Should every statehouse have a statue of Baphomet?
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There it was: A fragment of pink paper, gently wafting down from the starry heavens above. And then another, and another, followed by foil hearts and more fragments of crepe, until the ground was covered. It was like pink and red and gold foil snow drifting down from a spring evening sky. There was no explanation. There was no rhyme or reason. In a time of quarantine, the sky simply opened up and rained down confetti on Brooklyn.
The pink and red confetti, dotted as it was with gold and silver hearts, offered a clue as to its origin. While it simply drifted down from the sky, the only explanation on that May night was that somewhere on a nearby rooftop, someone was celebrating. Perhaps a marriage had been proposed, or a baby born or even a graduation consummated with an exploding tower spewing happiness into the cool night air. As Ursa Major turned through the wheel of heaven and the specks of paper and foil drifted down, we felt the kindling of kindred spirits — unknowable yet undeniably present — somewhere over the rooftops. Vicariously, we shared in their celebration.
This happened two nights ago. It was one of those strange occurrences that are surprisingly common in the city. A glancing contact with the lives of others. An intrusion from someone else’s revelry into your own ordinary world. It was all the more striking with everyone in the city living in isolation from one another. For one moment, it seemed, there was something drawing us all together. Surprising moments such as this have become incredibly rare, yet all the more penetrating for their rareness. They stand out for their strangeness.
Three nights ago, a man dressed all in red rode a scooter down Nostrand Avenue, in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean. With one hand he controlled the scooter — his foot every so often grazing the pavement to give him a boost forward — and in the other hand he held a snowy white, live rabbit. The rabbit’s red eyes placidly gazed on the passing cars and pedestrians. And then they were gone. This is Brooklyn in 2020. It is Brooklyn the Strange. It is in America, the weird and wonderful.
Today’s Film: Hail Satan? (2019)
Hail Satan? opens on the steps of the Florida Statehouse where a group of black clad individuals are holding a press conference to announce Gov. Ron DeSantis’ endorsement by the newly formed Satanic Temple. It soon becomes clear that the press conference is a stunt — sort of — but that the Satanic Temple is real and its founders mean business. Over the next hour and a half, this documentary from director Penny Lane unwinds a fascinating and compelling story about the creation of the religious movement known as Satanism and the contradictory relationship between government and religion in the United States.
The adherents of the Satanic Temple are a motley crew, and it brings together outcasts from conservative churches, the queer community, metal heads and goths, and a raft of freethinkers and atheists. One of the most striking things about the film is that it reveals that most of the more than 50,000 global adherents to the Satanic Temple are not Satan-worshipers (the majority seem to be atheists or agnostics), rather, they are united under its banner as a sort of protest movement against theocracy. The film argues that the Satanic Temple, rather than being a cohort of devil worshippers —with one notable exception — is the most effective advocacy body for the separation of Church and State.
Much of the action of Hail Satan? revolves around several attempts in deeply conservative states, principally Arkansas, to erect statues of the Ten Commandments on public grounds outside of state capitals or court houses. The installation of these monuments, and the entire spectrum of religious language on American currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance, is a recent movement and traces its origins back to Billy Graham and Cold War fears of godless Communists. The statues themselves strongly resemble the tablets brought down from the mountain by Charlton Heston in Cecile B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (which I wrote about a few weeks ago). The reason for this, the filmmakers discover, is that these statues were originally distributed nationally by DeMille and company as part of a marketing gimmick for the film.
The Satanic Temple takes issue with the installation of these monuments as being a gross violation of the separation of church and state. Rather than protesting, though, the organization counters by petitioning for the installation of enormous bronze statues of Baphomet, essentially a satanic goat with bat wings. Understandably, conservative state legislatures objected to this request, and a heated court battle ensues. The brilliance of the film lies in its ability to take seriously the rational, antiauthoritarian arguments being made by the Satanic Temple, rather than simply getting caught up in the trappings of devil worship. This does not mean that the director and her team shy away from portraying the religious practices associated with the temple (this is definitely not a documentary to watch with your kids), rather, she deftly situates the temple within the greater context of American politics and history.
Hail Satan? came out of Sundance and is an artfully edited and directed, fascinating look at a quintessentially American phenomenon. As the election cycle heats up and the citizenry’s beliefs calcify, the wryly humorous story it tells is more compelling than ever. It draws a clear through-line from Billy Graham to the Satanic Panic of the 1990s to the Westboro Baptist Church and the rise of Trumpism. Even once it concludes, the film and its characters will linger, and the questions it raises remain unanswered.
Reading List:
Over at the Times, there’s a great Q&A about prehistoric Manhattan with Eric W. Sanderson, a senior conservation ecologist for the Bronx Zoo’s Wildlife Conservation Society.
And The New Yorker published a great interview with actor and musician Riz Ahmed. It’s well worth the time.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.