Satan in popular culture
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Satan appears frequently as a character in works of literature and popular culture. In Christian tradition the figure of Satan, or the devil, personifies evil. By the mid-twentieth century Satan had become just a metaphor to most people in Western cultures; however, Satan still had a role in culture as a representation of evil. Popular interest in Satan increased towards the end of the twentieth century, with films like The Omen and The Exorcist drawing large audiences. Today Satan remains a common figure in popular culture.[1]
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[edit] Entertainment
[edit] Music
- The musical interval of an Augmented 4th is sometimes known as tritone and "The Devil In Music" (lat. Diabolus in musica), a name given to it circa. 1400, given its unusual sound. Composers were encouraged to stay away from the interval, and whilst it is sometimes found in non-religious music of the time, it was never used in religious music until the existing system of keys came into use.
- Satan was notably portrayed as "a man of wealth and taste" in the song Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones.
- Black metal is sometimes considered Satan's "official music" in modern times.
- The Devil Went Down to Georgia by the Charlie Daniels Band was the first song to feature a battle between the Devil and a musician. The theme of battling the Devil has been revisited several times in other songs; with the victor varying in each song.
- Stephen Lynch's "Beelz" off his album The Craig Machine is unique due to the fact that it sung from the Devil's point of view. He starts the song off with a satanic growl and quickly shifts to a more effeminate voice.
[edit] Satan in film and television
Generally when Satan is depicted in movies and television, he is represented as a red-skinned man with horns on his head, hoofs, tail, and pitchfork, while often he is represented as a plain human being, and, in rare instances, only his voice is heard.
Including Satan as a personification of evil holds many narrative opportunities. Others have portrayed a human character's struggles with Satan to mark human foibles and failings in the attempt to live a good life — for example, Bedazzled (1967, remade 2000) and Oh, God! You Devil (1984). And in the horror/suspense genre, including Satan provides for a gripping, nearly all-powerful foe, as seen in The Omen trilogy. He can also be seen in someplaces throughout the movie "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny" (2006) resulting in a rock-off at the end with Jack and KG.
Satan has been featured as a character on many popular shows including South Park, Family Guy, Futurama's (Robot Devil), The Simpsons, Robot Chicken, and most other Adult Swim.[citation needed]
The Sci-fi Tv series Stargate SG-1 offers an interesting perspective (not only for this case, but many gods of various religions). The alien character Sokar, a Goa'uld, takes the persona of Satan, and become one of the most powerful of his species, possessing a great army with which he wanted to take control over all other System Lords and subsequently the galaxy itself. He even created his own Hell on Ne'tu (alike Apokolips, another fiction hell analogy), the satellite of his homeworld Delmak, where he sends his enemies for torture and punishment.
[edit] Fiction
Many writers have incorporated the character of Satan into their works. Among the most famous works are, in chronological order:
- Dante Alighieri's Inferno (1321)
- Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1604)
- Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer (1654)
- John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667)
- Jacques Cazotte's Le Diable amoureux (1772)
- William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)
- Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust (Part 1, 1808; Part 2, 1832)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850)
- Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (1835)
- Charles Baudelaire's Litanies of Satan (1857)
- Imre Madach's The Tragedy of Man (1862)
- Jules Michelet's Satanism and Witchcraft (1862)
- Giosuè Carducci's Hymn to Satan (1865)
- Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1867)
- Gustave Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov (1880)
- Mark Twain's A Pen Warmed Up in Hell (1889)
- Marie Corelli's The Sorrows of Satan (1896)
- George Bernard Shaw's The Devil's Disciple (1901)
- George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman (1903)
- Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth (1909)
- Alister Crowley's Hymn to Satan (1913)
- Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
- Aleister Crowley's Hymn to Lucifer (1919)
- Alister Crowley's Liber Samekh
- Robert Louis Stevenson's Markheim (1925)
- Stephen Vincent Benét's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1937)
- Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus (1947)
- Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels (1953)
- William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954)
- Robert Bloch's That Hell-Bound Train (1959)
- Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (1966)
- William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971)
- Harlan Ellison's The Deathbird (1974)
- Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series (1983-1990)
- Robert A. Heinlein's Job: a Comedy of Justice (1984)
- Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985)
- Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy #8: Devils, an anthology of 18 fantasy short stories edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenburg, and Charles Waugh (1987)
- Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens (1990)
- Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (1995)
- Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins's Left Behind series (1995-present)
- Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil (1996)
- Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell: A Novel (2000)
- Eoin Colfer's The Wish List (2000)
- John A. De Vito's The Devil's Apocrypha (2002)
- Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer (2003)
[edit] Comics
- In DC and Vertigo comics, the figure of the devil is portrayed by Lucifer Morningstar, the fallen angel and former ruler of hell, although other figures, most notably Neron, are sometimes used to portray the devil.
- In Marvel Comics, a "Lucifer" has been mentioned in some comics as being a hell lord with the same "Fall from Heaven" backstory. In the recent Ghost Rider series, Johnny Blaze faces a demon who claims to be Lucifer. In other Marvel plotlines, several high-level demons, such as Mephisto, Azazel, Marduk Kurios, and Satanish, have claimed to be the Biblical Satan.[citation needed]
[edit] Devil's Dictionary definition
Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary gives a satirical definition of Satan:
SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sackcloth and ashes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he.
"Name it."
"Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws."
"What, wretch! You, his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul — you ask for the right to make his laws?"
"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself."
It was so ordered.
[edit] Video Games
- In Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, a rock and roll version of Satan, Lou (short for Lucifer), is the manager for your band. The band learns that they accidentally signed their souls away to him, and they stage a guitar battle against him to win back their souls. The song that you play in the final battle is Steve Ouimette's metal cover of The Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."
[edit] U.S. Justice
In 1971, Gerald Mayo brought a civil rights action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against Satan and his servants who allegedly placed deliberate obstacles in Mayo's path and caused Mayo's downfall. In this U.S. court's written opinion, the court did not deny the existence of Satan; rather, the court asserted that it was unlikely that Satan was ever present in the geographic area included in the Western District of Pennsylvania, stating, "We question whether plaintiff may obtain personal jurisdiction over the defendant in this judicial district." In what was clearly a jocular reference to The Devil and Daniel Webster, the court implied that Satan might live in New Hampshire, stating, "While the official reports disclose no case where this defendant has appeared as defendant there is an unofficial account of a trial in New Hampshire where this defendant filed an action of mortgage foreclosure as plaintiff." This appears to be the only published legal case in the United States regarding the existence of Satan and, at present, the United States' official position would seem to be that Satan may exist and, if so, Satan might be found in New Hampshire.
[edit] See also
- List of works which retell or strongly allude to the Faust tale
- Satan (disambiguation)
- I Am The Beast SSSOTLOHIEFMJN v. Michigan State Police
[edit] Further reading
- The Comics Go to Hell: A Visual History of the Devil in Comics (by Fredrik Stromberg, 360 pages, Fantagraphics Books, 2005, ISBN 1560976160)
- The Lure of the Dark Side: Satan & Western Demonology in Popular Culture (by Eric S. Christianson and Christopher Patridge, 256 pages, Equinox Publishing Ltd, SW11, 2008, ISBN 1845533100)
- The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema (by Nikolas Schreck, 256 pages, Creation Books, 2001, ISBN 1840680431)
[edit] References
- ^ Kurtz, Lester R., 2007, Gods in the Global Village: The World's Religions in Sociological Perspective, Pine Forge Press, ISBN 1-412-92715-3, p. 153.
[edit] External links
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