{"id":7344,"date":"2019-05-10T09:05:57","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T13:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7344"},"modified":"2019-05-10T09:05:58","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T13:05:58","slug":"review-hail-satan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7344","title":{"rendered":"Review: HAIL SATAN?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Satan is used as a rallying call for counter culture resistance in Penny Lane\u2019s insightful documentary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBeing an atheist is boring,\u201d says the Satanic Temple leader Lucien Greaves, at one point in \u201cHail Satan?\u201d The question mark in the film\u2019s title is a knowing wink of sorts. We learn that Greaves has helped to build a kind of religion that uses the devil worship as a jumping off point. That question mark is a clue. Many serious members of the organization neither believe in Satan nor God, but their valiant fight is for some measure of parity. What could be more American? What could be more Christian?

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Satanic Temple leader Lucien Greaves.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The young Greaves, who goes by other names as well, is an odd looking spokesperson. Well educated, and often calm and unflappable in public settings, his angular features and thin, but muscular frame is punctuated by a pale, grey, fogged right eye, as if damaged by glaucoma. It\u2019s immediately frightening, and belies his handsome features, perhaps to some making him even more appealing. Some might call his appearance \u201cthe mark of the devil,\u201d but that assumes that they believe in the dark lord\u2019s power.

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The Satanic Temple organization is about more than religion.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHail Satan?\u201d follows Greaves and members of his non-profit organization as they challenge the notion that the United States is a Christian nation. It would have been easy for director Penny Lane\u2019s amusing documentary to become an infomercial for the Satanic Temple. But this is a story told from a particular point of view, which may or may not be flawed. And effort is made to show the negative elements of the organization\u2014fringe players take Greaves\u2019 arguably good intentions into dangerous places. I\u2019m reminded of a line of dialogue from Matt Ruff\u2019s novel \u201cLovecraft County,\u201d in which one character, a lawyer for the NAACP says, \u201cthey were old school Democrats, the kind that wear sheets after dark.\u201d Every organization has its skeletons.

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The monument of the Temple, Baphomet, rolls through the streets.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At its core, I think, the Satan Temple\u2019s goal is to level the playing field. Their point is that the United States is a secular country. And they\u2019ve been successful in challenging the placement of the Ten Commandments monuments on public property by requesting that their own monument, that of Baphomet, be also prominently displayed. It\u2019s a really effective legal strategy. When the Ten Commandments monument is denied by a municipality, the Satanic Temple withdraws their application for placing their own monument.

\u201cHail Satan?\u201d is a colorful and entertaining film, humbly shot on what appears to be hand held video cameras and cell phones. Filmmaker Lane, whose previous work includes 2016\u2019s \u201cNuts!\u201d and 2013\u2019s \u201cOur Nixon,\u201d has a great deal of fun with her often tattooed and pierced, outlandish subjects. It\u2019s fun, but respectfully so. And the film is grounded by Greaves\u2019 steadying influence, an intellectual approach to civil disobedience that uses the outrageous belief in an entity that\u2019s synonymous with evil to remind all Americans of the freedoms granted to them by the US Constitution.

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Even extreme speech can be protected.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And it is in the extremes that our rights are fully tested. Whether it is a Ku Klux Klan leader on television in the 1950s advocating for the re-settlement of African-Americans, or Alma Lovell in the 1930s going door-to-door in the city of Griffin, Georgia, distributing Witness leaflets, the Constitution is there to protect religious beliefs or the lack of them. \u201cHail Satan,\u201d well, that\u2019s not for me, but I\u2019ll protect the right of others to utter the words, even if they might not believe that the devil really exists.

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Documentary about the Satanic Temple isn’t about the devil. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1480,1481,1478,1479,1476,1477],"class_list":["post-7344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-bophomet","tag-first-amendment","tag-hail-satan","tag-lucien-greaves","tag-penny-lane","tag-the-satanic-temple","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7351,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions\/7351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}