The Babadook Gets Limited Edition Blu-Ray for Gay Pride

IFC Midnight announced on Twitter that they’ve released a limited, gay pride edition. Even better? All proceeds will go to the LA LGBT Center, the county’s largest and most innovative center of its kind.

The special rainbow-slipcovered Blu-rays are currently available on Shout Factory’s website, but get ’em quick as there’s only 2,500 copies.

The Babadook was appropriated by queers almost from jump, beginning in 2017, when Vox, in an article entitled: How the Babadook became the LGBTQ icon we didn’t know we needed said,

“Mister Babadook, as the figure is referred to in the movie, is queer in the most empirical sense. Its existence is defiance, and it seeks to break down the borders of acceptability and establishment.”

One of the earliest, most popular queer readings of The Babadook surfaced in October 2016, when Tumblr user Ianstagram posted a thought complaint: “Whenever someone says the Babadook isn’t openly gay it’s like?? Did you even watch the movie???” He added on December 13, “Carol (2015), unlike The Babadook, was not a gay movie and was about a scary monster bothering a blonde, stressed-out mom.” To date, the post has received over 91,000 likes and reblogs.

“Haunting a small white family in an Australian suburb is a radical act, and the Babadook did that,” John Paul Brammer, a journalist and queer Babadook enthusiast, told Vox. “While I must make it clear that I was not the first to acknowledge the Babadook’s burgeoning status as a queer icon, I do count myself among the most vocal supporters of the movement to recognize the Babadook as a radical representation of queerness.”

Some say that Mr. Babadook was officially canonized when one of our emerging queer icons and YouTuber Tyler Oakley posted the following.

Mr. Babadook seems to have embraced his identity since and was last seen canoodling with Pennywise the Clown.

“Whatever the reason, the stars of these movies are gay and they’re a couple now and that’s it. You will recall, previously, that the Babadook experienced an unlikely reawakening earlier this year and was transformed through sheer force of internet will into an LGBT icon. Those same powers are at work on Pennywise and it’s over, this is a thing now. ” The Onion’s A.V. Club

Mr. Clown, himself a burgeoning queer icon since the studio wide release of Stephen King’s It, was not available for comment and no wedding date has been announced.