Captain Lancaster And the Black Body

Published October 16, 2020 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi y’all,

when it was confirmed that Captain Lancaster was using black bodies to sustain his quality of life, my thoughts went beyond the exploitation of black bodies and I wondered whether there was a comment about the fetishism of male black bodies being made by the show?

This is something that is prominent in British and Empire historical sources. Young black men are eroticised particularly in Victorian society but this continues into today. Songs on the football terraces about a black player being well endowed are common. I’m not that confident on commenting on the American experience but the show has touched on the theme of black men as sexually potent and a threat. There’s also modern porn genres which play on these themes (the white cuckold husband etc).

So there’s a fetishism, an eroticism, and some latent homosexually to the white gaze on the male black body. There’s a lot to unpack.

The hidden usage of black bodies under his uniform by Captain Lancaster has a lot of potential for metaphor. As a viewer, I am left questioning what his relationship is with these magical transplants. There’s obviously benefits and vitality that Lancaster is enjoying from them. I also wondered how much of his body was transplants? That does take us into some very weird territory but this is Lovecraft Country after all.

Yet the past is a weird territory. One of the examples that popped into my head was Baden Powell (founder of the scout movement and promoter of manly activities) who wrote during his time in Africa about young black men in what we would describe today as homoerotic. Another example is the author Rider Haggard and his novel She. In order to access a hidden world, our protagonists have to enter via a tunnel between the legs of a carved native figure and wade through muddy brown waters. Think we can all see what you are getting at love. Again Haggard’s writing was packaged as manly adventures.

The threat of the black male body is complex but part of it operates on this desire/disgust mechanism. The threat of a black man fucking a white woman isn’t just about possession but about inadequacy – what if she enjoys it! That’s it is this fear of the black sexual male which starts the events of the Tulsa Massacre feels like no coincidence. Its repression as a memory due to shame makes me think about the frenzy of what occurred. The scale is worthy of the Maenads legends. It is hard to comprehend that level of destruction being planned.

That Montrose roughly fucks his white lover is an intentional choice by the show to confront this subtext by giving it expression visually to the audience. Montrose is the centre of the show’s exploration of Tulsa as the intersection of several themes. He is the emotional and traumatized heart which is a superb piece of storytelling given where we started with him as the absentee abusive father.

Hence my questions about Lancaster. What does the black body mean to him given his literal adoption of black bodies? Was there desire for the black body that helped to fuel his racism? It’s one of those intriguing threads that I doubt will be addressed in episode ten. Perhaps it’s enough that it triggers thoughts like mine?

These are complicated ideas but we are complicated creatures when it comes to sex and sexuality. The white gaze, othering, homoerotic fetishism and racism is a difficult thing to discuss so I am impressed by the bravery of this show. Regardless of the finale, this show deserves to be a point of cultural discussion.

Hope you all are keeping well. The UK seems to be increasingly batty at the moment. Am half expecting the prime minister to declare war on Manchester at some point next week.