Near the beginning in episode one of HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” the protagonist, Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors), defends his affection for Edgar Rice Burroughs. A Black woman chides him for it because Burroughs’ space-traveling hero, John Carter, was a Confederate officer. “Stories are like people,” Atticus replies. “If you cherish them, you have to overlook their flaws.”
The same holds true for the author whose work inspired Matt Ruff’s novel on which “Lovecraft Country” is based. Although he labored in a fan-based subculture before his death in 1937, and was unknown in the mainstream, Lovecraft endured as the most influential horror writer since Edgar Allan Poe for bringing science fiction into his New England gothic settings. The common racism of his era is embedded in many of his stories. However, Lovecraft isn’t read for his characterizations of humankind but for the malign non-human entities that he imagined living under the sea, dwelling in dark places and lurking in parallel dimensions waiting to enter our world.
“Lovecraft Country” is an opportunity to recontextualize the author from the perspective of people he was happy to marginalize or even villainize. Middle Easterners, Pacific Islanders, Asians—the darker races and people of mixed blood were often in service to Lovecraft’s malign aliens in the stories he wrote. The series is set in the 1950s and begins as Atticus, his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) set forth from Chicago’s South Side to find Atticus’ missing father and pursue fragments of family lore that bring them into one of Lovecraft’s fabled lair of monsters, the New England woods.
What’s wrong with “Lovecraft Country” is what’s wrong with most contemporary horror films. They show too much monster—slimy things rendered in seen-it-better-before CGI. Shadows are much scarier. The all-white secret society Atticus and company stumble across isn’t convincingly realized, especially the daughter of it grandmaster, Christina (Abbey Lee), channeling ‘80s Valley Girl in her portrayal. The series gets on better footing when it returns to Chicago, where Letitia runs into trouble, spectral as well as human, when she moves into a white neighborhood on the city’s North Side.
“Lovecraft Country’s” Black cast gets its roles down right. Atticus and George are bookish devourers of pulp as well as literary fiction. The whole family, even young children, are drawn to science fiction and astronomy (a telescope sits at the kitchen window). George is editor of one of the “guide books” (Remember the 2018 film Green Book?) for “Negro travelers,” essential reading for Blacks driving not only through Jim Crow states but most of the country. They confront racial barriers everywhere—whether busses, lunch counters or “sunset towns” where Blacks aren’t tolerated from dusk through dawn. Angry white heads turn when they leave Black neighborhoods. Flashing police lights in the rear view mirror raise a cold sweat—and for good reason.
“Lovecraft Country” recreates the look of 1950s America accurately and without nostalgia, including urban summers when gushing fire hydrants brought the only relief from the sweltering heat in the age before air conditioning. The series also includes such intelligent soundbites as a snippet from James Baldwin’s debate with William Buckley at Oxford University, challenging the “system of reality” that perpetuates racism. Many movies and television shows have been derived from Lovecraft, none of them capturing the awesomeness of his cosmic horror (why didn’t Stanley Kubrick film “At the Mountains of Madness”?). “Lovecraft Country” is best when showing the everyday indignities—yes, the horror—of being stigmatized for the color of your complexion.
