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
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| 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.
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