A Nebraska woman is getting media attention after demanding that a Spider-Man sculpture be removed from a zoo where it was being displayed. Now the city of Lincoln is being forced to defend the sculpture, which is very clearly not an effigy for Satanic worship.
WANE News reports that the city of Lincoln, Nebraska is currently going head-to-head with a woman who believes they are promoting Satanism with the installment of the above-pictured sculpture. The unidentified woman has demanded that the statue be removed as it is a “hate crime against the church.” Meanwhile, the city of Lincoln says that this isn’t a city issue, and it is one of 50 different sculptures of a similar theme. The coordinator for the art installment has spoken out against the complaint, pointing out that the sculpture in question is obviously in the color of Spider-Man’s costume. The coordinator, according to CNN, has also explained that he believes the complainant may have seen the sculpture prior to it being finished — before the spider web accent could be added.
The coordinator for the art installation — which is for a Christian nonprofit group — thinks that the Nebraska woman may have erroneously believed that the gesture being made by the hand sculpture was Satanic in nature. However, when you look at the sculpture itself, there is obviously nothing about the gesture that is Satanic. The confused Nebraska woman must have confused the Spider-Man hands with the “devil horns” hand gesture.
This isn’t the first time someone has made a fool of his or herself by declaring something harmless (or even wholesome) to be Satanic and evil. The United States went through a phenomenon called The Satanic Panic during the 1980s, for one thing — and that was an era of wildly stupid accusations of Satanism at everything from children’s toys to tabletop roleplaying games. While it’s easy to call the Satanic Panic a thing of the 80s, the truth of the matter is that it never actually went away entirely. When the first Harry Potter books became popular, overly religious parents in both the United States and United Kingdom were insistent that J.K. Rowling was promoting evil witchcraft. Of course, J.K. Rowling turned out to be a problematic person for reasons unrelated to the fantasy world she created through Harry Potter. In more recent events, conspiracy theories like the notorious Pizzagate and others which accuse the world’s elite of child cannibalism are products of that Satanic Panic that rose to mainstream popularity in the 80s.
People like this Nebraska woman are gripped by religious zealotry, but lack the common life experience to know when they’re simply being silly. Hopefully someone can sit her down and show her a couple Spider-Man movies so she can become familiar with the connection it has to the hand-shaped sculpture that’s on display in Lincoln.
Chelsea Hoffman is a true crime writer with over a decade of professional writing experience. She is best known for her coverage of missing people including the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann as well as the heartbreaking cases of Dylan Redwine, Heather Elvis and many others.
