Hippolyta's Spiritual Awakening Through Spiritual Warfare in Lovecraft Country (2020)

In episode seven of Lovecraft Country (2020), titled "I Am," Hippolyta, the most scientifically literate character in the series, transcends into the heavens to Earth 504 and is granted self-affirmation by the god-like womanly figure called I Am. While on Earth 504, Hippolyta gains the power to "name herself" anything in any place and time that she can imagine. Unfortunately, the identities that Hippolyta chooses would otherwise prove extremely difficult for her to attain on terrestrial 1950s Earth due to racism and sexism. Hippolyta's experiences result from what sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields call "racecraft," or "the mental terrain [and] pervasive belief" by otherwise scientifically literate persons that race exists as a scientific fact rather than as a result of human action and imagination (18).

The horror and science-fiction genres and the witchcraft trope fit Lovecraft Country's examinations of racecraft given how race appears in the series as an element of spiritual warfare. More specifically, the series depicts spiritual warfare existing across past, present, and future in parallel universes between unworldly beings and within humans. In this essay, I propose that Hippolyta's journey to and from Earth 504 invites viewers to witness a concept that I call "cosmic rememory." Drawing on Toni Morrison's famous formulation of rememory, cosmic rememory reveals information about one's spiritual state as it pertains to notions that cannot be explained solely within the natural world. Ultimately, cosmic rememory extends beyond reading these supernatural moments as exclusively revealing of trauma. I argue that Hippolyta's cosmic rememory sets her on the journey toward gaining the self-actualization needed to defeat racecraft in her past, present, and future as a part of a more significant spiritual battle between individuals and the racecraft that haunts terrestrial Earth.