#h.p. dailey

[roachleakage]

Was Lovecraft Ableist? An Examination of "Lovecraftian Madness", Part 1: At the Mountains of Madness

Those passingly familiar with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft are probably familiar with some version of these claims:

"Lovecraft was ableist! He wrote all the time about characters being 'driven to madness' by incomprehensible revelations, which is basically like saying you can get mental illness from looking at something scary."

"Actually, Lovecraft wasn't being ableist. He wasn't even thinking of mental illness when he wrote that; he was talking about (emotional distress/alien influences/whatever was happening at the end of Flatland)."

So I decided to do some digging into these claims. I checked out a couple of Lovecraft's stories best known for their association with mental shenanigans: The Call of Cthulhu, known for its titular character's brain-melting impact on several people in the story, and At the Mountains of Madness, which, as one might imagine, uses the word a whole awful lot.

Now first off, I would like to acknowledge that this does not constitute a comprehensive review of Lovecraft's work. However, when it comes to people's understanding of Lovecraft's takes on madness/mental illness/etc., it is these two stories in specific that people tend to think of, alleging scenes from one or the other where characters see Things Man Was Not Meant To See and lose their entire minds about it.

So how accurate are these claims?

Well, before I get into it, I should mention that there are going to be spoilers here. For At the Mountains of Madness in this post, and The Call of Cthulhu later. So if you want to hop off and read them first, now's your chance.

(Be aware, though, that The Call of Cthulhu is one of the most vilely racist and disfigurmisic of Lovecraft's stories. Read at your own discretion.)

So, to start with, I thought I'd look into the claim about "Lovecraftian madness", particularly regarding its alleged meaning within the context of the stories. And to do that, I cracked open At the Mountains of Madness. If you're not familiar with the plot of this book, or need a refresher, it's about members of an Antarctic geology expedition who accidentally discover the remains of a pre-human civilization of large alien sea cucumbers, also known as "Great Old Ones".

(Inb4 "nuu, the Great Old Ones are gods, these were Elder Things!" This is a popular misconception that At the Mountains of Madness does not bear out. It uses both terms interchangeably.)

This story, as you might imagine, uses the word "madness" quite liberally. It appears 20 times throughout the story, mostly in a mix of repeated title drops and the narrator speculating on the cause of a particularly shocking event that occurs midway through the story.

So let's look at the title drops first. The phrase "mountains of madness", or some variation thereof, appears ten different times in the text, disconnected from any allegations of mental illness or bizarre behavior. So what on Earth is the narrator talking about?

Well, here's an explanation in his own words:

Little by little, however, they rose grimly into the western sky; allowing us to distinguish various bare, bleak, blackish summits, and to catch the curious sense of phantasy which they inspired as seen in the reddish antarctic light against the provocative background of iridescent ice-dust clouds. In the whole spectacle there was a persistent, pervasive hint of stupendous secrecy and potential revelation; as if these stark, nightmare spires marked the pylons of a frightful gateway into forbidden spheres of dream, and complex gulfs of remote time, space, and ultra-dimensionality. I could not help feeling that they were evil things—mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That seething, half-luminous cloud-background held ineffable suggestions of a vague, ethereal beyondness far more than terrestrially spatial; and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this untrodden and unfathomed austral world.

As we can see from this description, the narrator is having a bit of a reaction to the sight of these mountains. They seem impossible and half-real, in a way that he finds both threatening and almost awe-inspiring, and he suspects that they contain all manner of hidden secrets that he and his team could discover if they probed further.

So initially, the titular madness is just the projection of his own reaction, which he's mistaken for an objective quality - a belief that seems to be borne out when the mountains do, in fact, turn out to be full of weird shit. They're the Mountains of What The Fuck Is Going On Here. The Mountains of Things That Make No Rational Sense.

One might argue that this is still code for mental illness, as the term "madness" is frequently used to imply that nonsensical thoughts stem from a fundamentally damaged mind - but this would be an anachronism, as I learned when researching the history of the term. The neutral usage came first; people didn't really start to use "madness" in that way until well after Lovecraft's time.

(To be fair, the term 'madness' was absolutely used to discredit and pathologize people, especially women and minorities who objected to mistreatment by those with more power - but through a somewhat different lens, as I go into in more detail below.)

This leads us to the second way the word is used, which at first blush does look like a synonym for mental illness:

We had by that time agreed not to transmit anything suggesting madness on the part of Lake’s men, and it surely looked like madness to find six imperfect monstrosities carefully buried upright in nine-foot snow graves…

…the madness of a lone survivor might have conceived the inconceivable—a wild trip across the monstrous mountains and a descent into the unknown primal masonry—

But, because of the aforementioned research, I am now aware that that is not exactly true. This is certainly referring to mental phenomena - specifically, a (speculated) pattern of nonsensical behavior stemming from a state of mental irrationality. However, based on the way 'madness' was used in literature, this was not the same as an accusation of mental illness. It wasn't even an accusation of a specific problem; any number of irrational episodes could be considered madness, from panic attacks to dissociation. It was simply a way of saying that someone was not in their right mind at the moment, which is the narrator's best guess for why a bunch of people would massacre each other but also lovingly bury the valuable research specimens they had unearthed just a day before.

This is the kind of "madness" that was used against vulnerable people - not the concept that they were mentally ill, but accusations that they were simply In No State To Be Rational. It was essentially the same as how "hysteria" is used today. Of course, attributing an event you can't explain to Some Kind Of Hysteria(TM) is still a dick move, but it's not the same as insinuating mental illness.

Now, before I wrap this part up, I want to touch on another common misconception that just bugs me - the idea that a character in the story was just overwhelmingly terrified by what he saw in the mountains, to the point where it drove him mad!!!

The character in question is Danforth, the narrator's companion during the final leg of the story where he explores the ancient ruins. And to an extent, these claims are true, but the circumstances are stripped of context to the point where Danforth looks like a blithering xenophobe, and not a guy who had just suffered a harrowing brush with death and then, while fleeing for his life, accidentally noticed something that made the experience even worse.

Because that's what actually happened. The journey through the ruins is actually mostly free of terror - sure, there's some disparaging commentary about "decadence" on the part of the narrator (being used here as a synonym for degeneracy), but the overall tone is one of fascination. The things they've found are unexplainable and bizarre, but they're also the archaeological find of the millennium, and that is the spirit that the characters approach their exploration in.

So what is it that actually tips Danforth over the edge? Well, if you mind spoilers, here's the part where the post ends for you. Otherwise, read on:

As they are exploring the ruins of the Old Ones' city, the protagonists find their way into a path that leads down into an underground cave system. Having found evidence that the creatures they're tracking has gone into those caves, they follow, eventually tracking down a majority of the creatures who have been slaughtered horribly. Still, they hear the Old Ones' greeting call in the distance - "Tekeli-li!" so they continue deeper into the caves.

It is here they encounter the Shoggoth, either one of the beings that overthrew the Old Ones' enslavement, or one of their descendants. This is the creature they saw in a fresco some time back, messily decapitating their former masters, the same style of execution that the freshly dead Old Ones had suffered. The creature advances on them with unknown intent, and it is around then that the protagonist remembers a fact about Shoggoths:

They are excellent vocal mimics.

The sound the characters were following wasn't a potentially friendly alien at all. It was the thing that killed them.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we look into the other Lovecraft story most commonly pointed to for this topic: The Call of Cthulhu, a story that's notorious for being racist but not so much for what we'll be looking at.

#h.p. lovecraft #lovecraftian horror #cosmic horror #at the mountains of madness #h.p. dailey

[roachleakage]

Was Lovecraft Ableist? An Examination of "Lovecraftian Madness", Part 2: The Call of Cthulhu

(Warnings for this post include spoilers for The Call of Cthulhu, and Lovecraft-typical racism as well as period-typical ableism.)

In my last post about Lovecraft, I began an examination of the subject of "Lovecraftian madness" - specifically, how the term is used today, what people believe it to mean, and whether Lovecraft intended it in an ableist and derogatory sense. To figure this out, I decided to look at two of his best known works: At the Mountains of Madness, a story that uses the word "madness" more often than I change my underwear, and The Call of Cthulhu, a story notorious for its plot point of people getting the brain scramblies from seeing visions of an elder god.

Since this is a pretty in-depth topic, I've split it into two posts. In the last one I examined At the Mountains of Madness and its relationship to the infamous word. Based on the context and usage within the story, I determined that while it wasn't without its issues, it had nothing to do with the concept of mental illness at the time and, generally speaking, was not ableist of Lovecraft to use.

So what about the story that started it all? And I don't just mean "Lovecraftian madness" - I mean evil cults trying to summon their apocalyptic gods, the aforementioned and legendary brain scramblies, and the introduction of the Mythos' most iconic and misunderstood character, Cthulhu* himself.

Well, The Call of Cthulhu is already notorious for its disturbing levels of racism, so it wouldn't be terribly surprising to find out that it was ableist as well. What did surprise me is that, contrary to the insistence of many of Lovecraft's fans... not once did he describe the phenomenon that everyone is familiar with as "madness".

So, what did he call it? Well, the story features a diverse assortment of terms and euphemisms. A few of the choicest entries:

The (newspaper) cuttings largely alluded to outré mental illnesses and outbreaks of group folly or mania in the spring of 1925.

On March 23d, the manuscript continued, Wilcox failed to appear; and inquiries at his quarters revealed that he had been stricken with an obscure sort of fever and taken to the home of his family in Waterman Street… …Reference to this object, the doctor added, was invariably a prelude to the young man’s subsidence into lethargy. His temperature, oddly enough, was not greatly above normal; but his whole condition was otherwise such as to suggest true fever rather than mental disorder.

The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure, and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell.

Mental illness, mental disorder, and violent insanity. Yikes.

But he doesn't stop there. Having pathologized the hell out of anyone affected by this phenomenon, Lovecraft goes on to take potshots at some of his least favorite people:

Voodoo orgies multiply in Hayti, and African outposts report ominous mutterings. American officers in the Philippines find certain tribes bothersome about this time, and New York policemen are mobbed by hysterical Levantines on the night of March 22–23.

From what I've been able to glean, "Levantine" is a general term referring to people from the Levant region, but this being Lovecraft, he may in fact have been referring to Jewish people - I have no way of knowing for sure.

He gives us a parting shot at the mentally ill, for good measure:

And so numerous are the recorded troubles in insane asylums, that only a miracle can have stopped the medical fraternity from noting strange parallelisms and drawing mystified conclusions.

Now, before I continue, there are a couple of things that I want to make note of. First, while Lovecraft's hatred for minority races went above and beyond the norms of his time, many of his prejudicial beliefs were standard, and that includes the way he talks about mental illness in this story.

Second, Lovecraft's relationship to the entire concept of mental illness was both deeply personal and fraught with torment. Lovecraft's own parents were institutionalized at different points, and he himself suffered from what may well have been an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, as well as possible issues with emotional dysregulation, and a sensitivity to stress that profoundly impacted his mental and physical health. This, in turn, contributed to an unhealthy preoccupation with the concept of mental illness, specifically the fear that he would succumb to the same fate as his father.

Essentially, what I'm saying is, this isn't a scathing indictment on his character in the way that his racism was. However, what this does not change is one simple, undeniable fact:

The Call of Cthulhu, and the associated notion of elder gods melting your brains with their mere presence, is rooted in ableism.

This entire story describes some kind of mental plague that disproportionately affects people like Lovecraft himself - the emotionally sensitive, the mentally ill, and so on. While we can take this as the internalized ableism and self-deprecation that it was, it was still an exhibition of bigotry toward the neurodivergent.

And despite people's best intentions, changing "mental illness" to "madness" does not magically erase that fact. And anyone who tries to tell you that Lovecraft never intended it to be about mental illness, it was just alien influence, I swear! is either lying, or in desperate need of a reread of this story.

Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to make this concept less shitty. You could get away from the whole 'mental illness' thing and lean into the Psychic Exposure To Alien Minds angle - provided you're careful not to produce some tacit implication that some people are just weaker minded, as Lovecraft did. Or you could go the Mountains of Madness route and not talk about psychic aliens at all, just the consequences of stress and trauma on the human mind.

But what doesn't work, and what doesn't help anyone who suffers from mental illness, is to pretend that the ableism was never there. That's never going to be true, however fervently we can wish it was.

*Pronounced Ckhloo-loo, if you're a Mythos purist. Neat little tidbit I picked up while researching on www.hplovecraft.com.

#h.p. lovecraft #lovecraftian horror #cosmic horror #ableism #The Call of Cthulhu #h.p. dailey

[roachleakage]

OK, to be a little less flippant and more helpful toward Ancient Aliens anon, I need to explain what the issue is with the argument "If (idea) is false, how do you explain (list of seemingly overwhelming points of evidence)?"

At first glance this does seem really solid! After all, it's pointing to all the support that the idea seems to have behind it, much like pointing to the fossil record to support the theory of evolution. However, if I was going to educate someone about evolution, this question would be the last approach I would take - because it isn't a scientific statement at all, but a rhetorical device, and a very bad one. It requires two recognized bad-faith maneuvers in order to execute properly: the appeal to ignorance, and the Gish gallop.

An appeal to ignorance, for those who may not know, is a logical fallacy wherein a person tries to argue that a belief must be true because no one knows what the alternative could be. An example of this might be "If you don't think that manifestation works, then explain how I got the exact thing I wanted the week after I started manifesting!" The purpose is to put the other person on the spot, forcing them to assume what is called the burden of proof - the need to provide evidence for a point in order to continue advocating for it.

The problem is, if you're making a big, incredible claim, then you are the one who needs to provide evidence. And when you look at many popular but unverified claims, it can be pretty easy to notice that the empirical data just isn't there. So how is our ancient aliens proponent going to prove that they've done their dues if they don't have any proper, verified, scientific sources?

Enter the Gish gallop, a technique wherein a person basically tries to whammy and disorient you by listing as much alleged evidence as possible in the time or space given. When it comes to faux archaeology like the ancient aliens claim, this usually means listing off a bunch of different cultures and places throughout history - most of which have nothing to do with each other outside of some fairly impressive architecture and maybe a handful of superficial cultural similarities.

One easy way to notice that you're being Gish galloped is that the other person makes no effort to explain how all these disparate shreds of evidence are supposedly connected. It's like watching someone try to convince you that they how to make a sandwich when they don't even know what a sandwich is. They can't tell you that (for example) mayonnaise goes on the bread, then cheese, then ham, then mustard. Instead, they just start naming ingredients - ham, bread, jam, cheese, tomato sauce, baked beans, and so on - in the hope that this seemingly enormous display of knowledge will keep you from noticing the glaring problems with their rant.

Now, I don't blame anon for asking this question. Most people learned it from the actual grifters, and perceive it as being a good argument because it worked so well on them. And it does, fantastically, if you don't realize that it's the rhetorical equivalent of puffing up your feathers in hopes that the other guy gets scared.

#ancient aliens #logical fallacies #rhetoric #scams #grifting #appeal to ignorance #gish gallop #h.p. dailey

[roachleakage]

Roach Reviews: Some Good Lovecraftian Art: Part 1: Glorious

"Lovecraftian" is such an unhelpful label to put on art at this point. It covers everything from commercially-driven Call of Cthulhu (the story, not the game) knockoffs. to works that have a tangential relationship to the Yog-Sothothery at best. to horror that just happens to be gothic and/or weird. I think a lot of works get labeled as Lovecraftian not out of serious artistic consideration, but because Lovecraft is widely regarded as a "master" (lmfao) and people see comparing other works to his as an easy shorthand compliment. Unfortunately this leads to the term becoming muddied and eventually useless.

That doesn't interest me, though. It's shitty and boring and doesn't help anyone. So instead, I'm going to talk about some original works that I find both truly Lovecraftian - in the sense that they derive from his works in a way that at least somewhat understands their themes - and just plain good.

These are in no particular order, and I make no claims of representing the entire corpus of Lovecraftian art; this is just some shit I really like. And since I'm going to be talking at length about these, this is going to be a series; in this first installment we are covering a recent movie release.

Glorious (2022, dir. Rebekah McKendry)

Did you know that the reason At the Mountains of Madness was deemed "unfilmable" was not because it would be technically challenging or overambitious, but because Hollywood executives couldn't figure out how to market it? One of the biggest problems, apparently, was that the cast didn't have any attractive women in it.

Anyway, Glorious is about a man who is trapped in a restroom where he talks to a glory hole voiced by J.K. Simmons. Since the movie came out fairly recently, you've probably already heard about it, but I'm here to give it my personal stamp of approval. It's hard to say much about this movie without spoiling it, so I'll give it my best shot.

First of all, let's talk about the Lovecraft connection. The character talking through the glory hole is Ghatanothoa, who was first introduced in "Out of the Aeons", a story ghostwritten by Lovecraft for one Hazel Heald. The character would go on to feature in Lin Carter's Xothic legend cycle, published between 1971 and 1981. However, the Ghatanothoa in the movie diverges a bit from both of these sources, having his own unique origin and purpose that drive much of the story.

What is that purpose? Well, that's a huge spoiler, by which I mean less that it's a big reveal in-universe and more that this movie is better watched as blind as possible. So instead, I'm going to attempt to talk about what makes the movie good.

I actually put off watching this movie for several months because I wasn't sure I could actually get through it. Is the story interesting? Is one guy talking to a hole enough to carry a movie and keep my ADHD brain awake from passing out? Turns out the answer is yes. Not only is Ryan Kwanten a fantastic physical actor, playing off the restroom's space with a dynamic energy that is great to watch, the film makes great use of camera angles and some other devious tricks (like gradually revealing aspects of what's going on) to keep things from getting stale.

So, on to the next important question: s it Lovecraftian? You could easily debate that it isn't; after all, it bears no obvious trappings of Gothic fiction, nor does it feature many of the hallmarks most traditionally associated with Lovecraft's best-known work. But if we define the genre as only what is best known, then many of the author's own works wouldn't qualify as Lovecraftian. The guy repeated himself occasionally, but he was far from a one-trick pony.

And ultimately, the story uses several elements that I feel make the cut. It deals with themes of isolation, mental and emotional torment, and grief, in a way that is heavily evocative both of the Gothic genre and of Lovecraft's own personality. The cosmic horror, meanwhile, is here not to represent those personal feelings, but as a potent illustration of the self-centeredness of obsessing over one's own misery - again a very genre-fitting message. I doubt that this vague sort of meta-criticism is intentional - most likely it's just a "if the shoe fits" situation, as Lovecraft was frequently guilty of exhibiting Gothic villain behaviors in real life - but it's certainly interesting.

But I digress. Yes, I would argue, it's Lovecraftian - as an intimate tale of horror that marries personal pain to cosmic terrors, a fresh and inventive yet thematically faithful take on the Mythos. It's also a damn good movie, if my exuberance so far hasn't made it obvious. If you enjoyed 1408, are into Lovecraft deep cuts, or both of those things, this is definitely the movie for you.

#reviews #movie reviews #gothic horror #lovecraftian horror #glorious (movie) #roach reviews #h.p. dailey

[roachleakage]

That's it, I'm changing my pen name. From now on everybody call me H.P. Dailey.

#about me