[Pride 2020] Queerness And The Exploration Of Childhood Sexuality In Let The Right One In

The first time I kissed a girl, I was five-years-old. The two of us were kindergarten best friends and decided that we loved each other and we were going to get married and live in the same house forever and ever, because we had been taught by movies and television shows that when you love someone, that’s what you do. We also learned that to show someone you loved them, you kissed them. So we did, frequently, on the playground during recess.

The day we were inevitably caught (by a boy student FURIOUS that we wouldn’t kiss him too) our teacher wasn’t sure what to do with us, so she called our parents. My parents never made me feel guilty or bad about what had happened, but my friend? My friend was immediately taken out of public school and sent away to a private academy. There was nothing sexual or inherently “gay” about the two of us kissing (although, she and I crossed paths two decades later and she’s now an out and proud pansexual) but the adults in the situation, our teacher and her parents, attached the horrors of gay sex onto children trying to navigate their emotions.

Vampire films, by and large, are dripping with sexuality. One could argue that there is an inherent sexual nature to vampires due to the intimacy of their killing, pressing their mouths to erogenous zones like the side of the neck, in order to subdue their victim. The protagonists of Let the Right One In, however, are twelve. Or at least, Oskar is twelve and Eli has “been twelve for a very long time.” There’s a fine line in discussing sexuality in pre-pubescent characters between exploitation and exploration, but Let the Right One In has a very nuanced and authentic look at the developing feelings of coming-of-age.

Given the canonical age gap between the two, I’m going to be focusing heavily on Oskar’s feelings toward Eli, as diving into the romantic or sexual mindset of an ageless vampire who was forced to endure the traumatic transformation into an immortal vampire as a pre-teen, was forcibly mutilated, and has had to spend an unknown amount of years killing in order to stay alive while maintaining the appearance of a child is...far too complicated for a blog post.

Oskar is a young boy living a somewhat isolated existence in an apartment complex with his overworked mother. He attends school, only to be mercilessly ridiculed and harassed at every turn. Oskar doesn’t have any friends and spends his free-time scrapbooking newspaper clippings about murderers and fantasizing about enacting revenge on his bullies by stabbing a tree with a knife. Oskar clearly doesn’t have a safe or healthy outlet for his emotions, nor is he effectively communicating them to the world around him. There are many that read this exploration of masculinity through violence to track for angry and frustrated queer boys, which it very well may be, but it also makes a strong case as a trauma response.

This isn’t to say he is incapable of safely expressing or navigating his emotions, he just doesn’t have anyone he feels safe to confide in. Oskar is desperate for companionship of any kind, so when a mysterious 12-year-old “girl” with a peculiar smell arrives to live at his apartment complex, this is the perfect opportunity for him to finally make a friend. After just a few days, Oskar has immediately attached himself to Eli. All of his free time is dedicated to Eli, and he works harder to appease them than he has anyone else in his life.

(I will be using they/them pronouns to describe Eli)

In the middle of the film, after attacking and feeding to survive, a bloodied and snow-covered Eli flies up to Oskar’s window. He invites Eli in, they strip naked, and they lay next to him in bed. Absolutely nothing about this scene is sexual, but this is often difficult to explain to American audiences who have very Puritanical views and taboos about nudity. However, the nudity is not the focus of Oskar’s possible queerness in this moment.

After a bit of small talk, Oskar comes out and asks if Eli wants to go steady with him. Eli doesn’t understand what that means and despite everything in the film indicating he’d do otherwise, Oskar boldly expresses his confidence and clarifies by asking if Eli wants to be his “girlfriend.” Eli responds by saying, “Oskar...I’m not a girl.” Without any acknowledgement of what Eli’s statement could possibly mean, Oskar retorts, “Oh...but do you want to go steady or not?”

Every time I watch this scene I’m immediately transported back to kindergarten, kissing a girl under a slide during recess without any understanding that what we were doing could possibly be viewed as “other” by those around us.

The story takes place in October of 1981, only three months after Michael Gottlieb reported seeing clusters of pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) among gay men, leading to a report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention that has since been considered the first scientific publication regarding the virus that would later be named HIV/AIDS.

Did Oskar fully comprehend what it meant for him to be in love with “not a girl?” It’s unclear, and I feel as if the author (John Ajvide Lindqvist) intentionally left it ambiguous.

In the book, Eli’s story of gender identity is graphic and in all honesty, quite sad, but they’ve made the best they can with the life they’ve been given, similarly to other problematic trans figures like Hedwig (of the titular “Angry Inch”) and Angela Baker in Sleepaway Camp. Oskar hasn’t taken the time to assess his sexuality and therefore doesn’t identify what he “likes.” Eli’s gender identity doesn’t matter to Oskar, because in the eyes of the audience, Oskar’s sexuality is “Eli,” and whatever that may entail.

Oskar’s love and affection for Eli is of the purest sort, and if blood-sucking vampirism cannot destroy that, something as trivial as gender identity isn’t going to do it either.

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