Creating New Images: Black Feminist Thought and Lovecraft Country

Ayanna Woods

Lovecraft Country has received praise and criticism, garnering a large audience throughout its first season. Though it is successful and certainly one of the most interesting debuts in recent memory, the series is decidedly imperfect. Indeed, many critics hold that the series mishandles issues like colorism and queerness by allowing darkskin characters Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) and Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams) to be demonized for most of the first season and portraying Montrose’s queerness as little more than a shameful burden to himself and his family. On both of these fronts, the show seems to lack nuance, leaving audience members to parse out where the show excels and where it misses its mark. But there is one issue the show seems to get right: its portrayal of Black womanhood.

The Black, female characters of the show are beautifully complex, cunning, and strong. In her 1990 book, Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins writes that, “when faced with this structural injustice targeted toward the group, many Black women have insisted on our right to define our own reality, establish our own identities, and name our history” (72). Lovecraft Country provides Black women characters who do just that; through their resistance, the show presents a Black Feminist portrayal of Black womanhood.

The “structural injustice” addressed in Lovecraft Country comes in the form of “Controlling Images,” a concept Hill Collins explains as part of the rhetorical work that maintains the systems that oppress Black women in America. In highlighting and combating these kinds of images, the show is engaging in a Black Feminist critique of American society. When explaining these controlling images as “[portrayals of] African-American women as stereotypical mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas that help justify U.S. Black women’s oppression,” Hill Collins adds that “Challenging these controlling images has long been a core theme in Black feminist thought” (69). So, we can locate the rhetorical imaging that Lovecraft Country engages in at the very core of Black Feminist thought, creating a thread between the series and a legacy of thinkers and creatives who use words and images to liberate Black women from the intersecting oppressions we face.

There is a deep need for these kinds of representations, since the Controlling Images in question become harmful stereotypes that have tangible, material impacts on the groups they depict. Part of the reason the show seems to strike so many powerful chords with Black audiences lies precisely in the way that stereotypes quietly play a role in the larger systemic project of oppressing Black people. Hill Collins provides a revealing analysis of the power of stereotypes about Black women:

As part of a generalized ideology of domination, stereotypical images of Black womanhood take on special meaning. Because the authority to define societal values is a major instrument of power, elite groups, in exercising power, manipulate ideas about Black womanhood. They do so by exploiting already existing symbols, or creating new ones. (69)

This analysis gets at the power of stereotypes to change how Black women are perceived, which affects all of our interactions since perception inevitably colors how humans treat one another.

Hill Collins’ analysis also gets at what, specifically, Lovecraft Country is doing to turn the power of stereotypes on its head– creating new images and symbols that cleverly contradict the Controlling Images that aid in Black women’s oppression. For instance, through Hippolyta’s (Aunjanue Ellis) journey of self-discovery in episode seven, “I Am”, the show provides an example of the damage caused by the matriarch stereotype. Hill Collins deconstructs the concept as follows:

…The Black matriarchy thesis argued that African-American women who failed to fulfill their traditional “womanly” duties at home contributed to social problems in Black civil society… Spending too much time away from home, these working mothers ostensibly could not properly supervise their children and thus were a major contributing factor to their children’s failure at school. As overly aggressive, unfeminine women, Black matriarchs allegedly emasculated their lovers and husbands. (75)

The stereotype described here does not reflect Hippolyta but rather what she ran from for many years, at the expense of her own fulfillment. Conditioned to believe that she would be failing her family if she took control of her professional life, Hippolyta shrank herself for what she thought was the good of her family. George (Courtney B. Vance), pleased that he got to have both the career and family that he wanted, settled into the convenience of Hippolyta’s sacrifice.

But in episode seven, Hippolyta’s journeys through multiple dimensions allow her to see that she has lost out on a full and fulfilling life, as she gets the chance to bask in the spotlight as a performer, push herself to her physical limits as a Dahomey warrior, and see new planets as a space explorer. She even travels to a dimension where her husband, George, is still alive, getting to speak the resentment that she had been repressing for so many years. They have an honest conversation about his part in her shrinking herself, and he apologizes for not supporting her aspirations. She leaves this particular dimension with much-needed closure, as she and George had been wrestling with her desire to be more involved in the research and writing for their “Safe Negro Travel Guide” shortly before he dies in episode two. The fact that she gets to do all this and still return home to care for her daughter, Diana (Jada Harris) creates the image of a Black motherhood that has room for fulfilment, grief, and self-discovery. This new image is a direct contradiction of the matriarch stereotype, which suggests that Black women cannot be a meaningful presence in their homes while pursuing anything outside it. Hippolyta’s new version of motherhood frees her from her regrets while simultaneously showing audiences that Black women can be explorers, performers, warriors, wives, and mothers all at the same time. When she returns to her family, she holds her head higher because the “mammy” image no longer controls her decisions. The palpable freedom she finds in this episode is the result of the Black Feminist thought at work in the show’s production, which gives the audience this beautiful lens through which to see Hippolyta and her journey.

The Black Feminist lens has long done this work of removing the restraints of harmful stereotypes from Black women. Hill Collins explains the importance of this lens:

Black women intellectuals who study African-American families and Black motherhood typically report finding few matriarchs and even fewer mammies… Instead they portray African-American mothers as complex individuals who often show tremendous strength under adverse conditions, or who become beaten down by the incessant demands of providing for their families. (75-76)

A series created by a Black woman, Misha Green, Lovecraft Country is an excellent example of the transformative power of this kind of analysis. And this transformative power is not only visible in Hippolyta’s complexity. Letitia ‘Leti’ Lewis (Jurnee Smollett) shows “tremendous strength in adverse conditions” and is also a reflection of a lens that sees Black women as capable, indispensable heroes while simultaneously allowing them to have vulnerable, human experiences like motherhood. Even after she discovers she is pregnant, Leti is constantly saving the group from the threats that seem to lie around every corner. She chooses to take a hands-on approach to solving the mysterious problems that she and her loved ones face, while still prioritizing the protection and preservation of her unborn child.

Leti has an epic, heroic moment in nearly every episode, often risking her own life to save those around her.  In episode one, “Sundown,” she, Tic (Jonathan Majors), and George stop at a diner in a sundown town. It is Leti who discovers the server is helping local racists ambush them and uses her impressive driving skills to make their getaway. This scene also reflects the intersection of Leti’s marginalized identities, as Tic and George had not allowed Leti to drive at any point during the drive from Chicago to Massachusetts and had essentially made the decision to stop at the diner without consulting her. Leti’s driving the trio to safety presents a damning irony that shines a light on Tic and George’s misogyny, which she must weather even as the three of them together face life-threatening danger at the hands of white supremacy. In the end, though, it is her presence, observative nature, and skill that are vital to their survival.

Leti’s skills and powers of observation come to the rescue later in the episode when they are in the woods with a racist sheriff and his officers being chased by shoggoths. She is underestimated once again when the sheriff insists that she be the one to run for the car, thinking that she is less of a threat to him than Tic because she is a woman. Though she is vulnerable with Tic in this moment and expresses to him that she is afraid, she leans on her athletic history, and then runs in the direction of the monsters to save them all. Her driving skills bring irony into the episode again when she returns with the car and drives directly into the sheriff, who had underestimated her minutes earlier, as he is cornering Tic and George having turned into a shoggoth. Moments later, when Tic is busy tending to an injured George, Leti’s observational skills prove even more timely when she notices the shoggoths approaching and launches lit flares in their direction, keeping them at bay. In all of these moments, Leti gets to be both heroic and human, experiencing the kind of breadth in her adventures that a young Hippolyta likely longed for.

The space Leti is allowed in order to fully experience life as it unfolds before her does not stop, moreover, when she learns she is pregnant. Leti continues to prove herself invaluable to the cause of defeating Christina Braithwhite (Abbey Lee) and the others who seek to kill Tic. In episode nine, “Rewind 1921,” when Tic, Leti, and Montrose travel back in time to retrieve the Book of Names before it is destroyed in the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, it is Leti who goes to Tic’s grandparents’ house and retrieves the book. She stands in the house with his great-grandmother as it burns around them and tearfully explains to her that they need the Book of Names so that they can potentially use it to save Tic, kill Christina, and protect their bloodline from extinction. Leti later shares this knowledge with the others, as they try to save Tic from Christina’s spell that will drain him of his life-force. The image of Leti standing in a burning building and begging to learn the magic that can potentially save Tic’s life is a profoundly strong one, as it shows not only her bravery but her commitment to her unborn child and the legacy of the family she is joining.

Though Tic is clearly the main character of the show, Leti is just as important to the story, despite the obstacles she faces due to the efforts both of the villains of the show and the male characters’ continuous underestimation of what she can handle. Like Hippolyta, Leti is a complex character, with a background of athleticism, a career as a musician, and even a history of protesting for civil rights. Though she has the aforementioned triumphant, heroic moments, she also struggles to understand her relationship with her late mother and repair the estranged relationship between herself and her sister Ruby. Embarking on the dangerous and fantastical journey to save Tic and discovering that she’s pregnant along the way only adds to her complexity, and the show allows her to be all of this freely—to be a hero, while still making mistakes and experiencing tenderness and vulnerability.

Telling liberating stories like Leti’s and Hippolyta’s through a Black Feminist lens on a platform as influential as HBO is powerful. The space these characters are allowed to be human and realize their potential is a resistant narrative that contradicts harmful stereotypes while highlighting the adversity Black women face, even intra-communally, as well as demonstrating the strength we often exhibit in response. Hill Collins discusses the extremely high stakes of creating this space:

Analyzing the particular controlling images applied to African-American women reveals the specific contours of Black women’s objectification as well as the ways in which oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, and class intersect. Moreover, since the images themselves are dynamic and changing, each provides a starting point for examining new forms of control that emerge in a transnational context, one where selling images has increased in importance in the global marketplace. (72)

Following this thinking, Lovecraft Country’s treatment of Black womanhood and meditations on the converging oppressions have implications that cannot be overstated. With the value of “selling images” at an all-time high in this digital age, creating and popularizing images that override the controlling images of America’s past is vital work.

All of this works together to construct a brilliantly Black Feminist portrayal of Black womanhood that liberates its characters and leaves that liberation on the table for those in the real world to digest and internalize. To truly challenge controlling images of Black people at intersections of multiple structures of oppression (as Black women are), it would have been even better if the show had been able to challenge harmful images of Black queer people and darkskin people, but perhaps the examples of Leti’s and Hippolyta’s stories can serve as a blueprint for the other kinds of resistant imagery that many believe the show is missing. Until that happens (perhaps in season 2?), we can relish in the beautiful and dynamic depictions of Black womanhood the series has already provided.

 

Works Cited

Green, Misha, creator. Lovecraft Country. HBO, 2020.

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Routledge, 1990. Kindle Edition.