hbo
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Meet Me in Daegu'
Welcome back to Lovecraft Country—we are past the halfway point of the season’s journey! I can totally see Misha Green in her writers’ room, saying, “Give me K-Horror, but make it BLACK!” What I am really enjoying is how the show’s creators are throwing all of these different, well-developed worlds and storylines at us, confident…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Strange Case'
Hey! Welcome back to another week in Lovecraft Country! Our fifth week’s episode—the first half of our midpoint in the season, and our most extensive analysis to date—was full of interruptions and metamorphoses (spoilers to follow): Ruby was plagued by interruptions, both as a Black woman and a white one; Tic’s progress seems to be…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: A History of Violence
Welcome back to another week in HBO’s Lovecraft Country; our fourth. I want to begin this article moving backward from the largest issue in this week’s episode (serious spoiler alert): the violent murder of Yahima by Montrose. The final scene features a presumably cis Black man slitting the throat of a “two-spirit” Indigenous person in…
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The Safe Negro Travel Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Holy Ghost'
If you watched Episode 3 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, you already know: This was a damn near perfect episode. I sincerely believe that the horror genre is where Black folks get to tell truths that otherwise aren’t safe to tell. Horror is an imaginative space for us because so much of our history and experiences…
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Jharrel Jerome, Janet Mock and Yara Shahidi Among Next Round of Casting for Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me HBO Adaptation
The ensemble cast for HBO’s special adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me just became even larger! On Wednesday, it was announced that Jharrel Jerome (When They See Us), 2017 TED Global Fellow and poet-playwright Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Janet Mock (Pose), pianist and composer Jason Moran, Wendell Pierce (Burning Cane), Mj Rodriguez (Pose),…
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The Safe Negro Travel Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Whitey's on the Moon'
Still with us on our journey through Lovecraft Country? Last Sunday’s episode—the series’ second—is why I have certain issues with traditional Black pain/trauma narratives (spoilers to follow, so if you haven’t watched, stop here). We can certainly explore the origins of our deepest pains—but isn’t it so much more interesting with Shoggoths in the mix?…
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Hot 97 Employee Pasquale 'Paddy Duke' Raucci Fired for Involvment in Shooting Death of Yusuf Hawkins
Pasquale “Paddy Duke” Raucci, the commercial programming director for New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97, has been fired from his position after the HBO documentary, Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn, showed his alleged ties to Hawkins’ death. The announcement of Raucci’s firing comes 31 years to the day that Hawkins was killed on August…
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The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country: 'Sundown'
If you clicked this link, you probably watched “Sundown,” the first episode of Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country on HBO on Sunday (if not, go watch). Now, ahead of next Sunday’s episode, you’re interested in becoming more than a casual viewer as you recognize that the series is an incredibly subversive piece of historical fiction with…
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The Best Part of Lovecraft Country's Premiere? What Happens to the Racist-est Racists
Of the several nits I have to pick with Watchmen—a show I am still infatuated with—the most prominent (and also the pettiest) is that the murderous racists didn’t die violent and painful enough deaths. One (Senator Keene) was literally liquified because of his own ego, and the other racists were zapped to oblivion by Lady…
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Lovecraft Country and the Horror Story of America
Welcome to Lovecraft Country…or um, you know…welcome to America for Black folks. Based on the Matt Ruff novel of the same name, Lovecraft Country follows Atticus “Tic” Freeman (Jonathan Majors) who takes a road trip from Chicago across 1950s Jim Crow America to find his missing father Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams). His childhood friend Letitia,…