#but the free-speech-martyr / Joker-archetype thing is tired

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

I read an article in the WSJ which said that some people were trying to rehabilitate Sade’s reputation (for context, this was mentioned in the same breath as Robespierre, Henry VIII, and some others being less vilified, and then mocked this supposed trend towards seeing hated historical figures more positively) - is this . . . True? Working? & to what extent?? Maybe I just live in a conservative town but no one seems to like him or is even willing to talk about him

I'm assuming you mean this article, which I'll link in case anyone wants to read it... Although it's less of an article and more of a stand-up comedy routine?

But about Sade, yes, definitely. In the 20th century, there were even people who considered him a progressive visionary; especially those in the surrealist movement, who considered Sade a pioneer of the style. A lot of famous surrealists loved him: Salvador Dalí used him as the inspiration for 25 works, there are quite a bit 'imaginary portraits' of Sade including one by Man Ray, Guillaume Appolinaire famously called Sade "the freest spirit that has ever existed" and wrote a book praising him, the final scene of Dalí and Luis Buñel's film L'Age D'or is a very obvious allusion to 120 Days of Sodom, and... who could forget Marquis (1989) [warning, that one's... disturbing. It's the one with the dick puppet. It used to be on YouTube in it's entirety with Eng subtitles, but it seems to have been removed. It's there with Spanish subtitles tho, so if you can understand French and/or read Spanish and want to be scarred for life, there you go]. Anyway, the surrealists are the ones who dubbed him the "Divine Marquis".

There are also other intellectuals who called for a rehabilitation of Sade's image. George Bataille's "The Use Value of D.A.F. de Sade", Angela Carter's "The Sadeian Woman" (which is a feminist reading of Sade), Simone Beauvoir's "Must We Burn Sade?" There are a lot others, but I'll stop there for brevity, cuz I can tell this is going to be a long answer.

Something else that helped the public image of Sade in the 20th century were his descendants, namely, one descendant, Comte Xavier de Sade, Donatien's great-great-grandson (who I posted about here). Xavier had discovered thousands of Donatien's letters and documents in a walled up family library. In 1947, he and poet Gilbert Lély begun the process of sorting through them. They were eventually published. Though Xavier himself is Catholic, found himself unable to read Donatien's books, and stayed out of the moral debates about him, his discovery led to more intimate biographies, keeping fascination in Donatien alive into this century (not to mention people now knew domestic details, which is always humanizing). While we're talking about descendants, and this is just a fun fact, Marie-Laure Noailles who was close personal friends of the surrealists including Ray, Buñel, and Dalí (and funded L'Age D'or), was a direct descendant of Sade. His great-great-great-granddaughter. She was interviewed by Francine du Plessix-Gray, she's quite the character.

Today, the wild praise for Sade has somewhat died down. I don't see much of it anymore, at least in academic spaces. I do think there are still echos of it though. Some modern bios I find a bit too sympathetic towards him (Du Plessix-Gray's bio and Lever's bio have their moments). His fictional portrayals are also generally kind, making him more of a Joker type character, but not the antagonist (Assassin's Creed is an obvious example, Quills (2000) too). Basically, any work where his inflammatory writing is mentioned, but not his actual crimes like, y'know, rape. He's often used as a martyr for anti-censorship/freedom of speech. Which is odd, cuz, you can morally defend his writing, whatever, it's fiction... but he's also a very real rapist. So, not sure how great a symbol he is on that front. Maybe use someone who isn't the human embodiment of the "slippery slope" argument conservatives love using. And then there's Assassin's Creed... I mean, you don't even have to play the game to see what they were doing. Just look at Sade's character design. The choice to make him younger and thinner says a lot about what audience reaction they were going for. And in gameplay, he's an ally. I think his role in Assassin's Creed is just a great indicator of public perception of him. Especially when compared to Robespierre's portrayal in game... Also a great indicator of public perception. So yeah, the pro-Sade sentiments of the 20th century have not entirely worn off.

I'll leave you with this 2015 review on a Musée d’Orsay exhibition on Sade where the reviewer calls Sade a "badass" in the first paragraph. I think it does a good job of showing how a lot of people view Sade as this anti-establishment, sly, smart, raunchy, rebel.