Satan’s back in vogue, coming for our soles

For all the fashion stories I’ve written, I never would have predicted bloodlaced, satanic sneakers as a hot trend for spring 2021.

The shoes, a collaboration between Brooklyn label MSCHF and rapper Lil Nas X, are a tiein to the enthusiastically gay artist’s music video for “Montereo (Call Me by Your Name)” and contain a drop of human blood mixed with dye inside the midsole. In case the redandblack color scheme is too subtle, they also have a pentagram medallion on the laces and Luke 10:18 emblazoned on the heel, a reference to the biblical verse describing Lucifer’s fall from grace.

The exactly 666 pairs of the customized Nike Air Max 97s sold out swiftly, proving that you can’t go too far in fashion for some people.

The song’s music video features the performer riding a strip club pole to hell, where he gives the devil a lap dance. It is brilliantly and defiantly queer, and uses the Eden, heaven and hell settings as commentary on Nas’ experiences as a gay man dealing with religious homophobia.

The shoes aren’t really my thing (nor Nike’s —the company sued MSCHF to halt shipment of the shoes), but Nas hit on something: Satan is absolutely having another moment in the zeitgeist.

But why? Sometimes it’s fun to run with the bad kids, but this seems excessive.

Recent years saw the Satanfriendly “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” on Netflix, where teens nonchalantly worshiped the Dark Lord while dealing with puberty. And since 2015, the Fox series “Lucifer” has been retelling the Morning Star story with the title character played by Tom Ellis. (His take is more devillite, half the evil, no carbs.)

In real life, the 2019 documentary “Hail Satan?” also made news for its look at the Satanic Temple’s activism on behalf of the separation of church and state. The group also gained popculture notoriety for campaigns demanding that statues of the goat deity Baphomet be presented in public spaces that display other religious symbols. Less innocently, one of the cornerstone beliefs of the disproven QAnon conspiracy is that Satanworshiping pedophiles run the government.

And while the phrase “Hail Satan” itself has become a common, ironic exclamation on social media, it feels too retroMarilyn Manson to have real shock value anymore.

The last time I remember Satan having a moment in the broader culture was in the late ’90s during Manson’s heyday. Like Manson, that era’s portrayal of Satan was twisted and dark (although new allegations that Manson was abusive to women offstage are more disturbing than any of his music). The pop devil du jour is more of an alternative take on Satan, appropriate in a culture saturated with media depicting sympathetic origin stories for villains ranging from Darth Vader and Hannibal Lecter to Maleficent and Nurse Ratched.

After four years of the Trump administration — a world where facts were negotiable and the definitions of good and bad, ethical and unethical were presented as morally flexible — it’s also not really surprising that the culture has embraced a “both sides” stance on one of the great baddies.

Some artists have played with the theme in interesting ways. Lil Nas X’s video makes us question who the villains really are in the biblical world, as heavenly figures are shown casting judgment and rendering punishment. In hell, it’s apparently all about the dancing.

There’s also been a hip appropriation of the idea of a broader, selfconscious satanic “aesthetic” as the sneakers attest to. But it’s a moment that’s already starting to feel passe.

The pandemic has made most of us less enthusiastic about antiheroes when there’s so many genuine hero narratives around us. With mortality also being a constant thought this past year, some of us are probably a little more squeamish joking about hell.

It may be just as well: You can only have sympathy for the devil for so long.

Sometimes it’s fun to run with the bad kids, but this seems excessive.