HP Lovecraft
I watched a video (about a RPG Call of Cthulhu) today where the person doing the video kept bringing up the fact that HP Lovecraft was a racist, and making it a reason not to like his work. OK HP was a racist, so what? So was everyone else at the time he lived, that doesn't make him evil or good it just makes him a product of his time. I get so incredibly tired of today's generations judging people who lived decades, even centuries ago by today's "standards". I'm sorry people, but everyone is sculpted by the times they live in, and for people today to judge them is no less bigoted than those they are judging.
What HP was, is xenophobic in a clinical sense. He grew up in a broken home where his father died in a sanitarium from complications of syphilis. He was raised by a obsessive mother who in today's world would more than likely been diagnosed with Munchhausen syndrome. He was at the very least verbally abused, she referred to him as Ugly, Deformed, Hideous, She refused to touch him, or show him any signs of affection. His grandfather the only stable influence in his life died when he was young and left the family bankrupt, Forcing them to leave the only home he had known. He received little formal education. Etc. Etc. Etc. Is it any wonder he was afraid of anything different, strange or foreign? In today's world he would be excused for pretty much anything. Today's school shooters, gang bangers and mass murderers can't hold a candle to the trauma this child was put through but instead of looking at the man with our supposed "compassion and understanding" instead of showing our "evolved morality" he and his work is labeled racist. He is posthumously crucified because his writing reflects the times he lived in and was colored by his life experiences. Yeah people today are really evolved.
And as a post script, HP did marry a Jewish woman (Sonia Greene) from a Eastern European family, and while the marriage did not last it had nothing to do with her Ethnicity or religion. As HP matured many of his ideas and opinions began to soften, as his correspondence and writing show, if he had lived past his 46th it impossible to say how they would have continued to evolve.
What HP was, is xenophobic in a clinical sense. He grew up in a broken home where his father died in a sanitarium from complications of syphilis. He was raised by a obsessive mother who in today's world would more than likely been diagnosed with Munchhausen syndrome. He was at the very least verbally abused, she referred to him as Ugly, Deformed, Hideous, She refused to touch him, or show him any signs of affection. His grandfather the only stable influence in his life died when he was young and left the family bankrupt, Forcing them to leave the only home he had known. He received little formal education. Etc. Etc. Etc. Is it any wonder he was afraid of anything different, strange or foreign? In today's world he would be excused for pretty much anything. Today's school shooters, gang bangers and mass murderers can't hold a candle to the trauma this child was put through but instead of looking at the man with our supposed "compassion and understanding" instead of showing our "evolved morality" he and his work is labeled racist. He is posthumously crucified because his writing reflects the times he lived in and was colored by his life experiences. Yeah people today are really evolved.
And as a post script, HP did marry a Jewish woman (Sonia Greene) from a Eastern European family, and while the marriage did not last it had nothing to do with her Ethnicity or religion. As HP matured many of his ideas and opinions began to soften, as his correspondence and writing show, if he had lived past his 46th it impossible to say how they would have continued to evolve.
Comments
Post a Comment