This week, in Lovecraft Country, we got a taste of horror from an unexpected, but wholly overdue, perspective. That of the Indiana Jones variety.
This week’s episode finds Atticus, Letitia, and Atticus’ father Montrose deep inside an ancient structure filled with puzzles, traps, and all the suspense of a dungeon in the Legend of Zelda. They are in search of missing pages from the “Book of Names”. When I say it comes from the perspective of an Indiana Jones story, it’s hard not to see why.
The only IJ story one would need to be familiar with for the majority of the story would be the Last Crusade. Our team of explorers find themselves in a museum, looking for a hidden entrance.
“‘X’ marks the spot,” and all that jazz.
Despite that glaringly obvious throwback to the franchise, it also takes notes from Raiders of the Lost Ark while trying to find an entrance to the underground region. Remember the “Map Room” scene in Raiders? Yes, that’s in there with very little to hide the influence.
In one scene, the trio is walking down a narrow platform/walkway that is disintegrating behind them. With the threat of falling into a seemingly bottomless pit, they quicken their pace. The problem becomes, they then have a swinging blade, a la Edgar Allan Poe’s “the Pit and the Pendulum”. While they’re not tied down as the blade swings back and forth, the anticipation is still there as the path behind them dissipates.
Making it to their final destination, a room full of books, documents, and a skeleton collapsed on the single desk in the room, the team seems to be moments away from their sought after pages. That is until the skeleton starts moving.
Each episode appears to try and highlight some level of racism, inherent or systematic, that people of color seem to face. While initially intrigued at the idea of Indiana Jones, Goonies, and National Treasure being treated as horror, it became much more apparent why this style was chosen for this episode.
Black Panther.
Remember the scene in Black Panther where Killmonger is introduced? The museum? After Killmonger identifies that one artifact is from Wakanda, despite what the expert who meets with him tells him, he “forgives” her and says he’d be happy to take the items off her hands to save any future embarassment.
“These items aren’t for sale,” she replies. To which Killmonger says,
How do you think your ancestors got these? Think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it, like they took everything else?
The same thing was being showcased in Lovecraft Country this week. While the episode could’ve acted as a stand-alone story, it did incredibly well with capturing the audience’s attention to highlight this important issue.
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