The devouring Shoggoths from the “Lovecraft Country” pilot? A squelching tip of the hat. That giant squid from “Watchmen”? Lovecraft again. The stomach monster from “Alien”? Extremely Lovecraft. Still, he remains influential, with his sinister, squishy qualities still felt across media - television, film, fiction, comics, video games, role-playing games, visual art, plushies - and multiple genres. To adapt a Lovecraft work is to reckon with a troubled and troubling legacy - blatant racism and sexual phobias blight much of his work. His brand of weird is gooey and misanthropic, with an insistence that the universe is at best indifferent to human life and at worst antagonistic. Filled with miscegenation, tentacles and unspeakable dread, his works often begin with ordinary or ordinary-seeming men drawn into extraordinary and otherworldly situations. Lovecraft, the widely cited if narrowly read pulp fiction writer from the early 20th century.īroadly - and with plenty of exceptions - Lovecraft’s stories suggest huge and unfathomable horrors lurking just beneath the surface of the mundane world. Based on Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, the series is a sideways look at the terrors of Jim Crow America that nods to and reframes the work of H.P. 16 on HBO, follows a Black family entangled in eldritch phenomena.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |