Behind the latest satanic panic over the singer, his video, and his shoes is a fear of losing the future.
For the meager price of $1,018, you could briefly purchase a pair of sneakers infused with human blood and embossed with a bronze pentagram. Even the price contains a satanic reference: In Luke 10:18, Christ says he saw “Satan fall like lightning from the heavens.” Only 666 pairs of the sneaker ever existed and they have vanished like tears in the rain. Their cultural legacy endures though, and so does the rage they helped provoke. Designed by Lil Nas X in collaboration with Brooklyn company MSCHF, the shoes accompany an equally provocative video from the singer. In the video called Montero, Lil Nas X seduces and then kills Satan and takes the unholy crown for himself. The sequence is overtly sexual, unapologetically queer, and it upset South Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem. “We are in a fight for the soul of our nation. We need to fight hard. And we need to fight smart. We have to win,” Noem announced on Twitter, alongside photos of the Satan shoes. She might well consider the state of her own soul. South Dakota boasted one of the country’s highest infection rates for COVID-19 in the fall of last year; Noem, meanwhile, opposed a mask mandate and lockdowns. There are deaths on her conscience; shoes are merely objects and thus, innocent of any bloodshed.
