After a bout of gastro – thank you Joshua Ethan Mond – I didn’t really have the strength over the weekend to do a follow up post on gender bias issues.*Â So I thought I’d have a laugh and instead write about Lovecraft and racism and anti-semitism as sparked by this wonderful post by Nnedi Okorafor.
Let’s be clear here: I loathe the fact that any award would use Lovecraft’s face – even a particularly ugly representation, not that he was much of a looker – as the bust for an award. But what I found interesting – and disturbing as well – is that until I’d read Nnedi’s post I hadn’t realised how much I hated the idea of Lovecraft being the emblem – no matter how caricatured – of an award as respected as the World Fantasy Award.
And that got me thinking. In spite of his vile attitude towards POC’s, Jews, homosexuals and any other minority group that his little mind couldn’t fathom like creatures from his own mythos, Lovecraft has become part of the mainstream. In a sense we – and I include myself in this – forget the sort of person he was and just judge him solely on his work**. And there’s a large part of me that thinks that this is OK. Since the Death of the Author, the work has been given a life of its own, able to be enjoyed without requiring character references of the author.
But there’s also a part of me that wonders whether we should be so forgiving. If Lovecraft was writing today, and was still very much the same man with the same fucked up attitudes, it’s likely*** that the reaction from the interwebs and publishers would be enough to curtail Lovecraft’s career. But Lovecraft has the gift of history on his side. And by the time it became unpopular to a be racist or an anti-semite or a homophobe, he’d already been accepted into the canon of the weird.****
So, maybe Lovecraft has won. Maybe he has become the lovable racist and anti-semite whose tentacles run so deep through the canon of the fantastical and the weird that we will never be able to fully shake him.
And yet I can’t help but laugh and smile and shout YES! when I read Nnedi’s way of dealing with the award.
I too am deeply honored to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It feels so so so right and so so good. The award’s jury was clearly progressive and looking in a new direction. I am the first black person to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel since its inception in 1975. Lovecraft is probably rolling in his grave. Or maybe, having become spirit, his mind has cleared of the poisons and now understands the err of his ways. Maybe he is pleased that a book set and about Africa in the future has won an award crafted in his honor. Yeah, I’ll go with that image.
* Though there’s the issue of quotas that I want to come back to.
** Which to be fair I’ve never been a huge fan of. Unless you’re counting the Reanimator movies. Well, at least the first couple.
*** Though I can’t actually be sure, because there’s a number of racists and homophobes and anti-semites today who get published and adored by millions…
**** Of course have no idea whether Lovecraft’s publishers (Weird Tales etc) would have been concerned about his views even if they’d known.
You have absolutely no concept of what real art is. Go die in a hole, you racially backwards philistine. By your logic nearly every writing of Arabic or Asian culture should be likewise ostracized for its racist tones. You Anglophobic scum forget that Lovecraft OPPOSED Hitler’s methods as “brutal” and he later married a Jewish woman! You disregard his reverence for Arabic and Egyptian culture. His beliefs about the inferiority of ghetto culture has been VALIDATED by the modern age. He hated it for the violence, barbarity, and ignorance that defines it! People like you should be shot!
Thanks for the death threat! Oh, and having an unhappy marriage with a woman who happens to be Jewish doesn’t absolve you from being an anti-semite.
It does, you fuck. Racism is, among other things, the idea that one should not breed with a certain RACE. Hitler’s entire plan of killing Jews was specifically so Germans would not marry, impregnate, or become pregnant by Jews. HPL even called der Fuhrer barbaric. To some, however, the only way to truly evade allegations of racism is to be black or Jewish. I guess that’s you. Oh, I never threatened you, either, though I strongly recommend you consider suicide as a more productive direction for your life. We don’t need more censorship. We need less people like you!
Your language was and still is aggressive but on reflection I agree you didn’t threaten my life. Though suggesting suicide as a lifestyle choice seems like an interesting way of dealing with people who disagree with you.
It’s interesting that you’ve reduced Hitler’s hatred down to an issue of miscegenation. Hitler’s hatred would have nothing to do with his belief that Jews wanted to control all the wealth of the world or that they were directly involved in Germany losing WW1 or that they were Communists.
But then your simplistic view on Hitler reflects Lovecraft’s knee jerk hatred and misunderstanding of Jews and their alien culture and beliefs.
And I’m not about censoring HP. People can read him to their hearts content as far as I’m concerned. I’m just not convinced we should be honouring him as a great figure of the genre.
Also, he spent most of his childhood masquerading about his neighborhood as an Arab. This is the origin of Abdul Alhazrad.
I suppose in your world view black face is also OK.
That you would see a childs fantasy as Blackface shows what kind of book burning cunt you are. Go join ISIS and die if you hate Whites so damn much. By the way, Jew girls are easy.
Geoff, mate, how’s it been? Haven’t seen you around these parts for more than a year.
Anywho, don’t think I’ll be joining ISIS what with me being Jewish and all. Like Lovecraft, they’re quite narrow minded as to who they will accept into their group.
Don’t be a stranger Geoff and come back soon.
Become a Mormon. Our Zion is way better than that bombed over heat storm in the middle east you guys call Isreal. You won’t have to fight Muslims bomb jockeys for it either, although the Baptists can get aggressive. HPL would have been happy here. ISIS is gonna learn the same thing Hitler did about Russia.