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Event Website
https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2023.htm
Start Date
8-5-2023 4:00 PM
End Date
8-5-2023 4:50 PM
Description
While different in genre, sitcom The Good Place and drama Lucifer share a certain irreverent tone and a somewhat unique approach to the afterlife. In The Good Place, there is no mention of gods or devils, only demons, a Good Place committee, and a judge. Lucifer, loosely based on Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels, however, features angels, demons, God, and the Devil, providing its own spin on established cosmology with embodied versions of prominent figures such as the archangel Michael and biblical brothers Cain and Abel. Yet what ties The Good Place and Lucifer together is a focus on hell and punishment as a state of mind brought about by one’s moral failings and guilt. For The Good Place, it is focused on learning to do better and thereby becoming one’s “best self,” while Lucifer leans heavily into the way the mind and its psychological tricks and turns can create a hell in both life and afterlife for both human and cosmic beings. Therefore, I will examine the way these two concepts of hell and eternity in both series both play off of and inform the other.
Included in
Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Digital Humanities Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons
Thinking Makes It So? Hell as a (Fixable) State of Mind in The Good Place and Lucifer
While different in genre, sitcom The Good Place and drama Lucifer share a certain irreverent tone and a somewhat unique approach to the afterlife. In The Good Place, there is no mention of gods or devils, only demons, a Good Place committee, and a judge. Lucifer, loosely based on Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels, however, features angels, demons, God, and the Devil, providing its own spin on established cosmology with embodied versions of prominent figures such as the archangel Michael and biblical brothers Cain and Abel. Yet what ties The Good Place and Lucifer together is a focus on hell and punishment as a state of mind brought about by one’s moral failings and guilt. For The Good Place, it is focused on learning to do better and thereby becoming one’s “best self,” while Lucifer leans heavily into the way the mind and its psychological tricks and turns can create a hell in both life and afterlife for both human and cosmic beings. Therefore, I will examine the way these two concepts of hell and eternity in both series both play off of and inform the other.
Comments
SESSION V
4:00 PM -4:50 Eastern
3:00 PM -3:50 Central
2:00 PM -2:50 Mountain
1:00 PM -1:50 Pacific
8:00 PM – 8:50 GMT