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

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dunno, i watched the first 5 minute where the black guy is just dreaming about the war, then every pulp fiction shit happened from war of the world to flying saucers and then he dreamed of a black man wearing baseball gear and cleaved a giant monster in two with a baseball bat then bam out of dream sequence and they already start talking about jim crow and fuck whiteys.

I just tuned out, i dont need another movie or tv show of peele figuratively bashing the viewers over the head with a baseball bat about MUH RACISM!!! BUT with at thin veneer of lovecraft monster mixed in. (the monster itself isnt really what makes lovecraftian horror interesting).

If anyone still recommends it, i might attempt to push myselfto watch out it, but i got better stuff to waste my with.
 
Hellion said:
Irrespective of the series as a whole, does anyone else end up feeling slightly ambivalent about Lovecraftian Horror in visual media (video games, tv/film etc.)? I feel sometimes that seeing things directly on screen can detract from a core tenet of the genre, namely that of unknowable, primordial horror.
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Games like Silent Hill and Pathologic manage to at least get the atmosphere, because the "enemy" is this ineffable thing that you never directly see or fight (the town and the sand plague) which meshes with Lovecraft's own vision of cosmic horror as the terror of being a speck of dust riding on a blue and green marble in the impossibly vast, hostile ocean that is the universe. It's as much the realization of one's own insignificance as tentacles and insanity.

Ihavetinyweewee said:
You can certainly do Lovecraftian horror with a Southern Gothic motif.
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Now I'm just imagining Flannery O'Connor's work with a Lovecraft veneer, and it's working well. The Misfit could slot into a Lovecraft story without missing a beat. It would be much less New England, though, so I'm imagining isolated country houses with dark secrets and soul-crushing humidity instead of fog, and so on. O'Connor herself combined unintuitive elements (Catholic in the Deep South to start) so you could play that up to increase the sense of off-ness.

cecograph said:
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.
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Wait, so this is a universe where Lovecraft's works exist, but are factual (more or less) and the main character has read them and...

...and this is the premise of Haiyore! Nyarko-San. I think I'll just re-watch that instead of putting up with Peele's "BLACKITY BLACKITY BLACK Y'ALL" horseshit.
 
Hellion said:
Irrespective of the series as a whole, does anyone else end up feeling slightly ambivalent about Lovecraftian Horror in visual media (video games, tv/film etc.)? I feel sometimes that seeing things directly on screen can detract from a core tenet of the genre, namely that of unknowable, primordial horror.
Click to expand...
One of my favourite styles in Lovecraft is where there are weird horrors, which get concrete descriptions, but at the end, there's a realisation or hint that there is something far more ancient behind it all, and that is left unknown. For example, there's plenty of standard fare monstrosities in Mountains of Madness, but the truly unsettling thing about that story is whatever the fuck Danforth saw, of which we have no idea.

In roughly that vein, I thought The Void was decent. There were monstrosities, a cult, body horror, a mad doctor who's tapping into cosmic powers to bring back a loved one. But it was the ending that was awesomely weird: the main characters fall through the void into a weird desolate world with an unexplained giant black pyramid.

It wasn't perfect, but I think it shows how to do this style of horror.
 
Bessie said:
I enjoyed Bad Monkeys by the 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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The Mirage was pretty fascinating and felt like a capstone on the "post 9/11 era" to me.
 
Dom Cruise said:
The Mirage was pretty fascinating and felt like a capstone on the "post 9/11 era" to me.
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I'll have to check it out. Bad Monkeys was quick but fun. Lots of love for Philip K. Dick.

Reading my post, I apparently wrote "the Ruff" rather than "Matt Ruff". Thanks for replying or I never would have noticed.
 
Krokodil Overdose said:
Wait, so this is a universe where Lovecraft's works exist, but are factual (more or less) and the main character has read them and...

...and this is the premise of Haiyore! Nyarko-San. I think I'll just re-watch that instead of putting up with Peele's "BLACKITY BLACKITY BLACK Y'ALL" horseshit.
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Not sure can say Peele is responsible for this, as its based on the book.


I watched first episode. I liked it. Nothing amazing but I felt it was good.
 
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 alright for a B-movie. Nic Cage was pretty good and I think they captured the essence of the story pretty well. I enjoyed it and there were some ups and downs.
 
If anyone wants to see actual adaptations the HPL Historical Society made movie adaptations of The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. Both are black and white, with the CoC being silent movie just as it would have been when Lovecraft was alive.
 
The unoriginal, repetitive cunts in Hollywood hate Lovecraft so much they can't so much as speak his name without chastising him. They also can't stop riding his big, beautiful dick.

Happy birthday, H.

It's going pretty much as you anticipated. :/
 
Is there a more over used cliche than "racism/bigotry was the real monster?"
 
When I tell people the actual Lovecraft was incredibly racist and that racism shows in his work, the default reaction I get is bewilderment. It's amusing in a dark way.

The one thing Lovecraft hated and feared more than any indescribable horror from beyond space and time was niggers.
 
I haven't seen the first episode yet, but the trailers make it look like, black people are awesome perfect angels, who wouldn't hurt a soul, while white people are all terrible, vile, racist and more dangerous than world-ending lovecraftitan monsters.

Typical Jordan Peele Pro Segeragation I mean Anti Racism stuff. I wonder how his white mom thinks of all this.
 
BipolarPon said:
I haven't seen the first episode yet, but the trailers make it look like, black people are awesome perfect angels, who wouldn't hurt a soul, while white people are all terrible, vile, racist and more dangerous than world-ending lovecraftitan monsters.

Typical Jordan Peele Pro Segeragation I mean Anti Racism stuff. I wonder how his white mom thinks of all this.
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Peele mom burned the coal, so im guessing shes pretty on board with that stuff.
 
Dr W said:
When I tell people the actual Lovecraft was incredibly racist and that racism shows in his work, the default reaction I get is bewilderment. It's amusing in a dark way.

The one thing Lovecraft hated and feared more than any indescribable horror from beyond space and time was niggers.
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I guess the cat named Niggerman in Rats in the Walls was too subtle.
 
Hellion said:
Irrespective of the series as a whole, does anyone else end up feeling slightly ambivalent about Lovecraftian Horror in visual media (video games, tv/film etc.)? I feel sometimes that seeing things directly on screen can detract from a core tenet of the genre, namely that of unknowable, primordial horror.
Click to expand...

The only game I've ever seen that did it right was Eternal Darkness, and even that couldn't get the "unspeakable horrors" thing right because nobody could get it right by definition.

Shame about Shadow of the Eternals never getting made. You might consider that an earlier example of this era of (ugh) "cancel culture"/mob behavior, as the game was torpedoed by distrust of Dyack (despite him not having any control of the finances) and through guilt by association (of the co-writer who was outed as a child molester).
 
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Dr W said:
When I tell people the actual Lovecraft was incredibly racist and that racism shows in his work, the default reaction I get is bewilderment. It's amusing in a dark way.
Click to expand...
The only people I know who are fans of Lovecraft (as in, they've actually read his stories) know the guy was a racist, and we still think the claims about racism showing in his fiction are overblown.
 
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