Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1332040
7 0 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 1 The television series Lovecraft Country is based on the book by Matt Ruff , which captured my imagination when I read it in 2017. But I wasn't the only one, as Jordan Peele, J.J. Abrams and Misha Green teamed up with HBO to bring this rich material to the screen. The story takes place in 1955 during the Jim Crow era, centering on two Black families with intertwined destinies, with each character carrying a deep secret. It begins with Atticus (Tic) Freeman arriving in Chicago in search of his missing father, Montrose Freeman. He teams up with his uncle, George Freeman, and his childhood friend Letitia (Leti) Lewis, and they quickly run into trouble with racist cops, strange monsters and the powerful Braithwhite family. It is revealed that the blood of the Black Freeman clan is intermixed with that of the white Braithwhites, and over the course of the series, these two families battle over the possession of magic spells and the Book of Names. Showrunner Misha Green wove together the central narrative of exploring the Freeman bloodline by fusing many genres, and gave each episode a diff erent theme. Tic, Leti and Montrose jump from a haunted house purging in one episode to a Goonies-style adventure in submerged pirate caves, to meeting a nine-tailed kumiho spirit during the Korean War in others. Each episode's complex themes and historical events shine a light on the grotesque topography of American racism, revealing that ordinary people can be much scarier than giant monsters. M i n d - B e n d i n g , G e n r e - B l e n d i n g T r i p t o L O V E C R A F T C O U N T R Y B Y K A L I N A I V A N O V, P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A