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Babadook & Pennywise: A Modern Love Story?

Rebecca Farley
September 13, 2017, 7:00 PM
Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
This is one of the most interesting Hollywood couplings we learned about in quite some time. Apparently, Pennywise and the Babadook are dating. In fact, they're in a long term committed relationship. Buzzfeed pointed out Wednesday morning that news of the relationship appeared online earlier this week after the debut of the movie It.
It all began with the Babadook, a horror movie monster who became a gay icon in June — which happens to be Pride Month. As Buzzfeed points out, a photoshopped image of a Netflix movie suggestion placed the Australian horror film under "LGBTQ" movies made its way around the internet, prompting the idea that the monster in the movie was an essential gay icon. Twitter then anointed the movie monster a true gay icon and a meme was born.
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Stephen King's It, which arrived in theaters Friday, features a demonic entity named "It" that feasts on the fears of children and takes the form of a clown named Pennywise. He's very scary. He's played by Bill Skarsgård, a decidedly not scary looking specimen.
And thus, fantastic double meme was born.
Of course, every celebrity coupling comes with drama. One Buzzfeed commenter alleged that the Babadook is actually in a committed relationship with the Bye Bye Man, the villain of a 2017 horror film called The Bye Bye Man. However, that movie received terrible reviews, while The Babadook and It have both had very warm receptions from critics. Why would the Babadook date a horror villain from the lower echelons of the genre?
Buzzfeed writer Ryan Broderick also investigated a series of DMs one Twitter user received from a conservative user, apparently enraged that Pennywise might be gay. He, er, seems to have forgotten that Pennywise does not actually exist. (At least, that's what I've been telling myself.)
"Penny-Wise went out of his way to terrorize the effeminate male children. The idea that his character would support the gay agenda is absurd," he argued, employing a creative definition of the word "absurd." (Twitter user Starkrhodey provided screenshots of the conversations to the outlet.)
Others on Twitter have pointed out that It is actually a female demonic entity, based on information from Stephen King's book. There's some discrepancy on this matter. Some say It shifts into a female spider form to lay eggs. Others say It doesn't have a gender. Only Stephen King can answer this question.
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There's also the not-so-minor issue that villains in film are commonly portrayed as gay or effeminate. TV Tropes names this trope as the "depraved homosexual," and it's problematic for obvious reasons.
Still, the meme appears to have stuck. Pennywise, welcome to the meme matrix. You're going to enjoy all the Photoshop.
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