Netflix Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment were recently hit with a lawsuit filed by the Satanic Temple. Why? Well, it turns out the organization took issue with the use of a “statue of Baphomet in the Netflix series, ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.’” According to the suit, the Temple is claiming “copyright infringement, trademark violation, and injury to business.” The suit itself was filed last Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Netflix Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment were recently hit with a lawsuit filed by the Satanic Temple. Why? Well, it turns out the organization took issue with the use of a “statue of Baphomet in the Netflix series, ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.’” According to the suit, the Temple is claiming “copyright infringement, trademark violation, and injury to business.” The suit itself was filed last Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In the suit, the Temple is seeking damages of “at least $50 million on each of the three claims,” and argues that both Warner Bros. and Netflix “blatantly misappropriated its design of the goat deity Baphomet in their ‘Sabrina’ remake. According to the group, its “copyrighted version features a being with a goat’s head and male chest, with two children by its side.” The group’s depiction veers from “other historical versions, which depict Baphomet with breasts and without children.”
According to the lawsuit, the Baphomet statue shown in ‘Sabrina’ is a copy of the Temple’s copyrighted statue because it “features a male chest with two children alongside.” Additionally, the group also took issue with the fact that the Netflix series depicted the statue as a “symbol of evil,” something the group claims has “injured and continues to injure the Temple.” The group noted in its suit that it views Satan as a “literary figure symbolic of the eternal rebel in opposition, rather than the personalization of evil.”
However, in the ‘Sabrina’ series, Satan is depicted as evil and is associated with cannibalism, misogyny, and corruption throughout the show. In fact, much of the series is about Sabrina, who is a half-mortal, half-witch teenager, deciding whether or not to become a full-fledged witch by signing “The Book of the Beast.” While signing the book would endow her with magical powers, she would also spend the rest of her existence in “servitude to Satan and his church, the Church of Night.”
Throughout the series, the character of Satan “sends his minions to torture and coerce Sabrina into signing the book, and is head of a patriarchal church organization that is rife with abuse.” He even makes occasional appearances throughout the show “as a terrifying beast with a goat’s head and hooves, and is represented by the Baphomet statue.”
So how have the two defendants responded to the lawsuit? Well, so far Warner Bros. has declined to comment on the pending litigation. Additionally, Netflix representatives have yet to respond to requests for comment.
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