Hail Satan?

In the midst of the Unit­ed States’ regres­sion into the appease­ment of deranged right-wing Evan­gel­i­cals, Pen­ny Lane’s lat­est doc­u­men­tary Hail Satan? couldn’t have come at a more oppor­tune time. The film doc­u­ments the his­to­ry and back­ground of The Satan­ic Tem­ple, a move­ment born from brash, tongue-in-cheek activism, inter­view­ing mem­bers of the church as they detail its evo­lu­tion into a full-fledged community.

Known for its counter protests against right-wing Chris­t­ian lob­by­ists, the group gained noto­ri­ety for demand­ing that a stat­ue of Baphomet be erect­ed next to a pro­posed stat­ue of the Ten Com­mand­ments on gov­ern­ment prop­er­ty. As Lane speaks to leader of the Tem­ple Lucien Greaves, as well as var­i­ous oth­er mem­bers of the church, it’s clear that she doesn’t need to place empha­sis on the diver­si­ty of the Tem­ple ver­sus the hege­mo­ny of their devout detrac­tors. We can see that for our­selves – many of the talk­ing heads being LGBT and peo­ple of colour.

In the film’s open­ing moments Lane imme­di­ate­ly dis­pels the notion that Satanism is sim­ple occultism or dev­il wor­ship, high­light­ing the clever, fun­ny peo­ple behind the move­ment – one that idolis­es Satan as a sym­bol of rebel­lion against an oppres­sive estab­lish­ment. Most of the mem­bers are shown as the good-natured, good-humoured peo­ple they are.

After all, this is a group that decid­ed to base their first head­quar­ters in Salem, and then spray-paint­ed the whole thing black. The inter­views and on-the-ground footage are the film’s great­est asset, as Lane’s use of archive often alter­nates between infor­ma­tive and obvi­ous, cou­pled with a sound­track that tries a lit­tle too hard to sell the absur­di­ty of the events being documented.

Lane makes a point of putting the hypocrisy of the Chris­tians try­ing to estab­lish an idol of wor­ship (in defi­ance of both their own beliefs and the Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion) in full view, but could stand to be a lit­tle more intro­spec­tive about the Satanist Tem­ple itself. Late in the film intro­duces and soon drops an inter­est­ing com­pli­ca­tion as a for­mer mem­ber sug­gests that the Tem­ple is on its way to becom­ing the very kind of insti­tu­tion it would rebel against.

Still, it’s hard not to be con­vinced when the oppo­si­tion is so clear­ly out of its mind – the mea­sured, con­cise think­ing of each Satanist Tem­ple mem­ber con­trast­ed by footage of oppres­sive luna­cy from right-wing Chris­t­ian lob­by­ists, shown pick­et­ing abor­tion clin­ics, spread­ing deceit and threat­en­ing vio­lence in mul­ti­ple cir­cum­stances against the peace­ful demon­stra­tions of The Satan­ic Tem­ple, as the group dis­rupts their attempts to assert con­trol over their districts.

Hail Satan? is a worth­while chal­lenge to default ideals of organ­ised reli­gion, turn­ing images brand­ed as tra­di­tion­al evil into an embod­i­ment of free­dom and plu­ral­ism and allow­ing mem­bers of a move­ment usu­al­ly demonised or mocked to define them­selves in their own. It’s assured and enlight­en­ing film­mak­ing, if not all that sur­pris­ing, and maybe too cute by half with some of its for­mal choic­es (‘Satan Nev­er Sleeps’ plays over the credits).

As one-sided as it may be, it stands as a good reminder of the restric­tions and grotes­query of right-wing evan­ge­lism, and the indis­pens­abil­i­ty of protest and rebellion.