Sunday, July 21, 2013

Uplifting Things #7: Lucifer in pop culture and literature

Dear Mr. Adversary,

Did we make you what you are or did you make us? Or help, at least. Irrelevant. I think it must be the latter. You're supposed to be evil, but how could someone so beautiful really be evil? It's unclear what you've even done to deserve your reputation. Although that could be part of why you deserve your reputation.

Besides, you wouldn't be nearly so alluring if you hadn't gotten chucked out of the pretty cloudy place with the angels and stuff. No one writes epics with Michael as the hero, or at least not last I checked...

Since I'm finishing up a paper for a class focusing on Paradise Lost, I haven't been able to get Lucifer/Satan out of my mind. Why did I take a class on Paradise Lost, you ask? Because I kept seeing references to it all over the place in other works I enjoyed.

There's something oddly appealing about series that incorporate biblical mythology. I think part of the appeal is a sense of otherworldiness like what you get with some science fiction or fantasy, but minus the usual cliches. Maybe it seems even more based in reality when you grow up in a society where so many peoples' worldviews are rooted in Christianity (even if you yourself aren't Christian.) The mythology of heaven and angels can be exploited in a way that adds a lot of beauty to a series, and there's something to be said for hellish glamour, as well.

One series I've encountered that does this really well on a visual level is Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki, which I've already written here about, but oh well. Of course, her character designs are pretty much always gorgeous, but the excuse to go crazy with wings certainly doesn't hurt. In addition, the story is original--she basically just appropriates angelic hierarchy and mythology to create the world it takes place in.

His Dark Materials is also an excellent series that simultaneously glorifies and omits the adversary. There is no actual devil (although Zaphania, Lord Asriel, and Mary seem to take on the infernal trinity of his roles in Paradise Lost as rebel angel, prince of "Hell", and tempter), but a postive interpretation of his attitude lives on in the characters and events of the story. Lyra's world is also extremely interesting in a vaguely steampunk way--it resembles our world very closely, and yet is different in enough ways that it's difficult to compare the two.

There's also the quasi-DC interpretation of Lucifer and heaven/hell that popped up in Sandman and continued in the spin-off Lucifer, which I thought did a good job making Lucifer a protagonist without making the reader any less wary of him or turning him into a hero.

And of course if you enjoy any of those titles (especially Lucifer and His Dark Materials), Paradise Lost itself is certainly worth a shot even if the syntax and language can be confusing. One of my favorite things about it is how the epic format seems to emphasize all sorts of contradictions that aren't quite as glaringly obvious in the biblical source material, such as showing Satan in more detail instead of basically just a force that influences humanity from the shadows--which means giving him some admirable qualities like courage and persistance, which results in him being appealing even though he's supposed to be the origin of all evil.


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