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| Courtesy: HBO |
Most of Lovecraft Country episode
1 was spent developing the series' capabilities as a drama, which
could frankly and powerfully discuss the legacy of racism in both
America and genre literature, only letting loose and giving us a
sample of the (fantastical) horror the show could provide towards the end. It feels
appropriate, then, that with episode 2, Whitey's on the
Moon, Lovecraft
Country uses the bulk of the
episode to show us what a good horror show it can be. Making
excellent use of the creepy mansion where Atticus, George, and Leti
found themselves at the end of the series premiere, this second
installment does a very strong job of building up the tension and the
supernatural mystery, while still devoting plenty of time to
character development. And while the first episode commented quite a
bit on the racism in classic horror, sci-fi, and fantasy fiction at
large, this episode delves quite a bit into Lovecraft specifically,
channeling the storytelling and thematic tropes of his work, and
turning them on their head to subvert his bigoted views. Whitey's
on the Moon zooms in on the
story a bit, looking less at the systemic racism in America as a
whole, and focusing on the specific plight of our characters now that
they have reached the town of Ardham, though it is still very
attentive to the deeply-ingrained racism they encounter along the
way. We're definitely in Lovecraft Country itself this time around.
Having arrived at
the mansion that Atticus's dad's letter lead them to, Atticus,
George, and Leti find themselves welcomed with a disconcerting level
of friendliness and hospitality by the wealthy, creepy, very Aryan
Braithwhite family (Abbey Lee, Tony Goldwyn, Jordan Patrick Smith),
who seem to basically rule the isolated town of Ardham. But something
is really creepy about the house as well as its inhabitants, and
something is messing with their memory and perception. Our three
heroes set out to find Atticus's dad and figure out exactly what is
going on, but are in way over their heads as the occult nature of
their predicament starts to become clear.
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Narratively this episode is pure
Lovecraftian horror, drawing recurring plot elements from multiple
Lovecraft stories like The Rats in the Walls (which
features that notoriously-named black cat), The Dunwich
Horror, and others:
mysterious birth-rites and sinister, forgotten-to-time family
histories, creepy mansions with strange chambers of ominous purpose (or eldritch purpose, I should say, if we're really getting Lovecraftian),
and an isolated town with an insular population who seem unmoored
from time. In terms of storytelling style, mood, and suspense, the
episode captures the essence of Lovecraft's horror pretty perfectly.
But crucially, it flips Lovecraft's racism on its head, making it
even creepier in the process. In The Rats in the Walls,
the protagonist who inherits the sinister mansion is a blatantly
racist white man whose family presumably built the house with slave
labor; in this story, the white aristocratic family who owns the
house are incredibly suspicious (if not obviously villainous) from
the start, and we see the story through the eyes of Atticus, George,
and Leti, who are entering the luxurious home under the assumption
that it is enemy territory where they cannot possibly be welcome
(after the horrors of last week's sundown-town confrontation, an
impossibly friendly blonde-haired, blue-eyed rich white man calling
Atticus “Mr. Freeman” and treating him like royalty is
immediately suspicious and creepy by its dissonance from the reality
of the day). In most Lovecraft stories about an insular, isolated
community in league with some type of dark forces (most notably The
Dunwich Horror and The
Shadow Over Innsmouth), the
creepiness of the community is indicated by its inhabitants being
described as hideous, subhuman degenerates – which is usually
pretty obviously coded with racism and Lovecraft's fear of the mixing
of the races, and always loaded with classism and a disgust of the
poor. In this episode, the creepy inhabitants of Ardham are all
stereotypical-Hollywood-ideal white people, most of them straight-up
Aryan in their appearance. The horror isn't that the people in this
town are somehow “wrong;” the horror is that they look exactly
like all the other racist white Americans our heroes have
encountered, and they appear to be living in some sort of creepy
white supremacist enclave that has clearly walled itself off from
anyone “other.”
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The episode does
take its time where it really counts, in the character development.
While the first episode got our trio on the road so fast that it felt
like Jurnee Smollett's Leti got shortchanged in the
character-development department, in this episode she gets more to
do, and a very good monologue that gives some deeper insights into
her character. Once again Courtney B. Vance is outstanding as George,
largely stealing the episode with a few crucial scenes, and Jonathan
Majors continues to be an excellent lead. The new additions to the
cast make very strong impressions as well, though in the interest of
remaining spoiler-free, I won't say more about them until next week.
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With its fast
pacing and sometimes-excessive speeding through the world it presents
us, Whitey's on the Moon is a somewhat more uneven episode
than the first, and I can't help but feel like this should have been
built out into episodes 2 and 3 instead. But the plot, character, and
world-building remain extremely strong, with a truly stellar cast
working magic with Green's dialogue, and pacing gripes aside, this
follow-up episode continues to build the series' excellent potential.
We've established now that Lovecraft Country can do horror
just as well as it does drama, so it will be very exciting to see
where the show goes from here.
Score:
- Christopher S. Jordan
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