Oh. “Zombie Boy” is a homophobic nickname
I guess this should’ve been pretty obvious. I mean, Will is a confirmed gay character, who is walking around town and having a mean nickname constantly hurled at him. Clearly there is some queercoding in that.
But does that mean that the nickname is homophobic in universe? If that were the case, why not just call him homophobic slurs in the first place?
The nickname Zombie Boy always was kind of strange to me as well. Why make fun of a kid for coming back to life? Wouldn’t that be a cool thing? Maybe it’s a little odd, but why be so mean about it?
Unless it’s not the only they’re making fun of him for
TW for discussion of rape below cut
To understand the intent behind the Zombie Boy nickname, we need to go back to Will’s dissapearance in season one. Our boy Troy lays it out pretty plainly what everyone in town thinks happened to Will.
Not just that Will was killed, but clarified as “killed by some other queer.” The emphasis on sexuality adding an implication to his statement. What Troy is really trying to say is that Will was raped and then killed by a gay man, otherwise why bring up sexuality at all?
And to be fair to Troy, that is kind of what happened.
But of course the town doesn’t know this. The story that was told is that Will only got lost in the woods. That was the story published in the Hawkins Post, so that’s what everyone believes, right?
This is the version of events that Lucas tells Max, and he is immediately met with skepticism from her. Lucas then tells Max not to ask Will about it because he’s very sensitive about it.
I’m not saying that the town believes that there is something supernatural going on, but rather I’m thinking that the people of Hawkins at least suspect that there is something about Will’s disappearance that is not being talked about openly. Let’s not forget that the “Zombie Boy” note that Will receives in his locker is a desecration of the news article sharing his story.
So here’s what the town initially believed happened: Will was kidnapped and raped by a gay man before being thrown into the quarry.
And here’s what the town knows: Will went missing and was found in the woods before being hospitalized. He is very sensitive about the topic and doesn’t like to talk about it. After being released from the hospital, he is now occasionally pulled out of school early for doctor’s appointments—
Oh.
I mean, it is any coincidence that all of this is happening while Reagan’s name is plastered all over town? Is it just a coincidence that the anniversary of Will’s disappearance falls right on Reagan’s reelection day?
And just to cut through all the shit and stop being vague, I’m talking about the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s, and yes I think that part of the town believes that Will has it.
I recently read a post from @emblazons that struck me with just how laden the AIDS metaphor is in season. To quote the post as best I can, there is something described like a disease attacking Will’s body and slowly killing him, and the Reagan administration government scientists are trying their best to prevent the truth from spreading and view the possible death of a queer person as a non-issue.
Starting to think about it through this lens, a “zombie” is the perfect metaphor for how Hawkins now views Will. He isn’t technically dead, but they suspect he has a disease with an incredibly low life-expectancy at the time, so he’s essentially a walking corpse.
The nickname doesn’t start and end at simply making fun of Will for having a disease. What do zombies do? They try to bite and turn other people into zombies.
The town doesn’t just see Will as someone who has been infected by someone else with an illness, but as someone who has been infected and is going to spread his illness around.
The rhetoric regarding queers as people who spread disease and kill continues in season 4, when we see Eddie reading the article that links sodomy with satanic practices, violence and murder. We then go on to see the entire town blame Eddie and his group of “satanic” outcasts for spreading death in the town. This attitude is certainly not lost on Hawkins, and the show doesn’t shy away from showing it.
The way that characters in the show use and react to Zombie Boy match this as well. There is a certain level of vitriol that comes with Zombie Boy, and the nickname is what leads Jonathan and Will into their extremely coded conversation about being a freak.
If Zombie Boy is an intentionally homophobic nickname, then does that mean that in this scene she's actually saying...?
So I actually don’t think that Snowball Girl is being intentionally homophobic here (although, saying what is essentially “Hey f*****, wanna dance?” is still CRAZY)
I think it’s less realistic if the entire town is in on this conspiracy and more believable if say, the nickname was started intentionally as a homophobic jab by some of the townsfolk, but is ambiguous enough to be picked up by more naïve kids like Snowball Girl who may not realize the actual meaning behind it. It may seem like it’s only about his ressurection on the surface, but when you peel back the layers you see just how offensive it really is.
Using a vague nickname is also very intentional by the Duffers as well. If they wanted to be subtle about Will’s sexuality before later confirming it, then having a more ambiguous moniker rather than just having the entire town call him an evil queer.
Even if the town really is just making fun of him for coming back to life and nothing else, and there isn’t actually this rampant rumor spreading across Hawkins about Will spreading disease, the heavy coding and intention from the writers is still be there.
