Jordan Peeles HBO Series Lovecraft Country Subverts The Racist Horror Icon

Jordan Peele’s HBO Series Lovecraft Country Subverts The Racist Horror Icon

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Jordan Peele’s upcoming HBO horror series Lovecraft Country features Jim Crow era laws while subverting the racist horror icon H.P. Lovecraft.

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Jordan Peeles HBO Series Lovecraft Country Subverts The Racist Horror Icon

On May 1st, the trailer for Jordan Peele’s upcoming Lovecraftian horror series Lovecraft Country dropped and showcased the various ways the series plans on subverting the racism of the literary icon. The upcoming HBO series is slated for eight episodes that feature creatures from both H.P. Lovecraft’s short and longform stories. Despite high profile names attached to the series such as J.J. Abrams, Lovecraft Country has not currently received ample attention for what it could accomplish in the larger sense.

The series is based on Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel of the same name. Based in the 1950s, it follows Atticus (Jonathan Majors), a young Black man, searching for his father (Michael K. Williams), who has gone missing in New England. Atticus’s family refers to the ominous and mysterious area as “Lovecraft country.” The series delves into classic horror themes while subverting the racism of Lovecraft during the era of Jim Crow laws. With its exploration of race and horror, Lovecraft Country could be destined to make major horror history.

With an abundance of literary references, Lovecraft Country ties together the problematic icon of H.P. Lovecraft with the character Atticus Finch of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. In the classic novel, Atticus Finch was a lawyer who represented Black defendants in Alabama in the mid-1950s. By naming the main character Atticus, there is a connotation that he will serve as a pivotal figure in standing up against racial injustices, especially in a place with such heavy ties to Lovecraft.

What Happens In The Lovecraft Country Trailer

Jordan Peeles HBO Series Lovecraft Country Subverts The Racist Horror Icon

The beginning of the trailer depicts the main character, Atticus, travelling home to find his missing father. He announces to his family that he returned home because his father wrote to him, telling Atticus that he is in Lovecraft country. Once hearing this, the entire family departs to go to the horrifying place as a team. After entering the area known as Lovecraft country, Atticus and family are targeted by white police officers in the woods while also being under attack by Lovecraftian creatures.

Between the creatures and police brutality, the trailer shows brief moments of joy and celebration in clubs with predominantly Black patrons, presumably for the purposes of gathering together as a community. The trailer also features car chases, shoot outs, explosions, and the haunting environment of Lovecraft country. It appears that the area is not only infested with monsters from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft, but is also filled to the brim with oppression. At one point, Atticus and his family are shown looking out the door of a Victorian home to see white people surrounding them; these people are trying to intimidate them.

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Furthermore, the trailer shows several instances of police targeting Black people, both young and old. Peele’s series undoubtedly intends on highlighting the dangers that Black people faced during Jim Crow while highlighting Lovecraft’s racist ideology. By using Lovecraft’s creatures in a film centered around Black people, Peele is actively subverting the deeply racist creations of the twentieth-century author, and challenges it head-on. Ultimately, the trailer for Lovecraft Country exposes the intensity of the series and its historical depiction of the horrors of Black life in the United States while also exposing the privileges of white people and police officers.

Who Is Horror Icon H.P. Lovecraft

Jordan Peeles HBO Series Lovecraft Country Subverts The Racist Horror Icon

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island to Sarah Susan and Winfield Scott Lovecraft. He was an only child. His writing career began in 1913 when he became involved in pulp fiction. Between the first and second World War, Lovecraft wrote stories based on his interpretation of humanity and its place within the universe. These stories were filled with fantastical elements and the disruption of the notion that humankind was the most important species in existence. Despite the ideology of human as lesser than, Lovecraft did find that different races could not be lumped together in the broader term of humankind.

Lovecraft’s stories never garnered him much acclaim, nor was he able to support himself or his family off of his earnings. He would grow in popularity after his death on March 15, 1937. Among his hundreds of stories, “The Call Of Cthulhu,” “The Rats In The Walls,” At The Mountains Of Madness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth are a few of Lovecraft’s most popular works. The Cthulhu mythos spawned an entire branch of horror that featured the ancient sea creature which wove Lovecraft deeper into the genre to create an entirely new subgenre called Lovecraftian horror. It remains a popular subgenre today with film’s such as Underwater (2020) utilizing his iconic Cthulhu as its monster.

His stories include themes of forbidden knowledge, inherited guilt, fate, and more. The most controversial of all of Lovecraft’s thematic elements is his use of race. His worldview was elitist and classist while also being highly racist towards Black people in particular. A great portion of his works contain the use of racial slurs and the comparison of Black people to animals or monsters. H.P. Lovecraft argued that there should be a color line that persevere the white race and demonize Black people. He even named his black cat after a racial slur. H.P. Lovecraft’s stories may be horrific but his personal beliefs on white supremacy and superiority may be his most terrifying attributes.

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How Jordan Peele Subverts Horror In Other Work

When Jordan Peele made his directorial debut with the 2017 film Get Out, he set a new standard for race within horror. With tired tropes of Black people in the genre such as being the first to die or as the ultimate horror, Peele’s film immediately subverted these tropes and called out the embedded racism in horror. Rather than the threat of neo-Nazis or skinheads, the main villains were the white upper-middle class Armitage family. The concept behind the film is that white Americans will continue to perpetuate a system of slavery and Black people will remain stuck in a system of oppression.

Rather than making the only source of horror physical, Peele subverts the genre by making the contemporary political and social ideologies of American society central to the film’s plot. Get Out is not detached from the moment it was produced during. In the 2019 film Us, Peele solidifies that the discourse on racism in America belongs in horror, as the genre has the power to be brutally honest and shock people into paying attention to a film’s contents. The film provides commentary on the othering of individuals based on their race alongside the long-term effects of classism and the marginalization of people.

Jordan Peele’s subversion of common horror tropes is only one of the ways that he is able to subvert racism in the genre as a whole and how he does so in Lovecraft Country. He artfully takes a recognizable icon or symbol, such as Lovecraft, and exposes it for its lasting effects on keeping Black people marginalized in the United States and in horror films. It is quite the feat to take on a popular figure in horror history but Peele has already established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the genre. Lovecraft Country is bound to be a genre shattering series that exposes the racism of H.P. Lovecraft and Jim Crow laws that continue to impact Black lives today.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/jordan-peele-lovecraft-country-racist-horror-icon-explained/

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