The opening moments of Lovecraft Country perfectly encapsulate everything you need to know about Misha Green’s brand new HBO series. Our hero, Atticus, is right there in front, leading the charge and fighting his way through the trenches. There are bodies strewn all around. There are bullets screaming past him. The music that plays, the soundtrack from an old-time radio drama, scratches and pops as if from a tired Victrola. The voiceover tells us that this is the story of an American boy and a truly American dream.
As Atticus climbs up over the top, the scene suddenly explodes with colour, and we bear witness to a magnificent science fiction vista. Green glowing UFOs hover in the sky. A dragon sweeps across the scene. Martian tripods, shooting lasers, decimate the land. In the background, we see Roman legionaires fighting World War I doughboys. Dejah Thoris floats down from out of the sky, and a giant tentacled monster – that can only be described as “Lovecraftian” – is about to swallow Atticus, when Jackie Robinson shows up and smashes it dead with his baseball bat.
And then he wakes up, at the back of a bus in segregated America, clutching onto a well thumbed copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars.
I was hooked. There is so much stunning detail in those first two minutes that I knew everything I needed to about Atticus, who he was, and where he stood in relation to the world around him. For our hero, leaving Kentucky and giving the middle finger to Jim Crow, is just another nightmare he’s running away from. Because being black in America means that you always need an escape route.
Lovecraft Country is a lot of show. The series, which is executive produced by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams, and based on a novel by Matt Ruff, begins, ostensibly, as a road trip deep into the worst parts of America’s history. Atticus (Jonathan Majors), along with his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and childhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett), set out to a rather strange corner of New England in search of his estranged father. Little do they know that they’ll need more than just a Green Book in order to survive.
There are haunted houses and shape-shifting books. There are vampiric creatures that stalk the forests at night. There are spell-wielding white supremacists. There are county sheriffs who will hunt you down and kill you if you happen to be black and within their borders when the sun goes down. All things that you might expect from a series that bears the word “Lovecraft” in its title.
It is also all I’m inclined to tell you about what happens here. To say any more would be to take away from the excitement of not knowing what happens next. Watching Lovecraft Country gave me the exact same feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had with Watchmen. You know that sinking feeling you get when the plane you’re on experiences turbulence? The way fear and anxiety, when mixed with adrenaline, results in a rather peculiar high? That is the joyous nausea I’m talking about. The one that comes with experiencing something great for the first time.
But before I get into the why of it all, a quick note on Lovecraft Country’s three leads. This series is such an amazing showcase for Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett, and Courtney B. Vance. It is further proof that everyone here needs be in everything else. Majors makes for a dazzling leading man. He is the very embodiment of strength, and resilience, and controlled rage. He is tormented by both his past and his present. And the stunning slow burn of his performance means we have absolutely no idea how he’s going to react in any given scenario.
Jurnee Smollett will be your new obsession. She has such a presence that everything she does here will have you completely mesmerized. (There is a sequence in the third episode involving a baseball bat that is a perfect moment of choreographed catharsis.)
And Courtney B. Vance can’t help but bring gravitas to anything he’s in. I can’t tell if it’s the dulcet tone of his voice or the calming decency of his character.
The cast is masterful. The production is sumptuous. But the MVP here is showrunner Misha Green and her assured authorial voice.
Lovecraft Country, like Watchmen before it, are shows about race that use genre conventions as a method to deconstruct the myth of American exceptionalism. American history, by way of popular culture, and without the white filter through which it is primarily processed, means having to revisit some long accepted truths. The most damaging of which being the Tocquevillean notion that the United States and its values are uniquely virtuous and worthy of admiration. (They aren’t.)
In Watchmen, Damon Lindelof used the superhero story to dismantle that myth of America being “a shining city of a hill” and an “empire of liberty.” In it, the black experience is called upon as a direct antithesis to American exceptionalism. In Lovecraft Country, Misha Green uses pulp fiction to do something very similar. She reframes America as the monster. The way she sees it, the unchallenged faith towards America’s origin story remains the source of all their nightmares.
Whether it’s by way of a comic book or a horror story, both of these shows demonstrate how we can appropriate fact, fiction, and fantasy for our own purposes. It doesn’t matter when or where they’re from, what’s important is how we use them to empower ourselves. In that way, Lovecraft Country – and Watchmen – are a lot like Hamilton. Lin Manuel Miranda wrote the most important piece of fanfic ever. He took these revolutionary men, all of whom were incredibly complex, perfectly flawed, and overwhelmingly white, he mined them for their stories, and repurposed them in order to reframe history and reinforce cultural identity. He used it as a tool for emancipation.
Lovecraft Country has similar intentions. In a conversation that takes place early in the first episode, Atticus talks about his love of pulp fiction. He talks about John Carter and how much he enjoys those stories in which “the heroes get to go on adventures in other worlds, to fight insurmountable odds, defeat the monster, save the day.” He loves them despite John Carter’s past as a confederate soldier. He adds that stories are like people, they aren’t perfect, but we still try to cherish them and overlook their flaws. Even though the flaws never go away.
That’s is how Misha Green begins her treatise on America. With that one exchange that’s characterized by subtle shades of meaning and expression. She is saying that all of our histories are horrible, but it’s what we learn from it, and how we use it to grow, that will eventually determine which version we hold on to.
Lovecraft Country is smart, and exciting, and silly, and, for right now, the best way that this particular story has been told.
Lovecraft Country
HBO, Season 1, 10 episodes
Showrunner: Misha Green
Writers: Misha Green, Jonathan Kidd, Sonya Winton, Wes Taylor, Kevin Lau, Shannon Houston, and Belinda Ihuoma Ofordire
Cast: Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors, Courtney B. Vance, Aunjanue Ellis, Abbey Lee, Jada Harris, Wunmi Mosaku, and Michael Kenneth Williams
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