Good Memes of 2017: Babadook as Gay Icon
In these tumultuous times of 2020, let us harken back to three years ago and remember when Netflix accidentally created an icon for the ages.
The Babadook is a 2014 release by Australian Director Jennifer Kent; the Netflix hit follows the story of widow Amelia Vanek, who is trying to keep her volatile young son, Sam in check while grieving for her late husband, Oskar. As Amelia’s world falls down around her, a mysterious, looming entity called The Babadook arises from her deepest nightmares, and threatens to undo their waning family unit; the titular Mister Babadook ends up possessing Amelia, and nearly forces her to kill her own son.
Unable to fully destroy the monster (as the short story warns, you can’t get rid of the Babadook), Amelia and Sam lock him in the basement. The Babadook is a haunting tale about mental illness, grief and the stress of parents navigating a rocky relationship with their neurodivergent child, so it was safe to say that in 2017, three years after the movie’s release, most people were surprised to see Mister Babadook’s revival as a gay icon.
The post (that may or may not be photoshopped; nobody’s all that sure) that went viral on Tumblr features Netflix’s section of LGBT movies; wedged in between G.B.F. (Gay Best Friend) and Molly Shannon’s 2016 film Other People, is none other than the icon himself, and the film’s namesake, The Babadook.
There’s also probably something to be said about why Netflix thought “Room 237”, a documentary about the making of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining”, also needed to be included in that category.
The image itself originated from an earlier Babadook discourse chain on Tumblr started by used ianstagram, in which they proclaimed that the tale of the entity haunting a typical suburban family featured an “openly gay” Mister Babadook; outraged movie fans didn’t quite catch on, and the joke spawned into a meme, that spawned into an accidental icon for the modern era, and the internet just rolled with it.
And thus, a monstrous metaphor for depression returned from obscurity, as Mister Babadook popped up in pride celebrations across the country in June of 2017; one of the most iconic images of that era being Miles Jai, gay influencer and actor, dressing up as the Babadook to the season nine finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The youtube video, in which he shows us all how to get that babalewk, is still up at his channel, @MilesJaiProductions.
As the Babadook catapulted from horror icon to queer icon, a thousand think pieces relating the experience of many LGBT folks to the family’s fear of the Babadook monster popped up from news sites like The Guardian to Rolling Stone, and with good reason. Mister Babadook, as queerness itself, threatens to undo the fragile, standard family unit. Instead of embracing her “monster”, Amelia tries to banish it or suppress it, only for the Babadook to come back stronger; it’s easy to see how people can draw certain parallels to ongoing struggle, as straight, cisgender society has tried and continues to silence or quash queer movements, and relegate LGBT people to the shadows.
In another interpretation to The Babadook, people related to the monster because, for those of us who aren’t straight, it is often necessary to conceal parts of ourselves so as not to upset the social order of things. If we dare to do so, many are forced back in the closet (in the Babadook’s case, the basement), cast aside a family, or a society, that wants to be “normal”.
The Babadook, and iconic movie monsters like him, appeal to those who exist outside of the margins of what society deems normal because anything or anybody that exists in these margins is seen as monstrous. Brown and black bodies are monstrous; non-straight and non-cis bodies are monstrous. Really, anything that goes against the norms of being white, straight, and cis, is categorized as outsider, and thus subjected to scrutiny and distrust. Rolling Stone sums it up beautifully in their own op-ed for the “gay Babadook” meme: “horror drives on unnerving the viewer by preying on the inherent fear of the unknown, and homosexuality — really, anything or anyone that defies typical gender norms — has been historically misunderstood and maligned as a boogeyman.”
Director Jennifer Kent finally acknowledged the then two-year-old meme in 2019, and The Babadook’s distributors, IFC midnight and Shout Factory, went the cheeky route and made a limited edition DVD of the Babadook with none other than the gay icon himself, silhouetted in front of a rainbow background. Not to tempt anyone, but the DVD is still available on shoutfactory.com for twenty dollars.
As we navigate this year’s pride month, amidst everything else transpiring, always remember: pride started as a disruption. Being proud of who you sometimes means having to dismantle, or shake up the systems that have held you down or suppressed you for all this time; take a page out of the Babadook’s playbook, and live loudly and freely, and don’t let anybody lock you in a basement. Metaphorically speaking.
