What does it mean to be "Lovecraftian"?

[T. Kelly Lee]

The Thing is based in Cambell's story "Who Goes There." If there in info. indicating it is inspired by AtMoM, I'd like to see the reference for it. Certainly it is reminiscent of it, but I am aware of no direct connection.

I think that's correct.  People often cite Who Goes There as being Lovecraftian, but I'd say it's only VAGUELY Lovecraftian - perhaps in atmosphere alone.  If Campbell was inspired by HPL, I've never seen any documentation. 

[Genus Unknown]

Campbell may not have been influenced by Lovecraft, but there's no question that John Carpenter is.

[Clangador]

Campbell may not have been influenced by Lovecraft, but there's no question that John Carpenter is.

Indeed. The Thing, both of them, are great movies, but, other than the setting, I was not getting where people were getting the connection to Lovecraft.

[Genus Unknown]

There's the setting, there's the weirdness of the alien (no humans with funny foreheads and pointed ears here), there's the use of an ancient alien hidden underground for human investigators to discover, the threat of this alien taking over the planet if word gets out...

[T. Kelly Lee]

Campbell may not have been influenced by Lovecraft, but there's no question that John Carpenter is.

Indeed. The Thing, both of them, are great movies, but, other than the setting, I was not getting where people were getting the connection to Lovecraft.

I still tend to agree.  Lovecraftian "horror" is more about existential dread than "scary monster."  And Carpenter does do the scary monster thing.  But HPL never played with the kind of group dynamic-psycho terror that comes up in the The Thing.  The defining Lovecraftian trope is: lone seeker faces his cosmic humility.  That trope is pretty absent in The Thing. 

[Genus Unknown]

Is that really the defining Lovecraftian trope though? Critics talk about it a lot, and I can see it in "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Shadow Out of Time," and At the Mountains of Madness, but a lot of his other stories, crowd favorites even, deal either with different themes or with the "scary monster."

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is the purest expression of his "tainted bloodlines" idea, with little to nothing to say about man's insignificance in the universe.

"The Dunwich Horror" is a fairly straightforward monster story.

"The Picture in the House" is about a cannibal old man, with nothing cosmic about it.

"From Beyond" deals in worlds beyond the ken of mortal man, but the horror of it isn't so much about man's insignificance as the idea that these horrible creepy creatures are all around you all the time, and might pose physical danger.

"The Music of Erich Zann" -- It's all about strangeness and mystery, but without any themes of cosmic humility

"The Lurking Fear" -- tainted bloodlines.

"The Rats in the Walls" -- tainted bloodlines.

"The Colour Out of Space" -- The horror is in the strangeness and the physical danger posed by the thing in the meteor, not a horrible realization of mankind's place in the cosmos.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward -- More tainted bloodlines, and a dose of good old fashioned black magic.

"The Whisperer in Darkness" -- The scary monster, with a little bit of mankind's insignificance thrown in almost as an afterthought.

"The Haunter of the Dark" -- Same as above.

[JulieH]

I disagree with several of those - The Dunwich Horror clearly implied that there was SOMETHING huge beyond our ken, and that Wilbur and Orville (my name for the twin) were born specifically for the task of opening a gateway to let that tHING in.

It's the "huge thing beyond our ken" - and more particularly, the "huge thing beyond our ken that doesn't give a sh*t about us" - whether that huge thing is an entity or the mere vastness of the total perspective vortex.

But even when compared to the heredity issues which are another major subtheme in Lovecraft's writing, the connecting element is science.  (pseudo-science, if you must)  In other words, his horror came from science in one way or another - it came from astronomy and genetics and chemistry - and not from superstition, as most horror that had come before did. 

(Even Frankenstein was only very tenuously connected to science - it posited an idea, but never gave any sort of specifics as to how it was done - and the focus of the story was the allegory, the responsibility of the creator and not so much on the act of creation.)

[BookGwen]

How about "In the Mouth of Madness"?

Oh yeah, total shout-out to Lovecraft. And I would have to agree that the overall feel of the movie is very Lovecraftian.

Bob

I know everyone sees HPL in there, but to me, MoM is a very Stephen King feel, WAY more than Lovecraft.

Interesting point!

The average person who doesn't know Lovecraft (my father or late mother or in-laws) and stumbled across In The Mouth of Madness would think Stephen King! Stephen King! because of the art direction choice to make Sutter Cane's books look just like the Stephen King paperbacks I would devour every spare chance in the late 80s/early 90s. 

I actually did watch In The Mouth of Madness with my father once. Took him all of five minutes to think Sutter Cane = Stephen King. And then ten minutes to ask me which Stephen King book the movie was based on. Lovecraft didn't occur to him at all. Then again how often do references to Lovecraft pop up in the latest issue of Guns & Ammo or Fur, Fish and Game? 

Sell the tickets to the masses with the Stephen King feel because the 1995 mass market knows the name Stephen King.

That Lovecraft fella? Who he?

[JulieH]

But the story and everything else is also more King.  It's not personal horror, not eternal evil, not invasion from outside - it's mind warping reality shaping, and Lovecraft never went there, while King does it all the time.

If anything, there are more elements that might trace back to Hodgson, Poe, and Borges than Lovecraft.  Even Robert R. MacCammon' "Something Passed by".

Videodrome is arguably more Lovecraftian, since at least it involves a personal descent into madness.

[T. Kelly Lee]

Genus, virtually all those stories you list deal with the notion of the lone explorer having to face a cosmic horror - Rats in the Walls, Whisperer in Darkness, etc.  These are all classic examples of that trope. Whether you are finding out that the universe is ruled by uncaring monsters or that your grnadpa fucked a chimp, the story is that your ruin was caused by exploring a hidden realm best left hidden.  The closest HPL story to The Thing is certainly the Colour Out of Space.  Ken Heit thinks it is HPL's best, perhaps because it is more contemporary in its themes.  Personally I think it is almost a staight ripoff of the Novel of the White Powder. 

[T. Kelly Lee]

But the story and everything else is also more King.  It's not personal horror, not eternal evil, not invasion from outside - it's mind warping reality shaping, and Lovecraft never went there, while King does it all the time.

If anything, there are more elements that might trace back to Hodgson, Poe, and Borges than Lovecraft.  Even Robert R. MacCammon' "Something Passed by".

Videodrome is arguably more Lovecraftian, since at least it involves a personal descent into madness.

Mouth is meant to be a pastiche of Lovecraft and it comes out more like a parody...which, I argue, is the problem with a good bit of King's writing. The genius of authors like HPL, Blackwood, Machen, or Dunsany is that they were subtle.  King OTOH hits you square in the face. Mit is easier to do that on film than the create a Lovecraftian setting. If anything, Neil Gaiman comes closest to HPL these days. 

[Chrizzie Frizzie]

This is a really good topic - I don't feel that just throwing in the Necronomicon or mentioning the Old Ones or the Deep Ones in your story makes your genre "Lovecraftian."  I think "Lovecraftian" fiction has a very few common elements:

* The universe is materialistic.  Magic, the supernatural, and the paranormal are merely exotic sciences which we humans have yet to understand. 

* Humankind is utterly insignificant.  Not only are we not the top of the heap in evolutionary times, our evolution is really just the result of an accident. 

* The "secret" of the universe is dreadful and ultimately meaningless.  There is no good god with a benevolent purpose at the center of things but rather, blind and dumb "gods" who seem to exist for nothing more than their own amusement.  Some people can handle this knowledge and be fine, for non-nihilists, this revelation drives them mad. 

* Knowledge of the true nature of the world has been preserved to the present day through ancient books and hidden cults.  "Unwholesome" research can reveal this knowledge and usually leads to the destruction of the researcher.

* Humans are under constant threat of "contamination" from these unwholesome influences - whether it's interbreeding with apes or Deep Ones or having their brains taken out and put in jars to travel space.  Corruption of the human body is terrifying. 
 
*Dreams are highly significant.  They are more than just visions of the inner mind but can lead to higher revelation.   

This is a convincing list of what any lover of lovecraftiana would appreciate in a new story or in an adaptation.

I wonder however whether there is a value in a label such as "lovecraftian". The man himself evolved his own ideas about his writing, and the difference in perspective between "The call" and "shadow out of time" is dramatic. He had aspiration that he voiced himself with regards to weird writing and the atmosphere he wanted to establish and the themes he wanted to deal with. But since he himself did not feel that he ever did a good enough job of meeting those aspirations, I don't think we can presume to label any non-Lovecraft work "lovecraftian". Indeed, where "weird fiction" doesn't fit as a label, there "lovecraftian" sounds like an euphemism for "pastiche".

It seems appropriate to talk of a Cthulhu Mythos, which has been constructed by a group of writers and which doesn't necessarily have to be "Lovecraftian". Lovecraft never acknowledged a Cthulhu mythos, so no need to try to separate Lovecraft's part of the Mythos. Hail Derleth!

For creators such as King, Gaiman and Carpenter, I'd say "inspired by Lovecraft" or "touched by Lovecraft".

[T. Kelly Lee]

Yes, I agree in that for the purposes of casual conversation there's no reason to mix it up with labels regarding what is or isn't "Lovecraftian."  But if we want to play the game a little bit and dip our toes into the deeper waters of Lovecratian "scholarship" then there is some value there in analyzing his tropes and literary patterns.  For so long literary scholars just chucked Howie into the bin with a bunch of other unmemorable pulp writers.  But in recent decades people have been asking the serious question of how a writer of pulps could have SO MUCH influence on modern literature and entertainment.

Horro lit is one of America's greatest contributions to the literary genre.  Of course the genius Poe gave the world both the detective story and the horror story.  Like Poe, I think HPL transcended the baser aspect of the genre and created literature - and with its grounding in Jazz Age New England, genuinely American literature. 

While HPL's literary style, themes, and even his genre evolved I think if you look at his stuff critically you will find an essential core that perhaps even he wasn't aware of.  Take,for instance, the Outsider - written in 1921 and very much a representation of HPL's "Poe period."  At it's core it's the story of a loner who fills his days with rummaging around an empty "house" reading antique books and wondering what life outside is like.  When he finally finds out, it is revealed that his life is an utter lie and he is, in fact, a creature of the tomb.  His compulsion to know the truth drove him to discover an even greater horror. 

Now Mountains of Madness was written ten years later, but at its core it's about the same story.  A team of scientists, alone and driven by their compulsion for knowledge discover that the truth leads to even greater horror and malaise than NOT knowing.  In essence, a lot of the story is just window dressing on that same theme. 

Ultimately HPL's stories are all autobiographcial. You grow up thinking you're warm and safe and wealthy only to find out your father died in a madhouse of sexually transmitted disease, your mother was also insane, and the wealth you were told you could rely on just wasn't there.  Couple that with HPL's loss of faith and the scientific advances of his time and you get a guy who is both fascinated by the terror the future holds but also longing desperately to flee into a safer, more ignorant past. 

Today  we live in a post-modern era where our idols are smashed on a daily basis.  None of us trust our institutions, we all know we're just hairless apes, and every day the news brings another story on the origins of the universe that boggles the mind.  We're used to it.  But that post-modern mindset was born out of the malaise of the 1920's.  Hemmigway captured that anxiety in stories like The Sun Also Rises, but HPL used horror as a way to capture his feelings.  And, I would argue, that's a more lasting contribution than Hem's work because, as a horror writer, HPL was not bound by the times in which he was writing.  He made himself relevant to all ages. 

So that's why I see at least some value in underestanding what it means to be Lovecraftian.  August Derleth didn't get it.  And Robert Howard had his own fears and phobias.  King is a pastiche at best and a parody at his worst.  Just throwing in a tentacled monster or a referene to the mythos doesn't make your story "Lovecraftian" - it's the pure terror of the existential crisis that sums up the man's greatest fears.  And that involves facing those fears alone.  We all have to die alone and that's why it's so damn terrifying. 

That's what underlies HPL's writing - that everyone is believing the Big Lie and what is truly terrifying is to fall out of the herd and discover the truth - and that that truth is cold and indifferent like death itself.     

[Bob Lovecraft]

But the story and everything else is also more King.  It's not personal horror, not eternal evil, not invasion from outside - it's mind warping reality shaping, and Lovecraft never went there, while King does it all the time.

If anything, there are more elements that might trace back to Hodgson, Poe, and Borges than Lovecraft.  Even Robert R. MacCammon' "Something Passed by".

Videodrome is arguably more Lovecraftian, since at least it involves a personal descent into madness.

I' not sure I can agree with you on this one, JulieH. It is no secret that King was heavily influenced by Lovecraft. King's mention of him in various interviews is one of the main reasons Lovecraft's works got a "modern" look in teh 70's and 80's. I think that ItMoM was completely in the vein of Lovecraft, but as seen through a shitty Stephen Kingesque filter, which was then translated by Carpenter. To me that movie has Lovecraft written all over it. It's just written by a middle school kid with a low C average.

Bob

[T. Kelly Lee]

But the story and everything else is also more King.  It's not personal horror, not eternal evil, not invasion from outside - it's mind warping reality shaping, and Lovecraft never went there, while King does it all the time.

If anything, there are more elements that might trace back to Hodgson, Poe, and Borges than Lovecraft.  Even Robert R. MacCammon' "Something Passed by".

Videodrome is arguably more Lovecraftian, since at least it involves a personal descent into madness.

I' not sure I can agree with you on this one, JulieH. It is no secret that King was heavily influenced by Lovecraft. King's mention of him in various interviews is one of the main reasons Lovecraft's works got a "modern" look in teh 70's and 80's. I think that ItMoM was completely in the vein of Lovecraft, but as seen through a shitty Stephen Kingesque filter, which was then translated by Carpenter. To me that movie has Lovecraft written all over it. It's just written by a middle school kid with a low C average.

Bob

Yeah, that's really it.  If you're successful in life, live in Hollywood, and haven't studied Greek and Latin texts it's hard as hell to get a "feel" for Lovecraft as a writer.  That's why I think some of the small filmmakers do the best job of rendering his stuff into movie form.