The Babadook is a gay icon because of a Netflix clerical error
This investigation into how The Babadook became a gay icon was originally published in 2017. It has been updated throughout and republished for Pride Month.
The 2014 horror movie The Babadook follows a monster, simply called the Babadook, as it terrorizes a single mother and her son in their new house. The movie brought writer-director Jennifer Kent a new wave of success and acclaim, but it had another, odder effect on the culture, when an apparent clerical error turned its central monster into a defining figure in queer online culture.
Like many good memes, it all started with an innocent Tumblr post. Tumblr user Taco-bell-rey uploaded a screenshot showing The Babadook listed as one of the films available in the LGBTQ section of Netflix. It was reblogged thousands of times. The caption on that post — a one-line sentence about what this could possibly mean — cemented the Babadook’s fate.
“So proud that Netflix recognizes the Babadook as gay representation.”
The post quickly gained attention in the Tumblr community, but when the post found its way to Twitter, it began picking up even more steam. Buzzfeed’s Ryan Broderick, who co-hosted the Internet Explorer podcast, tweeted about how it was his favorite trend on Tumblr. Through his post, theBabadook debate took off, with writers suggesting the Babadook is gay because the movie deals with themes of isolation, depression, and an inability to be oneself.
Like another Tumblr-to-Twitter story of the same era — a Tumblr request to have Rihanna and Lupita Nyong’o star in their own heist movie based on a photo taken of the pair at Paris Fashion Week got Nyongo, Rihanna, Issa Rae, and Ava DuVernay all agreeing to make that movie together — The Babadook meme quickly found an
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