Lil Nas X’s recently released song, Montero (Call Me By Your Name), and the correlating music video and Satan shoes have got Christians, conservatives, historians and Milligan students talking.
The release came on March 26, and the Satan shoes are a collaboration with MSCHF, a self proclaimed conceptual art collective.
The song and video are supposed to be about the repression he and other LGBTQ+ youth experience, specifically in Christian spaces.
“I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the s*** y’all preached would happen to me because I was gay,” said Lil Nas X in a tweet. “So I hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.”
Senior worship leadership major Griffin Leonard commented on Lil Nas X’s tweets and the perceived message:
“It is completely fair for him to be upset over the treatment he received. The entire job of the Church is to love first. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to react. This reaction is from a place of hatred and distaste for the Church… Moving forward in love is far more important than getting even,” said Leonard. “On the other hand, this is art. Art, by definition, is for causing a reaction. If Lil Nas X had just made a song of an apathetic response, there would be no reaction. He wanted a reaction. Every artist wants a reaction.”
Lil Nas X also released a letter to his 14-year-old self on Twitter that further explains his choice to create the song and video. In it he expresses that his hope is to open doors for other queer individuals so they can live as themselves without judgement.
“The music video obviously has a lot deeper of a meaning, and I think it’s something that people should read into before writing it off,” said sophomore psychology major Valerie Couper. “(It’s) definitely art, and I think it should be treated as such. The devil stuff is a bit much though, and I think can just be a scary thing to think about.”
Many conservatives and Christians are upset by the sexual nature, references to homosexuality and use of religous imagery within the video as well as the shoe dedicated to Satan.
Greg Locke, a high-profile conservative pastor at Global Vision Bible Church, a Baptist church in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., commented on Lil Nas’ recent release during a live streamed sermon on March 28, calling it a “bunch of devil-worshipping wicked nonsense.”
“You think I’m going to stand for that? You’ve lost your mind,” he continued. “You tell Lil Nas X I said so. Bunch of Satanism, bunch of wickedness, bunch of devil-ism, bunch of demonism, bunch of psychotic wickedness!”
While the commentary from conservatives and Christians has mainly focused on the satanic references and the sexual nature of the video, historical scholars are focused on a different aspect. Many commend it for its use of Greco-Roman and medieval Christain motifs and messages in both Greek and Latin, saying it has built a strong historical narrative centered on queerness within historical and religious spaces where they are often erased, according to an article in Time, an American newsmagazine.
“Watching this video, I was a little bit shocked just because of how much knowledge you need to have to unpack some of these elements,” Roland Betancourt, a professor at University of California, Irvine and the author of Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages, says in the article. “It says that institutionalization of homophobia is a learned thing—and that there are other origin myths available to us that are not rooted in those ideas.”
In an interview with Time, Lil Nas X explained that he wanted to use this type of iconography and symbolism to make a comparison between ancient and modern-day persecution.
“I wanted to use these things that have been around for so long to tell my own story, and the story of so many other people in the community—or people who have been outcast in general through history,” he says. “It’s the same thing over and over.”
As for the shoes, Nike sued MSCHF, claiming that the unauthorized Satan shoes would likely cause confusion and dilution and falsely imply any association between MSCHF and Nike. Nike did not endorse the 666 pairs of Nike Air Max 97s that were modified to feature pentagrams, ink containing a drop of human blood and a reference to Luke 10:18.
Each pair was priced at $1,018, but MSCHF and Nike came to the agreement that any Satan shoes would be bought back at full retail price so as to remove them from circulation. According to USA Today, MSCHF was reportedly pleased with the settlement since the shoes already achieved their artistic purpose.
“I think the shoes are aggressive,” said Couper, “but the truth is, if we really want this to be a ‘free country’ then we can’t stop people from expressing themselves no matter how much we disagree.”
Headline photo: The Satan shoes are each individually numbered up to 666. Photo from CNN.