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09/08/20 Addendum re: Lovecraft Country- the most recent episode, A History Of Violence, (which I hadn’t seen, as it came out Sunday night and I write the newsletter Monday morning) has some… odd queerphobia. I dislike that I have to put a big asterisk when recommending this to people now, and my general rule is that I try not to rec something that I haven’t caught up with or watched within the past two years, but I thought this one was an exception (since I was also similarly surprised by Magnus Archives). Guess not!
Spoilers behind the cut, but generally: once a certain character shows up, things go down exactly how you think they would by the end. You Can See It Coming.
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Weird racial casting aside (I get that there may not be many Arawak actors currently working that fit the role, but casting a Latinx woman… Ok™ ), having the non-cis indigenous character be greeting by a “what are you” and then be murdered in an extremely up close and personal way? Not great. Especially when the first half of this episode spent some time speculating about Montrose’s sexuality- to have him be the one to very violently murder this character feels like they’re pulling some kind of “we’re going to justify and redeem him later lol” shit and I’m not for that.
One thing I’ve especially noted is that every depiction of sexuality/nudity seems to be then bookended with some kind of discussion of shame/humiliation. The snake dick, Atticus’s lingering bathing scene before a painful ritual, Leti’s virginity discussion, this, and then… Ruby having drunk sex with William, then the episode preview seeming to be about her taking up some kind of maid job for the estate he’s from? I can’t say I’m television literate enough to tell if this is a commentary or if it’s unconscious internalization re: POC sexuality, especially black sexuality. Obviously I don’t want to project or assume anything about the creators, especially since I’m not black, but I’ve read enough self-hating queer stories to put a couple puzzle pieces together.
It’d be nice to be wrong though! I was also initially mad at Leti’s death but she was… ‘cured’, so to speak, so who knows. I have slightly more faith in the creators of this series than I would if, say, they were all white, but still. It’s not much. I also know people also are ready to exile media marginalized creators make at the drop of a hat for singular mistakes and suffer much more when it’s media make by white creators and big corps tho. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯