LOVECRAFT COUNTRY
WHY A FRESH TAKE ON CLASSIC LITERATURE IS WHAT’S NEEDED NOW – LOVECRAFT COUNTRY REINVENTS THE HORROR OF TWO AUTHORS AND THE REAL WORLD
And you thought America couldn’t be any scarier than it is now.
THE CONUNDRUM OF HOW to deal with controversial artists is having a moment right now. Plenty of contemporary creative figures whose misdeeds are coming to light are getting their reckonings in the glare of the zeitgeist. But what about those who, in the past, made seminal works, and whose deeply racist, homophobic, and/or fascist ideologies have come to light in the ensuing years? How do we separate a love for the art from the artist?
HP Lovecraft is a prime example. The 20th century American author brought the Cthulhu Mythos into existence and is considered one of the most influential writers of supernatural horror fiction. But he also was a deeply troubled misanthrope, and an unrepentant racist. What do we do regarding that overshadowing legacy today? If you’re Misha Green, the writer, showrunner and executive producer of HBO’s new horror series Lovecraft
Country, you take the opportunity to address that history and reframe it into something new and, perhaps, even more resonant.
As a writer on Heroes and Sons Of Anarchy, Green was well-versed in the power of genre, pulp and horror. But she wasn’t an admirer of all things Cthulhu. “I read Lovecraft. I didn’t love it,” Green candidly admits to SFX, during a break from post-production on the series.
“I wasn’t as crazy as the Lovecraft fans are crazy [about him]. I was also aware of his history, which kind of sours it for me. I was aware of the HP Lovecraft Award, and should we really be vaulting this person to this acclaim? But the stories are good. You can’t take that away.”
Her path to reassessment came with the way author Matt Ruff addressed it all in his 2016 horror novel Lovecraft Country. The book spurred the imaginations of Green and Jordan Peele (an executive producer on the series) to such a degree that, together with JJ Abrams, they endeavored to adapt it for television.
The framing of the novel allowed Green to mine the worthiest elements of Lovecraft’s imagination and marry them to a black point of view, providing an unrelenting look into the dark heart of America’s racist, sexist and classist history, which for the many marginalised is the very definition of horror.
Like the book, the series takes place in the ’50s, shortly after war-burdened black soldier Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) returns to the Southside of Chicago to find his missing father. He reconnects with his Uncle George (Courtney B Vance) and former schoolmate Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett), and a strange road trip ensues. But that’s where the stories’ paths diverge.
“Matt’s book is beautiful,” Green enthuses, but she explains that she didn’t want to be contained by its narrative for the series. “So, going into our writers’ room, I said, ‘This is a beautiful jumping-off place. If we just did this book, we would be successful, because it’s an amazing book.’
“But I was like, ‘Let’s reach for the stars. Let’s go further. Let’s do what the spirit of the book is doing, which is reclaiming genre for people of colour. And in doing that, where can we go? We’ve got to go to the mystery genre. We’ve got to go to the adventure genre. We’ve got to go sci-fi. We’ve got to go to horror. We’ve got to do all of it!’ And that’s just what I pitched to HBO.”
To say it’s ambitious is an understatement, but the network backed her vision because of how unique and timely it is. Right from the pilot’s opening sequence, the gloves are off in terms of how the show presents the sci-fi, utilising lush production values and cinematic visual effects to reveal Atticus amongst UFOs and Lovecraftian creatures on the European front in World War II.
“It’s a super-fun playground to play in, for me at least,” Green enthuses about the unfettered realisation of the story. “I’m like, ‘How do people not make amazing shit when they have this much money?’ It’s crazy! That blows my mind. And the layers of creativity and the level of artistry of the people you’re working with at this level.”
But for all those bells and whistles, Green is equally proud of the work she and her writers have done to shift the focus in telling genre stories. It’s not unlike what writer Damon Lindelof and actress Regina King did last year with Watchmen’s black perspective
Let’s reach for the stars. Let’s go further. Let’s do what the spirit of the book is doing
on superheroes. “I think a lot of people easily put themselves in other people’s shoes,” Green says, of how open she thinks audiences are to new perspectives. “We [black people] do it all the time when we watch movies and TV. We’re always putting ourselves into white men’s shoes. You know what I mean? We’re so versed in it. And you can look at why that is happening, because the people who control what gets made are white men.
“I understand that, but I also trust the people that look like me. And I hire those people. So I think that more and more different voices are getting out there. It’s all about us having to change what we’re centring the narrative on. Instead of centring it on white men, it should be centred on making sure that lots of voices are being heard.”
AFTER DARK
Lovecraft Country does exactly that, as the majority of the faces on screen are black, with the narrative told from their perspective, and propelled forward by their actions. Atticus and Leti, in particular, are the heroes of their own story. “This is a family drama,” Green clarifies. “It’s gonna be epic, and it’s gonna have spectacle. It’s gonna be bananas, but at the end of the day, it’s about these people and their secrets and their shame, and how they speak up and release it to come together and fight and win.”
The series also uses some terrible, real history to augment the more fantastic and heightened elements of Atticus, Letitia and George’s heroes’ journey. For example, Green cites the concept of “sundown towns”, used in many southern states to keep black people under white control by, for example, banning them from being within the city limits after sunset. It’s featured in the pilot, but Green admits that she was unaware of the practice until she read about it in Ruff’s book. “That was the first time that I learned about sundown towns, and I was like, ‘This is fucking insane!’ You would write this in a horror story, and people would be like, ‘Oh, come on. That’s not real.’ There’s the connection to the genre right there, easily. And then, it’s that the monsters are going to be the people. We want to be relieved, almost, when the real monsters come.
“That, to me, is when we’re firing on all cylinders, because you have the genre on top of the real history. When it’s all working, I’m excited because I also want to be scared. I also want to feel the emotional depths of the real-life world and watch these people overcome this. Let’s see what happens!”
Green hopes audiences end up just as excited as she is about seeing what happens next for these characters – and for others like them, because she has a lot of plans… “There’s so much of this genre that has not included people of colour. And it’s not just black people. There’s also so many other people of colour that don’t get any stories told, or chances to be seen either. We don’t have to just make it black and white. So, in the idea of reclaiming the genre space for people of colour, there’s multiple seasons that can happen. I think of Battlestar Galactica. That really introduced me to this idea that at the end of the season you can twist completely to a whole ’nother season, and then twist completely to a whole ’nother season and a whole ’nother way.
“You can spend time with these characters, but the story morphs and changes. And you can still be interested, even though it’s not the exact thing you got in the first season. So I see Lovecraft going for many seasons in that respect of surprise, moving forward, and changing the game in genre. There’s so much to do with that.”
Lovecraft Country begins airing on 17 August on Sky One/Now TV.