Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: “God Johnson” and Fear of Characterizing God

(image via mymbuzz.com)

The second season of Lucifer recently ended and I have to say that it was amazing. However, there was one episode in particular that I both loved and was frustrated with called “God Johnson”. In this episode, Lucifer and Chloe head to a mental institution where a man has been murdered. The main suspect in the case is God—or, well, a man who thinks he is God, and who even legally changed his name to God Johnson. Lucifer confronts Johnson to tell him that the real God is an asshole, but he stops shorts when Johnson calls him by his angelic name, Samael. This prompts Lucifer to believe Johnson really is God. Later Lucifer admits himself into the same institution and sees Johnson heal a human, again causing him to truly believe this is really God. I was so excited about this! After the show introduced God’s wife, I was hoping we would eventually get to meet God himself and explore the relationship between God and Lucifer in a more real way. Sadly, though, this episode doesn’t take the direction that I would have hoped. God’s character is not engaged with in the same way that Lucifer’s is. God remains just this impassive, omnipotent, but never present figure. Despite how our media loves to play with religion in its shows, movies, etc., the Abrahamic God appears to be off limits in terms of real character exploration.

Spoilers for the Lucifer episode “God Johnson” below.

Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon): 2017 Edition

Let’s face it, 2016 was tough, and 2017 doesn’t look to be much easier. So let’s delve into some of our favorite geeky romantic pairings to help us cope! Yep, it’s Valentine’s Day, that sickeningly sweet holiday when our authors nominate and then vote on ships for our Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon) list. It is now my duty to present to you the super cute and sexy ships of 2017!

(via tenor)

Sexualized Saturdays: Even the Devil’s Masculinity Isn’t Safe from Women

Today’s topic came about from conversations I’ve been having with Lady Geek Girl. We both love Lucifer, the TV show which follows the devil’s shenanigans in L.A. and which just returned for its second season. I enjoy the show because I’m a sucker for procedural shows and I have a lack of immunity towards charming jerks. But today I want to talk about one matter that both intrigues me and worries me—how the portrayal of Lucifer’s masculinity relates to the fact that being near one specific woman makes Lucifer, who otherwise cannot be harmed by humans, physically vulnerable. What intrigues me is how Lucifer deals with the emotions this causes, but the potential messages of toxic masculinity and misogyny are quite disconcerting.

Some mild spoilers for the show below.

“Everything’s Coming Up Lucifer”: A Lucifer Season Premiere Review

Season 2 of Lucifer is here and I’m so excited! I love this trash show. Despite many problematic issues and some stereotyped writing, this show is remarkably entertaining and Season 2 looks set up to be better than the last one. I’m actually surprised by how much I enjoyed the latest episode and by how excited I am for the rest of the season. I was also pleased to find that certain issues with the show have been fixed and that the overall plot for Season 2 involving Lucifer’s mother actually seems like it might be really interesting.

Spoilers for first episode of Lucifer Season 2.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Women, Sexuality, and the Devil

Nothing bothers me more than the fact that religion has such a bad relationship with sex. In my particular experience, I am sick and tired of Christians having so many hangups about sex. I don’t necessarily have an issue with some Christians wanting to wait to have sex until marriage—I don’t agree with it, but as long as Christians don’t judge people who chose to do something different with their sexuality, then I’m fine with it. But that tends to not be the case. Individual Christians might be fine with it, but many Christian institutions tend not to be. I can’t tell you how many times as a kid I attended events that said “sex is a gift from God” but then proceed to say things like “but if you ever masturbate you’re sinning, if you think about sex you’re sinning, if you have sex ever then not only are you sinning but you’ll probably get a sexually transmitted disease, get pregnant, and even (especially if you’re a woman) you’ll be used up and broken.” This might not always be the intentional message, but I have seen and talked with enough teens to know this is the message that often gets through. The constant push from Christians to avoid any sort of sex or even exploration of sexuality certainly diminishes the belief that sex is a gift from God. But these modern problems aren’t the only thing that makes it seem like sex isn’t a gift from God. It’s Christianity’s long history of portraying sex as evil. Christianity has long listed numerous demons whose whole purpose was to tempt humans into some sort of “sexual perversion”, from Satan to Lilith and many others. There is also an obsession in Christian history with regulating peoples’ sex lives. There was a time when even married sex was considered lustful if it wasn’t done for procreation. Anything beyond married procreative sex was seen as the temptation of the devil.

Unfortunately, that’s not all. According to many religious teachings, this temptation into sexual sin was often seen to manifest itself primarily through women. Women were often thought to be more susceptible to lustful urges and temptation. Women were furthermore thought to have a closer connection to the devil because of this and because of their connection to Eve, the first woman, who was believed to have caused the downfall of man. And this is even reflected in our pop culture. I’m more than a little annoyed that more often than not in our pop culture, any and all sexuality is connected to the devil or demons, and that is all often wrapped in a nice sexist bow. While it’s understandable that our pop culture gets these ideas from religious sources, it’s certainly not healthy or helpful.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: The Lucifer Season Finale & Feminist Theology

Almost a month ago the Lucifer season finale premiered and I enjoyed the heck out of the episode. I loved everything from seeing Lucifer pray to getting a glimpse of hell, but the show really threw me a curve ball with Lucifer’s final line in the episode and the feminist theologian in me isn’t sure how to feel about it.

gif via dailyluciferonfox

Major spoilers for the Lucifer season finale after the jump.

Lucifer Perpetuating Rape Culture Despite Itself

Lucifer is one of my current favorite shows on television. It’s not exactly progressive, but it is entertaining as heck and has a ton of fun theology that I can sink my teeth into. However, Lucifer isn’t without faults, and while Lucifer as the devil is always somewhat problematic (it’s basically a part of his character at this point), I have had very few issues with how the show discussed sex and consent—until recently.

Trigger warning for discussions of rape culture, and spoilers for Lucifer Episodes 10 and 11 after the jump.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Lucifer and Ethics

Many people, when they think of the devil, think of a being without any kind of ethics or morality. I guess it stands to reason that if you believe God is good then the devil should fly in the face of that and just be utterly unethical and immoral in every way possible. But is that really the case? Could it be that the devil actually just has a completely different understanding of ethics? Well, it depends on which version of the devil you are talking about. And the devil’s ethics in the new Fox TV show Lucifer are particularly interesting.

Magical Mondays: Lucifer, Magical Elements, and Worldbuilding

I have recently become enamored of the new TV show Lucifer, and while I fear that it will just be another Supernatural, I’m a sucker for religiously themed supernatural shows. And this one is based on the Lucifer character created by Neil Gaiman, whose Sandman comics had amazing magical, supernatural characters, as well as worldbuilding that really helped the reader understand how magic and magical beings existed in this world. Upsettingly, however, Lucifer seems to have none of those things. The characters are amusing and even somewhat complex, but really if you boil the show down to the bare bones, it’s just a cop drama that happens to have the devil in it. Where’s the magic? Where’s the supernatural? I’m starting to wonder if there will be any at all.

The Devil Is Problematic, but Entertaining: Lucifer Season Premiere Review

She’s a hard-nosed cop and a single mother, and he’s the prince of darkness on vacation from Hell: together, they fight crime. That’s basically the plot of the new Fox TV show Lucifer. The show is loosely based on the Lucifer from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, which is one of the reasons I was so excited for it. Lucifer immediately hooked me with excellent music and an interesting portrayal of the devil, but that didn’t stop me from noticing all of the problematic shit in that has me praying (ironically, I guess) that this show doesn’t end up being another Supernatural. Hey, at least one of the main characters is a woman; that’s a step up.