The speed at which seemingly niche memes tend to explode across the internet is always a little baffling. At this point, it’s pretty much accepted as fact that the Babadook is a gay icon--which is fine, mostly. Of course there are some troubling connotations with treating a literal horror film monster as a gay man, but for the most part, it’s just an in-joke in the LGBT community. People find it funny, and for marginalized folks, making humor out of our difficulties can be incredibly important.
But people are starting to push this “joke” too far. The recent release of Andy Musichetti’s It, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, has taken the internet by storm. The iconic Pennywise the dancing clown, played in the new movie by Bill Skarsgard, is littered across Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. And, apparently in the vein of the Babadook meme, several people have begun insisting that Pennywise is gay, as well--and that the two monsters are dating. And this joke isn’t just a floating around obscure corners of the internet: it’s been covered on several news sites, including Buzzfeed and Screenrant.
There’s a significant problem with this, and it’s troubling that more people aren’t talking about it. While the Babadook is a lesser-known, goofy-looking monster with few pop culture connotations, Pennywise has been a staple of horror media for decades. Most people recognize the demonic clown for what he is in the novel and films: a manifestation of pure evil who preys upon children.
Those last three words are crucial. The image of the sinister Pennywise luring a six-year-old boy into the sewers to devour him is many people’s primary association with It, and it takes on a whole boatload of problematic significance if Pennywise is being read as gay. The misconception that gay men are often sexual predators is still very much alive, though enshroudment in progressive bubbles may make that hard to see. And those progressive bubbles are entirely superable on the internet: anyone can see the articles being written about how Pennywise is a “proud gay man.” That means that a lot of people are getting the message that the LGBT community not only condones being associated with implicitly pedophilic monsters, but actually encourages it. Furthermore, not many of these articles are being written by actual gay men. As a transmasculine queer person, it’s more than a little painful to see the non-men in my community playing along with this, and worse still when straight people start posting articles about it. The relationship between gay men and predatory stereotypes is fairly specific, and other LGBT people are on shaky ground with their attempts to “reclaim” it.
That alone should be reason enough to let the jokes stop, but it gets worse. The connection between It and real world homophobia isn’t just a connotative one: there’s a scene in the novel in which the monster murders a gay hate crime victim. And it’s based on the real murder of Charles Howard, a young gay man, in 1984. Some people have pointed out that Pennywise didn’t kill this character because of his sexuality, but that isn’t the point--the issue here is that Charlie Howard died less than 35 years ago. It was recent enough that there are still people living with pain and trauma connected to this particular crime. Pastel rainbow edits of the monster who murdered a fictional version of Howard are more than a little disrespectful.
I love the LGBT community. I love our ridiculous jokes and our ability to find humor in difficult times. But the Pennywise meme is taking things too far. There are loads and loads of fictional characters that we can adopt as representation--but straight people can keep the monsters for themselves.
