This Netflix Show Got Sued by the Satanic Temple

Lawsuits aren’t unusual in the entertainment world. It isn’t rare for writers and performers to take companies to court for issues regarding less-than-stellar work conditions and lack of proper payment. When it comes to matters of copyright infringement, things get even direr. From Star Wars to Abbott Elementary, many IPs have had to lawyer up to face claims of plagiarism and undue use of another’s property. But, in 2018, a Netflix series found itself at one end of a very curious lawsuit, not so much because of the reason that took both parties to court, but because of who was the accuser. For a brief period of time, teen horror show Chilling Adventures of Sabrina had to face a legal battle against none other than the Satanic Temple, a religious organization that purports to fight for the separation of church and state.

This lawsuit is particularly bizarre when we take into consideration the overall vibe and the core message of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: with a protagonist that is literally the devil’s spawn and cries for freedom and female empowerment, one would think that the show and the Temple have a lot in common. After all, the Satan-worshipping institution claims, on its About page, to “encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice, and undertake noble pursuits”. And, you know, maybe Sabrina and the Satanic Temple do see eye to eye in a lot of things, but that’s not what matters in the courtroom – at least, not in this particular case. The reason that brought the Satanic Temple to pick a fight with Netflix had nothing to do with religious beliefs, and was much more concerned with religious imagery. More specifically, it centered around a certain statue of Baphomet that appears in the teen series and that is very much owned by the Satanic Temple.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

As her 16th birthday nears, Sabrina Spellman must reconcile her dual nature as a half-witch, half-mortal while fighting the evil forces that threaten her, her family, and the daylight world humans inhabit.

Release Date

October 26, 2018

Main Genre

Drama

Genres

Drama , Fantasy , Horror

Rating

TV-14

Seasons

4

Where Does the Statue of Baphomet Appear in ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’?

Starring Kiernan Shipka as the famous teenage witch, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina breathes new life into the classic Archie Comics character. Created by Riverdale‘s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the show is a far cry from the 1996 series that originally brought the character to TV. With a much more horror-inclined approach to its source material, the series reimagines the half-human, half-witch Sabrina Spellman as part of a coven of Satanic witches, and eventually even goes as far as revealing that its main character is none other than the daughter of Lucifer Morningstar (Luke Cook) and is destined to rule over Hell. With so much going on with her genetic background, Sabrina is forced to live a double life, attending both a regular, human high school and the Academy of Unseen Arts, a somber magic school that features, among other things, a statue of Baphomet surrounded by two human children at its entrance.

This is where the problems began for Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Upon seeing the statue that decorates the school, viewers recognized it from a different place. Some remembered it from the news: in August 2018, the statue of the goat-headed demon was taken to a rally in Little Rock, Arkansas, protesting the unveiling of a monument dedicated to the Ten Commandments. Protesters objected to the blatant disregard for the separation of church and state represented by the monument. According to NPR, the image of the demon with two human children was originally commissioned to protest a similar monument that was supposed to be erected in 2015 in Oklahoma, but was eventually deemed unconstitutional. As for the Arkansas monument, well, that one remains standing and challenged up until 2023.

Based on a drawing by 19th-century French occultist Eliphas Levi and commissioned by the Satanic Temple to New York-based artist Mark Porter, the Baphomet statue was certainly remembered by Satanic Temple co-founder and spokesperson Lucien Greaves when an unauthorized copy of it popped up in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. And, just so you know, we’re not using these words lightly: Greaves himself posted a side-by-side comparison of the two statues on the website-formerly-known-as-Twitter, and the similarity is uncanny, to say the least.

The Satanic Temple Filed a Lawsuit Against ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ in 2018

The damning similarities between Porter’s Baphomet and the one that adorns the Academy of Unseen Arts led the Satanic Temple to file a lawsuit against Warner Bros. and Netflix, the producing and distributing companies behind Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, in 2018, the very same year the statue made its newsworthy appearance in Arkansas and in which the show’s episodes first dropped. The reaction took no time at all: the first of four seasons of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina hit Netflix in October, and the lawsuit was filed in early November in a New York federal court. According to NPR, the Satanic Temple wanted more than $150 million for copyright infringement and violation of trademark. Oh, and for damaging the organization’s business reputation. Because, you see, according to the Satanic Temple, the show also associated their beloved Baphomet with evil. “Defendants’ prominent use of this symbol as the central focal point of the school associated with evil, cannibalism and murder blurs and tarnishes the TST [the Satanic Temple] Baphomet with Children as a mark of TST,” says a portion of the complaint reproduced by NPR.

The Temple isn’t wrong. Though Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a show that champions liberation and being yourself above all things, the Academy of Unseen Arts itself is far from being a benevolent institution. As a matter of fact, it is at the heart of an extremely patriarchal and bloodthirsty society that Sabrina fights tooth and claw to dismantle. And, despite being the daughter of Satan, Sabrina isn’t keen on keeping her father’s reign intact, as she perceives it as cruel to humans and many supernatural entities alike. Quite different from the Satan of the Satanic Temple, which stands, according to the organization itself, as a symbol of equality, compassion, and justice, among other things.

It all sounded like the beginning of a heated legal battle. However, that’s not exactly how things developed. News of the lawsuit being filed first hit media outlets on November 8. By November 21, 2018, Variety was already reporting on a settlement. Stating that the Satanic Temple wanted only $50 million in financial compensation, instead of $150 million, Variety says that “both parties had reached an amicable settlement requiring Netflix to acknowledge copied elements of the Baphomet statue in the credits of episodes that have already filmed.” A confidentiality agreement keeps us from knowing if there was any money involved in the settlement.

In a press statement, Greaves lamented the deluge of hate mail that the Satanic Temple got from “people seemingly basic enough to conceive of the situation as one in which a large powerful Satanic organization is using its might to bully an uncertain and innocent teenage witch who has just been newly exposed to the wide, cruel world.” He also compared the media attention given to the lawsuit to the one dispensed to the Temple’s rally in Arkansas, bemoaning how poorly the latter, a protest in favor of civil liberties, was covered in comparison to a simple copyright claim.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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