Did Ti West cut an entire gay subplot from Maxxxine?

Ti West’s new horror-thriller Maxxxine, the third film in his trilogy beginning with X and Pearl, consists of an odd element that’s straightforward to overlook, since nobody ever remarks on it: The title character’s finest pal, Leon (Moses Sumney), has a forged on one arm. It’s grubby and inked-up, suggesting that his arm was damaged far sufficient prior to now that he’s had loads of time to get it signed and soiled from use, however not far sufficient again that it’s healed. On prime of that, his glasses are damaged and held along with prominently positioned tape. What occurred to him isn’t a part of this story — however there are hints of it on the display.

Viewers study little or no about Leon over the course of Maxxxine, regardless that he’s clearly meant to be a significant a part of her life, as one notably emotional scene suggests. Piecing collectively what we do study him — notably from parts that don’t totally add up except you’re studying between the traces — it appears like both Maxxxine had a Leon subplot that was trimmed out in some unspecified time in the future, or West desires us to assemble the puzzle items to select up on what’s occurring with him. Let’s dig into the clues.

[Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Maxxxine.]

X, an ode to Seventies horror films like The Texas Chain Noticed Bloodbath, facilities on the doomed manufacturing of a porn film being shot on a rural Texas farm in 1979. Its featured participant: Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), a ruthlessly bold wannabe film star whose motto is “I will not accept a life I do not deserve.” In that film, Maxine survives a bloodbath of the movie crew, engineered partly by one of many embittered, aged farm house owners, Pearl (additionally performed by Goth). The second movie, Pearl, is a flashback to when Pearl (Goth once more) was younger and had her personal ambitions of stardom, and it’s visually styled after basic ’50s musicals.

Maxxxine, going down after Maxine’s escape in X and her arrival in Hollywood, is ready in 1985. Like the opposite two films, it takes visible and narrative inspiration from films made throughout the period it portrays — notably Brian De Palma’s 1984 slasher-thriller Physique Double. That turns into related to the Leon story partly as a result of West says the film was impressed by the period’s ethical panic. As West put it in a Q&A after a current advance screening of the film:

[Maxxxine is] paying homage to the increase of residence video [in the 1980s] and issues like that. In 1985, there was an incredible quantity of ethical outcry about censorship, and about lyrics and music resulting in folks killing one another and committing suicide, and in horror films being too violent, or films being too violent basically. Or children gaining access to issues they shouldn’t have. And so there’s this weirdly puritanical second in the course of the ’80s, in response to issues like “video nasties” in England.

That ethical panic over display violence conflated with an ethical panic over the AIDS epidemic, and a backlash against gay Americans stemming from fear of AIDS. All of which leaves Leon in an period the place queer folks on display in mainstream films had been more likely to be both predators or victims. That was very true in horror films, which tended to deal with them in notoriously exploitative ways. And that’s related as a result of, whereas nobody in Maxxxine ever says the phrase “gay,” Leon is coded as a queer character.

We solely know a number of issues about Leon: He runs a video retailer, and is aware of quite a bit about films — sufficient to casually rattle off an inventory of film stars who obtained their begin in horror movies. Maxine lives in an house proper above that retailer, which in all probability explains how they obtained to know one another. They’re such shut pals that when she lastly will get her massive break in a Hollywood film, directed by revered up-and-comer Elizabeth Bender (performed by Elizabeth Debicki), she runs straight to Leon to inform him. However the proximity of his retailer and her house doesn’t absolutely clarify their relationship — as he mutters underneath his breath at one level when she leaves his retailer, he believes she solely likes him as a result of he’s the one man she is aware of who “isn’t trying to get into [her] pants.”

A later scene wherein Maxine and Leon each go to sleep whereas watching Bender’s breakout horror film The Puritan, with Maxine’s head cushioned in Leon’s lap, suggests a cushty bodily intimacy and a excessive degree of belief between them. Does that imply he’s gay? It wouldn’t in 2020s Hollywood, the place it’s a bit extra accepted that women and men are able to friendship, and that informal bodily contact isn’t at all times sexual.

However within the language of Nineteen Eighties films, it’s unequivocal coding. And within the language of Maxxxine, a gender-conscious horror film the place enticing girls are largely forged as prey for monstrous males, it’s even clearer. If he isn’t among the many ranks of males who wish to exploit, violate, management, or dismember Maxine — if he isn’t a leering lech who sees all girls when it comes to intercourse or violence — it might solely be as a result of he’s gay. The one man a girl in an ’80s exploitation thriller might be secure round is one who isn’t desirous about girls in any respect.

Picture: A24/YouTube

Should you take that as a given, it abruptly explains a number of extra issues that aren’t overtly defined within the film. One occurs when a barely glimpsed man comes into the video retailer late at evening and Leon turns somber, tells him one thing like “I don’t do that anymore, this is just a video store,” and kicks him out, closing the store up behind him. The opposite comes when the villain, a leather-clad slasher who till that time has solely focused girls, hacks up poor Leon in a sequence that’s a bit bit Brian De Palma homicide (full with paint-like, too-bright blood and too-obvious gore make-up), and a bit bit “Detective Arbogast meets his end in Psycho” (full with a straight-down-the-face slash that performs like a direct visible reference).

What’s occurring in that scene? Why does the killer goal Leon particularly? What did the opposite stranger need, and why did Leon flip him away? And what does that damaged arm should do with it? Contemplate this narrative. There aren’t sufficient clear clues to verify or deny any of this, however it could a minimum of pull collectively all of the narrative items Maxxxine leaves scattered round.

The killer, Maxine’s estranged father Ernest, is revealed as a televangelist sort pushed by self-righteous non secular mania. He’s carrying round a basic Madonna-whore advanced perspective towards girls, and he’s afraid his beloved daughter has become the latter, however desires to verify her as or convert her to the previous. He’s been torturing, branding, and murdering Maxine’s strip membership co-workers in what he sees as punishment for his or her sins — a basic archetype of religious hypocrisy, designed to be laughed at for his grotesque thought of Christian righteousness as a lot as feared.

Leon is gay and largely closeted, as he’d should be to remain secure throughout an period when conservative and non secular management was aggressively drumming up anxiety about gay men, resulting in a new wave of hate crimes against them. As a result of it’s a harmful time to be out and open, Leon is both utilizing the video retailer for nameless hookups, or truly working as a hustler on the aspect — a possible situation in Maxxxine’s heightened atmosphere of exploitation, the place everybody in Los Angeles is peddling their our bodies in a technique or one other.

Picture: A24/YouTube

Then he has an encounter that goes incorrect. Possibly one among his purchasers assaults him, or possibly (like Maxine earlier within the film) he’s attacked by a stranger who sees him as an outlet for frustration. He finally ends up with a damaged arm, and a brand new willpower to keep away from conduct which may make him a goal. When one among his outdated purchasers exhibits up on the retailer, he says he’s carried out with that a part of his life, whether or not meaning turning methods or simply hooking up.

When Ernest kills Leon, it isn’t a random assault or a warning to Maxine, it’s as a result of Ernest has been staking out the shop, is aware of Leon is gay, and considers him yet one more sinner to be punished. It isn’t a coincidence that he kills Leon proper after one among Leon’s outdated hookups exhibits up — it’s West giving us a fast reminder that the one man who doesn’t wish to get into Maxine’s pants has one thing else occurring together with his intercourse life.

Does Ernest kill Leon out of malignant homophobia, for corrupting Ernest’s supposedly pure daughter together with his evil gay presence? Or does he need him out of the way in which, as a result of Ernest is constructing as much as kidnapping Maxine? Is it a warning for her, on condition that Ernest is consciously terrorizing her? Or simply one other exploitative aspect within the movie? That’s far more than West tells us. There’s quite a bit about Leon that doesn’t get addressed on this film, with a purpose to maintain him backgrounded so West can give attention to Maxine’s story.

And on condition that her story is expressly about how ruthless she is, how keen she is to let go of something and anybody to get the life she thinks she deserves, having a superb pal in her life that she likes and trusts is a story velocity bump. Possibly she wanted to lose Leon, and the skinny connection to humanity he represented, with a purpose to attain her ultimate kind. Possibly that’s what that ultimate shot of her faux severed head on a bloody mattress on the set of her film actually means — she’s achieved every little thing she needed, however she couldn’t get there till most of her was sliced away little by little, whether or not by the trauma of X, the demise of her pals and father in Maxxxine, or her personal acutely aware decisions.

In the identical means, possibly West supposed extra for Leon, however needed to largely cut him out of the story to get right down to necessities. (Polygon reached out for remark, and can replace if we hear again.) Both means, all of the bizarre little clues round him counsel that there’s extra to his story than what we obtained within the ultimate cut.

Maxxxine is in theaters now.