1) While a more sympathetic example than the below, Lucifer's tirle character still retains the CW bait (yes I know it's a Fox/Netflix show) crowd as he's busy solving crimes.
2) Mystery of the Kingdom of God was a 2021 Christian kids film that would've fallen into obscurity beyond fudnamentalist audiences if it wasn't for folks picking up on the Tumblr sexyman vibes of the film's devil.
3) The CEO of Hell Lucifer (or 'Lucy') is an intimidating persona also reflecting the creator's preference for women in business suits.
4) Le génie du mal ('The Spirit of Evil', sculpture on the right) was a sculpture by Guillame Geefs in 1848, meant to replace the sculpture on the left by his brother Joseph, criticised for its distracting beauty and 'unhealthy allure'. He didn't do a good job (or did a VERY good one) taking that into account.
It’s both of them. The Inferno gave us a dominant iconography of Hell and the notion that Satan is trapped very deep underground (encased in ice, not tormented by fire). That version of Lucifer doesn’t do much except gnaw on people like Judas for eternity.
Paradise Lost gave us the popular interpretation of Satan as a vaguely sympathetic fallen angel with an axe to grind against his creator, including the famous quote “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
Well, the idea is that demons appear in all shapes and forms, but mostly ones that you will find aluring... where as angels just show up as horrors beyond our comprehension.
"Be not afraid" said that makes everyone very much afraid
Yeah that’s a common point of confusion. The angels in the Bible as we think of them - the messengers and guardians - appear in the guise of man, they’re noted to be “off” in some way, sometimes terrifying, but not because of the way they look, just something else emanating from them.
The actual “biblically accurate angels” people reference are more like… constructs, taking care of God’s throne.
Where Satan as a concept originated from, not Satan as a character though. Satan is barely a coherent and formed character in the bible, especially the OT.
Paradise Lost expanded and added on to Satan just as the NT writers did from the OT.
It generated controversy at once and was criticized for not representing a Christian ideal. The cathedral administration declared that "this devil is too sublime." The local press intimated that the work was distracting the "pretty penitent girls" who should have been listening to the sermons.
I’ve seen two interpretations on how he should look, one is that he should look hot to tempt you easily, the other is that he shouldn’t look hot to show the sins on him, obviously there’s been more interest in the former than the latter
The "blasphemy" is probably mostly just a joke or the classic: "if you depict something as attractive especially if it's religious in nature your going to get people crying blasphemy if it's going against the religion's ideals or common viewpoints at the time."
Canonically, The Adversary wasn't even a defined, singular being until the New Testament. It was more of a force that could mantle or be mantled by.. anyone, really. It was more of a concept or an element of nature.
The New Testament made it into an actual defined being but that's likely just from hundreds of years of spiritual and religious pondering, study and teaching between Old and New. The teachers realized the message digests better if The Satan was an actual individual. People are better at focusing their energies and ideas on a "person" rather than a spiritual force of evil.
To put it simply: They fanfic-ed Satan (the being) to get people invested in a more diagetic way.
And we all know if you're gonna fan-fic something.. you make them hot as fuck too hell yeah
What the fuck is the fate series even about? I swear every bit of lore I learn about it just makes me more confused. You have real life historical figures as characters who aren’t even from the same millennium, like Joan of Ark and Alexander the great existing at the same time but mythological characters like Gilgamesh also exist in this universe. But instead of him being a big buff burley man like he’s described in surviving literature, he’s a twink and then actual real life historical twink Alexander is depicted as a big buff burley man with a beard, something the historical Alexander was notorious for not having. Also, King Arthur is a character, but she’s a woman and she’s called Saber, but the sword she wields isn’t a saber and sometimes it’s invisible.
I really like Wicked and Divine's version of Lucifer.
For the general premise of the comic book, every hundred years or so Gods inhabit humans of the current teenage/ about to become adult generation and get two years to do whatever they want influencing the world then boom they all leave at the same time/ dying. And let humanity deal with the aftermath of them being around for a short time.
The trick this time around is the world is interconnected with airplanes and internet so instead of one god in India and another God in Brazil no way to communicate within 2 years etc... well they've got social media.
And Luci as a queer non binary version of Lucifer takes the whole sexless version of Angels into fun categories.
If I had a nickel for every comic-book Lucifer with a design based on David Bowie, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
Being born of data from the internet, they can have a huge variety of forms, thats why you can have a giant dinossaur, a hot angel, or a big ass transformer as your partner
The Bible says Satan will burn in hell, can't get any hotter than that
"And the devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also the beast and the false prophet were; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." (Revelation 20:10)
Fun fact: VivziePop actually stated that Lucifer was the only guy in the main cast she intended to be conventionally attractive -- the reason was because she remembered the Bible referring to Lucifer as "the most beautiful of God's angels".
Elizabeth Hurley in the Bedazzled remake (several moments are of her in multiple gorgeous outfits) and also Jennifer Love Hewitt in Shortcut to Happiness.
Louis Cypher from Shin Megami Tensei 2. He looks pretty sharp in that suit. It's also worth noting that Lucifer in the Bible was fair even among other angels so this trope would be accurate
They're just different entities. Many modern works conflate them, but Lucifer is the former foremost of God's angels who was cast out of Heaven for rebelling against Him, whereas Satan is described variously as a dualistic oppositional force against God or a 'prosecutor' employed by God to test the piety of his followers by tempting them to sin.
Is it blasphemous? Isn't "Lucifer" (i don't think thats his real name) described as a really hot angel in the Bible? (Not with those words, something like "Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty")
Well Lucifer isn't described at all in the Bible, he's not really an actual thing from the text. That being said Paridise Lost's description of him, which is where basically everything about him comes from despite not being part of cannon, does describe him as basically perfect which does include his form.
Is that really blasphemous to say? I feel like Satan kinda needs to be attractive or at least have the ability to appear so. He was the most beautiful of God’s angels first and he tempts people to do bad things. I feel like being good looking would help with that. It’s much easier to manipulate people when you’re attractive.
The Bible has no physical description of Satan, and it is used as a title for an angel in the Old Testament. Lucifer is used once as a mockery of Nebudchanezzar, and thus is never used for any spirit. The elevation of Satan from angelic prosecutor to enemy of God can be traced directly to the Exile and the influence of Zoroastrianism with its equal and opposite gods and afterlifes.
Anyways, something can't be blasphemous if it isn't a part of the scriptures to begin with.
While not the biblical devil, as that paradigm does not exist in the mythology of that verse, he is the basis of those myths, as he created Hell 4000+ years before the events of the show.
THATS what the dude from “Lucifer” looks like?! This black girl customer that came to my work was saying I look like THAT?? God damn I thought she was calling me creepy/scary or something and all this time she was flirting? Lmao I scrunched my face like “I look like Lucifer?! What do you mean??” And she thought it was the funniest thing. I told her you can’t just tell people they look like Lucifer
Also, do you assume an element of Christian theology is automatically wrong just because it's referenced in Helluva Boss? They don't exactly keep to strict Biblical canon, but one of the things they do get right are the identities of the demons representing the Seven Deadly Sins.
A lot of people saying the devil is supposed to be hot are outright wrong and confusing modern interpretation of the devil as the historical one. Most depictions of the devil pre-Milton portray the devil as a monstrous creature. Hell, even the idea that the devil is the fallen angel, is relatively recent (recent as in centuries old, but we're talking about millennia). Most Satans in the bible are not the devil, but just people that one way or another, they aren't even the same guy and some are actually on God's side, just asking questions.
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u/Dayman_C0meth 2h ago
Elizabeth Hurley's Satan in Bedazzled