‘Meg Ryan called – she wants her wig back!” is the retort that precedes a brutal physical attack on a gay couple near the start of It Chapter Two.The film continues the adventures of Stephen King’s “Loser” outcasts, who battle the killer alien clown, Pennywise, and deal with the hate-filled attitudes of their townsfolk in Derry.
The Meg Ryan quip comes from Adrian Mellon, the gay man who is beaten by homophobes before being murdered by Pennywise. King has confirmed that the character is based on Charlie Howard, an out gay man murdered in King’s home town of Bangor, Maine, in 1984 – who was targeted, in part, because he was wearing a flamboyant hat. By weaving the representation of an actual murder into his story, King suggests It’s horror results from the license some think they have to perpetuate violence. The sequence in the film has proved controversial because some critics, such as Slate’s Jeffrey Bloomer, consider it exploitative of Howard’s murder. But that’s the point. We’re meant to be shocked by the attack. In the book it happens straight after the murder of a six-year-old, which starts the story’s avenging narrative. As the film’s star Jessica Chastain told Variety: “We can’t pretend that it doesn’t still exist because it’s part of our every day”. The murder was completely excised from the home-friendly television miniseries adaptation in 1990.
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The question is personal for me: on the night in 2017 that I signed a contract to write a book about Stephen King’s It, I was assaulted and left for dead for wearing a flamboyant hat – a trilby with feathers in it. The attackers asked me if I was queer.
The film’s classification rating reveals how audiences are expected to respond to the material, especially with regard to the notional immature, impressionable viewer who may directly imitate the action or identify with the characters. In the UK, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has rated it as 15, citing its “strong gory violence, horror, language, discrimination”, and places the onus on 15-year-olds to govern themselves. But, in truth, this is lopsided: the story contains hate speech aimed at (legally-protected) disability through to (as-yet unprotected) fatphobia, but the BBFC’s guidance focuses only on homophobia: “A young man is subjected to homophobic abuse (‘faggot’) before being seriously beaten” and “a young boy being verbally abused in a similar manner.”
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One of the ratings body’s main concerns is preventing copycat behaviour: the BBFC notes that, to get a 15 rating, “the work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour, although there may be racist, homophobic or other discriminatory themes and language”. Accordingly, It Chapter Two’s homophobic murder scene discourages discrimination by presenting Adrian and his partner, Don, as heroes. The happy couple are framed against the bright lights of a fairground sky, having given their winnings to a young girl with a facial birth mark. The changes from the book also reinforce this: while in the book, Adrian wears a hat with a flower in it and Don wears skin-tight trousers and lipstick, in the film Adrian’s pink sweater is the only queer-coding. A gang verbally abuses them for talking about their planned future together and demands Adrian remove his novelty fairground hat. Rather than being cowed, film-Adrian (played by Xavier Dolan) delivers his beautifully-pitched Meg quip in a manner of which RuPaul would approve, but is punished for his spark when the assault begins.
When Adrian resurfaces, his corpse flirts with Bill Hader’s Richie, a fan-favourite character whose queerness is suggested by a close-up of a hand held a second too long to be “just friends”. While this isn’t the Richie of King’s book, the film applauds him for overcoming his internalised homophobia in a happy ending where he recarves his and his first love’s initials into Derry’s “Kissing Bridge”. The BBFC rating suggests mature children can understand that the film’s queer portrayals condemn homophobia and promote self-determination.
Stephen King’s It balances harsh depictions of realistic violence with the delights of unlikely friendships. King made this point by intertwining Charlie Howard with his fictitious counterparts; through the debate it has caused, the film has widened that dialogue. It has prompted discussions about empathy, and how to dismantle the hate and structural inequality that leads to discrimination in the first place. I was nervous of the sequence because of my own assault, but I’m glad it was included. It validated my perception that the attackers were in the wrong and it gave me hope. By including Adrian, making him a hero and aligning him with Richie’s acceptance of his own sexuality, this modern adaptation of It shows that the world is changing and there’s everything to fight for: we can all be lovers in the end.
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