Lovecraft Country - HBO's show about shoggoths and Jim Crow

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ngl as far as the woke era of media goes this looks more interesting than most.

I've not read the original novel, but I did read the book The Mirage by the same author, Matt Ruff and it was pretty good.

I also think you can translate the Lovecraftian motif into the south, there's the novel Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs which also translates the Lovecraft motif into the south.
 
Dom Cruise said:
ngl as far as the woke era of media goes this looks more interesting than most.

I've not read the original novel, but I did read the book The Mirage by the same author, Matt Ruff and it was pretty good.

I also think you can translate the Lovecraftian motif into the south, there's the novel Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs which also translates the Lovecraft motif into the south.
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You can certainly do Lovecraftian horror with a Southern Gothic motif.

New Orleans is tailored made for Lovecraft...

But, my guess is that Lovecraft Country won't even touch the sense of nihilism and hopelessness...
 
Ihavetinyweewee said:
You can certainly do Lovecraftian horror with a Southern Gothic motif.

New Orleans is tailored made for Lovecraft...

But, my guess is that Lovecraft Country won't even touch the sense of nihilism and hopelessness...
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The north and the south are just kissing cousins of "gothic" anyway.

It's funny how it generally doesn't really work in the rest of America, although Stephen King's Children of The Corn is one big exception that does Lovecraftian in the midwest well.
 
The Nothingness said:
I do recall a part of The Call of Cthulhu involved a raid on a Cthulhu cult in Louisiana.
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I doubt that would fly in modern day because they were described as being blacks and mulattoes practicing some kind of twisted voodoo orgy. In fact most of the Cthulhu cult worldwide is portrayed as minorities, in particular swarthy sailor types, with their leadership somewhere in China.
 
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Filthy Greenskin said:
It's a shame Del Toro's Mountains of Madness film will likely never see the light of day because movie producers will only ever greenlight films with marketable monsters that fill up the screen because who needs subtlety when it comes to cosmic horror am i right? people just want to see the big spooky monsters already! and by spooky monsters it's cthulu and will always be cthulu because brand recognition, even though he's a bit of a weenie in the elder god olympics.
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The main reason IMO that we'll probably never see a good Lovecraft adaptation is that Lovecraft's themes are too reactionary. Most of his works deals with themes of societal decay, genetic determinism, and the dangers of blind scientific progress. While you can probably get away with the latter category (for now), no one would dare make a faithful adaptation of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" or "The Rats In The Walls." Hell, Cthulhu itself was even an allegory for social collapse and decay:
Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.
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Jewthulhu said:
The main reason IMO that we'll probably never see a good Lovecraft adaptation is that Lovecraft's themes are too reactionary. Most of his works deals with themes of societal decay, genetic determinism, and the dangers of blind scientific progress. While you can probably get away with the latter category (for now), no one would dare make a faithful adaptation of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" or "The Rats In The Walls." Hell, Cthulhu itself was even an allegory for social collapse and decay: Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.
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Sounds like summer 2020 to me.
 
Jewthulhu said:
The main reason IMO that we'll probably never see a good Lovecraft adaptation is that Lovecraft's themes are too reactionary. Most of his works deals with themes of societal decay, genetic determinism, and the dangers of blind scientific progress. While you can probably get away with the latter category (for now), no one would dare make a faithful adaptation of "Shadow Over Innsmouth" or "The Rats In The Walls." Hell, Cthulhu itself was even an allegory for social collapse and decay:
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the only theme I can see stepping on some peoples' toes is genetic determinism. media about societal decay performs well across the board - the big "dystopian fiction" bang still hasn't petered out.
 
Filthy Greenskin said:
The only time Lovecraftian Horror has been done well in videogames was Bloodborne which unashamedly borrowed from Lovecraft with the whole perceiving other planes of existence, dream-states, corrupt townships going bananas and 99% of the time the actual enemy are corrupted humans with big unseen gods pulling the strings. And the designs of actual great ones and their minions weren't just Cthulu clones.

It's a shame Del Toro's Mountains of Madness film will likely never see the light of day because movie producers will only ever greenlight films with marketable monsters that fill up the screen because who needs subtlety when it comes to cosmic horror am i right? people just want to see the big spooky monsters already! and by spooky monsters it's cthulu and will always be cthulu because brand recognition, even though he's a bit of a weenie in the elder god olympics.
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There was a Color Out of Space film that came out earlier this year. I hear it's good, but I hear that about a lot of things so who knows.
 
Frog Gremlin said:
the only theme I can see stepping on some peoples' toes is genetic determinism. media about societal decay performs well across the board - the big "dystopian fiction" bang still hasn't petered out.
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The Lovecraftian motif does not at all have to be connected to his racism, that's why it's idiotic for people wanting to "cancel" him because "Lovecraftian" doesn't have to have anything to do with racism.

If you ask me what the root of "Lovecraftian" means I think it's simply fear of insignificance and fear of insanity.
 
Dom Cruise said:
fear of insignificance
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very much looking forward to the "great replacement"-themed lovecraft adaption. it'd be the most faithful of its kind.

jokes aside, I definitely agree. "Lovecraftian" has essentially just become another term for cosmic horror (which makes sense, given that he was a pioneer of the genre), and doesn't necessarily need to be directly tied to his personal beliefs or cultural anxieties.
 
The first episode was good.

The main character has returned from the Korean war with a letter from his father, who has learned some weird shit about his ancestry and gone missing while looking for them (standard Lovecraft trope). Oh, and he's gone looking in Arkham, MA, which the main character recognises because he's a fan of Lovecraft. His uncle explains that it's actually "Ardham, MA", which turns out to be a lost New England town. Crappy CGI monsters show up. In the final scene, they arrive at the site of a weird cult.

So there's plenty of Lovecraft tropes so far, but I suspect that's all they are: a resource with which to discuss racism in America. It's not a bad conceit, and I liked the acting and direction.

Table Country said:
There was a Color Out of Space film that came out earlier this year. I hear it's good, but I hear that about a lot of things so who knows.
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It was okay. The practical effects were great, and reminiscent of The Thing, which is the best Lovecraft adjacent horror ever.
 
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Dom Cruise said:
I've not read the original novel, but I did read the book The Mirage by the same author, Matt Ruff and it was pretty good.
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I enjoyed Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff but haven't read anything else by him. The premises sound interesting, though. I might read Lovecraft Country, but I'm pretty pessimistic about adaptations in general, and Peele's involvement is another mark against it.
 
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