Queer Mutants Deserve Better

Boy, I did not expect I would have to write this today. But here we go.

It’s weird, feeling compelled to write this while in the middle of watching the upcoming Scoob! movie.

What a dichotomy, there.

But as I was watching that film, which begins like so many Scooby-Doo mysteries, we discover that the scary monster haunting a house is, in fact, a man. Take off his mask and there’s a human underneath. Pulling the levers. Shooting the fog machines. Stealing the money.

“I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids,” the villain would say. In Scooby-Doo, the kids persevere and aren’t silenced.

In the real world, it’s a bit more complicated.

At the end of each mystery, it never matters what mask the villains wear, because it’s just a decoy. They hide behind it, yes. They use it to their advantage. To fool. To obfuscate the truth. They use it as a tool to get away with whatever act they’re trying to pull. But at the end of the day, that “creation” still belongs to the person. The person goes to jail, not the mask. 

And this might be a strange pivot, but I bring this up because queer Drive-In Mutants deserve better. All Mutants deserve better, honestly. 

I’ve mostly kept my mouth shut since Joe Bob Briggs came into my virtual life. I enjoyed The Last Drive-In. I laughed at some of his jokes. I marveled at the encyclopedic knowledge he’d bring to the table, not only about film but philosophy and art. About humanity. It plays as a dichotomy between the “dumb redneck” persona John Bloom plays and the very astute and intelligent man underneath. It’s funny when at one point, Joe Bob Briggs can be discussing “hatchet-fu” and how many breasts are in a movie before switching on a dime to discuss Aristotle. I get the act. It’s not always for me, but I get it.

What I don’t get is the singular need to punch down, whether it’s at women filmmakers, people of color or the LGBTQ community. Particularly when there is a wide world of other, meaner and more powerful entities that could use a good Joe Bob spankin’. But that’s not the Joe Bob Briggs way.

Maybe John Bloom, the man behind Joe Bob, said it best in 1998:

“The safari jacket of testosterone that Joe Bob Briggs pulled on for his forays into sniggering at blacks, Hispanics, women, and gays is woven with two philosophical threads: no exceptions and no mercy. 

John Bloom explains the Joe Bob Briggs attitude: "Joe Bob is like a machine gun on a swivel. He swings and fires and hits this target and this target and this target at random until, finally, one of the targets screams. When a target screams, you've found the sacred cow. Then you go back and shoot it 20 more times. You identify the sacred cow, and then you set out to destroy it. Joe Bob hates everything."

This statement gets to the heart of why I’m personally not going to follow along with his schtick anymore. It’s not worth my time or effort. I’m not cancelling Joe Bob Briggs. I hate that word. “Cancelling.” But I owe it to the freedom of speech that I’m told this character is staunchly for to not silently sit here when his rhetoric, or his active Twitter army, comes at my friends. 

When someone brings up his rants, particularly towards the LGBTQ community and women, the response typically comes in one of the following flavors:

1. Do you mean Joe Bob Briggs or John Bloom? or

2. You know it’s a persona? or

3. He’s actually making fun of people who think this way or

4. He’s defending free speech.

It’s exhausting. 

But worse, it’s silencing. Joe Bob Briggs has become a stifling presence in the horror community. I cannot tell you the number of people who privately talk to me about how they feel uncomfortable but don’t know how to speak out. Or how I watch people who do speak out get bombarded for weeks with retaliation from the omnipresent Twitter crew...a crew that includes people I like and follow. 

Right now, all you have to do is post a comment or say anything questioning Joe Bob Briggs and you’ll see a mash-up of people quite raucously responding. The “nice” ones will use one of the four pre-meditated responses above. The other ones...well, they push harder. 

The goal is always the same: protect a man that doesn’t need protecting and silencing anyone who has something to say. 

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which of the above four options people punch back with. It doesn’t matter today where Joe Bob Briggs ends and John Bloom begins just as it didn’t matter in the 80s when Briggs targeted “We Are the World” by using Africans, African Americans and Mexicans as his ammunition. When he said, “cause I think we should be sending as many Negroes to college as we can, especially the stupid Negroes,” it didn’t matter if it was Joe Bob Briggs or John Bloom. 

Just like it didn’t matter when he then doubled down and sang a song, with the following lyrics:

We are the weird
We are the starving,
We are the scum of the filthy earth
So let’s start scarfin…
There’s a goat-head bakin
We’re callin it their food,
If the Meskins can eat it,
They can eat it too.”

Just like it doesn’t matter now.

I bring this up not to “unearth” something someone did in the past, but to use it as an example that at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether that was coming out of Joe Bob Briggs’ mouth or John Bloom’s. The damage was done either way, back then.

And it’s done now. 

The fact he works at Cinestate. That he’s on Shudder. That he is a guest at Film Festivals. All of this creates an omnipresence that makes the LGBTQ and the POC horror community fearful. Afraid that if they speak up or question something, a cadre of his #MutantFam will swoop in and tear them down. Or, for those who make money writing about films, that they will somehow be excommunicated since the biggest seat of horror power right now comes from Cinestate, who owns Fangoria as well as the site that Briggs writes for (For the record, and for those that need to hear it, I personally know this is not the case even without this tweet).

I know people who work at Cinestate and Fangoria. I have a fantastic working relationship with everyone I’ve talked to at both. I’m proud that Fangoria quoted me in the press materials for Porno. I gave The Standoff at Sparrow Creek a glowing review and included it in my top ten favorites from last year. The company employs incredibly empathetic people. Truly wonderful people who will reach out, DM me or email me not because they need something, but because they’re genuinely good people. People I would love to share a meal with or a toss back a few drinks with. The same goes for Fangoria, which goes out of their way to be inclusive. Ditto Shudder. Been a proud paying member of Shudder from the beginning and they employ amazing people and put out inclusive content.

This isn’t about them.

It’s about Joe Bob Briggs, spouting off some nonsense about the LGBTQ community again and again. It’s punching down. No. Worse. It’s punching down and then silencing any opposition. 

I don’t care whether it’s Joe Bob Briggs or John Bloom talking. I just don’t give a shit. It’s meaningless. The words are coming out of a living man’s mouth or fingers and it hurts people I care about. 

Take that Joe Bob Briggs mask off and you have John Bloom. And I’m tired of him getting away with it. Of silencing, whether knowingly or unknowingly, people who raise a question.

The world needs those meddling kids. I guess I have to be one, too.