FILM / Having "The Look": Aquaman, H. P. Lovecraft, & Visible Queerness / Gretchen Rockwell
Image © Warner Bros. Pictures | DC Entertainment
THE SHADOW OVER AMNESTY BAY, my Tweet proclaimed, followed by this text: "Beneath the color & humor of James Wan’s Aquaman (2018) lurks a sinister shadow. Lovecraftian horror informs the central conflicts between Curry & his villains, highlighting the original anxieties present in Lovecraft’s work. In this essay I will—", and ended there to fit the meme format.
Twitter is where I learned that meme, and where you can find me under the name ‘Mx. Gretchen Rockwell.’ Funnily enough, I first added the "Mx." to my username to be a good ally; looking back, I should've realized sooner why the gender-neutral salutation felt comfortable. It's not what I hear on the daily—the two options my students have are "ma'am" and "sir," and as I'm clearly not seen as a "sir," "ma'am" it is. The military is binary; there's no place there for someone who fits into neither (any) gender. It is what it is.
* * *
H.P. Lovecraft was from Providence, which I didn't know till I took this job in Rhode Island and heard about its "NecronomiCon" celebrating his life and works. I never officially attended the convention, but I binged most of the Cthulhu stories before attending some of the public events. Reading, I was aware of his exceptional xenophobia and racism—fear of the "Other" taken to the extreme. Even so, my favorite story ended up being "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," a novella in which the great and terrible secret is that the inhabitants of the titular Massachusetts town are breeding with fish creatures from beneath the sea, and even someone with the thinnest of blood relations will develop "the Innsmouth look": that is, a visibly mixed person. A clear outsider.
I'd seen Aquaman when first released and enjoyed it immensely, but upon a rewatch post-Lovecraft binge, I had a very different (though no less enjoyable) experience. The Lovecraftian references aren't even subtextual at points: The Dunwich Horror & Other Tales shows up on a coffee table; Black Manta directly quotes "Call of Cthulhu" when he first attacks Aquaman. Multiple critics noted how James Wan intentionally responded to Lovecraft's anxieties about mixed-race people through Arthur Curry. Arthur is only half-Atlantean—a "mongrel," as one character outright names him!—and in casting mixed-race actor Jason Momoa, Wan emphasizes how this aspect of his character makes him H.P. Lovecraft's worst nightmare. Through his Maine-lighthouse-keeping human father, Arthur is made a fellow New Englander—and to Lovecraft and the fictional Atlanteans, it's Tom Curry (played by Temuera Morrison) that's to blame for his perceived unsuitability, his obvious outsider status, and his visible other-ness.
* * *
As a white person, I can't speak to the mixed-race aspects of Aquaman, but in my particular form of queerness, I too have a "look" which immediately identifies me as "other" if you know what to look for. In fact, like Lovecraft's denizens of Innsmouth, my coded queerness and visible “other”-ness in my environment has only increased every year. I've streaked my long hair teal-blue, earning the epithet of mermaid from quite a few people; I've inked tattoos dark and dense on each wrist; I've shaved the sides of my head short; I dress more androgynously than ever, striking a balance between masculine and feminine (strongly leaning towards masculine). I've claimed the identity of queer, and am finally expressing it without worry of "standing out" too much. I'm going to stand out regardless—I may as well be comfortable.
I've gone beyond coding to add pronouns to my social media headers and my professional bio. That was the first and hardest step to take in officially letting people see me, being visible in a way that really matters.
There is, though, one place I am not seen as I am. This is partially by choice, partially by construction. In the military, gender is understood as a strict binary; being agender is both foreign and untenable. So I'm not 'out' at the military school where I teach—but even if I were, my students would still have to call me 'ma'am.' The military is a world where I do not—cannot—exist, or at least exist without being gendered.
That said, I'm a civilian. I could be not only visibly but vocally queer; I could decide to disregard the friction that would create with conservative colleagues or students, and the disconnect with my employer's culture; I could add pronouns to my signature line—I could say something. In some ways, I already have—several fellow instructors are Facebook friends, where I share my publications (with my updated bio) frequently and have my pronouns listed in my header; a few of my colleagues follow me on Twitter, where it’s hardly hidden. It's there to be seen, if you're looking.
No one has said anything.
* * *
At first, I wonder if people haven't seen my new bio and pronouns. I wonder this for too long. Then I wonder why they haven't said anything—is it a generational thing, or that they're afraid to broach something that seems private? Maybe it's that they don't respect it (me), don't understand it, or don't care to. I start considering the conversations that could be happening right now in closed-door offices, in non-work spheres. The whispers behind my back. And then I decide, very determinedly, to stop considering. That way, madness lies.
* * *
The first words in "The Call of Cthulhu" are these: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." In it and his other tales, Lovecraft hints that "dead Cthulhu [who] waits dreaming" is the root of the world's underlying anxiety and paranoia, and makes it clear that to encounter Cthulhu is to look into the void and crawl, gibbering, away. Simply put, Cthulhu is world-breaker, paradigm-destroyer, ancient and lurking terror—the most eldritch horror.
But "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "The Dunwich Horror" imply that for Lovecraft, there is an equal horror: something half-human, the obvious result of humans breeding with monsters. "The Dunwich Horror" closes with the memorable observation that the evil creature meant to be brought into our world, the main antagonist's twin brother, "looked more like the [inhuman] father than he did." To Aquaman's viewers, Orm Marius fits this role perfectly: the bitter and bigoted man bent on conquering all the other Atlantean kingdoms to become Ocean Master, who takes after his Atlantean father in looks and personality. But to King Orm (and H.P. Lovecraft), Arthur is the terrible brother who "look[s] more like [his] father" and enters the world only to bring about its destruction. And worse—he succeeds.
* * *
"Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of m[e]n," Black Manta snarls as he emerges from the sea. The implications there are intriguing: is he the loathsome thing who has been plotting his revenge, or is he referring to his ally King Orm, who is planning to attack the surface world? Is he placing himself in the role of Cthulhu, vengeful being rising to conquer and destroy the established order of things? It's unclear—but Black Manta is not the only Cthulhu avatar here.
Near the end of the movie, Arthur Curry proves his worthiness of the ultimate trident. Riding the legendary monster Karathen, he crashes up from the ocean floor into the film's climactic battle, completely turning the tides to defeat his half-brother and become King of Atlantis. The Lovecraftian image practically announces itself: a horrific, godlike, tentacled beast rises from the depths of the ocean, causing mass destruction and loss of life as it (or at least, its rider) establishes a new world order.
In addition to this visual reference to the Great Old One, Arthur, like Black Manta before him, takes on the metaphorical role of Cthulhu—and to Orm, surely seems as horrific. He is the demonic twin, the unspeakable evil from another world. And he comes to shatter the existing system and replace it with something new.
* * *
Systemic erasure is half the reason I don't talk about being agender or correct people when they misgender me. To explain the rest, I could say that I resent the idea that I have to "come out" in a way that cis, straight people never will—true. But the real reason is that as long as I don't say anything, I have an element of deniability. I'm lucky to not expect physical violence in my workplace, but there would be consequences. But if I stay silent, I can engage safely with people who wouldn't work with me if they definitively knew I was queer. If I keep interactions at a surface level, my queerness can be ignored, even if I have "the look."
I don't quite have Arthur's courage, his mastery of fluidity, his command of the environment he chooses to live in. Until I am fully out, some part of me stays hidden deep, waiting to rise until I come out publicly, declaratively, and irrevocably.
I am cheered, however, that Arthur spends most of Aquaman growing into the hero he can be, embracing his own capability. Even once he triumphs, his first question is, "So what do I do now?" The answer he receives is: "Be their king," i.e. be all that he is, visibly and boldly. His response (the film's final line) is, "This is going to be fun." I hope to one day feel that same joy and anticipation—to have the bravery to use everything I am to disrupt the rigid and restrictive systems around me. To be seen for who and what I am.
Gretchen Rockwell is a queer poet currently working as a supplemental instructor of English at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, RI. Xer work has appeared in Glass: Poets Resist, Okay Donkey, Noble/Gas Qtrly, Kissing Dynamite, FreezeRay Poetry, and elsewhere. Gretchen enjoys writing poetry about gender and sexuality, history, myth, science, space, and unusual connections – find xer at www.gretchenrockwell.com or on Twitter at @daft_rockwell.