Black Christmas, Barb, & Me
By: Garrett Ghostly
Tags: Queer, Trauma, Christmas, Film, Horror

I didn’t see Black Christmas (1974) until my late-twenties. Even with an early love of the horror genre, it was just one of those films that had somehow eluded me year after year, holiday season after holiday season. But one December, at a renovated movie palace back east, I got my chance.

It was a horror classic, I knew that much. But I’d seen other classics before. Night of the Living Dead (near perfection), The Exorcist (meh), American Werewolf in London (a fun chore). And as the grainy title scene flickered to life, I figured this classic too would simply find its place along that spectrum. I’d either love it, hate it, or toss it somewhere in-between. But an hour and thirty-eight minutes later, I struggled to place it.

I went through the motions of leaving the theater then. Shuffling out of my seat, throwing away my empty popcorn bag, taking a much needed trip to the restroom. Exiting out into the cold, I agreed with my friend that I enjoyed the film, but in actuality I was left digesting the experience well into the night.

It was the somber tone punctuated with bits of campy humor, and the carefully constructed tension leading up to every kill, and the glow of holiday lights against the blackness of winter. As someone more familiar with the garish and chaotic slashers of the 1980’s, I was entranced by Black Christmas’s style in almost every way. But beyond the moody aesthetic and the quality storytelling, I realized I registered something more. Something that resonated with me and felt uncomfortably familiar.

I don’t often get wrapped up in the characters I consume. Certainly, there are plenty I love and admire and root for, but I rarely find myself invested in them beyond the story. Even rarer do I relate to them on a deeper, personal level.

This was not the case with Barb, the sarcastic and fiery sorority sister, played by the eternally beloved Margot Kidder.

Barb is a doomed character in Black Christmas; you can feel it from her introductory scenes in the film’s first act. As she spits out vulgarities and downs glass after glass of brown liquor, it’s clear she’ll succumb to the killer’s evil intentions. But the film, thankfully, isn’t content to let her exist as some tired cliche or unimaginative body for the count. Doomed as she may be in the context of the genre, Barb is a fully fleshed out character with her own motivations and personality and faults… and she reminds me a lot of myself.

Perhaps it’s her crude, somewhat off-putting humor. Perhaps its the strained, sad way she speaks to her mother on the phone. Perhaps its the way she seems restless and vulnerable in private, but lively and unaffected in the presence of others. Perhaps it’s all these things and more. (Spoiler: it’s all these things and more.)

There’s a beautiful sadness about Barb, which she carries around like she carries a rocks glass full of whisky, prominently and protectively. It’s a sadness that everyone knows is there, that even she knows is there, but she fights to keep it hidden behind her words and actions. I can relate.

I’m not an emotional person, to say the very least. I rarely cry or let myself feel down or disappointed. I keep friends and family at an arm’s length, if not further, to avoid being affected by anything they may do to or for me. When things get “too real”, whatever that means, I’m quick to use humor to skirt around it, or harsh sarcasm to deflect it. And, if worse comes to worse, I’ll throw up a wall of silence or of whatever venomous words I can muster. You know. All those super healthy coping mechanisms that come from a childhood filled with neglect and low-level trauma.

Though there’s no discussion of Barb’s past in the film, to me it was apparent. She was the grown child of immature parents, much like myself. Raised in a home where her emotions and sense of self were cast aside in order to make room for the whims and needs of those around her. And now, in the film’s modernity, she was a living consequence of that upbringing. A lonely, yet functional alcoholic, constantly cycling between wanting to connect with those around her, realizing she doesn’t know how, resigning herself to loneliness, and finding an odd, prideful strength in that resignation.

Again, I can relate.

You don’t have to look far and wide to discover that Barb is also a queer icon. It’s been discussed plenty of times by fans, especially over the last twenty years or so when queer horror stopped being a sub-genre relegated to the margins of horror and started coming into its own.

Barb is a character who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. She isn’t beholden to social constraints or patriarchy-endorsed pleasantries. She discusses sex openly, jokingly, and wears a loose blouse that could easily be mistaken for a man’s button-up. For a woman in 1974, the fearlessness to engage in these behaviors was… unexpected, to say the least. These traits have led audiences have read Barb’s character as lesbian, or as bisexual, and I (a gay man myself) am among them.

In my opinion, a hefty portion of Barb’s despondency comes from hiding her true self. It’s clear, from what the film does show us, that she downplays the strained relationship she has with her mother, but many fans have concluded that she hides much more.

It’s Queer Coding 101 perhaps, but there’s a sense of tribulation and adversity a lot of queer people carry. You can sometimes catch it harbored in our eyes, and we’ve learned to recognize it in each other. I catch this constitution in Barb’s eyes as well, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.

Almost a decade later and I’ve rewatched Black Christmas every holiday season. And with each viewing I’m reminded of how much I connect with Barb. Sometimes it’s a comforting feeling, sometimes it’s odd and unnerving, but the impact never seems to diminish. If anything, I feel closer to her now than I ever have before.

Because I realize we share more than our resentments and mannerisms. We also share a journey. Somehow making it through the long year only to find ourselves still discontented, yet hellbent on to persevering, come Christmastime. Sure, her journey unfortunately ends at the sharp end of a glass unicorn, but I don’t exactly end my year reveling in happiness and cheer myself.

I expect Barb has told those around her to keep their sympathies to themselves about as much as I have. We learned long ago to live without them, much less expect them. But what I think we both strive for, from our friends and family and lovers, in her fictional universe and in my real world, is understanding.

Understanding that our bitterness can compliment the sweetness of others. That our past pain is our current strength. And that if we truly didn’t care for you, you wouldn’t be in our lives.

It sounds complicated, and it absolutely is. This entire column, in fact, is complicated, even to me as I’m writing it.

But sometimes complicated works.

It works for me. It works for Barb.

It works for us.