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How ‘The Babadook’ Came Out of the Closet and Became a Gay Icon

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Whenever something is created, there’s no telling how that creation will impact society nor how society will impact that creation.

Even though the first time we are introduced to the Babadook, he’s literally coming out of the closet. Neither the monster nor the movie was originally intended to become a staple in LGBTQ horror.

At its inception, writer and director Jennifer Kent meant the film to be a metaphor for grief or depression.

However, with help from social media, pop culture, fate, and resonating themes, The Babadook is forever cemented in gay iconography.

Tumblr, Netflix, and Twitter Team Up to Out the Babadook

It all started on Tumblr back in early 2017, when one user named Ianstagram posted:

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“Whenever someone says the Babadook isn’t openly gay it’s like?? Did you even watch the movie???”

While some users were quick to point out the confirmed meaning behind the film, Ianstagram continued:

“A movie about a gay man who just wants to live his life in a small Australian suburb? It may be “just a movie” to you but to the LGBT community the Babadook is a symbol of our journey”.

Since Ianstagram goes on to say:

 “How do you explain the scene where the Babadook looks right at the camera and says “I am my own person and I love men”?” The humorous nature of the posts is evident, but it didn’t matter. With over 100,000 notes, the icon was conceived.

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This Tumblr post gained even more traction on Twitter as journalist Ryan Broderick shared a tweet exclaiming that Babadook being gay is his “new favorite Tumblr meme”.

Tumblr’s influence on this phenomenon struck once again as a few months later, user taco-bell-rey posted an imagepurporting The Babadook was listed under the “LGBTQ Movies” category on Netflix. With well over 179,000 notes on Tumblr, the involvement this post had in solidifying the figure as a gay icon is undeniable.

While in the beginning, Netflix may not have participated in this meme intentionally, by June 9th, 2017, the streaming mogul made its involvement official by putting out a pride month tweet saying: “Be the Babadook you want to see in the world”.

Although these platforms brought about the notion that Babadook is gay, it is pop culture that gave birth to the idea.

Pop Culture Turning Babadook into “Babashook”

With memes aplenty of the Babadook garbed in various rainbow-themed attire, pop culture quickly played its part in establishing the Babadook’s sexuality through news articles, YouTube videos, research papers, and more.

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Additionally, the LGBTQ community almost immediately adopted the figure. Most notably, New Jersey drag performer and queen Pissi Myles released a music video in June 2017 titled “Babashook”, where she cleverly remixed the tone of the Baba-book into a tune as she donned a look characteristic of the top-hat wearing icon.

Then, during the red carpet event for the season 9 finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Miles Jai showed up dressed as the Babadook. Not long later, performer Chique Fil-Atio put on a Babadook-inspired drag performance in the show She Liked It Spooky: A Celebration for Ebony Strange at the Elysium (2018).

While the film would have never received its status as an LGBTQ symbol were it not for this social embrace, it seems as though this was the fate of the monster from the very beginning.

The Spirit of Tod Browning

The icon that stands for those who are historically forced to remain in the shadows, has roots in representation.

Although it was not the intention of creator and director Jennifer Kent, The Babadook’s icon status was seemingly fated all along since the Babadook’s appearance was inspired by a character in Tod Browning’s London After Midnight (1927).

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If you do not recognize the name, Tod Browning is not only responsible for the compassionate, controversial horror film Freaks (1932), which gave representation to a group typically ostracized from society, but he is also responsible for Dracula (1933). That film has been widely viewed as homoerotic due to the relationship between characters Dracula and Renfield.

It seems that the spirit of the famed director’s work lives on, and even in death, Tod Browning is still giving voices to those that are typically underrepresented in the world of horror.

The Proof is in ‘The Babadook’

While Mister Babadook’s icon status was conceived by Tumblr, birthed by pop culture, adopted by the LGBTQ community, and fated by Tod Browning’s legacy, the notion could have never survived had it not been for the movie itself.

The themes of oppression, isolation, and acceptance exhibited in the film, resonate deeply within the LGBTQ+ community.

When watching with all of this in mind, the film is wrought with on-the-nose metaphors, such as: when the main character tried to fight the Babadook, he retreated back into the closet. Once you see it, you can’t help but wonder how The Babadook wasn’t intended to be an LGBT film all along.

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Lest we forget, the most important lesson of the Babadook was that try as you may to fight him, he is here to stay. The only choice you have is to accept him.

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of… the Babadook

A writer by both passion and profession: Tiffany Taylor is a mother of three with a lifelong interest in all things strange or mysterious. Her love for the written word blossomed from her love of horror at a young age because scary stories played an integral role in her childhood. Today, when she isn’t reading, writing, or watching scary movies, Tiffany enjoys cooking, stargazing, and listening to music.

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Editorials

What’s in a Look? The Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy

The Jason Voorhees redesign sparked heated debate, but is the backlash overblown? Dive into Friday the 13th’s formula and fan expectations.

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If you’re a longtime reader of Horror Press, you may have noticed that I really really like the Friday the 13th franchise. Can’t get enough. And yet, I simply couldn’t muster a shred of enthusiasm for piling hate on the new Jason Voorhees redesign that Horror, Inc. recently shared with an unwitting public.

Why the Jason Voorhees Redesign Controversy Feels Overblown

Hockey mask? Check. Machete? Check. Clothing? Yeah, he’s wearing it. I really didn’t see the problem, but very many people online pointed out all the places where I should. The intensity and specificity of the critiques shot me right back to 2008, reminding me distinctly of watching Project Runway with my friend’s mom while I waited for him to get home from baseball practice. What, just me?

But the horror community’s sudden transformation into fashion mavens got me thinking about other things, too: the character of the franchise as a whole, how Jason Voorhees fits into it, and why I feel like this reaction has been blown out of proportion. (A disproportionate reaction to a pop culture thing? On my Internet? Well I never.)

Baghead Jason

What Does A Jason Look Like, Anyway?

What confused me the most about this reaction was something I couldn’t quite get a bead on. What does Jason Voorhees look like? His look, both masked and unmasked (especially unmasked), changes wildly from film to film, even when he’s played by the same person (in three consecutive movies, Kane Hodder played a hulking zombie Jason, a shiny slime monster Jason, and a Jason who was mainly seen in mirrors and looked like his face was stung by a thousand bees). And then there’s the matter of him being both a zombie child and a bagheaded killer before receiving his iconic hockey mask.

However, if you synthesize the various forms of the character into the archetypical Jason Voorhees, the one that most people might visualize in their head when told to imagine him, the result doesn’t not look like this new redesign. Frankly, I even think “redesign” is too strong a word for what this is. This image shows a dude in outdoorsy clothes wearing a hockey mask. It looks enough like “Jason Voorhees” to me that my eyes just slide right off of it.

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What Do We Expect From Friday the 13th, And What Do We Need?

Ultimately, many people clearly disagree with my assessment of this redesign, which led me to ponder the franchise as a whole. If there’s something to complain about with this new look, that implies that there is a “right” way and a “wrong” way to be a Friday the 13th movie.

This I can agree with. While the franchise is wide-ranging and expansive to the point that it has included Jason going to space, fighting a dream demon, and taking a cruise ship from a New Jersey lake to the New York harbor, the movies do still follow a reasonably consistent formula.

Step 1: Generate a group of people in a place either on the shores of Crystal Lake or in Crystal Lake township (they can travel elsewhere, but this is where they must start).
Step 2: Plunk Jason down near them, give him a variety of edged weapons, and watch what happens. One girl survives the onslaught, and sometimes she brings along a friend or two as adjunct survivors. Bada bing, bada boom, you have yourself a Friday the 13th movie.

If you fuck with that formula, you’ve got a problem. But beyond that, there’s really not a hell of a lot that the movies have in common. Sometimes you have a telekinetic final girl, other times you have a child psychologist. Sometimes the dead meat characters are camp counselors, but other times they’re partiers or townies or students attending space college.

Hell, even the people killing them aren’t always the same. Look at Pamela Voorhees in the original movie or Roy in A New Beginning.

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So why this protectiveness around the minutiae of Jason’s look?

It’s Us, Hi, We’re The Problem, It’s Us

I don’t mean to discount everyone’s negative opinions about this Jason redesign. There are a multitude of aesthetic and personal reasons to dislike what’s going on here, and you don’t have to turn that yuck into a yum just because I said so. But I think we’ve had online fandoms around long enough to see how poisonous they can be to the creative process.

For instance, was The Rise of Skywalker a better movie because it went down the laundry list of fan complaints about The Last Jedi and basically had characters stare into the camera and announce the ways they were being fixed?

Look, I’m not immune to having preconceived disdain for certain projects. If I’m waiting for a new installment in a franchise and all that I’m hearing coming out of producers’ mouths is “prequel” and “television show,” those are fighting words.

However, the constant online pushback to projects that are in early development might be one reason it has taken us so long to actually get more Friday the 13th (I’m talking in addition to the long delays amid the lawsuit, of course). It’s been more than a decade and a half without a new Jason vehicle, and that time keeps on stretching longer and longer.

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Poll taken from Horror Press Instagram account

What Fans Really Want From a New Jason Voorhees Movie

Instead of just letting the creative tap flow and having a filmmaker put out the thing they want to make, then having somebody else take the wheel and do that same thing for the next installment, it seems like producers are terrified of making the wrong move and angering the fans, which has prevented them from actually pulling the trigger on much of anything.

Look, we survived A New Beginning. And Jason Takes Manhattan. Even Jason Goes to Hell. A controversial misstep can’t kill the immortal beast that is Friday the 13th. I say let’s just let them make one. Having something tangible to complain about is better than having nothing at all.

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Editorials

Monstrous Mothers: Unveiling the Horror in ‘Mommie Dearest’ and ‘Umma’

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

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I challenged myself to fill a gap in my cinema history this month and watched Mommie Dearest. I was very familiar with the movie due to how many drag queens reference it and because of Joan Crawford’s villainous reputation. However, I had never seen it in its entirety before, which is weird because I write about my own maternal baggage often. Without ever seeing the film, I knew this movie, categorized as a drama, belonged under my favorite genre label. Some sources even try to meet in the middle and classify it as a psychological drama, which is a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting to remove itself from what it actually is. After all, what else should we call a film about being abused by the person who should love us most other than horror?

Does Mommie Dearest Belong in the Horror Genre?

The horror umbrella is massive and encompasses many subgenres including thrillers, sci-fi, and even true crime. I like to quip that movies like Mommie Dearest and Priscilla belong to the latter category. I even point out they have final girls surviving their monsters, but like most jokes, there is a lot of hard truth behind that. To be clear, Mommie Dearest is highly contested even by Christina Crawford, who wrote the book about the abuse suffered at the hands of her alcoholic guardian. However, the fact remains that there is an abusive mother terrorizing children at the heart of the horror. This is a tale as old as time in the genre, and we see these themes of motherhood, mental illness, and generational trauma often. So, why do we typically forget this movie when discussing titles like Psycho (1960), Run, Hereditary, etc.?

Mommie Dearest recounts a version of Christina Crawford’s upbringing by Hollywood royalty Joan Crawford. It depicts her as an unstable, jealous, manipulative woman who only holds space for her beliefs. As with most abusive parents, she takes out her frustrations and feelings of inadequacy on those around her. Specifically, those who cannot fight back due to the power dynamics at play. This version of Joan is a vicious bully, which feels familiar for many people who grew up with an abusive parent. How many of us never knew what would set our parental monster off, so just learned to walk on eggshells? How many of us grew up believing we were the problem for way longer than we should have? How many of us normalized the abuse for so long that it carried over into adulthood, letting us believe being mistreated is just part of living?

Watch the trailer for Mommie Dearest

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The Lasting Impact of Abusive Parents in Horror Movies

While my mother wasn’t the active bully in our home, part of my struggle with her is her complicitness in the hell she helped create for all of us. Which is why, while I don’t think Mommie Dearest is a great film, I believe it’s a decent horror flick. It made me want to revisit a better movie, Umma, that also dealt with motherhood, mental illness, and trauma. Iris K. Shim’s 2022 PG-13 horror sees Sandra Oh playing a single mother who has not healed. After growing up with her own mother, who was especially cruel to her, she has built her world around that trauma and forced her daughter to live within its walls with her. As someone who was severely homeschooled by a woman who still really needs to find a therapist, Umma hits me in my feelings every time. 

Watch the trailer for Umma below

Maternal Monsters: A Common Thread in Psycho, Hereditary, and More

Before the film starts, Oh’s character, Amanda, has turned her back on her family and cultural heritage. She has built a life that she’s not really living as she hides in her home, afraid of electricity due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mom. So, when her uncle shows up with her mother’s ashes, she is triggered and haunted. All of the issues she hasn’t dealt with rush to the surface, manifesting in ways that begin turning her into her deceased mom. Amanda does eventually force herself to confront her past to avoid becoming her mother and hurting her daughter. So, while Umma is different from Mommie Dearest, it’s not hard to see they share some of the same DNA. Scary moms make the genre go round which is why movies like M.O.M. Mothers of Monsters, Serial Mom, Mother, May I?, and so many others will always pull an audience by naming the monster in the title.

I doubt I am the first person on Norma Bates’ internet to clock that some of horror’s most notorious villains are parents, specifically moms. I’m also sure I cannot be the first person to argue Mommie Dearest is a horror movie on many levels. After all, a large part of the rabid fanbase seems to be comprised of genre kids who grew up wondering why the film felt familiar. However, I hope I am the first to encourage you to watch these two movies if your momma trauma will allow you to hold space for a couple more monstrous mothers this month. Both have much to say about how we cope with the fallout of being harmed by the people who should keep us safe.

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