Review: Hail Satan?

Hail Satan?
Cert: 15 / 94 mins / Dir. Penny Lane / Trailer



When I informed Mrs Blackout that I’d stopped on my way through London to catch a documentary about Satanists positioning themselves as an accessible mainstream alternative to America’s evangelical Right, her reply was "Because of course you did". It’s a subject I’ve found morbidly fascinating since reading the book behind this year’s Lords Of Chaos, if only because it’s great to know that the subculture of wearing needlessly provocative t-shirts and pulling evil faces in the mirror while listening to Slayer apparently hasn’t changed in the 30 years since I was doing that as a hobby. And so, to the USA…

JOURNEY

Director Penny Lane takes us on a journey beginning in 2013, in Tallahassee Florida. Lucien Greaves, leader of The Satanic Temple has gained publicity by winding up The Westboro Baptist Church (so the audience is instantly on-side), and is determined to position his organisation in opposition to the non-specific religious Right (although Catholicism takes a lot of flak, for obvious reasons). A host of talking heads whisks us through branches at Salem, Detroit, Boston, Santa Cruz, Little Rock and Tucson. Members of the organisation and other experts and pundits discuss the aims and outcomes of The Satanic Temple, while debating their relevance in today’s society. The Temple’s claim is that Christianity has become the default option rather than a considered choice, allowing more insidious fundamentalism to creep into America’s infrastructure. So far, so reasonable.

Now, many of the people we meet connected with the church are exactly what you expect them to be. And while they obviously are who they are, their depiction here is doing the movement no real favours in terms of the mainstream acceptance they claim to be fighting for, yet still somehow shun. A narrative thread emerges when the group tries to get a 8½ foot statue of Baphomet erected at the Arkansas Capitol Building opposite a monument to the Ten Commandments, their reasoning being that this counterpoint will bring balance*¹. For obvious reasons, legal scuffles ensue and we spend the rest of the documentary in and out of a host of courtrooms. Things then come to a head with infighting, as Jex Blackmore of the Boston branch starts becoming more militant in her outlook, around the time of Trump’s inauguration. Again, not entirely unreasonable.

FOREIGNER

Lane’s movie is dryly funny (most of which is intentional) and surprisingly detached, but really struggles for a reason to exist. Hail Satan doesn’t challenge its subjects, but seems unwilling to challenge its audience either. It’s interesting enough as a snapshot of a minority group, but the documentary won’t tell you much about the religious Right that you couldn’t get from regularly watching the news. As for the Good Guys In Black, members of the temple are shown being involved with various charitable and outreach programmes, doing great work at ground-level in their communities.

Ultimately this section is all a bit ‘look at me’. You want to be a good person, go right ahead. You can help the homeless without putting a badge on that to annoy the Christians*². It’s difficult to take against The Satanic Temple’s aims of counteracting right-wing Christian hypocrisy and abuse, but more atheistic members of the audience will feel that’s a little like trying to take down Coronation Street by showing more episodes of EastEnders.

Although we do also get a brief segue where a few of the members confide that while they’re proud to be called Satanists, they don’t believe in actual, literal Satan. Yeah, I think you’re Goths mate. I mean to be fair, this lot are more actual Satanists than those fascists hiding behind pentagram t-shirts, but the members we meet here go so far out of their way here to be act Completely Normal™ that the only logical response is to wonder why they’re bothering worshipping the devil at all. And ultimately, they don’t get their statue up. As the credits roll, that’s shown to be still in-process, lost in a mountain of appeal paperwork.

SPEEDWAGON

So, why now? What does Hail Satan? actually bring to the fore that couldn’t have been said 10, 20, 30 years ago? It’s hard to say, but after running the cameras for three years I imagine something had to be done with the footage. Penny Lane is obviously not here to preach against The Satanic Temple, but without challenging their beliefs or methodology just ends up Giving Them Enough Rope instead.

I’m not sure if it’s the sign of a great documentary or a really mediocre one if the viewer starts judging the subject rather than the film itself. But I’m going for the latter. When I was 17, this shit would have fired me right up. Nowadays it makes me slightly amused but also slightly weary.

Hail Satan? is diverting for its run-time but is, by no small measure, the most measured argument for liberal atheism you’ll see this week.

Afraid I’m drawing a blank on that one, as documentaries about contemporary Satanism aren’t really my forte (I get the impression it’s a bit like zombie movies, where you’ve got to wade through a lot of shit to get to the good stuff).



It’s quite televisual, which isn’t the worst thing, but it’s also no surprise.



One for the streaming queue.



I have to confess I haven’t seen any more of Penny Lane’s work, although I’m planning on rectifying that.



On some level, that’s likely yes.



There is.

It occurs when the film shows a clip from The Ten Commandments and it’s fucking magnificent.



Level 1: Archive footage shows a clip of 1985’s Legend starring Latter-Day-Clone-Wars Darth Sidious.

That and a WIlhelm? Hail Satan, indeed…





*¹ Okay two things here. Firstly, the film goes out of its way to list and explore Satanism’s Seven Tenets, the guidelines which are obviously the closest parallel to the Ten Commandments. But do they try to get a statue erected with those on it? No. They jump straight for the "and a sculpture of The Big Goat Man please" like a bunch of petulant sixth-formers.

Secondly, the documentary also points out that although several of America’s great buildings have these Bible-inspired statues, they were in fact funded by Paramount Pictures to promote their 1956 film, The Ten Commandments. And okay, the idea behind them may be morally upstanding, but the Satanists may as well have lobbied to get Pizza Hutt’s 1999 Jar Jar Binks statue put there as a response… ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Indeed, for the specific type of Christian they’re setting out to annoy, doing things like genuinely helping society’s underdogs should be annoyance enough, the t-shirts and heavy eyeliner are just a bonus. ^{[ BACK ]}


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