‘Lovecraft Country’ Episode 5: Body horror, drag and mixed messages deliver the most uncomfortable episode yet
Ruby might have dreamt of the opportunities a White person has but when she gets it, she becomes someone problematic. It is lovely when she enjoys her ice cream and her afternoon in the park where everyone "handles her warmly" as a human being, but the metamorphosis also corrupts her. Ruby is horrified when she sees the tortured man hung to die in the police captain's closet but then enacts her own 'revenge' torture on her manager who she saw assaulting Tamara outside the bar. Does that make her better or worse than the police captain? Or the manager for that matter? Once she has the "superpower" of Whiteness, what she does with it is telling.
The body horror genre is firmly placed in dislocation -- of having one's body invaded by an alien influence or creature that takes over your body's functions and duties. The worst of body horror is when no one notices you are gone from behind the eyes that were once yours and you have to watch, trapped inside, unable to control anything.
Ruby's experience is the opposite of this. She isn't taken over as much as she gives herself up to the White experience. As cases of "Blackfishing" are on the rise with White influencers overtanning and 'enjoying' being Black by using makeup to create full lips or surgery to adopt more curvaceous figures, this episode seems in particularly bad taste. It is unclear what precisely the episode was trying to say, especially when Ruby's metamorphosis is mixed in with depictions of drag culture, with Sammy, Montrose's lover, transforming himself to compete in a drag competition. Simultaneously, Christina is revealed to have used the same "magic potion" she gave Ruby to become William, a man.
Again, the "body horror" of the magic potion around gender and race becomes an uncomfortable juxtaposition to real-life instances of body dysmorphia or the controversy around transracial identities. Ruby and Christina don't use the potion because Ruby "feels White" or Christina identifies as a man. They do it because it benefits them in the short term within the existing societal matrix, and they retreat into their original identities when they want with no consequences. This parodies the way in which White influencers pretend to be racially ambiguous or "exotic" to make money, and retreat back into Whiteness after they are done posting snaps on Instagram.
This could have been an episode devoted to evocative and insightful musings on race, gender and even body shape. Instead, it becomes something that is purely grotesque body horror -- worse, by showing Montrose "finding himself" and finally kissing Sammy while he is in drag -- we see the episode equating Ruby and Christina's actions with trans identities -- which is also problematic. Furthermore, we are also alienated from Ruby, who till now has been a stellar character and someone we were rooting for. As she is corrupted by Christina, her authentic experience as a sensuous Black woman with an ample figure, depicted onscreen, is now suddenly diluted and in a strange way distorted -- unlike Leti, her lighter-skinned, thinner sister -- making this episode a rare fail in a series that has been going strong till now.
'Lovecraft Country' airs on HBO every Sunday at 9 pm.