DOCO-APOCALYPSE

About a year ago, Ad-Rock and Mike D aka Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond (the remaining members of Beastie Boys) hosted a theatrical presentation at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The pair took the stage to chronicle the band’s 30-year history. Behind them on a colossal screen:  photographs, TV and film clips, home videos and archival pieces played along as they recounted the highs and lows of their careers. The event was staged by filmmaker Spike Jonze, who has said he approached the stage show as if it were the live-theater version of a documentary.

Hail Satan? is made by documentary filmmaker Penny Lane and chronicles the recent beginnings of the organization known as The Satanic Temple in the United States – in particular their political activism. The documentary also asks the question ‘Who are these people who identify as Satanists – and what makes them tick?’ I think the answer to that is something many people will find quite surprising – because it’s such a broad variety of people. For them, Satan doesn’t represent evil — instead the figure of Satan to them represents rebellion, a freethinker who dared to question the ultimate authority. So by using that as a jumping off point in their ideology, the way to worship and to express their beliefs isn’t by sacrificing humans or animals. It’s political protest. One of The Satanic Temple leaders’ states at one point that “Activism is a Satanic practice” – essentially in the act of openly questioning and defying authority.