World Fantasy Awards may drop H.P. Lovecraft's likeness from award statuette due to author's racism.

[mecegirl]

snip

Would an essay count as an artistic work in the same way that a poem would?

Short answer, yes.
Long answer: The philosophy of Aesthetics has an ancient and noble tradition of never making up it's damn mind.

If that's the case then people have a stronger case for disregarding Card's work.

 

[JimB]

It's also not fair to blame someone for the symptoms of their illness because you find the symptoms annoying.

I don't care about assigning blame, particularly to a dead man. Blame is useless. It doesn't help anything. I care about the effects of his actions. Whether he was ill or not is irrelevant for three reasons: the first is his actions have effects on others no matter what his intentions; the second is he isn't yet proven to be ill; the third is his illness isn't proven to have caused his racism. More on that in a moment.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1188

Jesus Christ, that is a slog to read through. I guess the contibutor doesn't understand the importance of paragraph breaks. Oh well, not the point.

The point is, anyone who claims his racism was caused by mental illness has chosen an extremely high standard for himself to meet. Racism is not a mental illness; no peer-reviewed medical organization in the world that I am aware of recognizes it as such. Now, there may be certain forms of delusion that fixate on racism, or at least that can fixate on racism, but which ones are we talking about here? What symptoms did Lovecraft evince, and how do those symptoms combine to form a psychopathology that can be used to diagnose a dead man?

Without that kind of information, trying to excuse his racism because of mental illness seems like just that: an excuse.

Realistically there's no difference between Lovecraft and Solanas except:

Then go complain to whatever organization offers a statuette of Valerie Solanas as an award. Otherwise, her illness and behaviors are irrelevant here except to change the subject.

The point is "Boo Racism" (this isn't dispergent, this is literally what moral statements boil down to). And that's fine, you can not like racism. I don't like racism. Doesn't matter in this context though unless you make it matter by insisting that H.P. Lovecraft must be talked about in a context of racism.

It matters because it affects people. It affected Mr. Okorafor, after all.

Voltaire was racist as sin, does it mean we shouldn't honor him as a great philosopher?

I don't care whether people honor a dead man. Honor isn't doing him any good any more, on account of him being dead and all. As such, I will not prioritize what people want a dead man to be entitled to over the living people who have to deal with that fallout.

Contrarily, you are claiming it is wrong to honor his literary achievements.

No, I'm pretty sure what I said is, it's fucked up to give to a black author a statue of a man who thought that author was a half-beast filled with vice, created by the gods to bridge the gap between human and animal.

What practical reason?

I...I don't know how else to say it. I already said. Because it's a component of the discussion, and ignoring that is a disservice to your (the specific you) opponent and to the audience. It makes them less likely to agree with your position because you (the specific you) won't address what concerns them.

Criticism is fine, knee-jerk reactionary censorship and revisionism... not so much.

Neither is describing as censorship an act that does not alter, eliminate, or reduce ease of access to a person's works mandated by the state. If you want to describe this as an organization bending to pressure from its consumers, then that's fine, but it's not censorship, it's capitalism. Passing this off as censorship smacks of hysteria. Likewise, I don't think I need to say how pointing out the things a person is documented as saying counts as revisionism.

 

[Irick]

It matters because it affects people. It affected Mr. Okorafor, after all.

Everything and nothing affects people. The world does not exist but for our own internal narrative. The choice to let the views of a long dead man affect your current state is still an active choice. You must seek to engage that portion of history, and in doing so, you are critiquing the past.

Again, I don't disagree with the points about H.P. Lovecraft, but why exactly should I be okay with politicizing this award? Why should I care as to how people feel about H.P. Lovecraft? Why should we 'fix' a historical icon?

Is it because people are ignorant as to the iconic status? Is it because the historical Lovecraft offends them?

Political statements are fine. Don't accept an award if you feel it does more for your causes that way, but I see no reason to change the bust because of it. H.P. lovecraft is still one of the most influential authors of all time and there is really nothing that anyone has said on the matter that has even begun to address the fact that this has no basis in literary merit or accomplishment, which is what the award purportedly celebrates.

I don't care whether people honor a dead man. Honor isn't doing him any good any more, on account of him being dead and all. As such, I will not prioritize what people want a dead man to be entitled to over the living people who have to deal with that fallout.

The fallout of being offended by the beliefs of a man dead long before you were born?
The Literary Canon is a thing that exists, though I'm sure you would find it very offensive. It happens to have a lot of emotionally moving pieces in it. Even pieces that would make you question the purpose of living. People have to deal with the fallout of the literary canon everyday.

Should we remove references to offensive material so that people don't have to deal with the fallout of it?

No, I'm pretty sure what I said is, it's fucked up to give to a black author a statue of a man who thought that author was a half-beast filled with vice, created by the gods to bridge the gap between human and animal.

And yet it's still traditional to give doctors busts of Hippocrates whilst adorning private and state medical facilities with religious iconography harkening back to a mercantile god. These things violate the separation of church and state, romanticize a man to the living embodiment of medical ethics and... are entirely detached from their historic context into one of modern iconography.

Go figure right? Busts and Symbols become detached from the real and instead stand in for an ideal.

I...I don't know how else to say it. I already said. Because it's a component of the discussion, and ignoring that is a disservice to your (the specific you) opponent and to the audience. It makes them less likely to agree with your position because you (the specific you) won't address what concerns them.

It's still not remotely consequential, so, I don't much care for it. The critisism is fine, the calling for Lovecraft to be scrubbed from the award due to what amount to 'he had antiquated views' (though far more emotionally charged because: pathos) is not something I can take seriously. Period.

Neither is describing as censorship an act that does not alter, eliminate, or reduce ease of access to a person's works mandated by the state. If you want to describe this as an organization bending to pressure from its consumers, then that's fine, but it's not censorship, it's capitalism. Passing this off as censorship smacks of hysteria. Likewise, I don't think I need to say how pointing out the things a person is documented as saying counts as revisionism.

Casting historical views against modern morality is an act of revisionism. It is implying that morality is consistent through history, which simply isn't true. The norms and standards of society have shifted and changed near yearly basis. Attempting to present history in a light that reflects modern sensibilities regardless of the simple reality of the situation revises history.

Yes, this is a form of censorship. It is the removal of an Icon (Symbol, which conveys information) because it is considered harmful. That's pretty much the definition of censorship, even if it doesn't involve you striking through a piece of paper with a black felt pen.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Picking someone as wrong in the head, whether or not he genuinely had something against people not of his sill colour, or if it was just something cultural, as Lovecraft and then having second thoughts on it is just stupid.

They should have been more careful about this in the first place.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

It's their award and they can make it in the likeness of H.P. Lovecraft's cat for all I care, but this is a very slippery slope to demonize and marginalize famous individuals who held beliefs or did actions that were not only considered acceptable, but downright normal, for the time in which they lived.

To give examples of people we should now remove from any sort of awards, building names, recognition, monuments, currency, etc., due to them having beliefs that were normal at the time but that we now see as barbaric or backwards:

-As many already mentioned, George Washington, Ben Franklin, and pretty much any of the original founders of the US (slave owners).

-Edgar Allen Poe (believed in phrenology, the now laughably bad science of believing head shape determined personality).

-Margaret Sanger, Alexander Graham Bell, Teddy Roosevelt (actually, pretty much any US President up until FDR), H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, William Welch, and many more. All supported eugenics, the belief (among others) that Government should be allowed to forcibly sterilize "undesirables" to improve the human race's gene pool. Was considered to be largely to blame for the Holocaust and the idea of the Nazi "Aryan race".

There are too many anti-semites to even begin a list, not to mention it'd be real interesting if we got into what people would have likely believed. How many famous individuals from prior to 1950, no matter how 'progressive' they were for their time, would have supported gay marriage, states paying for sex change surgery, or affirmative action, back when ideas such as these barely even existed? Obviously one cannot speak for the dead, but I'd have serious doubts.

Trying to transpose the morality of our age onto those who lived in a completely different era is a fool's errand. The way I see it, who's to say that 200 years from now, people won't look back at us and consider us barbaric because we kept dogs and cats as pets, or ate meat, or watched trashy reality shows?

 

[mecegirl]

I was wondering how long it would be Godwin's Law would rear it's ugly head in this argument... anyway, I would argue Hitler is an entirely different case from Lovecraft (in terms of honoring them anyway) since for one, he never became anything more than an amateur artist (seriously, check out some of his other stuff, a lot of the perspective is wonky). Lovecraft on the other hand was one of the most influential writers for a genre in his time. Second, Lovecraft's views rarely if ever reflected his actions. At most, he wrote a fairly racist poem that was self contained from all his other work. Lastly, Lovecraft had other major aspects to his character other than his racism and was a lot more sympathetic than someone as controversial than Hitler. I just have a problem demonizing famous figures in history for what amounts to a small facet of their person. Humans, even the most celebrated ones, tend to be fairly flawed individuals. Name any public figure, and I'm pretty sure I can identify a fairly unsavory view the held or action they preformed. Does this mean we can't ever give these people credit for the good they did or remove any icon involving their likeness? I'm not saying we should excuse Lovecraft's racism or anything, but you can easily recognize his more negative views while at the same time giving him credit for the positive ones without being needlessly dogmatic and trying to retroactively police history like this. I mean hell, this isn't even the first time I've heard something like this. I've seen people try to get statues or busts of certain individuals removed simply because of a controversial opinion they held completey unrelated to what the iconography was recognizing them for.

You don't need to educate me on the merits of Hitler's art. I'm well aware of it. Hitler may have improved if he was let into the Academy of Fine Arts. Maybe he should have taken their advice and went to Architecture school instead going down the path that he did, but that's another topic. Still, I have yet to see a painting of dead Jews attributed to him. Maybe it's because he sucked at drawing people so he stuck to cityscapes and building instead. Either way his fucked up view of humanity never intersected with his art. And so if you are talking about him as painter judging him for his antisemitism is pointless.

SO far as Lovecraft is concerned what seems like a minor flaw won't be so minor to to everyone. And it isn't a controversial opinion, it's a wrong one. It's just flat out wrong. People of African decent are not subhuman. They were never subhuman. Nor were they magically gifted with sentience and personhood once Europeans decided to acknowledge their humanity. If Lovecraft were alive he wouldn't care about Ms Okorafor's talent. He would not judge her based on the quality of her work. He'd think she wouldn't deserve an award based on nothing but the color of her skin. But judging him based on his work is wrong? As a writer if he is not to be judged by his own work then what is he to be judged for? He didn't have to write racist poems, he chose to.

 

[Signa]

[snip]

Advocating Racism is wrong
The Racist Interpretation of Lovecraft's Bust as the icon of the World Fantasy Award Advocates Racism.
Therefore, The Racist Interpretation of Lovecraft's Bust as the icon of the World Fantasy Award is wrong.

Damn! How long did it take you to write that whole thing? I'm impressed,[footnote]comma is optional here in this sentence[/footnote] it needed to be said.

 

[Ratty]

It's not in the novels, but neither are Lovecraft's racist rants.

Bluh? Racism is all over many of Lovecraft's stories. The "horror" of non-WASPs "race mixing" can be found in his stories. As has been pointed out several times.

Picking someone as wrong in the head, whether or not he genuinely had something against people not of his sill colour, or if it was just something cultural, as Lovecraft and then having second thoughts on it is just stupid.

They should have been more careful about this in the first place.

According to someone in the comments to the original blogpost, Lovecraft was picked partly as an appeasement to the horror authors of the World Fantasy Awards, who outnumbered SF and Fantasy authors in 1975. Then, when the pendulum swung and SF/Fantasy became more popular and their were more authors of those genres in the organization the horror authors branched out and made their own award. I don't know if that's true or not but it would explain why Lovecraft is on an award primarily for SF and fantasy authors.

I found this interesting article that discusses the "product of his time" point.
Yes it's a wordpress blog but it does try to keep a logical perspective, defending points with examples.

http://nicolecushing.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/lovecraft-racism-the-man-of-his-time-defense/

Here's a line from it:
"If writers are all just ?men or women of their time?, then we?d probably, according to conventional wisdom, expect Poe (a writer born almost a century before Lovecraft, raised in the antebellum South ? hell, in the future capital of the Confederacy ? by a merchant who traded in slaves) to write stories even more filled with racist sentiment. And yet, I?ve yet to find any overt racism in Poe?s work at all (I?m not saying it?s not there, just that I haven?t seen it yet ? and I?ve read just as much Poe as Lovecraft, maybe a little more). We?d probably expect Ambrose Bierce (born and raised in the Midwest, in the 1840s) to likewise express racist leanings, and yet one academic article I?ve taken a look at actually argues that he wrote against anti-immigrant sentiment.
...
Lovecraft, on the other hand, seems positively obsessed with the theme of white supremacy, taking opportunities to shoe-horn it into stories even when it?s completely unnecessary. There?s no narrative reason Lovecraft had to name the cat in ?The Rats in the Walls? after a racist slur, or depict Buck Robinson in the degrading, animalistic way in which he did. These references are wholly gratuitous, apparently for Lovecraft?s own amusement and what he may have fancied to be the amusement of his audience (and before you leap to a ?he did it for his audience? defense, take note that his private letters ? not intended for an audience ? are also littered with racist references)."

I agree with much of the points so it seems better to post this from someone who looked into this a bit than explain my less informed opinion and logic.

Yep, all of these arguments kind of fall flat to me. But especially that one. "Oh EVERYBODY back then was an uninlightened racist, he didn't have any choice!" aside from being based on a demonstrably untrue premise[footnote]Which defames everyone in the past while giving unearned pats on the back to us present-day folk, as someone else mentioned all you need to see proof racism is alive today is to scroll through some youtube comments.[/footnote], ignores that Lovecraft was NOT "a man of his time" in key ways. As you mentioned he was an Atheist, he didn't marry young, and he wrote weird fiction. Lovecraft had freewill apparently as much as any of his did. While he did mature and start to rethink some of his ideas as he aged, he apparently still thought blacks biologically inferior, so still racist. Just perhaps a more mellowed one.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Eh, everyone was racist back then, but honestly, it's their choise if they want to use him or not, don't really see how it matters to anyone, honestly.

It's actually pretty hard to even find nuanced views on non-white people from back then, so I'll wonder which classic author they'll go to next.

Not really. And certainly if casual racism existed, few if any took it to Lovecraft's extent. Edgar Allen Poe, meanwhile, freed a slave by purchasing one and then selling it to a black family for $1. Which was a common intermediary step to a long legal process of freedom.

 

[jthwilliams]

I find this hard. Distinguishing the art from the artist. Example Orson Scott Card is something I fundamentally disagree with, but Endor's Game was one of my favorite stories as a child and many of his works are very well written. It causes a real dilemma for me.

 

[mecegirl]

SO far as Lovecraft is concerned what seems like a minor flaw won't be so minor to to everyone. And it isn't a controversial opinion, it's a wrong one. It's just flat out wrong. People of African decent are not subhuman. They were never subhuman. Nor were they magically gifted with sentience and personhood once Europeans decided to acknowledge their humanity. If Lovecraft were alive he wouldn't care about Ms Okorafor's talent. He would not judge her based on the quality of her work. He'd think she wouldn't deserve an award based on nothing but the color of her skin. But judging him based on his work is wrong? As a writer if he is not to be judged by his own work then what is he to be judged for? He didn't have to write racist poems, he chose to.

So because he held fairly outdated views, that even though it was considered more extreme than most it wasn't seen as something anywhere near as toxic as it is by today's standards, he should be regarded as if he was alive and saying this kind of stuff today? Look, I get that not everyone was racist back then but the fact of the matter is most people during that time could publicly hold some fairly vile opinions and not receive an ounce of flak from most. Let's not forget that New England was (and still is in some regards) one of the worst northern regions in terms of racism.

Also, just because he in particular wouldn't judge a person based on the quality of their work doesn't mean we should do the same. Also, a point of contention. It seems his racism was centered on culture rather than race itself. He would probably regard someone of another race who was properly "assimilated" a lot better than one who he believes hasn't.

Not most people, most White people maybe, but not most people. Unless you believe that those being mistreated didn't consider themselves human. Or that the rest of the planet didn't consider themselves human. But just because they didn't receive flack for it where they lived doesn't change the fact that it is wrong. You can use the term outdated if it makes you feel better, but since the facts don't support their ideas they are still wrong. We have zero problems looking at some of the scientific beliefs in cultures older than ours and identifying them as incorrect based on current knowledge. How is this any different? It's a fact that people of African decent are human(and always have been human) just like its a fact that the earth isn't flat.

You would have a point if he didn't insert racism into his writing. If all he ever wrote was about Cthulhu there would be less of a problem. Like I said, he didn't have to write poems showcasing his racist beliefs. So how is ignoring his racist poems properly judging the quality of his work? He wrote them so why shouldn't they be judged?

 

[Ratty]

it also seems like nothing but a superfluous change with no other reasoning than political correctness.

You don't see any potential wrongs in giving the statue of a virulently racist man, both in his social life and in his writings, as an award to people of the same races he consistently railed against as an award for literary achievement?

"He thought you and your family were vice filled mongrels. It says so in his writing! Anyway here's his likeness as an award for your writing. Hey don't be so sensitive, it's an honor!"

 

[Schadrach]

Before anyone wants to defend Lovecraft as a product of his time, read some of his poetry first. He was pretty far out there, even for the 20's and 30's.

Got one in particular in mind? I pulled my copy of The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H.P. Lovecraft out from between the Arkham House 3 volume set and a cheap printing of The Challenge From Beyond when I saw the thread and have been lightly browsing.

 

[jthwilliams]

it also seems like nothing but a superfluous change with no other reasoning than political correctness.

You don't see any potential wrongs in giving the statue of a virulently racist man, both in his social life and in his writings, as an award to people of the same races he consistently railed against as an award for literary achievement?

"He thought you and your family were vice filled mongrels. It says so in his writing! Anyway here's his likeness as an award for your writing. Hey don't be so sensitive, it's an honor!"

In that case, we can't have anything using Thomas Jefferson's face, UVA might as well just remove his statue from the rotunda because of his positions on slavery.

"He actually expanded his usage of slavery rather than try and get rid of it, he though your people were biologically and mentally inferior to whites to try and use it as an excuse for why slavery is ok. It says so in some of his letters! Anyway here's his likeness plastered on numerous institutions and awards. Hey don't be so sensitive, it's an honor!"

I mean Christ, it's not like racism was one of his main motivations in life and his writing or anything. I'm just saying that maybe we shouldn't condemn individuals throughout history just because they held certain archaic and outdated views, especially when said views do not compose a significant amount of their work or ambitions.

Yeah but what do you do. When you live in a progressive society the past will always be that way. People aren't simple it is possible for someone to be a great actor in history and a real bastard in other areas. Do we ignore that Columbus might have credit as the European who found this place but if you look at what he actually did he was a monster and just go ahead and celebrate Columbus day. or that we acknowledge that as a people as a culture we aren't proud of everything done by every person who helped shape our history, but we still want to celebrate what they achieved even if we wouldn't like them as people if we met them. It is a dilemma and I don't there is a easy and straight forward answer.