Saturday Night Live tried to explain Lovecraft Country to mixed effect this weekend. Heading into the season finale, the cultural institution did it’s best to encapsulate the sci-fi series. Issa Rae had hosting duties and she joked about the wide-ranging interests at the center of Lovecraft. The cut sketch joked about how much was really going on in the HBO show but might have flown over regular viewers’ heads. Despite, the high concept tv going on, Lovecraft is worth a watch as viewers look for something to binge this fall. Many watching know that there’s a lot to unpack and Rae’s funny delivery here, as a Tennessee Titans fan, only adds to the bit.
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She told Chris Redd’s character, “It has race, gender, witches. And aliens! Or maybe they’re monsters? Gender and Afrofuturism, which, you know, is the whole study of black women in space, who time-travel with Afrobots.” Meanwhile Redd wonders, ” I can’t tell if you’ve seen the show… or if you’re just making stuff up?”
POV: you explaining Lovecraft Country to your friends pic.twitter.com/eo8YhIhwA7
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) October 18, 2020
If you feel like you’re reading a foreign language, Comicbook.com’s Nicole Drum has a pretty nice synopsis of the series from early in the run.
“Based on Matt Ruff’s novel of the same name, Lovecraft Country follows 25-year-old Korean war vet Atticus Black (Majors), who along with his friend Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Smollett), and his Uncle George (Vance) to head out on a road trip to find his missing father,” she explained. “Set in the Jim Crow America of the 1950s, the trio must survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the malevolent spirits that could be ripped straight from a Lovecraft paperback.”
Drum added, “Even in just the first episode, Lovecraft Country doesn’t shy away from either of those horrors, either, with an opening sequence full of Lovecraft monsters as well as moments that directly address the racism not only of H.P. Lovecraft himself, but of the time period as well, including a particularly harrowing scene that exposes the dark history of America’s so-called “Sundown Towns”.
Have you enjoyed Lovecraft Country so far?? Let us know in the comments!
