Lovecraft Country
Aug. 19th, 2021 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraWe decided to do a month of HBO+ to watch In The Heights [ETA: which we enjoyed] and some Hugo stuff, and so we also finally watched the other nine episodes of Lovecraft Country! I overall liked it a lot and thought it was a good adaptation, although I am a sucker for highly attractive people and I'm sure I was biased by that. Although, on the flip side, I could have done with the gore being dialed back a bit, especially because we somehow ended up watching the very worst episode for it while my parents were here, and they were pretty taken aback (also had the most sex, and sexual violence, which hadn't been a thing onscreen before that point, which I guess teaches me to try to look up some episode-specific content tags before watching anything with my parents).
I have some more specific thoughts behind the cut, with spoilers for both the show and the book.
The two episodes I was most keen to see onscreen were the museum heist and the observatory. I thought it made sense to swap in the main characters for the museum heist instead of one-off new characters, but I'm afraid that I found the way they staged it a little too goofy, with the plank bridge and the bottomless chasm. Although I then reread that chapter and honestly it was pretty goofy in the book too; I had forgotten about the flying torpedo thing, and was just remembering gravity games, which is a kind of thing I tend to like, and which could have looked really good, but might have been too high-budget to film, I suppose. And then the observatory was a *really* different take, but I liked it - it was less sad than the whole "permanent castaway" thing, and the revelation that Hippolyta had been away for 200 years subjective was terrific, and honestly the "explorer's kit from the future with handy meal replicator" thing in the book never quite worked for me, like, it was a neat idea, but it didn't quite fit. Why didn't anyone else seem to have future tech around? And then using the observatory to do a time travel episode, that was clever, I always like a time travel episode, and I thought going back to Tulsa (instead of the "family frozen in time" chapter) was pretty powerful.
Here is what I liked least. I really did not get Christina deciding to recreate Emmett Till's murder like some kind of fucked-up death tourism, and I don't think the show should have gone there without being more clear about what exactly it was trying to say. (I mean, it might have been "white women treat Black pain like entertainment", which, fair, I guess, here I am writing this review about a TV show that's in large part about Black pain, although in my own defense on the TV show they are fictional characters and Emmett Till very very much was not. But in the context of Christina's conversation with Ruby it seems like maybe it was supposed to be something about Christina either trying to empathize with Ruby or either undermining or confirming her claim not to care, but I couldn't tell which.)
I also really didn't like Dee killing Christina in the final scene - I know it might sound a little naive to talk about a "loss of innocence" when she had already had multiple family members and a friend murdered, but, I don't know, she was still a child, and I didn't find it satisfying to see her become a killer herself. I thought getting to spit on Lancaster and say "fuck you, pig" was the right level of anger for a child, not, like, robo-crushing someone's head off their neck, and I wanted her story to end on more of a "hope" beat than a "vengeance" beat. Like, cool cyborg arm, sure, and then art? real life adventures with her super-mom? I had thought that part of the point of Hippolyta's 200 years was that wanting to kill white people was legit and cathartic, but also more like a stage to be worked through on the way to more important stuff like exploration and joy (and resolving things with loved ones). So it just felt weird to me to end the show with one more killing instead of, like, Leti casting some beautiful piece of magic, something that suggests what's possible now. Maybe Dee riding her new pet monster guardian while her mom flies alongside, I did like Dee having the monster. Maybe they're back in the car heading towards dawn, which is sadder now that they're missing two people, but calls back to the "sh-boom" scene, which was *terrific*. Montrose's grudging little "sh-boom"! (Every story is better if you give the characters some little moments!)
And then there's "no more magic for white people", which, like, on the one hand was a good line, and on the other hand boy would I not want to be on the implementation committee for that. Are Jews white? Are Arabs? I guess we still don't have a Middle Eastern and North African category on the census and so at least in the US all MENA people are "white", but I would not say they have white privilege in the same way I do. For that matter, eastern Europe did not exactly have the same participation in things like imperialism or the Atlantic slave trade as the big colonial powers, and, look, I know that Lovecraft Country is a story about Black pain and Black rage and Black power, and it's not cool to be like "but what about the whiiiite people, not alllll white people", and then it turns into a gross reverse-racism thing, but the part of my brain that really likes to think about, like, the gritty details of worldbuilding, and what the ripple effects of some big event might look like, that part is totally like "okay, the next season opens with a magical ventilator suddenly shutting off and some young person panicking in a Balkan language while their grandparent dies, right?". Or, like, okay, I have done some research, the Lovings get arrested in 1958, although Loving v Virginia isn't decided until 1967 - maybe the next season tackles the question of interracial couples and multiracial children. How does it change relationships if one of the people, who used to have more privilege, now has less in this way. Is a multiracial child banned from magic or not. Is this the magical one-drop rule. What if some multiracial kids get magic and some don't, does that mean that some are "more Black" or "more white" or something icky like that. *I* couldn't write this story sensitively, but I feel like a team of multiracial and Black writers could say really interesting things here. Except for the risk of turning into a gross reverse-racism thing. :/
Anyways, I guess it was a 2020 show, so I will not face the question of nominating anything for the Hugos... I'll be interested to see whether any episodes make the longlist. I'm thinking maybe the Tulsa episode, if any.
I have some more specific thoughts behind the cut, with spoilers for both the show and the book.
The two episodes I was most keen to see onscreen were the museum heist and the observatory. I thought it made sense to swap in the main characters for the museum heist instead of one-off new characters, but I'm afraid that I found the way they staged it a little too goofy, with the plank bridge and the bottomless chasm. Although I then reread that chapter and honestly it was pretty goofy in the book too; I had forgotten about the flying torpedo thing, and was just remembering gravity games, which is a kind of thing I tend to like, and which could have looked really good, but might have been too high-budget to film, I suppose. And then the observatory was a *really* different take, but I liked it - it was less sad than the whole "permanent castaway" thing, and the revelation that Hippolyta had been away for 200 years subjective was terrific, and honestly the "explorer's kit from the future with handy meal replicator" thing in the book never quite worked for me, like, it was a neat idea, but it didn't quite fit. Why didn't anyone else seem to have future tech around? And then using the observatory to do a time travel episode, that was clever, I always like a time travel episode, and I thought going back to Tulsa (instead of the "family frozen in time" chapter) was pretty powerful.
Here is what I liked least. I really did not get Christina deciding to recreate Emmett Till's murder like some kind of fucked-up death tourism, and I don't think the show should have gone there without being more clear about what exactly it was trying to say. (I mean, it might have been "white women treat Black pain like entertainment", which, fair, I guess, here I am writing this review about a TV show that's in large part about Black pain, although in my own defense on the TV show they are fictional characters and Emmett Till very very much was not. But in the context of Christina's conversation with Ruby it seems like maybe it was supposed to be something about Christina either trying to empathize with Ruby or either undermining or confirming her claim not to care, but I couldn't tell which.)
I also really didn't like Dee killing Christina in the final scene - I know it might sound a little naive to talk about a "loss of innocence" when she had already had multiple family members and a friend murdered, but, I don't know, she was still a child, and I didn't find it satisfying to see her become a killer herself. I thought getting to spit on Lancaster and say "fuck you, pig" was the right level of anger for a child, not, like, robo-crushing someone's head off their neck, and I wanted her story to end on more of a "hope" beat than a "vengeance" beat. Like, cool cyborg arm, sure, and then art? real life adventures with her super-mom? I had thought that part of the point of Hippolyta's 200 years was that wanting to kill white people was legit and cathartic, but also more like a stage to be worked through on the way to more important stuff like exploration and joy (and resolving things with loved ones). So it just felt weird to me to end the show with one more killing instead of, like, Leti casting some beautiful piece of magic, something that suggests what's possible now. Maybe Dee riding her new pet monster guardian while her mom flies alongside, I did like Dee having the monster. Maybe they're back in the car heading towards dawn, which is sadder now that they're missing two people, but calls back to the "sh-boom" scene, which was *terrific*. Montrose's grudging little "sh-boom"! (Every story is better if you give the characters some little moments!)
And then there's "no more magic for white people", which, like, on the one hand was a good line, and on the other hand boy would I not want to be on the implementation committee for that. Are Jews white? Are Arabs? I guess we still don't have a Middle Eastern and North African category on the census and so at least in the US all MENA people are "white", but I would not say they have white privilege in the same way I do. For that matter, eastern Europe did not exactly have the same participation in things like imperialism or the Atlantic slave trade as the big colonial powers, and, look, I know that Lovecraft Country is a story about Black pain and Black rage and Black power, and it's not cool to be like "but what about the whiiiite people, not alllll white people", and then it turns into a gross reverse-racism thing, but the part of my brain that really likes to think about, like, the gritty details of worldbuilding, and what the ripple effects of some big event might look like, that part is totally like "okay, the next season opens with a magical ventilator suddenly shutting off and some young person panicking in a Balkan language while their grandparent dies, right?". Or, like, okay, I have done some research, the Lovings get arrested in 1958, although Loving v Virginia isn't decided until 1967 - maybe the next season tackles the question of interracial couples and multiracial children. How does it change relationships if one of the people, who used to have more privilege, now has less in this way. Is a multiracial child banned from magic or not. Is this the magical one-drop rule. What if some multiracial kids get magic and some don't, does that mean that some are "more Black" or "more white" or something icky like that. *I* couldn't write this story sensitively, but I feel like a team of multiracial and Black writers could say really interesting things here. Except for the risk of turning into a gross reverse-racism thing. :/
Anyways, I guess it was a 2020 show, so I will not face the question of nominating anything for the Hugos... I'll be interested to see whether any episodes make the longlist. I'm thinking maybe the Tulsa episode, if any.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-20 11:12 am (UTC)It's been funny to see Wunmi Mosaku in Loki even though her part is so far very bleh.
I think HBOmax has Infinity Train which you might like.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-20 03:17 pm (UTC)From what little I've heard about the projected second season, it sounds like it would've been much more interesting.