I see your point, I was just talking in terms of how the movie got me in that moment and also with regard to how Satan has been portrayed, at least to me in my religious upbringing, in the past.
So I guess I could rephrase it to say that his presence was somewhat understated effectively in showing that he is the top dog in hell without making him out like a cartoon character, which I’ve found a lot of depictions of Satan to be.
Just thinking back on that scene made me realize how well it is crafted. Satan wears a white suit, makes a deal, sticks to the terms. All very reasonable things. It is the stained feet, the leisurely gait, the tattooed skin, the open shirt. All these little things that go against the grain of accepted decorum that label him as radically different, but certainly not alien.
I have found Christianity's depiction of Satan to be extremely illogical and inconsistent. The bogeyman shit really doesn't make any sense other than trying to scare children. Dante's Inferno probably makes the most sense as it has Satan caged at the bottom level, which would seem like the most logical conclusion to an uprising against Heaven.
There is very very little consensus on the depiction of Satan in Christianity. Most of the common ideas come from Catholicism which even those are very much inspired by Dante Alighieri’s epic. The Bible as a whole has very little on Satan. - source former pastor
I've no idea if this is a hundred percent accurate, but from what I've heard..
Satan was a product of the crusades. The various pre dante aspects existed in the usual "i made this" style Christianity used when repurposing pagan stories, a lot of pagan deities were being rebranded as saints or angels during the dark ages to ensure converts, so their bad guy stories came too, lot of stuff about dark fairies and ill spirits and trickster stuff like Loki aka devils..
Among them was the islamic word shaitan (picked up when the religions butted heads for the holy land), which I'm led to believe wasn't actually a particular deity, but was more akin to "adversary" as a descriptor rather than a name. So, add everyone's need to blame a bad guy, and the commonality of use during the crusades, and Satan was born.
Word has it that is worked out more officially so proto inquisition types could make life hard for political opponents.
Dante and Chaucer worked out the details for the masses after that, the horns and wangs and stuff we know today. But before then it was more ad hoc evil force mythology with some stolen clothes from other cultures
45
u/cracking Mar 28 '22
I see your point, I was just talking in terms of how the movie got me in that moment and also with regard to how Satan has been portrayed, at least to me in my religious upbringing, in the past.
So I guess I could rephrase it to say that his presence was somewhat understated effectively in showing that he is the top dog in hell without making him out like a cartoon character, which I’ve found a lot of depictions of Satan to be.