[Author’s Note: This particular piece largely focuses on cis gay men specifically, though there are a variety of people in the broader queer community with relationships to this film that deserve to be written about as well, by people more capable of speaking to those experiences.]
Why What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Is a Timeless Classic
1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a good film. Hell, it’s a great film. Based on Henry Farrell’s novel of the same name, it follows the toxic relationship between two sisters: former child star Baby Jane (Bette Davis) and her older sister Blanche (Joan Crawford).
Although Jane was a huge star as a toddler, Blanche handled the transition into adulthood much better and became a bona fide Hollywood success story while Jane faded into obscurity and alcoholism, unable to fit into a world that had moved away from vaudeville. Now that they’re both elderly (by Hollywood standards – Davis was 54 and Crawford only about 4 years older the year the film was released), their roles have reversed yet again. Blanche has paraplegia after an accident, and Jane has become her caretaker. However, Jane’s increasing mental instability forces Blanche to attempt to find ways to escape a house that has now become a torture chamber.
Baby Jane is a taut survival thriller, an engrossing psychological drama, and a showcase of two tremendous talents butting heads both on and off the screen. These things should be appealing to pretty much everyone, and they are. But, to a certain type of gay man (which includes me, though we’re not all the same, and I certainly don’t speak for all of us), the movie is so much more than that.
A Cult Classic in Queer Culture
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a minted camp classic that gay men especially can’t seem to stop chewing on. The film has received tributes in the form of RuPaul’s Drag Race performances and countless more local live shows, plus a feature-length drag remake in 2010. Hell, Ryan Murphy even made an entire season of an FX series to dig into the delicious feud between Bette and Joan on the film’s set.
The same obsession extends to the rest of the “hagsploitation” genre that this movie birthed and depictions of over-the-top older women everywhere, from The Golden Girls to Arrested Development to High Point Coffee commercials. However, the connection between the gay community and onscreen “hags” is perhaps at its most potent with Baby Jane, which is why that film is the centerpiece of this particular attempt to answer one big question. Why do older women, especially cruel ones in horror movies, tend to connect with the gay community so much?
The Allure of “Letter to Daddy”
While there are infinite reasons to love it, Baby Jane strikes a chord that reverberates across a multitude of gay experiences. That might not seem immediately obvious in scenes like Jane’s notoriously unhinged performance of the song “Letter to Daddy” in a chirpy childlike warble. Jane’s attempts to recapture the glory days of her prepubescent self are awkward at best and deeply menacing at worst. However, these moments are what make her such a compelling figure.
While gender and sexuality are a spectrum, there is almost no gay person on Earth who didn’t grow up being told that the gender binary and heteronormativity define society. Men are supposed to behave this way. And the people attracted to men are supposed to behave that way. Oh, and those people are all supposed to be women.
The things associated with the people attracted to men (glamour, passion, pretty much anything exciting) are thus deemed womanly and tacitly forbidden to young men. That forbidden nature can make those things even more alluring once the young man in question has already realized he’s broken society’s dictum to be attracted to women and might want to break even more if he can. Not every gay man desires those things, of course, but there is a gulf between glamour and maleness that sometimes feels uncrossable for those who want it.
The Struggle for Glamour and Identity
Jane also experiences a gulf between herself and glamour, but the tenor of it is different. She is no longer a person who society (particularly the entertainment industry) deems beautiful. However, she did have access to the trappings of beauty and glamour once upon a time. Because she is a woman, to some degree it is still socially acceptable for her to indulge in those trappings, like makeup, fur coats, and the like.
That combination of access and frustrated desire is likely why she’s such a thrilling character through which to experience the world. As a woman, she is allowed to desire men, to express beauty, to experience drama and passion and color. Those are the qualities that can make women on film such intriguing characters for gay men, particularly closeted gay men. They provide characters upon whom gay men can safely project themselves, providing a fictional vehicle through which they can explore those suppressed desires.
However, Jane isn’t merely an onscreen surrogate. The reason she’s such a rich character is her inability to get what she wants. Otherwise, hers would be a role that any random rom-com heroine could fill.
From Caricature to Monstrous Rebellion
Unfortunately for Jane, the intensity with which she desires the trappings of femininity turns her inside out and makes her into a buffoonish caricature and a wrathful monster, lashing out at her captive sister for possessing what she doesn’t, even despite Blanche’s injuries and the fact that she’s totally dependent on Jane. Jane has a habit of lashing out at anyone who she’s jealous of, or who she feels is blocking her way to feeling the way she wishes to feel about herself.
However, that ultimately makes her more appealing rather than less. Jane’s open resentment of the world around her and the people who make it that way is intoxicating. She uses every last foothold into the world of womanhood to shred that world with her exquisitely pointed nails, ultimately exacting revenge on the very system she wants so dearly to belong to, even if it means entirely losing herself – and her sister- in the process.
A Cathartic Outlet for Queer Frustrations
The term “revenge fantasy” exists for a reason. Jane already has her foot in the door of femininity, and she uses that foot to stomp everything she can find. It’s a bit of rulebreaking that doesn’t end up working out for her, but it makes her so much more valuable to identify with. Jane is a figure through which gay men can exorcise the demons of the heteronormative binary, indulging in the forbidden fruit and simultaneously slashing at the whole damn basket.
The Lasting Legacy of Baby Jane in Queer Horror
While What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is the ur-text of this phenomenon because Jane is so dynamic and perfectly balanced, the DNA of her campy, twisted, delicious menace can be traced through the ages. Without her, other titanic figures like Scream 2’s Mrs. Loomis or X’s Pearl might not have the same luster or even have existed at all. Jane and every badly behaved woman she inspired provide an outlet for frustrations that frequently can’t even be named by the people feeling them. For that, and so much more, the gay community thanks her for her service.