The image of a burly Sam Smith wearing heels and twirling across the stage at the recent Grammy Awards is not an image I will soon forget.
It is still an image that, no matter how hard I try to erase it from my memory, the hours I wake up continue to haunt and my innocent dreams continue to haunt me. photos, night after night.
The fact that the sexist British pop star was dressed like that, from head to toe, in a “sexy” Satan costume only added to the difficulty of the quest. I’m getting to the point where I need expert help! (However, I don’t know who I should turn to: an exorcist? A psychologist? YouTube comments?)
Wearing pointed devil horns and a pointed hat, wielding a blinding staff, Smith shook his hips and thighs in a way that would not be imitated in polite society.
Needless to say, I was scarred.
To perform the singer’s latest hit, “Unholy” (a title that Smith tries so hard to embody), the non-binary singer turned “evil” ” at the Grammy Awards. Smith’s outfit colors matched the background of President Biden’s Independence Day Speech in Philadelphia.
Does that red background in Joe Biden’s speech tonight herald a red wave in the midterm elections?
Who thinks it’s a good idea for Biden and the Democrats? pic.twitter.com/pVYKI7OCtH
– Ed LaRose (@metaphorsbwithu) September 2, 2022
Smith wears high-heeled boots, an unflatteringly tight latex overcoat, a hat with demon horns, and to complete the look, a choker necklace.
The group of dancers surrounding Smith also wore similar costumes. The transgender woman, Kim Petras, for whom Smith performed the song, wears a slightly more feminine (and I mean only slightly) devil costume.
For some undisclosed reason, she is also locked in a cage.
The lyrics, for what it’s worth, aren’t explicitly Luciferian: they describe the infidelity of a married man, who is looking for a night-time probationary whose wife is unaware of his wife. know.
“I didn’t know Dad was getting mad at the body shop, doing something unhealthy.”
Right.
As a listener, I was not impressed; redundant and dull songs. The vocals are fine but not enough to make up for all that the song lacks.
However, as a viewer, it felt as if I was being actively included in a phallic Satanic death cult. I felt as if I was being dragged down to the ninth and final level of hell – where Judas himself had rushed to open the gate from Satan’s clutches.
In response to Smith’s terrible performance, I noticed many people asking the same question: Why the devil?
Why the devil, really. I think it all boils down to Milton’s misunderstanding.
A leap!–you might exclaim, as I leap from Sam Smith to John Milton- from the pit of obscenity to the heights of the divine.
John Milton, with the exception of Shakespeare, is the greatest writer the English language has ever known. His youth poetry was sublime, his adult polemics formidable, and his crowning achievement, the 12-volume epic Paradise Lost, eclipsed both Dante’s Inferno and Virgil’s Aeneid in scope. vi, its beauty and grandeur.
It is surpassed only by Homer’s twin masterpieces, “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” (which it comes in at a very close second).
The plot of “Lost Paradise” is simple enough: it’s a poetic retelling of the first few chapters of Genesis. The story begins on media res, when Satan, recently expelled from the kingdom of Heaven, plans to take revenge on God’s most noble creation on Earth.
He goes on to recount his grievances with the Almighty, his revolt, his conflict with Jesus, his wrongful fall, and his imprisonment. held in Hell – the grim underworld he currently rules. From the depths of Hell, he plans to climb back to Eden, where, in the guise of a serpent, he will tempt Eve (and through Eve, Adam) with unauthorized offerings.
It is proof of Milton’s excellence as a writer that a large number of influential thinkers in the 19th century did not consider God, but Satan, the true hero of the work.
Of course, this was not the intention of the author, who in their orthodox view is nothing more than an executionable demon. According to the evidence found in his writing, Milton was a devout and God-fearing Puritan one might hope to be.
In a way, he was more pious than the Pope.
However, when reading “Paradise Lost,” it’s hard not to be completely enthralled with possibly the most beautifully drawn character in literary history: Milton’s Satan. Regardless of your bravery, regardless of your beliefs, it is a character that you cannot help but be drawn to.
One such influential thinker living in the 19th century was Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley, like Milton, was an early student armed with a pen as sharp as his mind.
However, unlike Milton, he is an unwavering atheist who is always controversial.
While at Oxford, he wrote a 12-page essay, “The Necessity of Atheism,” through which a major scandal quickly erupted. Its title alone was enough to warrant his expulsion from that divine organization. A subversive work strongly criticizing the church, “The Necessity of Atheism,” for a fledgling poet less than twenty years old, is a remarkably mature work.
It is also an unacceptable transgression and for that reason it is sufficient to expel the fearless apostate.
Later in old age, Shelley wrote his most famous work of prose, “The Apologetics of Poetry,” in which his youthful raw atheism is conspicuously preserved. In Defense, Shelley explains why Satan is considered the real hero of Paradise Lost.
According to Shelly:
“Nothing can surpass the power and magnificence of the character of Satan as embodied in Paradise Lost. It is wrong to assume that he may have been intended to be the embodiment of universal evil.”
And then the concluding lines:
“Milton’s Devil as a moral being far superior to his God is like a man who perseveres in a purpose he envisions excelling despite adversity. and torture, who in the cold security of victory certainly did the most terrible thing to avenge his enemies.”
“Until now, Milton has violated popular belief by holding that his God has no moral quality superior to his Devil. And this daring disregard of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton’s genius.”
In these startling passages (which Milton was sure to protest and fight back fiercely) Shelley spoke of the growing affection between his Romantics.
For them, due to technological progress and scientific progress, God was stripped of the title of “Creator of the universe.” Much weaker now is His claim of “Patron of mankind” – a position they no longer feel He deserves. Gradually, God was removed from the theological, historical drama.
Little by little, he was led off the stage. After being captured behind the curtain, He was thrown into the trash along with many other bogus Olympian tyrants, petty Pagan idols that no educated person would believe in.
Satan has risen to take his place – the brave, the great, the energetic, the unyielding, morally superior to the heroic image we all can now. longing. To a new generation, he becomes a character to which no higher law can bind, except that which he chooses to impose upon himself.
He does not seek the truth outside of himself. Indeed, he made his own truth. (Does it sound familiar? He “speaks his own truth” and talks about his “life experience” non-stop.) He is his own command and asserts his own will to power. He is the center and circumference of the world.
Is this not the image that Smith, when he began to become the devil, described?
The seed of Devil worship (in the artistic and literary sense) was sown in the 19th century by the great English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Their result, whom so many Americans are now probing, is another Englishman living in the 21st arrondissement: Sam Smith.
Daniel Finneran identifies as a journalist and interlocutor whose work (including podcasts, videos, sleep meditation and articles) can be found at finneranswake.com And pneumeditations.com. His Twitter account, of which five are followers, is @DanielEFinneran. He will answer all questions.
