Wonderfull doc. I am now 72, and I discovered Lovecraft back in the mid '60's when I was in high school in Schenectady, NY. The school library had original editions of HPL printed by Arkham Press, and I became fascinated with his strange and archaic writing style. During the summer of 1968 I attended a program at Brown University, and took my Lovecraft with me. I must have spent hours searching for all the places that HPL mentioned in his stories. Benefit Street in those days was still largely as it had been in Lovecraft's day, and Im sure that true devotes will know of the narrow yellow house on Benefit Street mentioned in the story. It was abandoned then, and was as eldritch as could be. Even the large slates of the sidewalk in front were perpetually damp. I think that once you have found him, he never leaves you. That summer remains eternal in my mind. Thanks again, and greetings from the Hudson Valley. I salute you for keeping the flame alive.
I've been waiting for this one so patiently. Thank you so much for all the work you put in these wonderful documentaries. Weird Fiction has changed my life.
Awesome Doc, I am studying Braille so that I can always read the works of H. P. Lovecraft, regardless of the circumstances. I will pierce the cosmic darkness that surrounds me and refuse to descend into madness. My late father, who was a lifelong fan of Lovecraft born in the 1920's he was proud to exist during the Gold era of SCi-Fi and Lovecrafts own lifetime he introduced me as a young child to every classic Sci-fI and Classic horror he could get his hands on his favotite work rhough was Lovecraft I was very fortunate to have him in my life.
Appreciate the mix here of animated visualisations of his stories, the visits to locations and repositories of his papers, great mix of direct quotes and modern readers from all races creating a balanced overview of HPL's life & mindset.
You should've mentioned the Dark Adventure Radio Theater adaptations of his works, simply incredible. in fact most H. P. Lovecraft audio books are very pleasant and special, made with love and care.
Phenomenal series. Their story telling is top notch. If I may be so bold, the best telling of The Dunwich Horror it has been my pleasure to hear was done by a radio revival group called *19 Nocturne Boulevard* They played it as an audio drama and I've never heard better. Now, if you are a purist, liberties have been taken, but in this case they enhance the dramatic quality and do NOT diminish HPL's fabulous plot. The character's are given dimension, and the poignant and moving addition of Lavinia Whatley's love for her strange son is given voice and depth and genuine pathos without diminishing the horrific nature of his purpose Give yourself a treat!
@@apophisrolo1339 Believe me, I have heard a radio adaptation by Ronald Coleman ( the first, 1943), a version recorded by David McCallum, Roddy McDowell, countless by seasoned Creepypasta hosts like Otis Jiry, and the inestimable Ian Gordon. And the 19 Nocturne Blvd. version stands head and shoulders above them all.
@@JosieTyner-s7u I have a Dunwich Horror (Suspense episode 1945.11.01) by Ronald Coleman, don't know anything about a 1943 version.. is it longer? the one i have is only 24:05min, another is Atlanta Radio Theater Company 1988 adaptation, and the Robert M. Price version (my favorite after the Dark Adventure Radio Theater version of course)
@@apophisrolo1339 Whoops no I just got the date wrong. 1946 is correct. Wonderful, wonderful performance from a great actor. Sorry for the mistake. ART 's Call of Cthulhu and Shadow over In Innsmouth, equally enjoyable.. I'm iffy about movie adaptations, cosmic horror is hella difficult to convey. But there are two that definitely pass muster in my book. The HPLHS production of the Call of Cthulhu meticulously used 1920's camera techniques to make a silent version the is an exquisite little jewel. Atmospheric, evocative, the actors are splendid and the stop -action U-No-Hu, Lord of R'lyeh, The Great Dreamer Himself, was worthy of Ray Harryhousen. The Bryan Yuzna production of "Dagon," where The shadow over I. Is very successfully transported to the Basque coast of Spain. Low budget but very convincing and effective, the atmosphere is perfect. More than anything, I would love to see an animated version of The Dream quest of Unknown Kadath. I fear the cost would be astronomical as it would be worthy of grand old techniques like rotogravure . I'm thinking Ethan Hawke as Randolph Carter...
I F ing love H.P. stories. I never knew he was a big racist. I never felt that when I read him. He is long dead. But it's his writing is what I cared for. So that's what I will allow myself to enjoy. The older I get. The more I realize. Sometimes humans produce amazing things, within thier warped views. My photography doesn't represent my mental illness. What we really need to ask here. Is. Will Tom Cruise ever release the Mountains of Madness movie? ✌️
I find it interesting that you never noticed it in his work. He does write explicitly about inhuman creatures pretending to be human and leans heavily on the fear of the other. It's stuff that's still in bigoted propaganda to this day.
@@mitcharendt2253 I've always struggled to see it in Shadows Over Innsmouth the way a lot of people do. I think its a bit trite to just make the connection between miscegenation and the Deep Ones breeding with humans- which is not an illogical one - without thinking about the possibility that Lovecraft just used it because it's a really scary idea to have alien/human hybrids, especially at the time of writing. Now Red Hook, well. That's where he really lays it all out there...
Y'all...I love HPL but his bigotry is naked on every other page and that's before we get into metaphors. The Horror at Red Hook is mostly a non stop bigoted rant against foreigners and non-WASP races and cultures and there's no euphemism or metaphor involved. It's actually so cartoonish that it's just laughable and ultimately (imo) harmless. One man's fears. But if you're not noticing it the bigotry...that's a concerning level of imperceptiveness.
Overall watchable if uneven documentary about H.P. Lovecraft and his impact on modern culture. Interesting if ironic and pretentious title as well (Exegesis Lovecraft) given this doc is not what I would call a critical explanation or interpretation. Certainly it has portions that are worth the time for those who appreciate Lovecraft or at least his writing of weird fiction (although not much new info/material is presented) on a casual basis. However, I would have enjoyed and appreciated a more dignified, serious, and academic approach to HPL here, an actual exegesis, instead of mostly through a pop-culture lens. This is Comic-Con (or Necronomi-Con) material. I am a weary of the pop culturalization and hyper-commercialization of Lovecraft which I believe denigrates his work and philosophy. For example, the interviews with the fanboys and such, depictions through childish cartoons, the odd, rubber Lovecraft mask worn by someone (?what?) and also the director including himself in the documentary---making it about himself as much as Lovecraft. I'm surprised the director didn't have a link at the end to sell merchandise such as Cthulhu plush toys and puppets, HPL cookbook, and so on. Unfortunately, Lovecraft has become another cheap commodity. I'm hoping for a serious and dignified documentary on HPL. Maybe someday.
Perhaps when people will stop moralizing his personal views of the world compared to today's morality. And perhaps even admit that that today people have their new biases. Like how one of those fans speaks about modern homophobic society, which many would argue against.
The doco is really told from the POV of the film maker... and it's about his diametric attitude towards being a person of colour who was fundamentally influenced by Lovecraft and only discovered HPL's attitudes after the fact, and how confronting that was.
@@Wangavision Still, there could have been more about the stories. S.T. Joshi himself has in an interview lamented that the documentary concentrated too much on Lovey's racism, and Joshi is also a person of colour, fundamentally influenced by Lovey, as his friends called him. This documentary was clearly too much about the film maker and too little about the topic, Lovey and what he is known for, namely, his stories.
Excellent and one of the best documentaries on H.P. Lovecraft. He did go beyond New York City during his limited travels by taking a trip to De Land, Florida to meet another member of the Kalem Club (aka the Lovecraft Circle) Robert Barlow. Barlow who was gay and later would became one of the top anthropologist & historian of Early Mexico & the development of the Nahuatl language. Besides being a friend of Lovecraft he was also an influence of William S. Burroughs in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Unfortunately, Barlow committed suicide after being outed as gay by a disgruntled former student at the Mexico City College campus in 1951.
I respect the hell out of S.T. Joshi. He had the most wise opinions, what you called "Orthodox", I would call rational. Leslie Lee had great takes also. It is said offense is taken, not given. Don't waste mental energy on the beliefs of others, especially dead ones.
HPL may have been surrounded by the "scientific" proposition that eugenics was something that could "help" the development of an organized and "better" type of human civilization, BUT...BUT he also was an adult who had opportunity to develop compassion, moral concerns, EMPATH, and love. He wasn't stupid...all he had to do was try to epand his horizons and realize life is a balance of so many factors---including science AND compassion----to produce the most fully realized adult human being. He chose to live as a perpetual spoiled kid. (Of course, he may have developed in a more rounded way with the passage of time or through events that he never had that might have changed many another similar person to a saner take on life, should he have had a longer life.) Still, there is no doubt that seeing our world through the eyes of someone who was not entirely "human" in the broadest sense is quite fascinating. It's like seeing the Earth through the eyes of an alien being..and well worth the experience. WE MIGHT ALSO WANT TO REMEMBER that Lovecraft never took up a gun and/or walked down streets or got on the radio or wrote editorials in mainstream newspapers advocating any harm to another human being, and was, in fact, well-behaved and very polite to any of the "other" from all accounts it seems, who came into his life directly. He kept his rage to pen and paper very much as his own therapy. There seems no doubt he was a damaged man in many ways, and the creative arts may very well have been his salvation, and, in an appropriately WEIRD way, to our artistic stimulation, , imagination-expansion, and edification. he brought new meaning and energy to a new kind of Metaphorical Writing THAT IS A REL GIFT HE LEFT BEHIND. AND LET HIS "BAD" PARTS REMIND US TO BECOME NOT THAT THING.
Lovecraft I thought was already quite popular by the 70's. Everyone I knew, even in the early 60's had copies of his book, the rock record albums, fanzines etc. We even wrote a script in the early 70's called THE CRY OF CTHULHU, with the blessings of Arkham House lawyer who handled rights, a script that eventually found its way up to "Spielberg-land" and amy have inspired some of POLTERGEIST. And there were a LOT of his books being published in paperback in both the US and the UK, movies and tv episodes (or NIGHT GALLERY, references by Stephen King (which really spread the word), underground (an regular) comic book adaptations. The gaming stuff certainly helped, but HPL was WELL on his way long before that. This is an interesting video, with maybe a bit too much on his racism. He has been known for that for a long long time (even the Monarch Notes book for the literary study of HPL spends time talking about it.) In some ways, Lovecraft was not a "regulation" human being. He was raised in a very peculiar way, and, in some ways, he was a racist against the human race... There's not hiding his racism, but now it has become a "thing". Maybe its his greatest monster, his greatest threat to the human race, his own most frightening creation. But it is only na PART of the story. LIke many one-of-a-kinds he brought us a lot of unique ideas and a rich vein of speculative diggings.
Oh my God, Lovecraft thought his race was somehow "better" than other races? You mean like people in India, Japan, Germany, Austria, Russia, Arabia, and hundreds of other places thought their race, religion, or tribe was "better" than others? That's really shocking. Let's spend endless hours psychoanalyzing and belittling Lovecraft for thinking the way that millions of other people thought at the time, all the while missing the irony of us thinking we are "better" than him.
It's unreal how ppl try to put the racism narrative on a completely different generation... where words were not as insulting as the snowflakes take it today.
The guy at 1:55 speaks truth and wisdom. All you need to understand about art. Personally I do not desperatly need to make Lovecraft a socialist to fit him in my world view. Btw, I hope that’s not Lenin at your desk, ha ha… Nevertheless I enjoyed this film.
I would say Lovecraft was more into eugenics or bioethics as all these Crowleyian people are. They believe in certain humans being more knowledgeable have a right to deceive you if you let them do it to you which is part of the ritual. They believe if you let yourself be enslaved, you deserve it which of course is the antithesis of the whole point of life and co creativity. I think part of his darkness was knowing this side of him and hating it about himself. At the same time there are many rumors about rituals he was part of and even a theory that he didn't even realize the real gods he was uncovering and was killed for it as one of the many profits through fiction we get throughout time have suffered
It is a very strange fact that Lovecraft stated again and again that human beings meant nothing to him in his cosmic perspective, and yet he had so many close friends, I guess you could almost call him a genius of friendship. After his recluse period in the years after dropping out of school, and for the rest of his life, he was an extremely social person, and he was loyal and generous to his friends like none other. I think this is one of the big mysteries surrounding Lovecraft, actually a far bigger mystery than his racism, which obviously was a product of his time and shared by many intelligent people in the 1920s and 1930s, and probably made even worse by his own professional failure and his poverty. The second big mystery about his life is probably his sexuality, or lack thereof, although nowadays I lean towards the belief that he was a closeted gay, which I think shines through in a few of the stories, notably in Hypnos and in The Hound.
Interesting, I take him at his word that, apart from Sonia, he was largely 'asexual' but the elements of The Hound and elsewhere are worth exploring. Perhaps he had a similar general indifference to heterosexuality & homosexuality?
Lovecraft sure hid his is racism well in his works. All racists are taught to be that way. Lovecraft over the years came to the realization that his racism was not only wrong but against his ideas of Humanity in general. You can see it in relation to the star-headed Old Ones of "At The Mountains Of Madness" and saw them not as monsters but instead as men.
Just as you can’t love others unless you love yourself, you can’t hate others unless you hate yourself. H.P. Mother called him ugly and unpresentable to society. His aunts also reinforced the idea that he was inadequate for the outside world.
this comment section… Lovecraft unfortunately richly deserved his legacy’s burden of being a cultural worm-grunting stick for Tom Buchanan-types far and wide. “Oh cool! Lovecraft! I’ll just check the Comment section while I watch…” >> Leaving before an actual phrenologist turns up in here…
The people in Innsmouth don't capture Olmstead - he escapes. Afterwards when he is "safe" he has dreams, in one of which he sees a Shoggoth, and this triggers the beginning of transformation. He starts to take on the "Innsmouth look" and considers buying an automatic to put an end to himself. He then decides to get his cousin out of the sanitarium and go to live with the Deep Ones. That seems a pretty major plot point to get wrong, and makes me wonder if the person who wrote this actually re-read things or just did it from memory? Either way, it doesn't give me much hope for the depth or accuracy of the work.
I am a little mystified that the racism in Lovecraft's writings receives so much attention, but the exact same racist, classist, and eugenicist beliefs seem to get a pass in the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hugh Lofting, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bram Stoker, and so many other popular writers of the late 19th and early 20th century. I understood, even as a child, that all of these writers had wrongheaded, antiquated points of view, and perhaps I was naive to assume that other readers could see what seemed so clear to me. I just wonder why this fuss is made over Lovecraft, but nobody objects to the latest Doctor Dolittle production, or the endless iterations of Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan.
It's ironic and rather fitting that a fundamentalist loon is living so close to one of Lovecraft's abodes, and actively wards people off with tales of exorcisms, hauntings and sacrifice. H.P.L. would find this amusing.
I had trouble with ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ because I think fish are beautiful. My illustration of Obed makes him quite handsome, in a fishy/human way. 😂
If I have a large bone of contention with this excellent documentary, it's that his circle of friends, and friends are an important part of anyone's life, are fairly excluded from this piece. Some are fascinating people in their own right: Barlow, Cook, Long, Loveman, Bishop, Galpin, Moore, Miniter, Wandrei , Dwyer etc. Even the few celebs he encountered, Harry Houdini, Chaplin's brother Wheeler, found him an engaging type to talk to.
Wow, Lovecraft had faults just like every other human being! What a surprise! He was also a genius and his work will long outlast all his woke critics....
Good grief no kidding.. I couldn't even make it past 25 minutes.. all the liberal sadness and victim narrative.. on an author from 100 yrs ago. Smh. So not a documentary.. but a whiny how dare he say that bs
True, stopped after they were calling Robert E. Howard a racist incel and saying that HPL fear was nowdays capitalism. Man, these wokies ruin everything
Why do these people gravitate toward Lovecraft and make his work and legacy somehow about themselves as non-white immigrants. He would not have wanted you here.
Because many don't realise that impotence bringa resentment. Yesterday it was against the foreigners. Today it's against the natives, which then loops back in favour of the original. But they can't admit to these natural human feelings, because that would be admitting of being similar to a man rejected by their own moral group. So they damn the man to save them selves from the repercussions of liking his works.
What a depressing small-minded documentary. Full of amateur psychology, painfully politically correct (ie. Woke) moralising - and Woke is an ideology notable mainly for its immaturity and its intolerance. Fretting about Lovecraft's moral character. Can we dare to read and enjoy his work if he might conceivably have been racist (spoiler: he was). Dare we read an author who might be popular with incels, with racists? How long, I wonder, before the moral guardians of literature decide that, for the good of all of us, Lovecraft must be cancelled so that we in the 21st century can feel virtuous and pure? When research reveals that Lovecraft may have begun to embrace socialism later in life this is presented in sanctimonious tones as the possibility of redemption! Tiresome, priggish and more than a little patronising. Speaks volumes about limited PC mindset of so many young Americans. Most conspicuous is the limited self awareness/self criticism among the Lovecraft fans in this documentary. Keen to identify racism in their hero and ostentatiously distance themselves from it they fail even to consider the possibility that they might harbour racist and bigoted tendencies in their own minds. In fact, self awareness is restricted to wondering how one can justify enjoying the works of a writer with a proven racist world view. What would one's peer group think? This is strangely reminiscent of Puritans identifying and denouncing the sinful - the better to confirm their own virtue.
Half an hour into this fine and thorough documentary gave me pause to think, in 100 years time, will there be a similar one for Harry Potter's author? I don't have any "dog in the fight" when it comes to other peoples opinions and I'm grateful for discovering Lovecraft through this documentary and will give him a try as I know that I am perfectly able to enjoy the visual arts and music by easily disassociating the "writer is from the works" I think art is a verb -it's something that happens between the art and the consumer ALONE The writer should have kept it to themselves if they wanted to have anything to do with it beyond completing it so I wonder that IF Lovecraft can survive 'Cancel Culture' perhaps so too can JKR..?
He called their critique Empiricism, or what could be defined as a blank slate, or .. tomb (where the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience), which is defined by relations, according to professional worldly thinkers. Empiricists argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of these previous sensory experiences. An example can be MKUltra, where memories are jumbled and derived as having been conjured by a movie, music, or some other media or experience where the thoughts or ideas came from. Subjects who would go against the doctor's narrative would then be subject to continued revision and falsification. These men of broader intellect, who have confined him in this same way have done so only by the virtue of the delicate individual Lovecraft physical and mental media. This is the reason why H.P. left his formal studies, commercial life, and social recreation, as an early child, to envision his ancestral home. The Physician's comparisons of the Author's experiences and history is purposed only to discredit the authenticity of his narrative, as the bulk of humanity follow suit in their lack of patience and intelligence, which lie outside the majorities common experience and materialism. Lovecraft found it sufficient, due to his present position, and what has led to these circumstances of the demented, to only relate the events without analyzing cause. This, knowing, that they were going to confine him in a locked room where ancestral voices could not reach him, due to the barrage of a mixed race with no explanation of origin. That is, Death: that knows no name, title, nor creed. We are one and all the same as we seek to make contact with the one living from the depths of our grave. The only ones evil are the ones we're left with who try to convince you that they are the ones who are not dead.
Seeing as how European cities were recently reduced to piles of rubble by the aggression of European vs. European, I find your comment somewhat baffling.
@@gardenvariety9957 Dresden was reduced to rubble, but was then completely rebuilt and recovered because Germans continued to live there. But no city can ever be restored to its former glory while its demographics have been reduced to a hopeless tangle and enigma.
@@fredericktarr8266 one way of looking at it. As an American, I welcome the enigmatic tangle that makes our language, our music, our cuisine, and yes, our cities (with exceptions) so vibrant
1:30:40 Did bro just say to cancel JK Rowling and pirate all her work? Awful. Just awful. This was in general very political in a very ridiculous way. It felt like more time was spent confirming how awful the man was rather than anything else. Other than that though, I did enjoy the nuggets of facts it actually provided on Lovecraft
If you fell in love with Lovecrafts storys, then second guess and debate with yourself if you should still enjoy his works once you realize he was racist, just go. Lovecraft isn't for you, if such a human malfunction holds your ideals so strongly that you can't separate art and your feelings.
![Chris Langan - The Interview THEY Didn't Want You To See - CTMU [Full Version; Timestamps]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9miVG2xT5jY/mqdefault.jpg)
Wonderfull doc. I am now 72, and I discovered Lovecraft back in the mid '60's when I was in high school in Schenectady, NY. The school library had original editions of HPL printed by Arkham Press, and I became fascinated with his strange and archaic writing style. During the summer of 1968 I attended a program at Brown University, and took my Lovecraft with me. I must have spent hours searching for all the places that HPL mentioned in his stories. Benefit Street in those days was still largely as it had been in Lovecraft's day, and Im sure that true devotes will know of the narrow yellow house on Benefit Street mentioned in the story. It was abandoned then, and was as eldritch as could be. Even the large slates of the sidewalk in front were perpetually damp. I think that once you have found him, he never leaves you. That summer remains eternal in my mind. Thanks again, and greetings from the Hudson Valley. I salute you for keeping the flame alive.
What fun you had, sir.
I didnt like Lovecraft til I found out his views on the immigrant apes flooding the USA. Now he's my favorite.
ST is a tremendous Gift to Lovecraft fans. His incisive books and criticism has opened up a lot of Lovecraft work to a larger audience.
Excellent documentary. I'm a Lovecraft fan for years. For some in the amateur astronomy community me included, Lovecraft is a favorite.
I just found Lovecraft in my mid forties and everytime i read a story i recognise how much filmmaker have ripped of his ideas. i need o read more.
Beautiful documentary from one of the most unexpected places.... thank you.
I’ve listened/watch to this documentary four times in a row. Excellent work!
I've been waiting for this one so patiently. Thank you so much for all the work you put in these wonderful documentaries. Weird Fiction has changed my life.
Awesome Doc, I am studying Braille so that I can always read the works of H. P. Lovecraft, regardless of the circumstances. I will pierce the cosmic darkness that surrounds me and refuse to descend into madness. My late father, who was a lifelong fan of Lovecraft born in the 1920's he was proud to exist during the Gold era of SCi-Fi and Lovecrafts own lifetime he introduced me as a young child to every classic Sci-fI and Classic horror he could get his hands on his favotite work rhough was Lovecraft I was very fortunate to have him in my life.
I love this channel so much, thank you!!!
Outstanding! I learned a lot about one of my favorite authors, and was entertained!
Fascinating doco, I had no idea, many thanks.
Alot of eye rolling commentary from several speakers featured in this doc but
Overall still a fascinating watch.
Appreciate the mix here of animated visualisations of his stories, the visits to locations and repositories of his papers, great mix of direct quotes and modern readers from all races creating a balanced overview of HPL's life & mindset.
The production is fascinating
1:10:20, Lovecraft also wrote Medusa's Coil while sitting on a bench in a park, this time in Richmond, Virginia. Over several days.
You should've mentioned the Dark Adventure Radio Theater adaptations of his works, simply incredible.
in fact most H. P. Lovecraft audio books are very pleasant and special, made with love and care.
Phenomenal series. Their story telling is top notch. If I may be so bold, the best telling of The Dunwich Horror it has been my pleasure to hear was done by a radio revival group called *19 Nocturne Boulevard* They played it as an audio drama and I've never heard better. Now, if you are a purist, liberties have been taken, but in this case they enhance the dramatic quality and do NOT diminish HPL's fabulous plot. The character's are given dimension, and the poignant and moving addition of Lavinia Whatley's love for her strange son is given voice and depth and genuine pathos without diminishing the horrific nature of his purpose Give yourself a treat!
@@JosieTyner-s7u They sound very interesting, it should be the 6th Dunwich Horror adaptation that i could find
@@apophisrolo1339 Believe me, I have heard a radio adaptation by Ronald Coleman ( the first, 1943), a version recorded by David McCallum, Roddy McDowell, countless by seasoned Creepypasta hosts like Otis Jiry, and the inestimable Ian Gordon. And the 19 Nocturne Blvd. version stands head and shoulders above them all.
@@JosieTyner-s7u I have a Dunwich Horror (Suspense episode 1945.11.01) by Ronald Coleman, don't know anything about a 1943 version.. is it longer? the one i have is only 24:05min, another is Atlanta Radio Theater Company 1988 adaptation, and the Robert M. Price version (my favorite after the Dark Adventure Radio Theater version of course)
@@apophisrolo1339 Whoops no I just got the date wrong. 1946 is correct. Wonderful, wonderful performance from a great actor. Sorry for the mistake. ART 's Call of Cthulhu and Shadow over In Innsmouth, equally enjoyable..
I'm iffy about movie adaptations, cosmic horror is hella difficult to convey. But there are two that definitely pass muster in my book. The HPLHS production of the Call of Cthulhu meticulously used 1920's camera techniques to make a silent version the is an exquisite little jewel. Atmospheric, evocative, the actors are splendid and the stop -action U-No-Hu, Lord of R'lyeh, The Great Dreamer Himself, was worthy of Ray Harryhousen. The Bryan Yuzna production of "Dagon," where The shadow over I. Is very successfully transported to the Basque coast of Spain. Low budget but very convincing and effective, the atmosphere is perfect.
More than anything, I would love to see an animated version of The Dream quest of Unknown Kadath. I fear the cost would be astronomical as it would be worthy of grand old techniques like rotogravure . I'm thinking Ethan Hawke as Randolph Carter...
His life is the tale of his times and so is worth telling.
I F ing love H.P. stories. I never knew he was a big racist. I never felt that when I read him. He is long dead. But it's his writing is what I cared for. So that's what I will allow myself to enjoy.
The older I get. The more I realize. Sometimes humans produce amazing things, within thier warped views. My photography doesn't represent my mental illness.
What we really need to ask here.
Is. Will Tom Cruise ever release the Mountains of Madness movie? ✌️
I find it interesting that you never noticed it in his work. He does write explicitly about inhuman creatures pretending to be human and leans heavily on the fear of the other. It's stuff that's still in bigoted propaganda to this day.
Ew tom cruise
@@mitcharendt2253 I've always struggled to see it in Shadows Over Innsmouth the way a lot of people do. I think its a bit trite to just make the connection between miscegenation and the Deep Ones breeding with humans- which is not an illogical one - without thinking about the possibility that Lovecraft just used it because it's a really scary idea to have alien/human hybrids, especially at the time of writing. Now Red Hook, well. That's where he really lays it all out there...
Y'all...I love HPL but his bigotry is naked on every other page and that's before we get into metaphors.
The Horror at Red Hook is mostly a non stop bigoted rant against foreigners and non-WASP races and cultures and there's no euphemism or metaphor involved.
It's actually so cartoonish that it's just laughable and ultimately (imo) harmless. One man's fears.
But if you're not noticing it the bigotry...that's a concerning level of imperceptiveness.
In ‘Reanimator,’ his racism towards black people is appalling. But then he thought Eastern Europeans were subhuman too.
Overall watchable if uneven documentary about H.P. Lovecraft and his impact on modern culture. Interesting if ironic and pretentious title as well (Exegesis Lovecraft) given this doc is not what I would call a critical explanation or interpretation. Certainly it has portions that are worth the time for those who appreciate Lovecraft or at least his writing of weird fiction (although not much new info/material is presented) on a casual basis. However, I would have enjoyed and appreciated a more dignified, serious, and academic approach to HPL here, an actual exegesis, instead of mostly through a pop-culture lens. This is Comic-Con (or Necronomi-Con) material.
I am a weary of the pop culturalization and hyper-commercialization of Lovecraft which I believe denigrates his work and philosophy. For example, the interviews with the fanboys and such, depictions through childish cartoons, the odd, rubber Lovecraft mask worn by someone (?what?) and also the director including himself in the documentary---making it about himself as much as Lovecraft. I'm surprised the director didn't have a link at the end to sell merchandise such as Cthulhu plush toys and puppets, HPL cookbook, and so on. Unfortunately, Lovecraft has become another cheap commodity. I'm hoping for a serious and dignified documentary on HPL. Maybe someday.
Perhaps when people will stop moralizing his personal views of the world compared to today's morality. And perhaps even admit that that today people have their new biases. Like how one of those fans speaks about modern homophobic society, which many would argue against.
Fear Of The Unknown is probably closer to that.
This documentary should have been titled "Lovecraft's Racism", because almost the whole of it discusses that topic.
The doco is really told from the POV of the film maker... and it's about his diametric attitude towards being a person of colour who was fundamentally influenced by Lovecraft and only discovered HPL's attitudes after the fact, and how confronting that was.
@@Wangavision Still, there could have been more about the stories. S.T. Joshi himself has in an interview lamented that the documentary concentrated too much on Lovey's racism, and Joshi is also a person of colour, fundamentally influenced by Lovey, as his friends called him. This documentary was clearly too much about the film maker and too little about the topic, Lovey and what he is known for, namely, his stories.
This documentary is incredible - very complex and exploratory.
Excellent and one of the best documentaries on H.P. Lovecraft. He did go beyond New York City during his limited travels by taking a trip to De Land, Florida to meet another member of the Kalem Club (aka the Lovecraft Circle) Robert Barlow. Barlow who was gay and later would became one of the top anthropologist & historian of Early Mexico & the development of the Nahuatl language. Besides being a friend of Lovecraft he was also an influence of William S. Burroughs in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Unfortunately, Barlow committed suicide after being outed as gay by a disgruntled former student at the Mexico City College campus in 1951.
They visit some of the places in Quebec, Canada that he visited. They don't mention his trip to Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts.
I respect the hell out of S.T. Joshi. He had the most wise opinions, what you called "Orthodox", I would call rational. Leslie Lee had great takes also. It is said offense is taken, not given. Don't waste mental energy on the beliefs of others, especially dead ones.
Well spoken.
Is the opening audio an actual recording of Lovecraft?
Some people take his work very seriously. Just what is holding the old gods back?
Waiting for the stars to align
Theological permits.
Cool doc thank you! I relate a lot with you man.
HPL may have been surrounded by the "scientific" proposition that eugenics was something that could "help" the development of an organized and "better" type of human civilization, BUT...BUT he also was an adult who had opportunity to develop compassion, moral concerns, EMPATH, and love. He wasn't stupid...all he had to do was try to epand his horizons and realize life is a balance of so many factors---including science AND compassion----to produce the most fully realized adult human being. He chose to live as a perpetual spoiled kid. (Of course, he may have developed in a more rounded way with the passage of time or through events that he never had that might have changed many another similar person to a saner take on life, should he have had a longer life.) Still, there is no doubt that seeing our world through the eyes of someone who was not entirely "human" in the broadest sense is quite fascinating. It's like seeing the Earth through the eyes of an alien being..and well worth the experience.
WE MIGHT ALSO WANT TO REMEMBER that Lovecraft never took up a gun and/or walked down streets or got on the radio or wrote editorials in mainstream newspapers advocating any harm to another human being, and was, in fact, well-behaved and very polite to any of the "other" from all accounts it seems, who came into his life directly. He kept his rage to pen and paper very much as his own therapy. There seems no doubt he was a damaged man in many ways, and the creative arts may very well have been his salvation, and, in an appropriately WEIRD way, to our artistic stimulation, , imagination-expansion, and edification. he brought new meaning and energy to a new kind of Metaphorical Writing THAT IS A REL GIFT HE LEFT BEHIND.
AND LET HIS "BAD" PARTS REMIND US TO BECOME NOT THAT THING.
Lovecraft I thought was already quite popular by the 70's. Everyone I knew, even in the early 60's had copies of his book, the rock record albums, fanzines etc. We even wrote a script in the early 70's called THE CRY OF CTHULHU, with the blessings of Arkham House lawyer who handled rights, a script that eventually found its way up to "Spielberg-land" and amy have inspired some of POLTERGEIST. And there were a LOT of his books being published in paperback in both the US and the UK, movies and tv episodes (or NIGHT GALLERY, references by Stephen King (which really spread the word), underground (an regular) comic book adaptations. The gaming stuff certainly helped, but HPL was WELL on his way long before that.
This is an interesting video, with maybe a bit too much on his racism. He has been known for that for a long long time (even the Monarch Notes book for the literary study of HPL spends time talking about it.) In some ways, Lovecraft was not a "regulation" human being. He was raised in a very peculiar way, and, in some ways, he was a racist against the human race... There's not hiding his racism, but now it has become a "thing". Maybe its his greatest monster, his greatest threat to the human race, his own most frightening creation. But it is only na PART of the story. LIke many one-of-a-kinds he brought us a lot of unique ideas and a rich vein of speculative diggings.
Now that's one ULTRA-CREEPY guy
Oh my God, Lovecraft thought his race was somehow "better" than other races? You mean like people in India, Japan, Germany, Austria, Russia, Arabia, and hundreds of other places thought their race, religion, or tribe was "better" than others? That's really shocking. Let's spend endless hours psychoanalyzing and belittling Lovecraft for thinking the way that millions of other people thought at the time, all the while missing the irony of us thinking we are "better" than him.
It's unreal how ppl try to put the racism narrative on a completely different generation... where words were not as insulting as the snowflakes take it today.
I can't imagine reading a HPL story that's 100 yrs old.. and getting butthurt.
True very true. Dude probably actually saw one brown person all his life. All those elder minds were of that thought--Christie too.
Human hypocrisy at its finest, it’s rampant 🙄🤦🏻♀️🤬
The guy at 1:55 speaks truth and wisdom. All you need to understand about art. Personally I do not desperatly need to make Lovecraft a socialist to fit him in my world view. Btw, I hope that’s not Lenin at your desk, ha ha… Nevertheless I enjoyed this film.
Unfortunately, almost everything here outside of S. T. Joshi is complete garbage and a waste of time. Joshi is fantastic as always though.
The guy at 1:55 is also sober.
I would say Lovecraft was more into eugenics or bioethics as all these Crowleyian people are. They believe in certain humans being more knowledgeable have a right to deceive you if you let them do it to you which is part of the ritual. They believe if you let yourself be enslaved, you deserve it which of course is the antithesis of the whole point of life and co creativity. I think part of his darkness was knowing this side of him and hating it about himself. At the same time there are many rumors about rituals he was part of and even a theory that he didn't even realize the real gods he was uncovering and was killed for it as one of the many profits through fiction we get throughout time have suffered
Crazy channel find
It is a very strange fact that Lovecraft stated again and again that human beings meant nothing to him in his cosmic perspective, and yet he had so many close friends, I guess you could almost call him a genius of friendship. After his recluse period in the years after dropping out of school, and for the rest of his life, he was an extremely social person, and he was loyal and generous to his friends like none other. I think this is one of the big mysteries surrounding Lovecraft, actually a far bigger mystery than his racism, which obviously was a product of his time and shared by many intelligent people in the 1920s and 1930s, and probably made even worse by his own professional failure and his poverty. The second big mystery about his life is probably his sexuality, or lack thereof, although nowadays I lean towards the belief that he was a closeted gay, which I think shines through in a few of the stories, notably in Hypnos and in The Hound.
Interesting, I take him at his word that, apart from Sonia, he was largely 'asexual' but the elements of The Hound and elsewhere are worth exploring. Perhaps he had a similar general indifference to heterosexuality & homosexuality?
I wanted video like you
What does "four square" stand fo/mean? Thanks.
Lovecraft sure hid his is racism well in his works. All racists are taught to be that way. Lovecraft over the years came to the realization that his racism was not only wrong but against his ideas of Humanity in general. You can see it in relation to the star-headed Old Ones of "At The Mountains Of Madness" and saw them not as monsters but instead as men.
You job is NOT to p0lice Lovecraft for the safety of us all.... you miss the important content of why this is problemeatic without censoring it
In many wys Lovecraft was a monster-maker who used humanity as his raw material.
Just as you can’t love others unless you love yourself, you can’t hate others unless you hate yourself. H.P. Mother called him ugly and unpresentable to society. His aunts also reinforced the idea that he was inadequate for the outside world.
That hard 'R' poem was wild. Totally caught me off guard, not gonna lie
Read Lovecraft for cosmic horror. If you want to read about anthropology, you may look somewhere else. Enough said.
I thought this would be a documentary about Lovecraft not about Lovecraft fans. I hate when documentary filmmakers insert themselves into the story.
this comment section… Lovecraft unfortunately richly deserved his legacy’s burden of being a cultural worm-grunting stick for Tom Buchanan-types far and wide.
“Oh cool! Lovecraft! I’ll just check the Comment section while I watch…”
>> Leaving before an actual phrenologist turns up in here…
I love the comments
up next, Jack London 😆
The people in Innsmouth don't capture Olmstead - he escapes. Afterwards when he is "safe" he has dreams, in one of which he sees a Shoggoth, and this triggers the beginning of transformation. He starts to take on the "Innsmouth look" and considers buying an automatic to put an end to himself. He then decides to get his cousin out of the sanitarium and go to live with the Deep Ones. That seems a pretty major plot point to get wrong, and makes me wonder if the person who wrote this actually re-read things or just did it from memory? Either way, it doesn't give me much hope for the depth or accuracy of the work.
I noticed that pretty fast as well.
O.K., now, let’s tackle the Marquis de Sade!
I'd watch it.
I am a little mystified that the racism in Lovecraft's writings receives so much attention, but the exact same racist, classist, and eugenicist beliefs seem to get a pass in the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hugh Lofting, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bram Stoker, and so many other popular writers of the late 19th and early 20th century. I understood, even as a child, that all of these writers had wrongheaded, antiquated points of view, and perhaps I was naive to assume that other readers could see what seemed so clear to me. I just wonder why this fuss is made over Lovecraft, but nobody objects to the latest Doctor Dolittle production, or the endless iterations of Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan.
Tolkien didn't have a racist bone in his body. In fact he actively fought against it.
"I've had an exorcist come to this house and cast his spirit out of here." 😂
"man-elovant" omg I'm dying 🤣
Local loons can be fun.
It's ironic and rather fitting that a fundamentalist loon is living so close to one of Lovecraft's abodes, and actively wards people off with tales of exorcisms, hauntings and sacrifice. H.P.L. would find this amusing.
Holy moly, thanks!
Excellent
I had trouble with ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ because I think fish are beautiful. My illustration of Obed makes him quite handsome, in a fishy/human way. 😂
tomardans.blogspot.com/2017/02/marsh-patriarch-portrait.html
Ah yes, the bane of snowflakes the world over. This guys life is as interesting as his writings.
And here you are pre-whining about it. By all means, stay absolutely miserable, cupcake.
😂😂💯
I know how satisfying it is to resort to cliches, but, consider: snowflakes are unique and beautiful creations, miracles really. Hardly an insult.
@@gardenvariety9957 you’re right. I’ll use a more fitting term: goblins.
@@nathansteinfromarkham7109 haha now thats more in the spirit of HP
Halfway through… you gonna mention Robert Barlowe?
If I have a large bone of contention with this excellent documentary, it's that his circle of friends, and friends are an important part of anyone's life, are fairly excluded from this piece. Some are fascinating people in their own right: Barlow, Cook, Long, Loveman, Bishop, Galpin, Moore, Miniter, Wandrei , Dwyer etc. Even the few celebs he encountered, Harry Houdini, Chaplin's brother Wheeler, found him an engaging type to talk to.
Wow, Lovecraft had faults just like every other human being! What a surprise! He was also a genius and his work will long outlast all his woke critics....
Art that lacks a message--morale or otherwise--is as meaningful as the logo on the sides of delivery trucks.
Agreed, from, The Idiot, and the Bluest Eye, to No Country for Old Men, Fight Club and Lord of the Rings-all great stories hold morale and message.
IS THE PRESUMPTION HERE THAT WE LIVE, NOW, IN A MORE "enlightened age"?
In a lot of ways (most?) this is the "Eddarkenment".
don't bother its ...woke.
Good grief no kidding.. I couldn't even make it past 25 minutes.. all the liberal sadness and victim narrative.. on an author from 100 yrs ago. Smh.
So not a documentary.. but a whiny how dare he say that bs
True, stopped after they were calling Robert E. Howard a racist incel and saying that HPL fear was nowdays capitalism. Man, these wokies ruin everything
@dai19721 My favorite part was the line about how Lovecraft needed to be subjected to a struggle session.
@@toddblackwood129 go woke go broke
Why do these people gravitate toward Lovecraft and make his work and legacy somehow about themselves as non-white immigrants. He would not have wanted you here.
Because many don't realise that impotence bringa resentment. Yesterday it was against the foreigners. Today it's against the natives, which then loops back in favour of the original.
But they can't admit to these natural human feelings, because that would be admitting of being similar to a man rejected by their own moral group. So they damn the man to save them selves from the repercussions of liking his works.
How was he atheist being his occult themed stories?
The way tv preachers speak about the Bible and then go cheat on their wives and steal money from their fans.
Get on with Lovecraft - I'm not interested in you - a nobody
hI RICHARD!!!!
What a depressing small-minded documentary. Full of amateur psychology, painfully politically correct (ie. Woke) moralising - and Woke is an ideology notable mainly for its immaturity and its intolerance.
Fretting about Lovecraft's moral character. Can we dare to read and enjoy his work if he might conceivably have been racist (spoiler: he was). Dare we read an author who might be popular with incels, with racists? How long, I wonder, before the moral guardians of literature decide that, for the good of all of us, Lovecraft must be cancelled so that we in the 21st century can feel virtuous and pure? When research reveals that Lovecraft may have begun to embrace socialism later in life this is presented in sanctimonious tones as the possibility of redemption! Tiresome, priggish and more than a little patronising. Speaks volumes about limited PC mindset of so many young Americans.
Most conspicuous is the limited self awareness/self criticism among the Lovecraft fans in this documentary. Keen to identify racism in their hero and ostentatiously distance themselves from it they fail even to consider the possibility that they might harbour racist and bigoted tendencies in their own minds. In fact, self awareness is restricted to wondering how one can justify enjoying the works of a writer with a proven racist world view. What would one's peer group think? This is strangely reminiscent of Puritans identifying and denouncing the sinful - the better to confirm their own virtue.
holy shit Virgil Texas
Half an hour into this fine and thorough documentary gave me pause to think, in 100 years time, will there be a similar one for Harry Potter's author?
I don't have any "dog in the fight" when it comes to other peoples opinions and I'm grateful for discovering Lovecraft through this documentary and will give him a try as I know that I am perfectly able to enjoy the visual arts and music by easily disassociating the "writer is from the works"
I think art is a verb
-it's something that happens between the art and the consumer ALONE
The writer should have kept it to themselves if they wanted to have anything to do with it beyond completing it so I wonder that IF Lovecraft can survive 'Cancel Culture' perhaps so too can JKR..?
He called their critique Empiricism, or what could be defined as a blank slate, or .. tomb (where the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience), which is defined by relations, according to professional worldly thinkers. Empiricists argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of these previous sensory experiences. An example can be MKUltra, where memories are jumbled and derived as having been conjured by a movie, music, or some other media or experience where the thoughts or ideas came from. Subjects who would go against the doctor's narrative would then be subject to continued revision and falsification. These men of broader intellect, who have confined him in this same way have done so only by the virtue of the delicate individual Lovecraft physical and mental media. This is the reason why H.P. left his formal studies, commercial life, and social recreation, as an early child, to envision his ancestral home. The Physician's comparisons of the Author's experiences and history is purposed only to discredit the authenticity of his narrative, as the bulk of humanity follow suit in their lack of patience and intelligence, which lie outside the majorities common experience and materialism. Lovecraft found it sufficient, due to his present position, and what has led to these circumstances of the demented, to only relate the events without analyzing cause. This, knowing, that they were going to confine him in a locked room where ancestral voices could not reach him, due to the barrage of a mixed race with no explanation of origin. That is, Death: that knows no name, title, nor creed. We are one and all the same as we seek to make contact with the one living from the depths of our grave. The only ones evil are the ones we're left with who try to convince you that they are the ones who are not dead.
Hard to find anything about Lovecraft that doesnt whine about him being racist. This one included.
we get it man, he was racist, ok
the cat.
say his name.
Lovecraft was absolutely correct about race. Simply observe how European cities have declined over the past decades for evidence.
Hahahahahhahahahahahahah
Agreed and America
Seeing as how European cities were recently reduced to piles of rubble by the aggression of European vs. European, I find your comment somewhat baffling.
@@gardenvariety9957 Dresden was reduced to rubble, but was then completely rebuilt and recovered because Germans continued to live there. But no city can ever be restored to its former glory while its demographics have been reduced to a hopeless tangle and enigma.
@@fredericktarr8266 one way of looking at it. As an American, I welcome the enigmatic tangle that makes our language, our music, our cuisine, and yes, our cities (with exceptions) so vibrant
Let the Presentism begin 😆
Now? Or now?
@@beerye9331 ah, so...now
1:30:40 Did bro just say to cancel JK Rowling and pirate all her work? Awful. Just awful.
This was in general very political in a very ridiculous way. It felt like more time was spent confirming how awful the man was rather than anything else. Other than that though, I did enjoy the nuggets of facts it actually provided on Lovecraft
If you fell in love with Lovecrafts storys, then second guess and debate with yourself if you should still enjoy his works once you realize he was racist, just go. Lovecraft isn't for you, if such a human malfunction holds your ideals so strongly that you can't separate art and your feelings.
Williams Barbara Rodriguez Carol Young Cynthia
Young Laura Clark Deborah Lopez Laura
Lol. A bunch of seething by the scientifically illiterate. Sociobiology basically showed us that Lovecraft was right.
Lopez Susan Lewis Sharon Lee Karen
the racism is the cool part