Episodes 99 - 100: The Thing on the Doorstep

[Bob Lovecraft]

Ok, I am well aware that this is somewhat premature (I only just DL'ed the episode, and have yet to listen to it), but I thought the thread needed to be listed immediately as I have just finished watching the "Collect Call of Cthulhu" which was linked in the show notes. Of all of the episodes of the Real Ghost Busters that I watched, and I believe I have seen them all, that was one of only two that stand out as being really great episodes. At the time, I had only heard of Cthulhu through conversations at the gaming store, and had never heard of H. P. Lovecraft at all. But after seeing this episode, I always kept an ear out for the topic to come up.

I had not realized how many Lovecraft references were in that episode, which isn't really surprising since I had never read any HPL at the time, but I love all of the references. Clark Ashton and Alice Derleth were great, but really, did Derleth have to be cast as the hero of the piece? They even mention the Eltdown Shards as a little throw-away line near the end of the episode. Very cool.

Anyway, I could go on about this, but I prefer to listen to the podcast now and see how that turned out. This is, after all, one of my all-time favorite Lovecraft stories.

Ghost Buster Bob

[JulieH]

I swear i saw this episode up on the feed, but now it's not showing up?

[old book]

RSS is a fickle beast at best.

An INSANELY HUGE (beware, demonoids) exegesis on the name of one of the characters here:

http://hppodcraft.com/forums/index.php?topic=1059.0

I liked that Sich and Chard addressed the man-on-woman-on-man issue right up front. I also like the Scooby Doo and other pop culture references they found. I believe Freddie is actually Fred Jr.; he takes his name from his father. I missed out on the Ghost Busters animated series first time around, but remember the movies, which also had shoutouts to Babylonian magic and that sort of thing, skirting dangerously close to the Lovecraftian Abyss. IIRC Dan Akroyd was involved along with Bill Murray in the initial offering. Dan Akroyd went on to UFO advocacy of a sort. Last time I saw him was on Larry King's show saying the FBI needs to be involved in investigating alien abductions.

The first line in the story is a classic. Worth the entire cover price. Another thing you might find in this story, besides actual friendship, is a tenuous sense of community. These people exist in a social milieu. If it's not high society, it's certainly upper middle class, but it's there. In other stories society sort of lurks off to the side as a narrative device, people talking about the protoganist of Shadow over Innsmouth, or gawking and whispering as the hero of Horror at Red Hook collapses on the street, a presence that is barely tangible and only provides an aspect to the main events, sort of like a faceless mob of villagers with torches in the night. Pickman's Model has a sort of high society presence but it's only decoration for the friendship between the narrator and Pickman, the friendship which presumably Lovecraft meant to make the centerpiece, but then ended up with ghouls in the graveyard.

Looking at the magic used in the story: that shifting or astral displacement, jumping bodies, swapping souls, undoubtedly must exist fully somewhere in the occult literature, although dropping in on another body and not displacing it, just secretly looking through the eyes of another, must be more common. This is a metaphor for the shifting perspectives of characters in a short story, whose actions are coordinated by the superego, i.e., the author. Lovecraft is conscious of this and is telling us he is all the characters, male and female. He is not guilty of murder, as he says in the first line, because he has shot himself.

Now why did he choose an Egyptian name for the main female character? Is there some significance to that?

[Bob Lovecraft]

I had no idea her name was egyptian.

Bob

[JulieH]

One of the things I tried really hard to do with my adaptation of it was to make Asenath just unpleasant, without being overtly icky.  In the longer screenplay version I originally wrote, there was a bit with the narrator's wife saying how she and the others girls in the college felt uncomfortable around her when in their scanties, but I had to pare the script to the bone when I turned it into audio.  It probably is better this way anyhow.

As to the weird names, that might not even be a Lovecraftian thing, per se - think about the era.  This was the mid-late 30s, so Asenath was presumably born in 1910-ish.  There was a HUGE Egyptology craze spanning much of the late 1890s-1920s at the very least.  A bit early for the Tut discovery, but Eqypt went hand in hand with the Art Deco movement.

[Bob Lovecraft]

That's a really good point about the popular media influencing the names at the time. That is such a standard phenomenon to just about all societies that I can see ho wit was overlooked so easily; it is just sort of there without being anything that stands out. I wonder ho many Harry's there are being raised in the current generation.

As for your screenplay/audio of "The Thing on the Doorstep", have is it ever really reasonable to do a multipart episode for things like this so that you are able to include everything you want?

Bob

[Yojimbo]

Was immediately struck by how much Ray sounded like Freddy, and likewise greatly amused that those were the first words out of Chad's mouth.

I too like this story, but on my last reading I didn't pick up on some of the hidden depths the guys mention in the ep. I do like Chris's occasional "golly" as the situation between Ed and Asenath gets progressively weirder and weirder.

Looking forward to more from Michael Reaves - it's a shame he can't contribute more directly.

[JulieH]

That's a really good point about the popular media influencing the names at the time. That is such a standard phenomenon to just about all societies that I can see ho wit was overlooked so easily; it is just sort of there without being anything that stands out. I wonder ho many Harry's there are being raised in the current generation.

Things moved slower in past eras, but there were plenty of babies named for movie stars the minute movies came out, and plenty of people named for characters in books the minute they became popular, so it's not unreasonable to extrapolate.

As for your screenplay/audio of "The Thing on the Doorstep", have is it ever really reasonable to do a multipart episode for things like this so that you are able to include everything you want?

That one was only about a 60-minute short script to start with, and was never going to get made (it was my very first experiment with adaptation - so of course, I had to pick something easy -ROFLMAO),  so trimming the fat (and excising or altering everything that was strictly visual!) was actually good for it.  Dunwich, of course, worked well in multiple parts.

[MattRichardson]

Now why did he choose an Egyptian name for the main female character? Is there some significance to that?

Asenath is the name of Joseph's Egyptian wife in the biblical story. I'm not sure there's any significance to it other than the fact that Lovecraft often uses biblical names in his work.

Speaking of the Bible, I think that Chad and Chris were confused about Lovecraft's views about the origin of the subordination of women. I don't think he's trying to blame the Asian races for this; rather, he's stating that the subordination of women has its origins in Oriental traditions, i.e. the Abrahamic religions. Today we use the term "Orient" to refer primarily to the Far East, but in previous decades it was used for the Middle East as well. In "The Count of Monte Cristo", Dantès considers Italy, Greece, Palestine, China, and Japan to all be eastern (oriental) countries.

Matt

[RedHookDave]

I love this story, great stuff esp while Insmouth is still fresh in my head!  The real Ghost Busters episode is too funny, full of HPL references.

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www.myspace.com/...collect-call-of-cthulhu.../950452


I especialy like one of the closing lines, "I'm going to take this (the Necronomicon) back to Miskatonic where it cant be used for evil." 

[old book]

I guess there's a Jungian/Freudian interpretation or two to be had in this story as well. One might go like this: Asenath represents the stifling over-protective mother against whom the individuating self must rebel so that its identity isn't subsumed by the mother's. Lovecraft solves this problem of the self being consumed by carrying it to its logical conclusion as a sort of thought-experiment, then saves the self through an alternate ego that destroys the weaker version of the self that succumbed entirely to the mother's thrall.

That leaves open the problem of the father figure, the old wizard really in control of Asenath. A combined Oedipus/Electra complex? Compensation for the early loss of a father figure by combining him into the mother's identity? Grandpa Whipple's survival in the form of Lovecraft's mother?

On the name, I was playing with the idea, too, that Lovecraft simply lifted it from the Joseph story, except that I think he was likely to trace things back to their source, and had access to scholarly materials that might have facilitated that, so I suspect he was intentionally using the Egyptian Assenec figure for whatever reason. I doubt the name Asenath or Asenaph was ever really popular in America even during the various Egyptian crazes and fads. At least I don't remember anyone ever being named that. The problem is that first syllable, which would have sounded uncouth to Victorian, Puritan. Baptist, etc., sensibilities, or at least insulting. I'm sure it was used at times, I just don't know of any such usages. It seems like a very uncommon name to me.

[Bob Lovecraft]

That leaves open the problem of the father figure, the old wizard really in control of Asenath.

Actually, by the time this story takes place, there is no Asenath anymore. She, or at least her soul, has been dead for years, leaving only her father's spirit inhabiting her body. So I'm not sure if your theory really pans out right there.

Oh, and i wanted to mention that I never really thought about how Edward was acting after his honeymoon. I just never made the connection. So thanks for that extra helping of mental fungus guys. After all, it's not like Edward would ever be the "pitcher" in that kind of a relationship, and it had to have been a long time since "daddy" had any real outlet for his pent up needs...

Bob

[Genus Unknown]

Yes, but WAS it Ephraim Waite at all? Maybe Ephraim was just another link in the chain. Who knows how far back the body-switching hijinks go?

[Bob Lovecraft]

Very good point. I hadn't really thought about it, but in a kind of "meta" sense, I think it has to be old Ephram. If it were anyone else, Lovecraft would have gone into it in exacting detail as far back as he needed to, even if it took five or six generations.

Bob

[Bulbatron]

I used to watch The Real Ghostbusters a little bit, but I never saw that episode.

I do like The Thing on the Doorstep though.  It never even occurred to me to think of it as Charles Dexter Ward lite.  I can see why some might though, having listened to the episode.

And any reference to Innsmourh is always welcome.