The video below is aimed at the video gamer, but I think the narrator nails the essence of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, and what a *lot* of people get wrong about it. Cthulhu is not a giant dumb monster, Godzilla with face tentacles; instead, Cthulhu is supremely intelligent, supremely malign and completely invulnerable not only to humanities weapons, but to our understanding. Cthulhu and his ilk cannot be fought; they can only – maybe – be evaded. Your hope lies not in victory, but in remaining un-noticed, or in simply not being anywhere near where Cthuhu might happen to be. If The Stars Are Right, if you are supremely lucky you will have by that point developed time travel, stargates or warp drive that can get you the hell away before he notices you.
“What they get wrong about Cthulhu” is something that covers a lot of authors as well as game designers. There have been a lot of short stories and books written in recent years that simply get the Lovecraftian world *wrong.* A lot of it has come about as people try to update the mythos for modern sensibilities… yes, Lovecraft was a racist, but trying to wrap the mythos around morality tales completely misses the point of Lovecrafts cosmic horror. Think back to the best of his cosmic horror tales: do you actually remember any of the human characters as actual characters? I sure don’t. Any of them could have been rich or poor, smart or dumb, left-handed or righties, short or tall, chipper or dour, friendly or curmudgeons, men or women, black or white… and none of it would a have made the slightest difference. Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, the Deep ones…none of ’em give a damn. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lived a life of privilege and joy, or have been oppressed and stomped on by life… you’re all equally crunchy.And trying to make many of Lovecraft’s non-human entities at all sympathetic is *really* missing the point. I’ve seen a number of tales that try to draw parallels between the government rounding up Deep Ones at the end of “Shadow Over Innsmouth” and governments rounding up ethnic groups and either segregating them or trying to wipe them out. But what that seems to miss is the fact that the Deep Ones not only kinda want to wipe out humanity, they have the power to do it, but they’re simply too lethargic or distracted to do so. The Deep ones aren’t simply victims of unthinking prejudice; they are *active* villains. Worse, they are apparently in cahoots with even greater threats perhaps even Cthulhu. So the right moral to draw from the end of “Innsmouth” isn’t “it’s bad to inter funny-lookin’ foreigners,” it’s “be careful about these guys so you don’t get ’em riled up so that they destroy the entire surface of the Earth.”
Similarly, there are a number of references to human Cthulhu (and other entity) cultists in Lovecrafts work. But these aren;t poor, misunderstood folk who simply have a different religion… these people are, by and large, *nuts* in a diagnosable sense. These people aren’t just worshipping different, they are hoping for, and trying to aid, the extermination of mankind. Screw those guys.
