Each week Joe Lipsett will highlight a key scene or interaction in Don Mancini’s “Chucky” series to consider how the show is engaging with and contributing to queer horror.
Last week the discussion of episode two focused on how Chucky (voiced by Brad Dourif) used his non-binary, gender fluid child as a bridge to connect to Jake (Zackary Arthur). I observed that it was a great moment of representation for a character that the franchise hasn’t publicly addressed in many years, but there’s also a dark angle to what Chucky is trying to do with Jake, namely to turn him into a killer.
“I Like To Be Hugged” takes the latter element and runs with it (quite literally in some scenes). This third episode of Chucky is pointedly less about Jake and more about Chucky than the two previous episodes, although both Jake and Chucky do embark on killer missions. As Chucky orchestrates a scenario that gets him closer to Lexy (Alyvia Alyn Lind) via her younger sister Caroline (Carina Battrick), Jake works out his (rightful) aggression about the queen bee.
Most of this is played as either thrilling diversion, such as the gotcha moment when Jake nearly stabs an identically dressed Junior (Teo Briones), or as comedy, like when Jake repeatedly stabs what remains of his art piece from the first episode, now adorned with a Lexy wig.
But what Chucky is doing, and how it is presented, gives me pause.
Throughout the first two episodes, there have been plenty of glimpses of young Charles Lee Ray (David Kohlsmith). The vignettes have frequently acted as framing devices, bookending the beginning or the end of episodes. In “I Like To Be Hugged”, writers Don Mancini and Kim Garland sprinkle more of Chucky’s backstory throughout, narrated in voice-over by Chucky as he dictates to Jake the details of his very first kill.
The language here is vital: Chucky uses phrases that are interchangeable with losing one’s virginity, immediately equating the act of killing with sex. This makes sense – a lot of the discussion about slashers conflate sex with death (see: every analysis of the Final Girl in existence). The difference is that “I Like To Be Hugged” is putting a LGBT spin on this because it involves a young, impressionable queer boy developing a friendship/mentorship with an older, predatory serial killer.
And therein lies the discomfort: at episode’s end, it is revealed that young Charles Lee Ray committed his first murder in an effort to impress the serial killer who broke into his house and murdered his father. Charles does so by murdering his mother, with whom he is hiding in a closet (in a queer text, that’s significant). Hell, the episode even ends with a quip about nature vs nurture, which brings to mind issues of LGBT rights and acceptance.
The reality is that predatory older men adopting sexually codified language to proposition boys into becoming like them, even when the older man is trapped in the plastic body of a knee high doll, has icky connotations. In the real world, homophobes have long tried to wield the narrative about gay men who prey on young and/or underage men in an effort to “convert” them as a means to brew fear and mistrust.
That’s not quite the world we see in Chucky. The serial killer who murdered Chucky’s father isn’t queer coded, and while Chucky himself supports the queer agenda, his primary orientation is more homicidal than anything else. Still, there’s no discounting the uncomfortable connection between murder and (gay) sexuality in Chucky and Jake’s relationship in this third episode and how easily it could be misinterpreted.
As a gay man, Don Mancini is undoubtedly aware of these issues, and thus far he has steered this very queer franchise through far more turbulent waters than this. Out of context from the rest of the semester, this isn’t a great development, but it speaks to the challenges of watching and analyzing serialized TV episode by episode.
This aspect of this storyline may well turn into nothing. Or it may be the start of something the whole series hinges on. Only time will tell.
Chucky airs Tuesdays on Syfy and USA Network. For more coverage, see Meagan’s review of episode three.