Nightmare on Gay Street: Conflating Sexuality and Gender in the Discourse Surrounding the “Gayest Horror Film Ever Made”

Even though Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) can easily be read as homophobic, the film is well known in horror fan communities as the "gayest horror film ever made" because of its homoeroticism (Scales). Thus, as a homophobic film from the 1980s, Freddy's Revenge is an unusual one. In addition to being both homophobic and homoerotic, not only is the villain coded as gay but the main character is as well. Seventeen-year-old Jesse can be read as struggling with his sexuality in the face of a killer who represents the disease, AIDS (Benshoff 246—49). Consequently, the film has been reclaimed by gay horror fans as a meaningful depiction of a sexual identity crisis wherein Jesse is understood as a "scream queen" who (almost) fulfills the role of the final girl (Scales) — the female protagonist of slasher films who survives to defeat the killer (Clover). This paper argues that even though Freddy's Revenge is received positively today by many gay horror fans, much of the discourse surrounding it—including some pro-gay discourse—is rooted in longstanding hegemonic notions of masculinity whereby gender and sexuality are collapsed together in a manner that suggests a boy who behaves like a girl is necessarily gay, weak, and less than a "real" man. This shows that aspects of twentieth-century hegemonic masculinity continue to operate today despite an increased general acceptance of women's and gay rights.