I’ve been thinking a lot about life recently. Life and love and what does it all mean, but mostly I’ve been thinking of Cthulhu. Cthulhu: one of the Great Old Ones of Lovecraft lore. The Great Priest, The Sleeping God, that humongous squid-faced bat-winged god. If you’re into doomsday cults then this is the deity for you. Cthulhu is everywhere. There’s Cthulhu comics, Cthulhu t-shirts, Cthulhu for President, Hello Cthulhu, My Little Cthulhu, Cthulhu cereal. But my question is why? Why Cthulhu? How did Cthulhu enter the public consciousness? Could it be possible that the entire internet has become Lovecraftian experts? Did the whole of humanity run out and get PhD’s in early 20th Century horror fantasy while I wasn’t looking (most likely when I was in the bathroom). The problem is H.P. Lovecraft really isn’t that popular, his lasting appeal has always been because he influenced people who then created work that other people actually enjoyed. So, how did this Cthulhu mania come to be?
Every few years someone (re)discovers H.P. Lovecraft and consequently new generations are introduced to the joys of Cthulhu. A lot of it is because of films like The Evil Dead series, Re-Animator, Into the Mouth of Madness, and games like Alone in the Dark that may not directly reference Cthulhu but touch upon Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. The 80’s was a hot bed for Cthulhu activity with perhaps The Evil Dead’s Necronomicon at the epicenter. Sam Raimi released the first Evil Dead in 1981, Evil Dead II in 1987, and Army of Darkness in 1993. Steve Jackson’s card game Illuminati first debuted in 1981 and featured multiple references to Cthulhu. Metallica’s second album Ride the Lightning (1984) featured an instrumental called “The Call of Ktulu.” In 1987,The Real Ghostbusters cartoon had an episode called “The Collect Call of Cathulhu”. In 1988, Blue Öyster Cult released a concept album that was a tribute to, you guessed it, Cthulhu. All of this meaning that if you rolled D&D dice and listened to metal in a your mother’s basement sometime in the 80’s then you were probably quite familiar with the old gods.
Those nerds would grow up and make art themselves, and with that art came more Cthulhu. Neil Gaiman has made numerous Cthulhu and Lovecraft references throughout his graphic novels and other work. The webcomic, Penny Arcade, has also mentioned Cthulhu quite a bit since it launched in 1998. So, Cthulhu went from Lovecraft to Sam Raimi to Steve Jackson to Metallica to Ghostbusters to Neil Gaiman to Penny Arcade and finally to you. Making you five or six times removed from the source material, and, maybe, this is why Cthulhu has gotten progressively more goofy as time goes on. Which still doesn’t explain our love for Cthulhu. Perhaps, it just reminds of us of other lost loves: Futurama’s lovable Dr. Zoidberg, for instance, or the Hall of Doom, which also resembled Darth Vader (Nothing is more bad ass than living inside a giant metal Darth Cthulhu head).
Precursors to Cthulhu?
Since, no one has read Lovecraft and most of those who have don’t particularly like him, wouldn’t it be easier to say, “I like Neil Gaiman” instead of “I like Cthulhu?” There’s no nerd cred in that though. There’s no point in liking the thing, you have to like the thing that the thing likes, in this case, Cthulhu. We always have to latch on to the most obscure reference even if we don’t 100% understand it ourselves. The more obscure it is, the more well informed and knowledgeable we appear to be. The cult of Cthulhu is like geek peer pressure. The internet has changed us into teenage girls.
“Oh, you don’t know who Cthulhu is? That’s so sad.”
“What!? No… I love Cthulhu. I was born with Cthulhu. All I think about is Cthulhu.”
“Whatever… I’m like totes into Yog-Sothoth now.”
And that’s Cthulhu for you. Although, I still don’t have any answers for Cthulhu’s tentacled pop culture cousin: Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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Then again, he may just turn over in his sleep.
http://www.ectomo.com/2010/08/12/cthulhu-cthursday-the-jequetepeque-headdress/
http://www.goominet.com/unspeakable-vault/
I wasn’t part of the “in” crowd who knew Lovecraft before he sold out and became popular.
I devoured sci-fi/fantasy books in my youth but I never heard of Lovecraft until a few years ago…whenever The Internet mandated the use of Cthulhu puns every other post.
I found The Call of Cthulhu to be a pretty good story but I found At the Mountains of Madness to be more journey then destination, and not in a good way.
Still, the idea of elder gods is intriguing. Thanks poster guy (or girl) above, I’ll start The Colour out of Space tonight.
My girlfriend, on the other hand, says it’s like reading medical journals because he writes too “technically”.
I think that’s where Lovecraft’s potential shines. The execution may be flawed sometimes, but the inspiration if amazing.