His influence is so ubiquitous within horror and fantasy that you simply can’t ignore it - nor is it always easy or simple to subvert it. For the problem with Lovecraft is that Lovecraft is everywhere. Necessarily, Lovecraft Country’s approach to Lovecraft’s legacy is simultaneously one of shrewd affection and resigned repugnance. The story teems with all the typical Lovecraftian tropes: creepy New England villages, dark mansions with esoteric secrets, and tentacle monsters shipped direct from the cosmic void but it’s also full of very realistic horror, in the form of the racist police violence and white supremacy our heroes must confront at every turn. The series, helmed by Misha Green and produced by Jordan Peele, places Black protagonists and horror nerds at the center of a proper Lovecraftian mystery. With HBO’s adaptation of Lovecraft Country into a 10-episode drama, that broader, overdue cultural reckoning may have finally arrived. In HBO’s Lovecraft Country, cosmic horrors pale next to the reality of racism
By centering Black characters who were often the metaphorical villains of Lovecraft’s stories, the book allows for a new layer of meaning to map onto Lovecraft’s old fears. Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel Lovecraft Country was one of the first attempts at an answer. For the past decade or so, as the extent of his racism has become more widely known and acknowledged, horror and fantasy writers whose landscapes are saturated with Lovecraft’s influence have been trying to figure out what to do about him. He injected many of his most famous and beloved stories with overt racist metaphors and frequent blunt literal racism. Lovecraft leaves no room for a debate about separating the artist from their art.
Lovecraft and his works of literary horror are long overdue for a cultural reckoning - because Lovecraft may have been one of the 20th century’s most influential writers, but he was also one of its most gallingly racist. There’s a prehistoric sea cucumber named after his most famous creation, Cthulhu. Giger to the otherworldly tentacle monsters of Stranger Things to True Detective’s Rust Cohle.
His monsters - and the men who encounter their cosmic evil - have left imprints everywhere from Alien designer H.R. He has directly influenced countless writers of modern horror, from Stephen King to Junji Ito to Guillermo del Toro. His work saturates modern horror and literary fiction.
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