When I first saw The Babadook, I wrote that the monster therein was, to my eyes at least, a metaphor for grief. What I apparently missed was that all that tapping and flapping of black wings in this masterful movie was a flying, swooping LGBT icon. Somehow this transformation of fortunes has taken place online, because… where else? A Tumblr post has “Ianstagram” claiming the Babadook—which lives in the dark and forbidding suburban home of a widow and her young son—as “a man who fearlessly and proudly loved other men in spite of a society telling him that his love was wrong—like, watch the movie??” This, when I read it, I took as a joke, because as someone (I hope) keenly aware of cultural gay signals, I had deduced nothing gay, closeted and unable to same-sex-love about the Babadook—unless being gay now also means being a monster and scaring the shit out of lonely widows who come to live in the place you call home.

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