The Babadook | Know Your Meme

Fandom

Fan reception to the film has been strong as well. On Facebook,The Babadook has over 160,000 likes. There is also a large amount of fan art on DeviantArt devoted to The Babadook. One notable instance of Babadook fandom was posted to Twitter on June 30th, 2016, when writer Katie Dippold tweeted about a Halloween party she attended dressed as the Babadook only to discover it wasn’t a costume party (shown below). Her tweet gained over 76,000 retweets and 146,000 likes and was covered by New York Magazine.

Gay Icon

In early 2017, a joke that The Babadook was gay began spreading through Tumblr and eventually Twitter. On December 10th, 2016, Tumblr user Taco-bell-rey uploaded a screenshot of The Babadook appearing in the LGBT section of Netflix. The post gained over 126,000 notes, and likely launched the idea that The Babadook was a gay character and icon.

The idea continued to spread throughout Tumblr as ironic, trolling discourse. On February 15th, 2017, Twitter user @Broderick uploaded screenshots of such dialogue, gaining over 5,000 retweets (shown below).

The meme drew its most attention when June, LGBT Pride Month, began. Then, the jokes about Babadook’s gay identity spread with such fervor they were covered by Mashable and Teen Vogue (examples shown below). As of June 7th, much of the Tumblr discourse around the Babadook centers around him being a gay icon.

Why Can’t You Just Be Normal?

Why Can’t You Just Be Normal? refers to a scene from the film in which the protagonist turns to her son in her car and cries “Why can’t you just be normal?”, leading the child to respond by shrieking. The scene became an exploitable where the characters are labeled as different objects.

Limited Edition Pride Blu-Ray

On June 3rd, 2019, IFC Midnight tweeted: “To celebrate #PrideMonth, we’ve teamed up with @ShoutFactory for a limited edition of THE BABADOOK. Even better than this? A portion of all sales in June go to the @LALGBTCenter. So yeah, we’re the screaming kid right now and we’re not sorry!” (shown below). The tweet garnered over 500 likes in a day. The limited edition blu-ray has a a rainbow color.

That same day, Twitter user @Keviatha responded by posting a Mr. Krabs meme about companies using rainbow colors to capitalize on Pride month (shown below, left). The tweet accumulated 50 likes in a day. The next day, @MeownTown responded to the blu-ray announcement by tweeting, “the babadook being gay is an lgbt+ joke, i’m personally really glad the creators of the movie are acknowledging a meme that us queers made. maybe it’s capitalism, but it’s hilarious capitalism.” The tweet gained over 40 likes that day (shown below, right).