Lovecraft Country again: a missed opportunity for true racial horror

‘View of the god, as his image, as all the legends of the Yuggoth spawn agree, meant paralysis and petrification of a single shocking kind, in which the victim was turned to stone and leather on the outside while the brain inside remained in eternal life – terribly fasted and imprisoned through the ages, and madly aware of the passage of endless periods of helpless inactivity until chance and time could complete the decay of the deceased shell and leave it exposed to death. Most brains would wake up long before this aeon-delayed release could arrive. ” – HP Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, “Out of the Aeons”

Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic – which has reminded modern society by default that it is just as vulnerable to unusual, invisible viruses as it ever was – it seems that America has been enough for a new Lovecraftian horror series , one that allayed my current fears about being powerless for the unusual hostility of the cosmos. Likewise, the country’s renewed recognition of racial injustice in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 could mean that more people than ever are ready for a Lovecraftian show that ultimately takes into account the racism of the namesake of the subgenre, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, whose prejudice against brown and black people informed in part the horror of his stories.

HBOs Lovecraft Country is not particularly focused on recreating the fear and existential fear of Lovecraft’s works. Showrunner and Underground creator Misha Green fashioned the series from the novel of the same name by Matt Ruff, as a Black repayment of the pulp plots and archetypes HP Lovecraft emerged. However, Green does not use the mythological pedigree of Ruff’s novel to criticize HP Lovecraft’s racism. Lovecraft Country is more or less a fantasy-mystery melodrama with pulp-adventure aspirations. It’s a retelling of storytelling to the extent that it puts Black characters in roles and situations where they have been historically excluded. But it’s fairer to call it a refurbishment than a refund, because Lovecraft Country remains dry looking at fantasy and occult mystery conventions.

Photo: Elizabeth Morris / HBO

The series primarily contains the trials of Black Servant Atticus Black (Jonathan Majors), when he returns to discover his family’s mystical heritage and clash with a sinister magic-wielding cult, all against the backdrop of the 1980s. Segregation-era America. With Majors joins a treasure trove of heavyweight Black talent who starred in the series, including Jurnee Smollett (Birds of prey), Michael K. Williams (The Wire), Courtney B. Vance (American Crime Story), and Aunjanue Ellis (When They See Us). Meanwhile Scandal‘s Tony Goldwin and Mad Max: Fury RoadAbbey Lee chews the landscape capable as the main antagonists of the series. But for all widths of Lovecraft CountryThe cast of the series gives the series its characters only depth.

Too much emphasis on mythologizing and portrayal expositions – the most visible impressions of Lovecraft’s fictional legacy about this series – stops the characters from behaving in ways that would shed light on their psychologies. The issue compounded is the show’s benevolent pace, which often makes the central voices of the series sensitive to its plot. Finally, Lovecraft Country gets more handle on characterization, at least for his supporting cast. Wunmi Mosaku (Luther) is a standout in a twisted, body-changing episode directed by Cheryl Dunye (Watermelon Woman). Williams, as always, pulls off a lower performance as Atticus’ father.

Along with Lovecraft CountryThe erratic characterization comes from his convincing attitude. The first five episodes span from Chicago to New England during the segregated fifties, although the specificity of this period is hardly explored for its utterly gruesome potential. While the series ‘Black Characters’ go through their cravings, they operate within a triumphant, presidential paradigm, as if the fight for civil rights had been won for a year and a half.

Each episode pits the main characters against racist opponents (some magical, like the ghosts of evil scientists, some mundane, like redlining and the police) who they eventually overcome by courage and ingenuity. The isolation and grief to which black people were subjected as a result of Jim Crow is rarely depicted; the series is firmly planted in the eyes of characters fighting monsters and shouldering persecution as if it were a temporary nuisance. Racism in Lovecraft Country is almost always portrayed as open and unhealthy – the concentrated, white clutter of Mississippi Burning instead of the annoying social death that Black people face every day. Needle Drops with Cardi B and Frank Ocean may be the series’ attempt to blur the lines between past and present, but their simplistic vision on racism is separate from both history and reality.

Somewhere in his first episode, Lovecraft Country presents their mission statement. In Atticus’ words, “Stories are like people. Love of them does not make them perfect. You just try to cherish them and overlook their shortcomings.” He adds, “But I love pulp stories.” And that’s the measure in which Lovecraft Country feels comfortable tackling the “flaws” of his influence on name-givers.

Photo: Elizabeth Morris / HBO

The show is pulp in the mold of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, with the spider being that now even black people have had the opportunity to fight demons, have high speed hunts, explore secret graves and in the to be center of magical prophecies. Many a Lovecraft derivative has given white creatives the opportunity to write pulp adventures with the occult, and there is no reason why Black creatives should not be given the same freedom to have fun with it. There’s also some shadowy joy in seeing the name of HP Lovecraft flaunted on a show that will eventually appeal to the people who love Lovecraft as “beasts” and “semi-humans.”

But since Howard Phillips Lovecraft is dead, what is really gained by using his toys to spin him in his grave? What is Lovecraft Country trying to prove? Black speculative fiction is capable of being much more than iterations of white genre stories painted with a new coat. There are so many Black experiences that still need to be given a voice in the genre sphere. To quote, not HP Lovecraft, but Ralph Ellison’s Invisible man:

‘You get pain from the need to convince yourself that you exist in the real world, that you are part of all the noise and pain, and that you strike with your fists, and you curse and you swear that they recognize you . And, alas, it is rarely successful. ”

Lovecraft Country feels like a missed opportunity to repurpose the racist fear at the heart of Lovecraft’s work to feel the specific fears, isolation and social death of black people in all corners of the world. The madness that the main characters of Lovecraft were often subjected to hardly compares to the absurd existence of Invisible manthe unnamed protagonist, that is to say the absurdity of blackness. A work that could be married with cosmic horror to Afropessimism, a framework that analyzes the legacy of powerlessness of Black people during Trans-Atlantic slavery, could portray Black’s fear and suffering in an honest, unusual way. Lovecraft Country goes with a more familiar, edible narrative, and although such an approach has its use, it leaves Black fear untouched and invisible.

The debut season of 10 episodes of Lovecraft Country debuts on HBO MAX on August 16 at 9PM ET, with new episodes airing on Sundays.