Never actually read any Lovecraft but given that the show explicitly and consciously features Lovecraft’s poem “On the creation of the n***”, few watching the show should be baffled, at least not for lack of knowledge about how Lovecraft felt about Black people.
In a way this project is an opposite response to so-called “cancel culture” (which to some degree Montrose had represented when he had caught Tic reading Lovecraft. Tic, as our stand-in, grants us permission to enjoy that which a hateful person has created, but throughout the show claims the creation and uses it against the hateful beliefs of its creator.
Sorry to double post but if there is a message that seems to be it. The author and show runners claiming ownership of Lovecraftian horror, Tic of the oppressors’ magic, Leti of the house (her name on the deed now so get the fuck out) … it is the repeated theme. At least so far.
And the title is a play on that theme, it can mean Lovecraft Country, a fantastical world where Lovecraft horrors play out, but also that the US is a Lovecraft Country; it’s why a basement in Boston connects to a house in Chicago, why Massachusetts cops have southern accents. It’s all one big horror.
(bolding mine) Not only did she look Ozark, she looked like the twin sister of Jason Bateman. But apparently, she’s not.
I’m only up to episode 2 so I’m stopping reading this thread here. But I found that a bit disappointing – if everything is an illusion and people come back from the dead…where’s the drama? Hope this was an aberration.
I just caught up with episode four, which I found pretty meh, though certainly the very last seconds raise a question or two. I do like the show overall, certainly the themes & the music, and Jurnee Smollett is terrific, but I struggle with Tic’s acting, and with the constant need of the writers to add internal conflict to an already dramatic narrative…it just feels like filler sometimes. You’ve already got white people/the police, and otherworldly Demons coming after you… For chrissake people, pull it together.
Langston League is curating an unofficial Black History syllabus focusing exclusively on the Black innovations and Black history mentioned in each episode.
Yeah, I thought tonight’s episode was way better than last week. Last week was straight out of the Goonies and felt slapped together. Tonight’s was really interesting and disturbing.
And I only expected the reveal because someone on Primetimer had guessed that earlier, I never would have expected that myself.
Yeah I really enjoyed the horror concept of inhabiting another skin, but from the point of view of the inhabitor. And the concept of the black woman using the currency of whiteness was fantastic! The Montrose Freeman storyline was pretty good as well. Though the Atticus and Tic one was meh.
Just to clarify, I didn’t suspect the surprise until tonight’s episode. But once the potion was introduced, it was basically a “Oh, I see what they’re doing” moment.
This may have been my least favorite episode. I’m still struggling with the decision to introduce Yahima, then have Montrose immediately kill her in what I guess is at least partially an act of self-hate that resolves only an episode later in a convenient emotional resolution. Also, I admit, the actual metamorphoses were disturbing enough that I had to flip away…yes, I get the metaphor of how far that body is from her real one, but I don’t really need to witness it in extensive detail.
And speaking of Montrose’s struggles, Ruby’s revenge is a little, I dunno, too on theme in a way.
I also really appreciated that Ruby, while Hillary, ended up being harder on the black sales associate than other white managers may have been. Undoubtedly it was due to Ruby knowing she was better qualified. But I was thinking Hillary/Ruby may have gone easier on her, or been nicer to her, because she knew what it was like to be black, but as Hillary she was perfectly fine being hard on the sales associate and just listening to the racist locker room banter among the white women. Kind of felt like the Stanford prison experiment a bit - once she was white, she took on white attitudes.
The theme of claiming the tools of oppression as yours, including to fight back with, continues in this ep btw. I’m thinking more the stiletto heels than even Ruby reclaiming her Blackness. The risks and dangers to your own morality when you use those tools as your own as well.
Question re William/Christina - I am assuming that she created him to be male and use that skin to be treated as an equal. Did the story told of William actually happen to them while in that skin?
I agree; there were things I liked about the episode as mentioned below, but on the whole it was, to me, unnecessarily and showily ‘transgressive.’ To my mind the showrunners’/writers’ imperative to be transgressive overrode good narrative sense.
The reveal about the two particular blonde/blond characters wasn’t much of a surprise, given that the show has pointedly been very careful to make sure they were never in the same scene.
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I agree with all this, too, particularly the point about the Yahima storyline, with all its implications for Montrose’s situation, being “resolved” too quickly. It would have been more interesting for Montrose to have to struggle with the parallels to his own experience. As it was, the implicit suggestion that the best way to deal with complications is to commit violence, is unfortunate.
I did like a lot of the Ruby/Hillary storyline, but again, the writers resorted to the idea that violence is always the best answer to any problem. That’s tough to admire.
This article gets at some of the things I don’t like about Lovecraft Country, but verbalizes them way better than I could. I’ll probably background the next episode, but I’m not feeling particularly attached to it.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to read that as I haven’t seen Antebellum. But it’s worth anyone’s time.
The author, who boasts impressive credentials,* makes some interesting points as she highlights the way the violence in LC (and in the movie Antebellum) differs from the similar level of violence in those Quentin Tarantino movies with plots heavily dependent on racial/ethnic identity, Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds.
She also discusses the villains in LC (and the movie) in a way that makes sense to me:
The article would definitely be of interest to many participants in this thread.
*" Soraya Nadia McDonald is the culture critic for The Undefeated. She writes about pop culture, fashion, the arts, and literature. She is the 2020 winner of the George Jean Nathan prize for dramatic criticism, a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the runner-up for the 2019 Vernon Jarrett Medal for outstanding reporting on black life."
I’ve not seen the series. But this thread has inspired me to read the book. The view of the police is over the top negative, to a truly hyperbolic degree. I don’t doubt relations were sometimes strained or poor, but fifty pages into the book there have been at least ten separate negative encounters with the constabulary, several including weaponry.
Reminds me of what some complained about with Season One of The Mandolarian. Both had broad arcs and character growth trajectories and also had episodes that served little to those arcs, that were more just interpretations of favorite tropes in the context of the show’s universe. I liked those episodes in The Mandalorian and I like them here. Of course I also like the MOWs eps in Doctor Who seasons. Some do not.
And I would say that Christina/William is more than a one note cartoon.