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 :).
I think it is absolutely a reaction to more people becoming non-religious. There is much more in the world that is morally ambiguous than the Bible alone would lead people to believe. Things like my example here: hell frozen over with Satan stuck in an endless dopamine hit cycle, struggling with depression is just one of many ways we have “humanized” Lucifer.
I think, especially, in a world ruled by corruption, that people no longer have faith that those in charge actually have their best interests in mind. You question whether Lucifer was kicked out of heaven for pointing out similar issues with heavenly society. Is he truly the villain in the story? He kills far fewer in Biblical history than God does.