Satanic but not Satan: Signs of the Devilish in Contemporary Cinema

Scholars have been discussing cinematic Jesuses and Christ-figures in film for some time. These are distinct categories. In the first are movies that are explicitly about Jesus in his historical setting, such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Last Temptation of Christ (1988), or The Passion of the Christ (2004),1 as well as some that imagine Jesus in the modern world like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) or Ultrachrist! (2003).2 The second (and much larger) category features films that have characters who are typologically Christ-figures.3 Developing a typology for Christ-figures is relatively straight forward, as the New Testament describes Jesus' characteristics and activities in some detail. This allows scholars to identify Christ-figures by things such as (a) a mysterious origin, (b) attraction of disciples, (c) commitment to justice, (d) conflict with authority figures, (e) suffering for others, (f) death (often in a cruciform pose) or the appearance of death, and (g) resurrection or re-awakening.4Paralleling the categories of Jesuses and Christ-figures are films that feature Satan and those with satanic figures. But given the rich literature examining Jesuses and Christ-figures, it is remarkable how little has been written about Satan and satanic figures.The first category - films that feature Satan as a character - has been discussed by Kelly Wyman.5 She noted two books that catalogue films with Satan or the Devil as characters,6 but suggests that these works have not analyzed the characteristics of Satan in them. Wyman does so by using the work of Russell7 to categorize cinematic Satans: Satan as human, Satan as beast, comedic Satans, Faustian stories, and the like. Her work is important, as it begins to examine Satan in film more seriously. Her analysis focuses on films that have Satan (or Lucifer or the Antichrist) as characters, such as The Witches of Eastwick (1987) or The Devil's Advocate (1997). Interestingly, while there are relatively few films featuring Jesus as a character, there are a plethora of those that feature Satan. I suspect the main reason for this is that Satan is immortal and so can appear in modern times, whereas the human Jesus cannot as easily.Wyman's analysis provides a parallel for films about Jesus with those about Satan. But she does not discuss the parallel to the second category of films about Christ: films with satanic characters who are not Satan. Developing a list of satanic traits is somewhat more difficult than developing a list of Christ-traits. As mentioned above, the New Testament describes Jesus in detail, but the Bible is relatively silent about Satan and demons in general. Satan does not play a major role in the Hebrew Bible; it was during the intertestamental period that Jews began to separate evil from YYWH and developed a complex demonology to explain evil.8 In the New Testament, these ideas congealed around Satan. But the New Testament does not devote much time to detailing his activities, appearance, or the like. Russell persuasively argues that most of our contemporary ideas about Satan are based not on the Bible but on medieval folklore, Milton's Paradise Lost, and the various versions of the Faust / pact with the Devil story.In this article, I examine six films that do not feature Satan but do have characters who exhibit traits associated with Satan in traditional mythology. As villains, all of them are evil and immoral; this is an obvious enough trait that I do not think it needs elaboration below. The most common other satanic attributes are a) an ability to shape-shiftand/or change appearance;9 b) being physically and/or mentally superior to other humans; c) exhibiting an association with fire and torment; and d) appearing handsome and well-dressed, usually in black attire, and often with a widow's peak hairline. In these movies, all the satanic figures are paired with a Christ-character, who eventually defeats them.The films to be studied are Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the three films of The Matrix trilogy (The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003a), and The Matrix Revolutions (2003b)), Superman Returns (2006), and Dark Knight (2008). …