I have the feeling that over the past years, we’ve started seeing more TV shows that are either sympathetic towards Hell and Satan, or somewhat negative towards Heaven. I just watched “Hazbin Hotel” today, which isn’t too theological, but clearly is fairly negative towards Heaven.
In “The Good Place”,
Spoilers for The Good Place
the people in The Bad Place end up pushing to improve the whole system, whereas The Good Place is happy to spend hundreds of year not letting people in.
“Little Demon” has Satan as a main character, and he’s more or less sympathetic.
“Ugly Americans” shows demons and Satan as relatively normal, and Hell doesn’t seem too bad.
I only watched the first episode of “Lucifer”, but it’s also more or less sympathetic towards Lucifer.
I have a few more examples (Billy Joel: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints”, or the very funny German “Ein Münchner im Himmel”, where Heaven is portrayed as fantastically boring), but I won’t list them all here.
My question is: how modern is this? I’ve heard of “Paradise Lost”, and I’ve heard that it portrays Satan somewhat sympathetically, though I found it very difficult to read. And the idea of the snake in the Garden of Eden as having given free will and wisdom to humanity can’t be that modern of a thought, even if it would have been heretical.
Is this something that’s happened in the last 10 years? Are there older examples? Does anyone have a good source I could read?
Note that I don’t claim Satan is always portrayed positively, or Heaven always negatively :).
In The Prophecy (1995), Christopher Walken played a corrupted Gabriel who is jealous of humans because God stopped talking to him (?). Viggo Mortensen plays Satan, not exactly sympathetically, but not too unrelatable. Constantine (2005) had a similar sub-plot With Tilda Swinton playing a jealous Gabriel, and of course Neo as Constantine.
This is an element of my novel series’ setting. I’m not trying to advertise it, but if you want more details, and how to access my so far only published book, DM me. I will warn you that only after publishing 1st edition did I realize how important accessibility is. The subject matter is confusing without my old writing style already. The only people who finished it are writers who knew to move on if they didn’t understand something, while my relatives gave up after the first page.
The way I interpreted demons or devils is based on Islamic myths. “Jinn” or “spirit” is the term I use for all such creatures. “Demons” or “devils” are those antagonized by angels, or are spirits that actively oppose them. According to the myth, humans, jinm, and other intelligent creatures that supposedly lived on earth, all have free will, while angels do not. I don’t see my demons as a manifestation of evil, but people with flaws. Angels, however, I’ve discovered are evil themselves, but believe their collective decisions are completely justifiable. They only appear as good cause they’re overall very good at PR and propaganda.
As for stuff outside of my work, I’ve been told Lord of Light has a similar vibe to my book. God’s Demon is a book about demons aka fallen angels going to war in hell. I didn’t entirely like kt though and did not read the sequel. I found some of its ideas interesting enough to finjsh the first book at least.
I’ll reply to this if I think of more. I have one or two artbooks in mind, but I don’t remember their names.