In potentially the weirdest case of cultural appropriation to date, a satanic group has accused Netflix of appropriating its artwork — specifically for the depiction of the devil as a goat man statue — in new series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Strap yourself in, this one’s a wild ride.
Basically, Lucien Greaves, the co-founder and spokesman for The Satanic Temple, has accused the streaming platform of stealing. Lucien believes that the depiction of satan as a goat man statue in the centre of Sabrina’s magical school, The Academy of Unseen Arts, is too similar to one the temple commissioned back in 2014. The satanists are not happy.
Turning to Twitter — which, as everyone knows, is the most satanic of social media platforms — to air The Satanic Temple’s grievances, Lucien pointed out the visual similarities in Netflix’s statue of the goat man demonic deity Baphomet, and the sculpture created by artist Mark Porter four years ago. Lucien claims that the church had already begun taking legal action against Netflix and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for appropriating the copyrighted monument, which he says the show has used to “promote their asinine Satanic Panic fiction”. Harsh.
Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, Lucien branded Netflix’s appropriation of Baphomet imagery, which is featured prominently in many of The Satanic Temple’s imagery and literature, “deeply problematic”.
“[But] even if that wasn’t the case,” he continues, “we’d be obligated to make a copyright claim because that’s how copyright works. It’s distressing on the grounds that you have to worry about that association being made where people will see your monument and not know which preceded the other, and thinking that you arbitrarily decided to go with the Sabrina design for your Baphomet monument, which rather cheapens our central icon.”
More in the coming days!