It Chapter Two and Homophobia

Bill Hader as Richie and James Ransone as Eddie in It Chapter Two. 
Courtesy of New Line Cinema.

This realisation may come half a year late, but after months of thought and deliberation, I have admitted something to myself: It Chapter Two is homophobic. That is to say, It Chapter Two has a huge problem with how it treats its (implied) gay characters. For the sake of this article, I am taking as fact that Richie and Eddie are both gay, though this is not explicitly confirmed in the film, and I want to discuss how the inclusion of gay characters actually makes the film more homophobic. Stick with me on this.

Many gays (myself included) initially heralded It Chapter Two as a victory in terms of representation in horror; screenwriter Gary Dauberman took the previously subtextual relationship between leads Eddie and Richie, and made it far more apparent. The dynamic between Eddie and Richie was easily the most enjoyable part of It Chapter Two, an otherwise mediocre sequel to the 2017 box office hit. Bill Hader (Richie) and James Ransone (Eddie) are the comic relief from the grisly child-murdering clown who stalks the streets of Derry, Maine, and they do a great job of easing tension, with witty one-liners and plenty of best-friend bantering. In fact, Eddie and Richie are the only characters really allowed to be funny, probably due in part to Hader and Ransone’s onscreen chemistry and comedic ability (and undoubtedly, Hader’s comedy chops as a long time cast member of Saturday Night Live contributed to his casting as Richie, the “trashmouth” funny man of the group). As a result, the dynamic between Richie and Eddie is the most interesting part of the film, because it has the nuance and versatility that the rest of the film lacks.

On closer inspection, however, the treatment of gay characters in It Chapter Two is dubious, and unfairly cruel when compared to the treatment of the straight characters. The very first scene of It Chapter Two follows a gay couple at a funfair in Derry, Maine, in 2015. The couple are followed and targeted by a group of bigots who beat one half of the couple to death (the other one is later killed by Pennywise himself). This scene is long, graphic, and viscerally upsetting, and I have to question Dauberman’s decision to place it as the opening scene of the film. This hate crime is part of Stephen King’s original text, and King has said he wrote it after the real life murder of a gay man, Charlie Howard, in Bangor, Maine, King’s hometown and the inspiration for the fictional town of Derry. Charlie Howard was murdered in 1984, two years before King published It, and in It, Howard is fictionalised and called Adrian Mellon.

Xavier Dolan as Adrian Mellon

The hate crime in the novel takes place in the 1980’s, making it relevant to Howard’s murder and a representation of the homophobic mentality that was present in Bangor and America as a wholeat that time. In It Chapter Two, however, the murder takes place in 2015, as the films change the timeline (Pennywise’s first attack is in 1988, and he reappears every 27 years). We as an audience are now thirty years removed from the context of Charlie Howard’s murder, and so including a fictionalised version of it is not a relevant confrontation of the violence that is enacted by conservative small-town beliefs, as perhaps King intended it to be, but rather an upsetting and potentially triggering reminder to the LGBT people watching that we are not safe.

To give the screenwriters the benefit of the doubt, the murder of Adrian Mellon is an important moment in the novel, as it signifies Pennywise’s return to Derry. It is understandable that Dauberman decided to leave it in when adapting the novel for screen; but when you look at some of the things that Dauberman chopped out of the original text, his decision to include this particular hate crime is surprising. In the text, Mike Hanlon, the only black main character, is the victim of many racist hate crimes both as a child and as an adult, specifically from Henry Bowers, the town bully. In the films, however, there is no mention of Mike Hanlon being the target of racist attacks; the racism of the books is completely erased, save for one “you don’t belong here” comment from Bowers. Racism exists now and did in 1988 (the setting of It Chapter One), but Dauberman did not think it relevant to include the racism in the source material when adapting it for a modern audience. Dauberman’s omission of the racist hate crimes makes his inclusion of the homophobic attack seem gratituous; why is one acceptable to adapt and one is not?

One proposed reason for the inclusion of the murder of Adrian Mellon and his boyfriend in It Chapter Two is to provide a parallel to the other two potentially gay characters, Richie and Eddie. Eddie in particular is paralleled with Adrian on multiple occasions; both have asthma and use their inhalers during scenes in which they are in danger, and both make snarky remarks about the hairstyle of their attackers (when Adrian is verbally assaulted by a homophobe he replies with “Meg Ryan called, she wants her wig back”, and when Eddie is stabbed through the cheek by Henry Bowers, he musters the strength to say “you should cut that fucking mullet man, it’s been, like, thirty years”). Making Adrian the parallel of Eddie in this way only serves to make the film’s half-hearted effort at “representation” even more disrespectful, because both characters end up dead. Because of the adaptational gay-coding of Eddie, we have to watch two gay men get murdered instead of just one. This is a monumental slap in the face to gay viewers; we are strung along for two and a half hours, only to be mocked for expecting a happy ending for the gay characters, and forced to watch them die, slowly, without closure or fulfilment. 

The gay characters in It Chapter Two are not allowed happy endings; their only options are to die (Eddie) or to be left alive after losing someone they loved (Richie). Make no mistake, happy endings in this film are entirely possible, but only for the straight characters. Beverly and Ben, a straight couple, realise their love for each other and finish the film on a luxury yacht with a sheep dog. Happy endings exist, It Chapter Two says, but not for gay people.

This feeds into the long standing obsession with seeing gay pain on screen, but rejecting the portrayals of gay happiness. Call Me by Your Name, a film about a gay teenager being sad and eventually abandoned by his older lover, was successful, and popular with straight people. God’s Own Country, a film about a gay man learning to better himself and accept love, with a happy ending, was not. Currently, straight audiences and creators control the film industry, and they like seeing gay people in pain, so it is no surprise that Dauberman followed the trend and the money. He created a gay romance that was not in the novel, only to have it fail. He created gay characters where previously there were none, only to have them die. There is no impartial, analytical way to express how upsetting this is. To know that as a gay person my suffering will always be more attractive to straight people than my joy, to be shown a glimmer of hope and representation in the form of a gay character and then watch them die, is heartbreaking. It Chapter Two lures gay viewers in, with gay-coding and subtext and narrative parallels, and then laughs at us for wanting a happy ending.

Sometimes I come out of the cinema and I think wow, I can't believe I paid money to see that film. Usually I think this because the film was boring or badly paced or poorly acted. But I didn’t think any of these things about It Chapter Two, because all I could think was: I just paid money to watch a gay man get murdered for being gay. I felt horrible, like I’d been complicit in something I really did not want to be complicit in. Because to me, and to other gay people, homophobic attacks are not a horror trope like possessed children or haunted books; they’re not scary in a fun, sleepover way. We can’t watch them and be distanced from them. When I watched that scene, I was scared, not because of Pennywise the child-eating clown; I was scared because every day since I was twelve years old I have known that I could be Adrian Mellon. When I watched that scene, I remembered every time my friends have had slurs shouted at them. I remembered every time I’ve held my breath whilst walking past a group of other teenagers. I remembered Melania Geymonat and Christine Hannigan needing hospital treatment after riding the bus in 2019. Films have always been my comfort and my escape, but this time, they couldn’t be. To include this scene in a mainstream film with such a wide reach and large audience, with no kind of trigger warning beforehand and no consideration for the gay people watching, is horrifying and irresponsible. It convinces me more than ever that we need to leave Stephen King and his movies in the eighties, where they belong.

Written by Millie Felton.

Published 22nd September 2020.