One of my favorite elements of Robert Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice, is the concept that creation is cyclical, and that a pantheon of deities vie to see who will make the next one. The current creation was overseen by a very crabby, puritanical Jehova – the next one, in Heinlein’s book, is overseen by a more free-spirited devil, and features religious elements like The Church of the Divine Orgasm. I could really get behind that.
Lars von Trier is examining a world the devil wrought in his next film, according to Production Weekly. The prolific and experimental filmmaker will be shooting Antichrist next summer, which the site tells us is “set in nature.” I don’t know what that means, unless Von Trier is doing The Bear meets The Omen. The film will be “based on the theory that it was Satan, not God, who created the world.”
This isn’t a new theory, and DaVinci Coders might be familiar with the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge, the imperfect deity who created the imperfect world of matter. The Demiurge as a being changes radically from belief system to belief system, but some equate him with Samael, a name connected with Satan. This is, of course, a gross and inaccurate oversimplification of a profoundly fascinating theological and philosophical concept designed to explain why, if God is perfect, does the world suck so badly.
Let’s hope von Trier’s film won’t suck badly. If he can get Opie’s daughter to show her bush again, though, I am all for it.