Lovecraft and Barker: Beyond the Threshold

I got into Clive Barker years ago after listening to The Hellbound Heart, which became the Hellraiser francise. I've never thought of Lovecraft and Barker tied together, in fact, Barker seems to have more of an interest in Edgar Allen Poe than Lovecraft. But it's in the undertones where we find the Eldritch inspriation that infected Barker's writings. 

For those mercifully unbaptised in Barker's strange worlds, The Hellbound Heart looks at what happens when people go for the extreme of pleasures. Angels to some, demons to others, the Cenobites give pain beyond the threshold to those that summon them. Cenobites are humans who have live in this realm of pain and pleasure to the extreme. The current count has eleven movies in the series based off the book, whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate. I've seen the first two movies and that's where I stopped. The rest of the films are like the Tremors movies: media designed to please only the most dedicated of fans or the fill a time spot a 3AM on the TV. Although, what would be the point of watching a Hellraiser movie on TV if all they do is blur the gore. I've had my fill of S&M type stuff from the first two films and I'm not seeking out more, even if the 2022 film was considered in high reguard. I'll come back to that later.

For description purposes, the Cenobites are humans who have fallen into the promises of the Lament Configuration, a puzzle box that opens the gateway to Hell. Or, at least, a level of Hell. The comics don't make the lore clear as to what constitutes Hell. Like Star Wars comics, the extended universe is a mess. It even overlaps with Barker's other characters like the Nightkin which only adds to the ocnfusion. I'll talk about Barker's universe another time.

For now, I wanted to talk about the idea of going beyond the threshold because that's a theme in Lovecraft's work. Lovecraft bemoaned how vampires and werewolves were out of date and no longer scary to him. He's quoted as saying that he had grown bored of our type of horror and wished for something to go beyond the realm of senses. Something we couldn't comprehend. It seems he achieved that in his writing but I never made the connection between Lovecraft and Barker. Perhaps it's because Barker is so focused on sexually charging his characters that the link didn't appear. Having read several of Barker's works, I can say that his stuff is based on sexual satisfaction. I recall that he even supported himself as a male prostitute while working on his writing craft. The Hellbound Heart was based around a BDSM club he visited when he was younger. Barker seems to have this rebellious streak in him against religion, especially Christianity. He's claimed before that he was a Christian before going back on that. I'm guessing that he doesn't know what religion he is and he likely finds religion to be a rope that's binding his creativity. I've seen similar issues in comedians like Daniel Tosh who uses comedy to reject his Christian upbrining. Whatever happened to Barker must have influenced his writing. But what kind of upbringing caused him to create such horrific wonders? From what I've seen, there's nothing about his background that alludes to physical or mental abuse. But I've only dug into the top level of Barker's life, mainly by looking at his Wikipedia page. Is it possible that he was just interested in dark, sadistic ideas from the get go? I usually think that people into dark things are usually a little messed up in the head. Let's put the spotlight on myself, why do I like these dark things? I think I'm just looking for another thrill. 

I know I drifted off course quite a bit here but I wanted to write that there is another Hellraiser game coming out soon. The original one, I kid you not, was never released but was designed for the NES. A kids console had a game about torture and Hell. No wonder it never saw release. Before this, Barker would write and do voice work for his game Undying which I'm currently playing. There's also his artwork which covers many of his early book releases. Stephen King has called Barker "The future of horror," which, after reading his latest book, The Scarlet Gospels, I think Barker has lost his touch. Thankfully he's going back into hiding and working on more stories which I can't wait to read. 

Going further, my favorite of his, which I've only read passages, is Imagica. I'll go into details about the book later when I've finished it but it's such a creative idea that he based off of his strange dreams. You have to wonder what kind of dreams caused him to write such a novel. I think that's all for now, I'm off to help my parents at their home.