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 :).
Historically hell has often been depicted as a rather cold place, away from the warmth of god’s love or what have you.
Anecdotally, 20 or so years ago, that’s what I remember being taught in CCD class when my parents were still making me go.
Dante’s Inferno (c. 1321) for example, depicts the 9th and deepest circle of hell as a large frozen lake. And many of the damned he encountered throughout the different circles are at least somewhat sympathetic, especially at the first level of where the inhabitants are by and large good people who just to not be Christians. (And to be clear, Dante often found himself at odds with the church, so his works don’t necessarily reflect official doctrine and were absolutely written to reflect his own agenda, that said a lot of our modern ideas about hell owe a lot to Dante’s depiction, and any actual mention of hell in the Bible is scarce to non-existent depending on how you interpret certain passages, so his version is just as valid as any other in my opinion)