M3gan was a queer icon before the movie’s release. Now that it’s out … – The Philadelphia Inquirer

M3gan was bound to capture online queer fandom from the moment she sashayed across the blood-splattered room.

We’re talking about M3gan — part android, part doll, part meme legend — the main character in Blumhouse Productions’ and Universal Pictures’ new film, M3gan. After a girl’s parents die in a car accident, her aunt (Allison Williams), an engineer, becomes her caretaker and tasks the robot she’s working on, M3gan, to help keep her niece safe. This is a horror film, so you can imagine that plan goes poorly.

But the internet doesn’t care about that.

The internet cares about Megan’s smize. The internet cares about her perfect skin because robots don’t have pores. The internet cares about her fierceness. The internet cares about her ability to twerk and murder in one swift motion.

The internet cares so much that M3gan was deemed a queer icon back in October when the first trailers of the film dropped. As one Twitter user put it: “she came to play and slay.”

But does her status in queer icon history hold up now that the movie’s out?

Horror films’ role in queer culture

Between the original trailer being cut to a creepy version of Taylor Swift’s “It’s Nice to Have a Friend,” and clips from M3gan’s highly choreographed fight/dance scene featuring some twerks and twirls, the character’s role in pop culture discourse was cemented quickly.

“When the trailer for M3gan released, the movie saw a fair amount of memes surrounding it,” Know Your Meme Managing Editor Zach Sweat told the Inquirer. “We almost immediately noticed the character’s memetic use among LGBTQ+ meme circles in which she was often portrayed as a ‘slay queen’ of sorts with users setting the dance to various music.”

It didn’t hurt that the trailer also happened to drop on National Coming Out Day.

Megan Thee Stallion retweeted the trailer, writing, “Not being biased but I think they made this movie for me.” Her tweet received nearly 30,000 likes that day. On Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, memes began popping up featuring the creepy dance scene. Many placed contemporary pop music — like Beyoncé’s “Alien Superstar” or RuPaul’s verse on “Cattitude” — over the original scene.

Articles about M3gan’s queer icon status began cropping up in LGBTQ outlets and national news shortly thereafter.

According to Know Your Meme, M3gan memes — particularly ones of her dancing — rose in popularity because of how unexpected the dance scene was in a horror film.

Still, this isn’t the first time a horror film character has taken on new appreciation within the queer community.

“There’s something specific about these mononymous figures of horror lore that draws in queer people,” said Daily Beast writer Justin Kirkland.

Honorable mentions include the eponymous characters from Ma, Annabelle and The Babadook, which premiered in 2014 but inspired queer memes years later.

But will it last? It sure looks like it.

Critical reception of the movie has been strong so far with a 95% fresh rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Those rankings could change over time as more critics and people see M3gan. A review from the New York Times called the film a “ludicrous, derivative and irresistible killer-doll movie” with “just enough camp.”

Sweat said that while the initial M3gan meme trends were short-lived last year, his team is seeing it come back around this week.

“Social media users [are] purporting LGBTQ+ people showing up for the film in droves and memes referencing her iconic status among the community,” he said. “Since the movie is fairly trendy again right now, it’s probably a safe bet we’ll see this discourse continuing on for a bit longer and it’ll definitely stick around as a long-term association with M3gan for some.”

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