The stars of the HBO Horror series eldritch CGI monsters. The series premieres on HBO later this month from showrunner Misha Green and executive producers Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams.
The HBO series is based on the 2016 sci-fi horror novel of the same name by author Matt Ruff, which follows Atticus Turner - a young black man from Chicago who experiences both racist and supernatural horrors on a journey to find his missing father during America’s Jim Crow era in the 1950s. The TV adaptation was first announced in 2017 after widespread praise for the novel, and will follow a similar narrative, paralleling and intertwining the horrifying nature of racism in America with the monstrous, supernatural abominations of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories.
In a recent interview with The Wrap, Majors - who plays Atticus in the series, renamed Atticus Black - and Smollett - who plays Letitia Lewis - discussed the show’s focus on coning Lovecraft’s supernatural horror stories with the racism that ran rampant during Jim Crow and continues today, and how in many ways, the racism is the more terrifying part. Majors said:
"I would say for me, the white racist, or racist in general, are extremely that much more terrifying than the Shoggoth or Cthulhu. A monster is something that is driven by an inside system, and that system is to either terrorize or destroy, and there’s no compromising with it. That’s interesting when it’s a feral dog for instance, where the dog is being told by its internals to attack, fight, kill…It’s quite different when that monster is disguised in the same body as you, and the only thing that’s different is the skin color.”
According to showrunner Misha Green, it was important for the show to place racists and monsters on the same level. Smollett echoed this sentiment, and that of Majors, saying that, “The unfortunate thing about the spiritual warfare that our characters are engaged with in bringing down the racism is that you don’t really know where it’s coming from… the attacks come on every level for a racist, but the monster, you just gotta outrun it.”
Lovecraft Country is set to launch at a pivotal moment in the battle against racism in America, as civil protests against police brutality and systemic racism continue in many cities across the country, seeking justice for murdered black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The direct invocation of H.P. Lovecraft in Ruff’s novel and HBO’s adaptation is particularly interesting, given that the writer himself - while incredibly influential in the realms of science fiction and horror - espoused racist and anti-immigrant beliefs consistently in his work.
Even before its release, Lovecraft Country has already drawn comparisons to HBO’s Watchmen, another show that engages with the theme of social injustice in America through the lens of science fiction, and which has been a major critical success for the network. With anticipation building, and the minds of Green and Peele at the helm, Lovecraft County has the potential to be another brilliant, challenging hit. The show premiers on HBO on August 16th.
Source: The Wrap
