Lovecraft Country

“Lovecraft Country” (2020) is a US television series based on the 2016 Matt Ruff book of the same name. It stars Jurnee Smollett and airs on Sundays on HBO Max from August 16th to October 18th 2020. Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) is an executive producer.

Disclaimer: This post is based only on the first episode – because that is all they have shown so far.

In just the first 20 minutes:

• The Green Book,
• sundown towns,
• James Baldwin voice-over,
• Gordon Parks photograph re-enactment,
• Black science fiction fans – even a female one!
• Jurnee Smollett as the female lead

I fell in love.

Our story: Atticus “Tic” Freeman (played by a hunky Jonathan Majors) is back from the Korean War, searching for his father, who was last heard of in a town across the country that appears on no government map. Tic is accompanied by Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), a writer for the Green Book, and Letitia “Leti” Lewis, a fellow science fiction fan. Aunt Hippolyta is played by Aunjanue Ellis (“Book of Negroes”), so she will probably become a main character too.

Norman Rockwell: It is set in the good old USA in the 1950s. Think Norman Rockwell paintings – with a Jim Crow overlay (underlay?), the kind where Black travellers need a Green Book so they know where it is safe for them to go. There is a scene early on at an ice cream shop that looks just like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting – but it is racially segregated and one of the White people is acting like a monkey to make fun of Our Heroes (who are all Black).

I love how it is set in the North, which likes to think racism is a Southern thing (just like how the UK likes to think racism is a US thing).

Cthulhu via Pinterest.

H.P. Lovecraft: Lovecraft means H.P. Lovecraft, the science fiction and horror writer from the early 1900s. He is best known for his Cthulhu monster (pictured). He wrote about that very town that appears on no map. My sister says that White guys say Lovecraft is Kind of Racist, which is Whitespeak for Really Racist. But Peele, reportedly, turns that on its head. You know, like where White people are the Real Monsters. Or something like that. We shall see.

HBO Max: Though they are using this show to lure people into a 7-day free trial, if my sister did not have HBO Max, I would just read the book instead. A book is almost always better than its film or television adaptation. But note that the book is 330 pages long and the show is 10 hours long (10 one-hour episodes) so, at a minute a page (my rule of thumb), they do not have to cut anything out: 600 > 330. Also, the book was written by a White man (Matt Ruff) while the show is written and run by a Black woman (Misha Green). That can make a marked difference (having seen how “Hidden Figures” was Whitewashed). It could be an actual case of Blackwashing!

Leti (Jurnee Smollett) via Tenor.

– Abagond, 2020.

Update (October 12th): Last night’s episode, 1.09, took place in the Tulsa race riot:

See also:

• Jurnee Smollett
• The Green Book
• sundown towns
• James Baldwin
• Gordon Parks
• Jordan Peele
  • Get Out
• Aunjanue Ellis
  • The Book of Negroes
• Norman Rockwell: The Problem We All Live With
• Jim Crow
• Whitespeak
• Black people as monkeys
• Hollywood whitewashing
  • Hidden Figures
• the Real Monster trope
  • Beauty and the Beast

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