With Christmas just around the corner, I found myself hunting around
for something
I could write about that was appropriate to this festive yuletide
season. Not at all an easy order to fill, given that these
editorials are also supposed to have something to do with the
Pulps. What could I write about that was both about Pulp and
about Christmas? Then I recalled that I had promised several
times to write an editorial about Plush Cthulhu and now seemed as good
a time as any. So, what about Christmas, you ask? Be
patient. You'll soon see why Plush Cthulhu is indeed an
appropriately Christmasy topic. Just you wait...the answer is
more horrible than your worst nightmare...
Now, I don't want to be an old stick-in-the-mud. I try to be
open to new ideas and changing times. True I still believe rap
music is just a passing fad, and I think the modern use of computer
generated special effects in today's movies look really, really cartoony. But other
than that, I wouldn't say I was completely closed minded. But,
honestly...Plush Cthulhu!?!
Surely, there is a special place reserved in hell for whomever it
was first dreamed up the idea of marketing H.P. Lovecraft's supremely
powerful, cosmically evil, eldritch, eternally-dreaming in the
underwater city of R'yleh, uber-god as a cuddly, green-felt,
beanie-filled Plush Cthulhu. Surely we have to draw the line somewhere!
Let me step back a bit, and fill in the backstory FOR THOSE OF YOU
WHO CAME IN LATE. Plush Cthulhu is a plush and beanie-filled
cuddle toy marketed by Toy Vault,
Inc. It is cute as all
get-out. It is also based on a supremely powerful ancient god
invented by H.P. Lovecraft called "Cthulhu", a name which, by the way,
was supposed to be as unpronouncable as it seems, since, according to
Lovecraft himself, the spelling was simply an attempt to duplicate
sounds which were never meant to be uttered by human tongues. (As far as I
know, most fans pronounce it something like kuh-THOO-loo.)
Cthulhu
himself was the chief deity of a whole imaginary pantheon
dreamed up by Lovecraft, and added to by other pulpsters such as Clark
Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, which featured in their famous
"Cthulhu Mythos", a sort of writer's game whereby Lovecraft and friends
would throw into their stories references to imaginary beings as well
as imaginary sources of ancient and evil lore -- the most famous being
of course the dreaded "Necronomicon".
The purpose of all this was to add verisimilitude to their fiction,
since obviously if readers found references to the Necronomicon in stories by
different authors they would be more inclined to believe that such a
forbidden tome actually existed.
I myself can vouch for the effectiveness of this. For several
years I really believed there must be a Necronomicon -- after all, I had
read about it in different sources, hadn't I? Disillusionment
came only when I read the late Robert Bloch's introduction to a
collection of his own Cthulhu Mythos stories called The Mysteries of the Worm (itself
named after an imaginary tome which the author of Psycho had contributed to the
Mythos). Bloch let the cat (or the Cat-hulhu?) out of the bag,
and for this young reader the effect was like discovering there is no
Santa Claus. (And, no, that wasn't the Christmas connection I
promised. Be patient. It's worse than you can imagine...)
Too be fair, Toy Vault isn't entirely to blame for this little plush
affront to all things eldritch and blasphemous. Apparently,
Lovecraft fans were already manufacturing plush Cthulhae all on their
own and Toy Vault just recognized a nascent market when it saw
one. At the same time, Toy Vault even has competition.
Another company called The
Outsider, which specializes in Lovecraft
knick-knacks, markets its own Plush Cthulhu which looks suspiciously
similar to Toy Vault's version, albeit not quite as detailed.
Then a company called Stuffe &
Nonsense also offers a stuffed Cthulhu
but their version is beige and much more thin and humanoid, rendering
it far
less cuddly.
But whether beige or green, cuddly or not so much, all the versions
have certain traits in common -- batwings and a face full of
tentacles. This is because Lovecraft gave a fairly detailed
description of his Uber-monster in a story called "The Call of
Cthulhu" in which a detective in New Orleans comes upon a statue of the
little fellow, which he describes in this overheated way:
"It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful."
Chances are, you'll already be familiar with the name "The Call of
Cthulhu", but not necessarily as a short story. That's because a
wildly popular role playing game by the same name was marketed a few
years back and is still selling great guns today. Which brings me
to the main point of my essay. Today, Lovecraft has achieved a
kind of pinnacle of public awareness. He still hasn't quite
gained literary respectability (although he's coming pretty damn
close), but his fans are legion if we go by the sales of The Call of
Cthulhu role playing game and the various Plush Cthulhae out
there. And yet, I suspect, very few of these supposed fans have
actually read the stories he
wrote. For them, H.P. Lovecraft is a name on a T-shirt. He
is an icon, a kitschy collectable that sits on their PC gazing down in
plush-filled vacuousness while they play the latest version of
Tomb
Raider XXI: Lara Croft in the Vatican!
As a fan of all things Pulp, I can't help but feel we have won the
battle but lost the war. (Or, as doctors say, the operation was a
success, but the patient died.) Don't get me wrong. Its
nice to see all those H.P. Lovecraft websites, its fun to visit sites
like the hilarious "Tales of the
Plush Cthulhu", but there is a part of
me that cringes all the same. Cthulhu was not a cute little
cuddle toy. He was a scary monster dreamed up by a remarkable
author and his scariness was a part of the stories in which he
appeared. Take him out of those stories and what's the
point? And as scary as "The Call of Cthulhu" role playing game
may be (and I understand it's pretty scary),
surely we owe something to the original story that gave it its
genesis. (To be fair, I understand Chaosium, marketers of the
role playing game, have included a copy of the original story in their
latest version of the game...but still, how many will actually read it?)
Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Chill, dude. It's only a toy.
Aw, but it gets worse, my friends, infinitely worse. You see,
impressed with the great sales they enjoyed marketing their Plush
Cthulhu, Toy Vault decided to expand its line and get really
creative. Now they offer plush versions of other creatures from
the Cthulhu Mythos -- namely a Plush Nyarlethotep and a Plush
Shoggoth. To be fair, the Plush Nyarlethotep in particular does
manage to be remarkably creepy for a cuddle toy, but still, I can't
help but feel there must be a Commandment that covers this sort of
thing. Something like THOU SHALT NOT DEPICT BLASPHEMOUS DEITES
WITH HIGH-QUALITY STITCHING.
But of course, Cthulhu remains the real star attraction, and so the
demoniac
hordes at Toy Vault have come up with variations on a theme. Now you
can buy Gothic Cthulhu, which, as the name implies, is a Goth version
done in black and silver felt, with long claws suitable for an evening
at a rave. Then there is
Secret Agent Cthulhu with its Sam Spade trenchcoat. And Superhero
Cthulhu complete with mask and cape. And even Dracthulhu, with
vampire fangs! Where it will all lead, I shudder to think.
The Apocalypse, maybe?
I wrote my own Lovecraft imitation, the serial "In the Dark of Kingston", because I think
we can learn a lot from such a past master of the macabre. Yet,
for all that
Lovecraft's fans are legion, even the more serious "scholars" seem
obsessed with the nuts and bolts of his mythos, with endlessly debating
whether or not his gods were "elementals", whether they were evil, or
merely alien, minutiae that, however interesting, have little to do
with why his stories worked.
There is little attempt to consider and analyze the techniques he
employed to get the effects he did. Indeed, more often, modern
Lovecraft scholars usually dismiss those very techniques as outdated
idiosyncracies, lapses for which Lovecraft is best forgiven, if not
outright criticized. To my mind, these scholars are no different
than the manufacturers of Plush Cthulhu. Lovecraft knew how to
write, damn it, and his techniques, outdated as they may be, were an
essential part of what made his stories the kick-ass fear-fests they
were. Dismiss those
techniques and you have missed the whole flaming point. (I'll have more to say on that topic in a
later editorial, you can bet on it. Stay tuned, Bat-fans!)
So, what does all this have to do with Christmas? Brace
yourselves, Faithful Fiends, I've saved the best for last. Just
when you thought it couldn't get any worse, just when the mind teeters
on the brink of unholy madness, now Toy Vault has come up with one
final mind-reeling monstrosity against which there can be no
rational defense. That's right.
Santa Cthulhu!
Merry Christmas!!!
(My rabid editorial
not-withstanding, you can't help but love the little guy. I
highly recommend you check out the "Tales of the Plush Cthulhu" site I mentioned earlier. It'll
put a great big blasphemous smile on your tentacles, if anything will.)
Jeffrey Blair Latta, co-editor and Supreme Plasmate
Got a response? Email
us
at lattabros@yahoo.com
Pulp
and
Dagger Fiction Webzine
