On H.P. Lovecraft: The Cyclopean Horror in the Room

Ah yes, I suppose if I am going to be a commenter on the internet, I might as well discuss this topic, seeing as how I’ve lost traction with that novel I’d spent the majority of July writing half of.

            For those of you who haven’t heard of him, short answer: he’s the guy responsible for giving us C’thulhu and the Necronomicon, as well as being blessed with the best name to have as a horror writer outside of Misery McDeath. If you've never heard o C'thulhu, I hope your readjustment to society went well, because you're clearly a feral child. There are C'thulhu plushies for Pete's sake

I'm sure you've seen him around here and there

Long answer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft is quite possibly the most influential writer in the geek world next to JRR Tolkien, an analogy that I’ll want to get back to later in this. His most enduring contribution to the world is the “c’thulhuverse,” which aside from giving us the above mentioned names, also introduced the ideas “cosmic horror,” in other words the idea that there are beings beyond space and time that whose very presence is enough to drive most men mad; much in the same way that Tolkien gave us the typical epic fantasy setting with Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, etc through the Middle Earth Saga and Robert E. Howard gave us the Sword and Sorcery setting with a certain Conan. Aside from that, the c’thulhuverse has inspired numerous videogames like Amnesia: the Dark Descent and Eternal Darkness.

            While you could argue that the idea of making something “incomprehensible to mortal beings” a bit of a cop out of not actually trying to, you know, actually describe what we the reader are supposed to be looking at. Then again, you could say that it was lazy of Spielberg to not show the shark until the end or for us to see the Xenomorph actually kill something in the Alien movies. That being said, the C’thuluverse also gave us a wide array of interesting creatures, from the shifting, twisting shoggoths, to the lobster like Mi-go to the radial, plantlike elder things.

            Lovecraft’s career proper started around 1920, although you know it comparing him to some other writers of the time. The guy was undeniably Gothic/Romantic in inspiration, especially Edgar Allan Poe, so you probably won’t get much out of comparing him to the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway. He was also a critic to a degree and a travel writer. He was a resident of New England and it shows in his work, where things like the old buildings and the like, giving them almost a character in and of themselves.

            I myself have read a decent chunk of Lovecraft’s work, including a decent chunk of the C’thuluverse, and that being said, I sort of prefer those stories of his not based in the C’thuluverse. I’d heartily recommend In the Vault and The Outsider, the latter a classic homage to gothic horror stories like “The Devil and John Proctor” and the latter a tale of loneliness and sad realizations.

            If I had to choose a story that took place in the C’thuluverse proper, I’d probably go with At the Mountains of Madness. There are a couple of reasons why. Primarily it’s because of the Elder Ones, these settlers from another world. We really get a picture of the society these creatures have created, as well as almost come to sympathize. Another reason is the Shoggoths. You see, I have a bit of a soft spot for anything pertaining to AIs or the like, probably owing to the fact that Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot was the first real sci-fi book I got into, and when you get right down to it, At the Mountains of Madness is pretty about that. You see, the Elder Ones created the Shoggoths as sort of menial laborers, but the rebellion of the shoggoths was what ultimately ended the Elder One’s society. In essence, Mountains of Madness is a sort of odd variant of the Rossum’s Universal Robots story. Elder Things create Shoggoths, shoggoths rebel, shoggoths remain in the aforementioned Mountains of Madness.

            If there is one thing that I dislike about his writing style, it’s the sheer—out of lack of a better word—panziness with which his protagonists respond to most situations. There’s an almost “ewe, kill it!” factor to the way things are revealed, as if Lovecraft was trying and failing to put a jump scare in book form, except we the reader would just come away annoyed by the whole thing, seeing as how by now we were just kind of disappointed. Hell, in “Madness” he calls penguins “grotesque.” And not even the blind, albino penguins either. According to the protagonist, plain old penguins are grotesque. In fact you get the feeling that anything not coming from New England was grotesque, including people. Which brings me to my next point.

The Cyclopean Horror in the Room.

            So there are two types of Genre fiction writers, progressives and conservatives. For every Heinlein there’s an Ayn Rand. For every individual who interprets Invasion of the Body as the whitewashing of culture there will inevitably be another who sees it as foreigners taking over. For every individual who sympathized with the Creature in Frankenstein, there’s at least one individual who sympathized with Frankenstein (despite being a chicken shit who didn’t even have the decency to name his creation, but that’s neither here nor there) and considers the creature to be “an abomination” or whatever. Lovecraft was definitely in the latter category. He definitely would’ve sympathized with Frankenstein.

To specify, Lovecraft was racist. Really, aggressively racist. And this wasn’t even like someone like Orson Scott Card whose overt homophobia you can just ignore while you’re reading his books. No, if you’ve read any Lovecraft, especially anything in the C’thulu mythos, then you’ll know just how bad it is. From discussions of “savage cultists,” to cats named “ni***man” you’ll find it all. Not only that, but the racism manages to seep it’s way into the undertones of the piece. Yeah, you’re starting to understand why so many of his creatures looked so otherworldly, or the aforementioned “ewe, gross” style of writing.

It gets particularly annoying in “The Whisperer in the Dark” where it turns out that the creatures assaulting the titular Whisperer are the Mi-go, an advanced alien race who are offering to let him travel the universe as just a brain in a jar, in a surgery that’s no more invasive than a haircut, and all the protagonist can do is react in disgust. We never hear that the mi-go are in any way going to use the man’s brain for diabolical purposes. We’re just supposed to react with horror when we hear that he’s been taken out to space. This guy is going to explore the outer reaches of outer space, how horrid. The amounts of both imagination and yet backwards thinking it must have taken to think of such fantastical idea and frame it as something horrifying like that is astounding.

The most blatant example of racism in Lovecraft’s work would definitely have to be “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” It turns out that the residents of Innsmouth have been mating with a race of underwater creatures called the Deep Ones (real original, H.G., real original) as part of a pact made with said creatures. The resulting offspring have blue-grey skin and are rather reptilian in nature. You read that right. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” is an allegory for the evils of intermarriage. Never have I heard a more offensive science fiction concept since I read about Tyroc on Cracked.com. What makes this all the weirder is that Mrs. Lovecraft was Jewish, although maybe Mr. Lovecraft was okay with it seeing as how Jews are generally white, and he only had a problem with how much melanin other people had.

Incidentally, this is primary reason why I tend to like his works not associated with “The C’thulu Mythos”. The aforementioned mythos tends to have the most racist undertones of Lovecraft’s work, and it feels significantly less awkward to read a tale where the narrator is talking about how evil other ethnicities. It’s also one the reasons why I like “Mountains” the most out of the “C’thulu Mythos”. It’s the only one of these stories where the narrator at least vaguely begins to sympathize with the writer’s creations. We’re at the very least supposed to feel vaguely sorry for the Elder Ones (jeeze, Lovecraft, how hard could it’ve been to think of a decent name for the s.o.bs), not to mention we’re at least supposed to respond to the Elder Ones society with fascination as opposed to the usual disgust.

So does all of this mean that the C’thulu Mythos itself is a racist entity? That anything that bases itself off of the work of Lovecraft is inherently racist? Not necessarily. The great thing about art is that even if it has some unsavory elements, doesn’t mean that there aren’t good things to be found in it. The movie “Birth of a Nation” romanticizes the Klu Klux Klan and even glorifies the lynching of a black man. Even so, many a critic argue that it is primarily responsible for the way in which modern movies are made. The same goes with Lovecraft’s work. Many artists have taken the themes of endless horror and changed them into completely not racist entities (see the aforementioned “Amnesia: The Dark Descent”).

Now, I know what you’re thinking. If it doesn’t matter that a lot of Lovecraft’s work was racist, why bother bringing it up? After all, Lovecraft’s pushing up daisies, making it supremely less awkward to buy his books than, say, the works of the extremely homophobic Orson Scott Card. Honestly, for the same reason people love to point out that people me (see: y-generation hipsters) like to point out that Edison stole half his ideas about electricity from Tesla, that Ford was Anti-Semitic or any a number of other flaws we like to find about people who were influential. There’s something fun to finding out that a famous person wasn’t the perfect little angel they’re made out to be in those picture books from fourth grade. There’s a sort of mischievous fun to it, if you will. And is it slightly immature of me to devote three days of work, and 1800 words to informing you the reader that Lovecraft was racist. Definitely, but then again it is my blog and I can do whatever I like with it.

Pontypool: Schlub Up or Die!

People—such as Movie Bob—like to say how the world of cinema has changed and that when viewing a movie poster, you literally had no idea what you were getting into outside of what the. Now, while there certainly isn’t that much that can be done for major motion pictures, I’d disagree with those sorts when it comes to slightly less known motion pictures. Instead of being clueless when going to the movies, viewers will be clueless when picking up a movie from redbox or when looking through suggestions on Netflix or some streaming service. All you have to go on are a little square with some awesome poster art and a little description at the bottom along with a couple of stars indicating total value, not unlike how those of the 80s and nineties had naught but the cover of a VHS and some vague description on the back, just as movie-goers of the 7

You gotta admit, that's a pretty
kickass poster

0s and 60s had a poster and possibly a preview they saw at another movie.

            I bring this up because this is very same mentality I went into “Pontypool” with. Going in, based solely on the poster, I’d be lying if I wasn’t expecting a schlocktacular zombiefest, but what I ended up with—while arguably containing zombies—was a little smarter than that, if not a little nonsensical at the same time.

            So Pontypool. Pontypool opens by introducing us to Grant Mazzy, the smooth DJ who was newly hired to be the voice of the local radio station in the titular town, Ontario, Sydney Brier, his producer, and Laurel-Ann Drummond, her Afghanistan vet assistant. As the day progresses, reports of something very wrong going on in town proper, beginning with a supposed riot at a dentist’s establishment to and ultimately climaxing in reports of “indescribable acts” by the towns people, including picking people up with their teeth and eating them.

If my description hasn’t made it all together clear, this is a very “Lumetian” picture. Chances are you haven’t heard of Sidney Lumet, but you may have heard of—as well as—seen some of the movies he’s made over the years, including both “12 Angry Men” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” films which give us one or two locations but due to things like camera angles, editing, or even the situation of the story, these locations stay dynamic enough to not completely bore the audience. Now, while he certainly wasn’t the first to think of this style of film making—indeed the style itself is arguably the great-great-great-grandchild of Greek style performances, and can still be seen in many a modern play—it is arguably his signature. Now Lumetian style can do a lot of different things for a film, however it is best at giving us the tension between a group of characters in an intensely personal setting. It also, if done well, allows the creators to skirt the classic “show, don’t tell” rule that is so integral to proper story telling. In 12 Angry Men, it allowed for us, the audience, to try and gain what we could from the descriptions given by the jurors. In “Dog Day Afternoon,” it helps to show the relationship between Sonny and the rest of the hostages.

In “Pontypool,” the three being trapped in the radio station really emphasizes the mystery of what’s going on. It’s hard not to be creeped out about what’s going on as reports cannibalism and god knows what else are coming from the poor schlub who liked to pretend he was on the traffic copter when he was just in his van. Meanwhile Mazzy is trying his best to be patient while Brier and Drummond try their best to get a feel for what’s going on. The effect is very Lovecraftian. You, along with the protagonists, aren’t entirely certain of what’s going on, but know full well that it’s bad and that no good can come of it. It’s a bit like a found footage movie, except without the pretentians to go along with it.

As I said earlier, there is a sort of Lovecraftian element to the fact that we're just hearing reports of what's going on as opposed to the team and the audience hearing for themselves. You could argue that this is sheer laziness on director Bruce Mcdonald's part, just as you could argue that leaving the horridness of the beasts up to the audience is laziness in Lovecraftian fiction. I'd argue that sometimes our limitations, and even our laziness, can lead to innovation. When Stan Lee was asked to to make a new superhero team, instead of thinking up some complex origin story, he just said they were mutants and wham, the X-men were born. Movies like Jaws, the first two Aliens movies and the Thing are all the better because of how little we see the titular creatures. What I'm getting at is that I'm giving McDonald a pass for not showing revealing the creatures until the end.

That being said, no movie’s perfect, and Pontypool is no different. The reveal of just what’s going on can range from completely a unique—if not convoluted—take on the zombie apocalypse genre, to completely and utterly convoluted. I’ll give you a hint: it defies even the most basic of understanding of how diseases are spread. My biggest problem is with the way the movie itself reveals just how the zombie apocalypse works. So the trio are all confused as to what’s going on and such and then all of a sudden, some German scientist comes along and just gives us a big old exposition dump about what’s going on. Not only that but the guy’s a caricature of every stupid b-movie scientist around. Now, while I don’t really have a problem with that sort of thing, it sticks out like a sore thumb in a film that’s been building up slow, uneasy tension. It’d be like if you were going through one of the “Grudge” movies and all of a sudden Freddy Krueger comes swaggering along making bad puns and whatnot.

Overall, Pontypool is not a “perfect movie.” But it’s got a genuinely interesting—if not convoluted—premise and some perfectly done execution. If you ever find yourself with some friends who just wanna have a decent time watching some movies, give this sucker a try. It’ll certainly b

On Preacher: Hardly a Mission from God.

Sorry I haven't posted anything a long, long while. School. Just school. That's all I'm gonna say.

            If I think back long enough, I’m pretty sure I can recall a news article on the G4 website—back before G4 was taken over by frat bros.—that the comic Preacher would be getting a television adaptation. At the time, I didn’t quite get what the big deal was with Preacher. After having read five out of the nine collections of Garth Ennis’s magnum opus, I can safely tell you that there will never be an adaptation of Preacher. If there ever is, it would be a shadow of the original. An empty husk completely devoid of what made the original so damned great.  Now, this is not for the same reason why Watchman failed as an adaption. Preacher doesn’t evolve the medium of comic writing into anything revolutionary or extraordinary like the works of Neil Gaimon or Alan Moore. No, Preacher would not survive the adaptation process because so many central aspects of it are so blasphemous, so many plot points are so politically incorrect, that there would be a veritable shitstorm from both conservatives and liberals alike after the pilot episode of a proper adaptation hit cable.

            I suppose now is as good a time as any to discuss Preacher’s plot, and oh what a gloriously ridiculous plot it is. Meet small-town preacher and resident author avatar Jesse Custer. Upon having a being called Genesis—a mixing of Angel and Demon—enter his body, giving him the ability to make people do his will just by speaking with what is referred to as the voice of God. After a chance encounter with the Saint of Killers, he learns from a reluctant angel some good news and some bad news. The good news is that God does exist. The bad news is that He quit. Starting to understand now, why an adaptation of Preacher wouldn’t out well? So now, along with his girlfriend and Cassidy—a vampiric Irishman—he’s on a quest to hunt down God Himself and make him confess as to why he just up and quit.

            Ladies, gents and everything inbetween, let me assure you that that description does not do Preacher justice. Yahtzee, aka the high king of the internet, once summed up Preacher in a particular scene in which someone wipes a retard’s ass before shooting said retard in the back of the head. And while it certainly has that, it also has Nazi Dominatrix secretaries, our main man Jesse pissing out a burning cross, inbred cycloptic rednecks, inbred ape-like descendents of Christ (eat that, Da Vinci Code), the Saint of Killers killing the devil himself, a hero cop who likes to be involved with homoerotic s and m in his spare time, a ruler of a global conspiracy who makes Fat Bastard look slimming, a redneck who will have sex with literally anything and the owner of Meat plant whose a proud member of the KKK and who can get a little too intimate with some of his meat. And let me assure you that there is so, so much more where that came from. Did I mention Arseface? He’s kinda my favorite.

            All of that is just the tip of this iceberg. The entire series reads like what would happen if the writers of South Park were from texas and had a particular script they were afraid to use lest it be too controversial. Preacher is crude, violent, over-the-top and hilarious. And I seriously doubt they could capture that magic without someone out there getting offended.

On Remember Me: Let Them Eat Achievement Points

I have this theory that a piece of art—in this case referring to a movie, book, painting, picture, video-game, etc.—can described as a piece indicative of it’s country of origin outside of the basic imagery associated with that piece. What makes something like Great Gatsby, Citizen Kane or even Fight Club “american” is not just their inclusion of things like office life, the roaring twenties, etc, although that may be a part of it. They can also be very “American” in theme. For example, Great Gatsby explores the hypocracy of old money and what-have-you, and Fight Club looks at consumerism and the definition of masculinity, all of which are things that things American culture still struggles with to this day. This brings me to an obscure little videogame called “Remember Me” something which I could undeniably call a product of French culture, not unlike the works of Dumas or Camus.

            For those of you who, understandably, may not have heard of “Remember Me,” here’s the jist. In the not too distant future in the city of Neo-Paris, a major corporation has commodified human memory by digitizing it. Inevitably things go wrong, and this leads to people altering memories and such as well as a prison where they lobotomize you by taking away your memories, in other words what makes you you. Speaking of memory alteration, the player takes on the role of Nilin, one of the best memory hunters around, in other words, people whose job it is to steal corporate secrets Inception style. She can even alter the memories of others. In the end though, she was sent to said special prison for siding with the “errorists” (no, I wouldn’t be surprised if that word was supposed to be one t short of "terrorists", thank you very much), but is broken out and is now on the hunt for the truth of what happened to her and just what the hell is going on.

Now, this is a fairly standard cyberpunk fiar with the addition of memory alteration and what have for a nice hook, but on the surface, between the sleak looking character and clothing design and the over abundance of neon signs about, it’s hard not to mistake this for your standard issue cyberpunk setting. That being said, about half-way through, something occurred to me: this is all a metaphor for the French revolution. The distinct divide between the haves and haves nots, the cruel treatment of the have nots by the errorists later on, it all added up. The icing on the cake of course had to be the fact that the super-special prison was called “La Bastille”. I shit you not, it’s called La Bastille you can look it up.

What I’m getting at here is that what makes “Remember Me” ever so slighty note-worthy is its French flavoring, not the clunky platforming or the we-wish-we-were-as-smooth-as-Batman:Arkhem fighting, not the setting or even Nilin’s refreshing, if not uncunny similarity to Mirror Edge’s Faith, sexism free character design, but it’s French core. And while the French may stink on the outside, there’s always something intriguing on the inside.