbed to death. What are they trying to tell us here

It would be more helpful if you examined it through the cultural lens in the place and time it was set. Then 12yo’s taking guns on camping trips wouldn’t seem so strange. It only seems strange to you know in this time and your place.

Exactly. I also think- maybe a paradoxical effect of being such a religious country- that American swear words are stronger than ours. And more obsessed with mothers, for some reason...

You sound super perfect and serious, OP.
You never misjudged anything and if you did, heaven forbid, you couldn't laugh about it or feel nostalgic about your near miss disasters and shared experiences of fucking up life with others.
You were not ignorant and finding your own way thru life at an immature age with imperfect (or absent or abusive) parents.
If you ever made a mistake, you took the experience very seriously and probably beat yourself up about it.

The adults in your life were supportive and you NEVER lied to them or had them be nasty to you & nobody cared they were nasty to you.
You were never the 'bad kid from the bad family' who many parents told their kids to avoid.
You were never overwhelmed by developing sexuality and bodily functions, certainly not at the ripe old age of 12.

That's why you don't get the appeal.

Exactly. And this is a big part of the message of the film. I went to see it aged 16 and that definitely came across.

You clearly thought about it much more seriously than I did, @brigidsexcitableaunt, and in particular I never gave much thought to the gun - which I guess says something about American movies. However, now that you brought it to my attention, I'm properly revolted. American movies tend to see violence as a solution for everything - including for non-violent groups (e.g, Witness and High Noon).

Its a brillaint film and the acting is unbelievable - think of how old these children are? And looking back, knowing what we now know about River and Corey's childhoods I found it a heartbreaking rewatch. It really is a magical film. And the goofy stuff - so so true!

I will add that it was written by Stephen King and I was told off for reading it at school and told to read a proper book not trash fiction 😂

I think you’ve failed to understand that ALL classic books will have context that must be understood before you assess them. You won’t find one AFAIK on a booklist that isn’t problematic. My son called Jane Eyre an embarrassing pick-me before I explained the context and also the Brontës’ lives and he adjusted his thinking just a small amount.

A kid in 50s Oregon, a boy, will be very familiar with guns. They hunt, shoot and fish, although unlikely at 12 to have already used a handgun for defence. That’s why they’re terrified of it, they aren’t glorifying it. If you want to put it into context of today’s problems with knife crime etc you can view it as scared people doing things their maturity level can’t and shouldn’t have to handle.

The gun represents the death of innocence. It’s Gordy’s turning point, he's past the point of no return in terms of childhood once he points that gun at Ace and is truly willing to use it. Chris’s death isn’t about the gun, it’s about innocence again. You can’t fight the unfairness and cruelty of the world, it was foreshadowed by Ace putting the knife to his neck - which Gordy saved him from. You can’t save everyone or take the bullies out of the world.

The train tracks represent the journey, it’s a coming of age story and is neatly hemmed by the following of the tracks, the perils along the way being life’s journey and the end of their old life (of childhood innocence). The vulgar language and ‘your mom’ insults represent their immaturity, you’re not supposed to like it, you’re supposed to understand that they’re silly kids who have no business going through what they’re going through. The events of the book/film grow them up too fast.

It’s a ‘neat’ film to me. The book, too. No excess, no unnecessary scenes, just pure and simple telling a painfully beautiful and real story of what life was like for rural, poor, post war boys. Pre 60s, pre JFK getting shot. In an age romanticised as an age of twee innocence, the book subverts that image that Americans/europeans were fed about the American lifestyle. Reality was that people struggled and were often miserable. Two, I think, of the boys were affected by war/the army. One of the dads was a war vet, and Gordy’s brother, whose death looms large across the film, died in the army. It’s all about the death of innocence and that’s on a bigger scale than for the boys, it’s the death of the American dream. Poor Ray was out picking berries ffs. How innocent is that? Representing freshness, sweetness, summer. And it’s wiped out in a flash.

There is very little literature unsuitable for a 15 year old. Why do you think they are too young to read a scene about indecent assault? What was the book?

@EverybodyLTBhear hear! (to your post but also the username lol)

I just wanted to say to the OP, King visits similar themes around the dangers of adolescence, destruction of hope/potential and corruption of innocence, in The Long Walk and Apt Pupil - and, of course, IT (but the other two are quicker reads). I took a totally different reading from the gun scene featured in the film - I don’t see it as glamourising guns, they’re all scared of the pistol and rightly so. Gordy talks some ludicrous big talk because he needs to use
every ounce of swagger he has to convince Ace he’ll shoot - Ace is about to commit murder. I am not sure he’d have shot at all, and that’s why there’s such relief when Ace backs down. Also, it’s heavily implied that matters won’t end there. In the book, I think Chris holds the gun, I can’t remember off the top off my head, but you do
get a sense that these boys are going to have a lot of rivers to cross before they’re safe, in all senses.

There’s also the idea that writing can be cathartic and Gordy’s story and the frame around it shows that he has surmounted traumatic life events to become a loving and well-balanced father, rather than perpetuating his own emotional neglect. And unlike the rest of his friends, he got to live out his dreams, and commemorate them. In the novella, all the boys grow up to die prematurely, apart from Gordy - it’s almost like they are doomed, and that ties in with the sense of threat. It perhaps felt a bit over-determined, or struck the wrong note for a movie that’s supposed to be sad but ultimately life-affirming.

I found their ramblings on the journey to be quite quaint, veering from bravado and obscenity to joyously singing The Ballad of Paladin - not much changes if you hear boys that age now, it’s all showing off and disparaging one another, then the occasional hand-brake turn right back into childhood.

Perhaps the reason it resonates with people is that it summons up something that many of us have also lost, or if we didn’t have it, that we vicariously enjoy experiencing. "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" isn’t true of my
own experience, I would never have been allowed to go camping! (though even their plan to fool their respective parents was sort of sad, don’t you guys think?) and I hadn’t formed those bonds at that age, but I certainly believed the narrator, and felt his loss.

I think it’s less that ‘death is sad and scary’ as they seem to be more inspired/ enobled by finding Ray Bowers than either sad or scared. Perhaps it’s more that life is sad and scary, but Ray’s fate reminds us that death is literally just a misstep away at any moment, so let’s appreciate what we have for the short time it’s ours.

This! Me and my friend loved watching this film as teens partly because we fancied the pair of them. It wasn’t a film I’d have chosen as an adult to watch. It was just a nice cult teen film for us. We’d get ice cream and sit and watch it. We didn’t think all that deeply about it! But now I’m going to have to rewatch!

And yes - knowing what happened to them later. :(
Corey actually posted a really cool video on Twitter the other day of a song he’s made and a video with it. It shows lots of his film characters as he goes from a child to adult.

@namechangedforvalidreasons Thank you!

Even thinking about it now it’s so moving, to think that Gordy as the writer is now the only person remembering those precious boys as they were. It’s interesting that he’s writing very close after the time Chris died, too. Is the novel being written as he finds out about his murder, or immediately after I wonder? I do think it works today, the worries we have about our children making their way in the world, the dangers they face - is it really much different to when The Body was written or when it was set? Broadly speaking, of course.