The theme of superstitious foreigners being right was also explored by Bram Stoker in "Dracula". In fact, the reason that Dracula wanted to move to England was that the Transylvanians knew the truth about him, which made it harder for him to prey on them. The English, because they were less likely to believe in such things as vampires, were much easier prey.

Those kinds of criticisms of people and literature of the past for not meeting modern social justice morality standards are always infuriatingly shallow. They just pick a few quotes that sound politically incorrect to modern ears and say, “That proves it, X is super racist and bad!” I can’t help but think it’s intentional sometimes, or at the very least willfully ignorant. Side note, I greatly enjoyed Voices of the Void 👍🏻

Look at his New York stories and then come back on this. Lovecraft was a full on racist and a standard New England snob par excellence. But the thing is you can still like the guy's work without needing to worry about the author. Heck, I still like a decent deal of his work (again the Mountains of Madness and Colour From Space are my two favorites of his, and for all he hated his older work I still really like the Alchemist). When I don't like his work, it's much more to do with the fact he delves too much into purple prose, makes something feel disjointed or unfinished (usually because it was), or it happens to not really be effective in what it was trying to do. It's not because of how he portrayed not-white people that I didn't like CoC for example; I didn't like it because for his most well known work, it's a poor example of his writing: it tends into wordiness too much, and is more like a reference book than a horror story to me.

Oh come one, Lovecraft was definitely racist, not just because of the cultists, negroids etc, but there's plenty of tales in which he says that the cause of decadence of his civilization is immigration . I still love his horror tales, but you can't deny how racist some of his views are, just read "The street" or "The Horror at Red Hook", there's really not much to interprete in those...

I don't think it's fair to judge Lovecraft with a modern lens when he was raised and lived in a time were racism was socially acceptable, I accepted he had those views and I moved on.

As I read Lovecrafts stories I thought the same. Especially in Shadow over Innsmouth the protagonists view upon other races or mixed ones is never stated. It's the other people that have prejudices towards the Insmouth folk. Even if the protagonists view on mixed or foreign races was stated my opinion is that one should always separate the author from the character. But a book, I read, about Lovecraft says he once said to his jewish wife he'd prefer, if they had guests, there were more aryans on the table than other folks. This clearly proves to me that Lovecraft personally had racist views.

Finally! I've been waiting for someone to do a video like this! Thank you for a fairer perspective on Lovecraft.

There's a poem called, "On Creation of N**" that most people refer to when claiming racism. Whether or not it's real is sketchy (It's only in a handful of books and most of them refer to another book from 1984 (albeit, the person who gathered the 1984 collection is rather highly accredited and has opposed the radical demonization of Lovecraft)). The poem refers to black people as being vice-filled beings between animals and humans. That being said, I could understand that Lovecraft would have such a viewpoint as one of the fears expressed in his works is de-evolution, as you've mentioned; and seeing as how black people were likely the first humans, it's reasonable how one with such a fear would look at it that way. I doubt he would have maintained such views in modern times, though. Remember, that he was once married to a Jewish woman, which would have been considered quite radical at the time he married her; so it stands to reason, that had he more familiarity with black people, he wouldn't have maintained such views.

I can see how narratively Lovecraft may not have been as racist as he has been accused of, but that still doesn't explain the name of his cat or the story that other racists told his to calm down. I'd be legit interested in a video about that, see what your perspective would be.

The post-modernists are wrong. Intent matters when writing a story, not your beliefs.

What is wrong with admitting that somebody is a racist sexist xenophobic and still enjoy the work. I think the guy who created All in the Family said that he pattern Archie Bunker off of his father sober people still enjoyed All in the Family The Jeffersons and all the other shows he created. There's nothing wrong with a person being racist sexist homophobic and expressing those views as long as they don't act out violently on those views

I love your content David, but I can't help but feel that you're not completely correct here. While I wholeheartedly believe that you're on to something about how he describes the cultists and denizens of Innsmouth, I can't help but disagree on his views regarding race in general. Lovecraft was terrified of almost everything he didn't understand, which is probably why he was such a fantastic horror/mystery writer, but that fear did carry over to other races as he was kind of a personal isolationist. So, I don't think he truly hated or despised people of other races, but he certainly held an air of uncertainty or fear about them. Then again, I could always be totally incorrect, but from what I know of the man, I think this might be closer to the truth. Anyhow... As always, love the content and can't wait till your next video.

I noticed something similar in Tolkien's work. In Lord of the Rings he described Trollmen coming from the south lands, with dark skin, white eyes and pink tongues. Some have interpreted them as actual half breeds of men and trolls, but I always interpreted it as how Tolkien perceived how some of the white people in LotR would think of black people.

wasn't just race but species Deep Ones are a whole different species.

It's nothing to do with writing Lovecraft off. It's about understanding him. He was a racist. That guided aspects of his stories. Why does it matter? It matters because we are interested in his work and curious about the mind that created it. Same reason one might want to consider Tolkien's Christianity or H.G. Well's socialism. Is ok for me to consider H.G. Well's socialism? Or am I no longer allowed to do that just in case I judge him by my standards?

I find hearing about Lovecraft's stories fascinating, but I should really start reading some of them. After Voices of the Void, of course.

People aren’t trying to assassinate Lovecraft. It’s pretty obvious that he has prejudices towards colored people. Just look at Call of Cthullu. There’s no point in trying to argue that he wasn’t racist. What’s important is realizing it and getting over it. His work can be enjoyed even by people of color.

Great video on Lovecraft. When I first learned of his opinions on race I was initially shocked, but learning more about his biography the shock wore off very quickly. Living in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft had a very insular upbringing. But I don't think he was such a complete racist considering that his wife was Jewish. Once again, great video. Keep up the great work.

My main problem with criticism of Lovecraft is the fact that people are applying the current standards and practices of today to the past. That would be like me criticizing past civilizations for human sacrifices. All this does is rob potential new readers of the ability to enjoy finely crafted tales of terror and cosmic dread. I'm honestly surprised they haven't banned Tom Sawyer for having the n-word in it. Or Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice for its portrayal of Jews. But I guess that's social justice for you, it's creatively bankrupt so all it does is destroy.

I read Shadow over Innsmouth has a bizarre commentary on inbreeding

Lovecraft was racist, but he was a weird dude in general. His discomfort with "race mixing" has as much to do with his discomfort towards sex as it did with ideas about race. He was nice to individual people but was misanthropic as a rule. And therein lies the strength of his work. Imagine humanity, sex, religion, etc. as objects of disgust and horror, and there you have Lovecraft.

I’ve only read “the outsider” all the way(which I loved, I think it was a good intro to his works.) so I’m not an expert on lovecraft but I like your theory, I find it neat how the foreigners are technically right even if it’s out of predgiduce. It does in a way mock the biases of the people lovecraft is shoved in with, even if it’s trading one predgiduce for another.

Based on the comments you can excuse anything as long as you revere the person. So, nothing is actually wrong or immoral, it is just a product of the times? Because people and whole societies have not and have never been affected by prejudice and hate?

Its pretty interesting the idea of seperating a work from its creator especially from the lens of comparing the past to the present. Could you elaborate on that concept and apply it to works of the present and recent developer/creator backlash we currently see. I see a lot of people say they will "boycott" pirate avoid ect when a creator shows a type of disdain towards their audience. I suppose what I am getting at is there a type of moral bankruptcy in the consumer when they take the stance of "boycott" but then here you present the idea of homer and lovrcraft work having merit all the same. Let me know if what I'm asking makes sense or should I reframe it?

Makes no sence at all to judge great people from... well, the entirety of our history, by standards and words made up just a few decades ago. Also, don't forget that a certain nepotistic foreign group in academia shaped those modern views. Generally people never cared for it. And it is only Europeans who are being forbidden by law or economic punishment to exercise their natural group protection strategies.

Important!! You must pronounce it “INNS-MITH” ... rhymes with MYTH.

Wasn’t Homer himself a slave?

The man was a great writer that happened to be a racist biggot. You can attempt rationalize it if you like, however the fact remains that theses are veiws that he expressed and likely held. His work still speaks for itself and I will continue to read his writing with pleasure.

This is such a great analysis of Lovecraft, I have learned much about this, thanks!

Very well thought out video. I appreciate people like you who look for truth rather than jump on the witch hunt bandwagon

I definitely agree that one needs to "grade on the curve" when it comes to assessing prejudice in people from the past. But Lovecraft was a racist loon _by the standards of his own time._ This is more evidenced in his private correspondence than his fiction, though some of his extreme antipathy towards ... well, most of the human race to be honest, does bleed through. If this causes stupid people to not read Lovecraft's work, that's their loss.

When Lovecraft was writing, scholars and archaeologists wrongly believed that the Philistine 'Dagon' was a fish-god, so evidently one thing led to another and suddenly he had a story with fish-men! Today Dagon is known more properly as a god of grain, but that would be harder to anthropomorphize!

It's Inns-MUTH, not mouth. It's great that you're so unbiased and unemotional. Given Lovecraft's situation, his background, interests, mental problems/frailty and professional failure, I guess it would be surprising had he not held the racial views that he did. And with the ongoing Islamisation of Europe - there already are Islamic fundamentalist political parties here, and Sharia is already being practiced in courts concerning things like child marriage and inheritance - Lovecraft's visions of the decline of Western civilisation may have a lot to tell us today.

The whole "race" issue in Lovecraft is a complex one. I don't think anyone who has read the man's letters would be likely to deny that his racial views play a large part in the subtext (at least) of his fiction; his statements in letters went all the way from the mildly paternalistic to vitriolic -- his references to William Stanley Braithwaite in his early correspondence with Rheinhart Kleiner being a good example of the latter -- but in any case, it is definitely there. And much of the language he uses to describe some of his horrors (including, as Robert Waugh has pointed out, the shoggoths) is very much in the "coded" terminology of racism. However, there is more going on there than simple ethnic prejudice. It IS an element, and an important one, which should not be swept under the rug, or ignored, or excused. But it should be put in historical perspective, as with any writer's work. If one fails to do this, then the bulk of literature would be on the "index expurgatorius"... which would be a loss to us all. There are passages in Lovecraft (I include all his work here, not simply his fiction, where it was least obvious, in the main) which are certainly offensive by today's standards, and some which were already well into that territory with most thinkers even in his own day. But to simply point the finger and chide the man -- who has, after all, been dead for damn' near a century now -- seems... short-sighted at best. Take it into account, but don't let it completely overshadow his contribution to literature, any more than such comments by, say, T. S. Elliot or Ezra Pound, or James Branch Cabell... or Juvenal, Samuel Johnson, Agatha Christie, or any other writer whose work has overcome such obstacles.

Read _The Conservative_ by H.P. Lovecraft He makes himself clear.

True, true. But I am NOT goat-like, mkay?

The same happened to Hergé, the creator of Tintin. People accuse Tintin in the Congo of being racist as hell but it's written from ignorance, Hergé wrote about the image of Africans that was common in Europe at the time. Later on (I believe from The Blue Lotus and onward) he actually became famous for doing proper research and representing other cultures quite accurately (for a children's comic book), which says to me that he was, if at all, significantly less racist than his peers.

Shadow out of Time!

Come on man. It's fair to chock it up to Lovecraft's racist allegories being a product of his time (white supremacy/racism was more ingrained & openly accepted by white society) & to not broadly reject his work but it's disingenuous to try to "splain" it as not actually racist at all.

What about his cat?

I am tired of hyper-sensitive SJWs getting triggered over something written nearly a hundred years ago.

have you ever made love to an eldritch half fish woman?! they are cold lovers.

No need to apologize. He was a racist. But most people were, and at least he did not want to kill anybody, which automatically raises Lovecraft above the most. Plus, he respected cats.

This is cringe , white people trying to dispute the fact that Lovecraft is a racist.