"Hail Satan?" (2019)

[Belacqua]

The statue thing is a huge JOKE. It's hilarious to put a statue of Baphomet up at a courthouse in the American South precisely because it agitates the indigenous fauna whilst simultaneously making a point about equal rights. The Satanic imagery is likeise an agitant. It is meant to show that they have no respect for the Christian establishment and its repressive ethos.

If they're a serious religion, or something like a religion, and they're taking a left-hand path, then they don't want to behave like right-hand people. So getting equal time on the same turf as Baptists is exactly the wrong thing. 

If they're not serious, if the whole thing is intended as a poke in the eye to people who are sincere, then they're playing at demanding equal rights when there are genuinely oppressed groups who would literally fight and die for equal rights. It doesn't help anybody to smirk and pretend you want recognition when gays and trans people and black people and Muslims in the US and any number of other groups are still going through actual struggle. 

So either they're a religion that has given up its foundational purpose -- to go the alternative route -- or they are a fake of the kind Baudrillard described -- the simulacrum that takes the place of reality. 

I don't think it's hilarious. I think it cheapens real culture.