{"id":42280,"date":"2018-11-19T08:53:33","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T14:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=42280"},"modified":"2018-11-19T09:47:58","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T15:47:58","slug":"lovecraft-in-the-library-forsyth-hosts-discussion-panel-on-controversial-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=42280","title":{"rendered":"Lovecraft in the Library: Forsyth hosts discussion panel on controversial author"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STORY BY JOHN CARTER JR<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This past Wednesday, Forsyth Library hosted an HP (Howard Philips) Lovecraft discussion panel. The topics of discussion made for excellent commentary on the life of the legendary author. Discussions concerning his racist tendencies were the central themes throughout. In particular, Lovecraft\u2019s creatures being what he equated to racial minorities. Even when compared to his contemporaries, Lovecraft\u2019s racism was in a league of its own. The work of HP Lovecraft is still read and dissected today by many readers and authors. Pieces like The Call of Cthulhu, The Nameless City, Necronomicon, and many more have gone on to inspire a plethora of works. Cthulhu itself is an iconic creature, who was even noted to have been made into \u201cplushies\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The conversation even discussed Lovecraft having seemingly influenced directors like Peter Jackson. His savage animalistic portrayal of Africans in his 2005 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">King Kong <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">remake is an example of this. This was fascinating to hear given Jackson&#8217;s work in New Zeland and his involvement in the exploitation of their people during work on the Tolkien films (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> franchises). Then again there have been many positive works created by people influenced by Lovecraft&#8217;s fantasy and yet disgusted by his racism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>View the panel discussion here.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q_4zncfULdA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Matt Ruff\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lovecraft Country<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, for example, has Atticus Turner and his family who are African American. Jeffery Cranor and Joseph Fink\u2019s hit podcast<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Welcome to Nightvale <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">having also being inspired by Lovecraftian Lore has its narrator Cecil in an openly homosexual relationship with a Latino Scientist named Carlos. The list of inspired works goes on and on. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Psycho<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conan the Barbarian, Hellboy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, some <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Spiderman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> works, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dungeons and Dragons<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Betrayal at House on the Hill<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magic the Gathering<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yu-Gi-Oh<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Call of Cthulhu<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> tabletop game are all works that have some inspiration from Lovecraft.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lovecraft was a racist monster who is overall completely different than other science fiction writers (Shelly, Vonnegut, and Bradbury for example). His influence although is still being seen today. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STORY BY JOHN CARTER JR This past Wednesday, Forsyth Library hosted an HP (Howard Philips) Lovecraft discussion panel. The topics of discussion made for excellent&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":42281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Lovecraft in the Library: Forsyth hosts discussion panel on controversial author","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,3398,55],"tags":[69,2367,106,12434,12231,103,290],"class_list":["post-42280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-campus-news","category-opinion","tag-fhsu","tag-forsyth-library","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-hp-lovecraft","tag-john-carter-jr","tag-tiger-media-network","tag-tmn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/h-p-lovecraft-1024x633.jpg?fit=1024%2C633&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42280"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42303,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42280\/revisions\/42303"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}