Post
by Konrad » Tue Oct 20, 2020 5:41 am
'tis the season for scaaaarrry T.V. Watched the first couple episodes of "Lovecraft Country". Set in America in the early 1950s with almost exclusively black characters, the truly horrifying, actually sickening parts are the portrayals of the murderous racism of the time. I almost wrote "the era" or "age", but my parents were children in the 50s, this is not the distant past. The head crunching monsters and evil magicians are almost, a trivial side-show in comparison. But what head-crunching and eeeeevil! I was expecting a slow burn, "X-Files" style suspense, but this show moves fast. I've only seen the first two episodes, but we are already to "Stranger Things" finale class, BOOM! pyrotechnics. Not a subtle series. More "Dr. Who" than "MIllennium". (Showing my age with the X-Files and Millenium references.)
The pulp-sci-fi-horror elements do sit rather awkwardly next to the very realistic horror of the simple facts of life in pre-Civil Rights Act America. But I suppose that is the point. Read more than a hundred pages of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Robert E. Howard, and you'll run across stuff so racist it will make your skin crawl. As fans of the genre, the question is what to do with that. The more important question is as citizens, what to do with the hideous racism running through every corner of U.S history and the lives of our great leaders. That's a pretty ambitious conversation for a pulp-horror T.V show to pull off.
Final word, I can not adequately describe the awesomeness of the soundtrack. Once or twice I sort of wished they actors would stop moving about doing things and distracting me from the music!
...and now his Head was full of nothing but Inchantments, Quarrels, Battles, Challenges, Wounds, Complaints, Amours, and abundance of Stuff and Impossibilities.....
Cervantes, Don Quixote