Thursdays I do character analysis, so let’s talk about Jesse Walsh.

But wait who tf is that and what does he have to do what It Ch 2?

Jesse Walsh is the central protagonist in the notoriously homoerotic “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2”.

This is significant, please read.

CW: 80s era Homophobia, the AIDs crisis, forced outing

When “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2” hit theaters, it was really poorly received.

It had a male lead when horror movies always had women screaming their way out of of a serial killer’s clutches - until Jesse Walsh.

Moviegoers thought he “screamed like a girl”, were confused about his sexuality, and the overall homophobia was so bad it ruined the closeted actor behind Jesse, Mark Patton’s, career just as he was getting started.

Let’s talk about how and why this movie got made for a second.

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) was such a huge hit, it put New Line Cinema on the map at the height of slasher popularity. The slasher genre itself was this new cool thing at the height of the Reagan era, pushing back on conversativism and always had a strong leading lady.

Enter Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (1985). This movie had to be made FAST. As NLC’s first big hit, the heat was on for NOES’ sequel to be made swiftly to meet the demand for more Freddy Krueger. The movie was shot in the summer and released on Halloween of the same year.

Mark Patton was casted as Jesse Walsh, the first male lead in a slasher film. People immediately noticed the film had homoerotic “undertones”. Gay magazines picked up on and reported on it being a gay film. Mark Patton was a closeted gay actor at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Mark was just getting started in Hollywood and his agents were really curious if he could play “straight”. On opening day when they watched Mark’s performance, they immediately told him it was clear he “couldn’t play straight”.

The AIDs crisis met the gay community with McCarthyism levels of paranoia and scrutiny. It was clear Hollywood wanted nothing to do with gay actors, Mark’s agency desperate to keep him closeted struck fear into him and made him wonder why he was even doing this at all.

Mark was dating another closeted actor at the time. The actor disappeared for a while and Mark later found out he was dying of AIDS. He passed away in 1988 and was forcibly outed by a man who tricked Mark into getting dinner with him. That man worked for the National Enquirer.

Mark left the country to go live in Mexico, returning only after a private investigation was launched for “Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy”. He’s now an activist for gay rights and is a survivor of the HIV/AIDs epidemic. I love him so much. Here he is now:

That brings us to why I’m writing this. The cultural impact of NOES2 has made it nothing short of a cult classic in the gay community. The movie has helped so many people come to terms with their sexuality especially during an era that made many gay people feel unwanted.

Richie Tozier wearing a variant of Jesse’s iconic shirt tells us a few things about his character.

Maybe that movie helped him come to terms with his sexuality at a time where homophobia ran rampant. Maybe he sees himself in Jesse Walsh.

Jesse also has a friend he’s clearly garnering feelings for throughout NOES2, despite him having a female love interest, he always seems to fight with or go to Grady when times are tough. Grady’s actor admits he realized this immediately and played the role as such.

What makes this especially interesting are these journals Mark Patton has written, a project he calls “Jesse’s Lost Journals”. He claims it’s the real story of NOES2 and the movie version is only the tip of the iceberg, laying things out very clearly he says there was subtext for

Jesse’s pining for Grady, abuse in the Walsh household, his fear of his own internalized homophobia, and Freddy Kreuger’s sexuality. He also details that Jesse is alive and attends horror conventions!

You can read those journals here: http://staticmass.net/jesses-lost-journals-preface/

For Richie, being a gay teen in a small town must have been terrifying. Watching horror movies with your friends as a kid was a normal thing to do and back then, for a lot of folks, NOES2 was the first movie to embrace a boy who was scared of himself.

He was afraid of what his feelings were and no one around him seemed to understand. It’s easy to see why Richie Tozier would find inspiration in a character like Jesse Walsh, emulating his fashion down to his iconic shirt and his wacky Hawaiian button downs.

The parallels of Jesse’s actor being forcibly outed by starring in a film he didn’t realize was homoerotic sounds like something right out of adult Richie’s nightmares.

Mark Patton’s agent demanding him to “play straight”, the man he loved being outed by a gossip magazine,

it all sounds like something that belongs IN a horror movie. Not just on the outskirts of one.

I’d like to think that Richie sees Mark Patton/Jesse Walsh as a hero and maybe, just maybe, that’s why he’s wearing that shirt.

Thanks so much for reading!

You can stream Mark Patton’s documentary about his experiences on Amazon Prime now

https://www.amazon.com/Scream-Queen-Nightmare-Elm-Street/dp/B083XR4K25

You can stream NOES 2 right now on Shudder!

https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/a-nightmare-on-elm-street-2-freddys-revenge/0b1eab07ad638c3a

You can also follow Mark Patton on Twitter! @ActorPatton thank you so much for being such a strong person, we really admire your work. Thank you for telling your story and I hope more people will see it and feel as inspired as I did!