Lovecraft Louisville

Shortly thereafter, Leti learns that the house is haunted by the spirit of a white scientist, along with the souls of the eight Black people he used for experimentation. The man’s spirit confronts Leti in the basement by morphing out of the ground to deliver the familiar haunted house cliché, “Get out of my house!” Despite the spirit’s demand, Leti stays. She decides to stake her claim in this new world by using the help of Atticus (the protagonist) and a local hoodoo woman. They initiate a ritual that, at first seems successful, but fails. The spirit renders the root worker unconscious and possesses the body of Leti’s friend Atticus freeman (Jonathan Majors). His eyes go black and he heads toward Leti to rid her of the house. Backed into a corner, Leti calls on the names of the eight entrapped spirits. The spirits answer Leti’s call and help her chant the incantation that the root worker started until they purge the man’s spirit from the house, allowing the eight spirits to find peace in the process.  

The struggle of every Black family during that time, and the struggle of every Black family now, is reflected in Leti’s struggle to live the American dream while being haunted by the American spirit. Her efforts to take part in homeownership and enjoy the rights that should be afforded her are constantly opposed by white men and their entitlement to land and bodies. This entitlement is literally the American spirit. This spirit of white entitlement has been the intrinsic nature, the essence, of how this nation operates since its inception.

The image of the haunted house is useful because it illustrates what philosopher and theorist Fred Moten describes as, “the relationship between instance and essence.” Leti is not only at odds with the instances of violence perpetrated by her white neighbors and the police, but she is also at odds with the very essence of that violence from which the instance gains its energy. In other words, the burning cross and the police intimidation are the instances — rituals of violence. These instances draw from the energy of white men who won’t surrender their entitlement to the land, even from beyond the grave. This is the essence, the spirit that haunts and possesses, the animating energy that drives these instances.

 Watching Lovecraft Country made it harder to love Louisville because I see that spirit here, too. 

I can’t think about the ghost of a white man enacting violence on a Black homeowner in order to maintain his control of the land without thinking about legacies of colonialism like redlining and gentrification. I can’t think about the image of police brutalizing a Black woman as part of a larger project to gain access to her home without thinking about the ways in which the city of Louisville has failed Breonna Taylor. I can’t think about the entitled spirit of a white man moving through the body of a Black man in order to carry out this harmful project without thinking about Daniel Cameron‘s flaccid attempt to conceal his harm with Blackness. I see Atticus possessed by the very spirit that hates him, and I can’t help but hear the words of Tamika Mallory ring clear, “You do not belong to Black people at all.”

Luckily, this episode was more than just a framework for understanding the intimate ways in which our realities are informed, and haunted by, the echoes of white men and the consequences of their desires (or the consequences of Black men who embody their desires). Watching this episode of Lovecraft Country made it harder to love my city, but it deepened my love for my people. The episode was a reminder that though the forces of oppression are alive and active, we are not without our own rituals of resistance. 

In the short time that the noise of Leti’s housewarming party overpowers the noise of the blaring car horns outside, I am reminded that the radical sound of our music provides relief from and pushes back against their noise. I am reminded of the everyday ritual bound up in Blackness, which is acted out in how we resist, how we love, and how we insist on a future where we are whole. I am reminded that when we place our hands on our chests there is a ritual murmuring beneath. When Leti is faced with the task of overcoming the oppressive spirit in her basement, she utilizes a ritual that can be heard at our protests. She cries the names of those who have been taken in an attempt to bring their spirits back into the space. She recognizes that naming is a way we can remain. When we remain, even under the constant pressure to die, remaining becomes the ritual.