April 26, 2005
The Devil is Dead
If we are to believe Mike Kelley who has said, “Dead things are art”, it is not God who is dead, but the devil. At least network television agrees. To judge by sensationalist offerings like Revelations, or the upcoming Locusts, entertainers in the wake of The Passion of Christ are clearly betting lurid depictions of Christ’s suffering / Evil is what’s going to sell ads. Kelley was, of course, not talking about Satan. The artist was specifically talking about folk art. But the idea that art only really takes interest in other forms of expression after they are dead provides a good counterpoint to the repeated criticism by the big picture cultural commentators that contemporary art makes itself irrelevant by failing to keep up with technological innovations. Kelley’s point is that culture is unusable until it is relegated to obsolescence. As long as it is “alive” it is still acquiring meaning. Only after it is “dead”, that is, only after it is cliché, can the artist milk it of its meaning in order to effectively comment on culture-at-large. In truth, television’s interest in religious action adventure as a genre could just as easily be construed as a harbinger of God’s death as of Satan’s. But God’s death has already received more than its share of press. By most accounts the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche already made the dire announcement over a century ago. The Devil’s death, on the other hand, has received considerably less media attention. In part, the reason for the lack of attention to Lucifer's death has to do with the fact that such a notion is highly counter-intuitive. Anyone with even the faintest pulse-beat would no doubt argue that there is more than enough evidence to conclude that the Devil is in fact alive and well, happily terrorizing the world to his heart’s content. Satan, however, was, if nothing else, intended as a negative symbolic example. In order to avoid the fate of the evildoers, Christian’s were urged to shun the Devil’s example. Without the Devil as our negative example one could easily expect that all of us the world over might instantly go insane and do whatever evil first comes into our minds. If the world seems lawless, then, does it not follow that it is not because the Devil is alive, but because he is no longer providing the negative example, hence, dead?