[Pride 2020] In Defense Of And Against Richie's Secret In It: Chapter 2

I have long been extremely forgiving when it comes to horror films, often to the chagrin of some friends on the genre margin who look to me for recommendations…frequently deducing that I am likely to recommend most anything. Personally, I believe that criticism, inundated as it is with denigration and complaints, could use a little more positivity. Among last year’s wide-release genre pipeline, for instance, only Pet Semetary truly disappointed me. That is to say, I was—all things considered—a fan of Andy Muschietti’s long-anticipated follow-up to 2017’s smash hit, It: Chapter 1.

I found the sequel to be audacious, dangerous, genuinely funny, and thrilling writ large in a genre too often afraid to truly go there – It: Chapter 2 goes there and back. There is, though, one clumsy misstep rendered all the more egregious by how openly its audience since release appear to be embracing it – Richie Tozier’s secret (spoilers ahead).

The audience comes to find out that Richie, played by veteran comedian Bill Hader, is gay during his singular quest to retrieve a childhood artifact for the Ritual of Chüd. Now, forgiving as I am, I am disinclined to buy into both Andy and Barbara Muschietti’s contention that the subtext is culled from the source material and only rendered marginally more explicit here. All things considered, the characterization is simply something made up for the new cinematic iteration of It. Gay subtext and gay characterizations are historically marred by their inextricable link to tragedy, particularly in a genre as inherently tragic as horror. The symbiosis of suffering and gay love works in the right context – 2018’s What Keeps You Alive is a sterling example – though in the context of both King’s source material and Muschietti’s adaptation, it feels protracted and cruel.

Childhood trauma, both King and Muschietti aver, is enduring and core to what makes us us. Love and the abiding ties of friendship and self-sacrifice, they argue, are the only way to conquer the trauma and break free from the narrative of trauma and pain that had so long defined a character’s very personhood.

Richie’s arc—and Eddie’s by extension—is defined by tragedy, both before and after their encounter with Pennywise. In the film adaptation, Ben, Beverly, Mike, Bill, and even Stanley – postmortem – are free to live authentically, having grown and gained from their triumph over It. Richie, conversely, continues to suffer, whether the filmmakers intended it that way or not. After a protracted and brutal homophobic hate crime in the opening scene, it becomes clear to both the audience and Richie that Derry’s homophobia has rippled throughout his life, rendering him unable to live authentically beyond the bounds of Derry’s Old Town Americana propriety and bigotry.

His aside following the Loser’s Club reunion at Jade of the Orient tacitly confirms this – “I don’t write my own material,” Richie says after failing to recognize his own joke when spoken by a young fan. Richie’s tragedy is compounded in both past and present as bullies hurl homophobic slurs at him in the arcade and Pennywise taunts him for his unrequited love for Eddie in the town square.

The horror genre has a storied and complicated relationship with gay characters – a theme adroitly explored on the Horror Queers podcast – though the trappings of the past are more forgivable in antecedent slashers such as 1981’s Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker because films like that never masquerade as commentaries on the deep roots of the trauma and their perennial interference in growth and expression.

It: Chapter 2, on the other hand, does.

Through a battle of wills, the Losers are finally able to successfully defeat Pennywise once and for all. They shed the constraints of their own respective trauma and see themselves, and their childhood in Derry, for what it truly was: a pleasant experience marred by trauma instead of a traumatic experience with sprinkles of good times.

Richie is still, though, forged by his trauma. As Beverly and Ben lock lips underwater in the dénouement, it is hard to ignore that just a few feet above them, Richie is inconsolable. Eddie has died saving Richie’s life never knowing how Richie felt about him. The only remnant of their love remains the initials R + E, etched into a bridge in town. Bill Hader deserves almost all the credit for what small amount of this new material works, managing to be both effortlessly charismatic and heartrending, sometimes at the same time. For a film whose narrative through line is growth through adversity, Richie’s stagnant homosexuality and ephemeral pain made permanent becomes all the more troubling.

It made me sad. Normally this wouldn’t bother me so much. But the film posits that this ending and these collective Losers, particularly during Stanley’s extended postmortem monologue, were all better now. They are happy and free, and this ending, Chapter 2 argues, is a good one. Perhaps happy for heterosexuals Bill, Ben, Beverly, and Mike, but not for Adrian Mellon, not for Eddie Kaspbrak, and certainly not for Richie Tozier.

If there was one positive to the film, though, it’s that it gave me the courage to finally come out.

Now, I’m aware of how strange that sounds, but as any gay person knows, it’s often the most arbitrary things that provides that last, final nudge to live authentically. By dint of the film’s ending, I knew – beyond all else – that I wanted more than that. I didn’t want to continue to deny who I was or how I felt because of fear. And that’s really what it was – fear. I was afraid of how others might view me, how their perceptions would shift. What my new place in both my own community and the gay community itself would be.

I had read once that living life as a gay man is to live a life of constant reminders of that gayness. When someone treats you strangely or is inordinately deferential, there exists the looming question of, “is this because I’m gay?” It’s a scary prospect, and one I avoided for 25 years. Instead, I felt content to coast along – like Richie – thinking professional success was enough to obfuscate whatever other feelings and desires I had. It’s not, though, and while I myself have never faced off against a primordial, interdimensional being in my own life, the fear I felt and the fear that constrained me might as well have been Pennywise.

Conclusively, though, as problematic as some of the representation in the film is, it solidifies just how subjective the genre can be, and how a film can be simultaneously troublesome and rewarding. There’s no telling when I would have come out had it not been for It: Chapter 2. It might have been soon, or it might have been much, much later – I’ll never know. What I do know is that the film nestled its way into my mind, forced me to think about its on-screen representation, and compelled me to make one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made in my own life. That is important.

I didn’t want to be Richie Tozier, but I’m glad Richie Tozier was there.

Please Consider Donating