Lady Gaga delivered an electrifying performance at the Super Bowl LI halftime show, complete with hit songs and up-tempo dancing. As we all know, some Religious Right figures see demons and Lucifer in even the most innocuous places, so it should surprise no one that some fundamentalists accused Lady Gaga of worshiping Satan during the Super Bowl.
First, in a February 7th commentary piece at Charisma News, Jessilyn Justice shared a Facebook post from "ex-new age expert" Steven Bancarz. She quotes Bancarz as speculating that the Super Bowl halftime show had Satanic elements.
"Pentagrams lining the stage at the Superbowl halftime show. Cross-dressing men with makeup dancing on stage. Flames, black clothing, 666 hand signs over the eyes. Typical halftime show."Second, Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones had his own wacky theories about the role of Satan in the Super Bowl halftime show. In a February 5th video, Jones described Lady Gaga and others like her as "sick, chicken-necked filthy little people who have it out for us and our families". At the 1:01 mark, he claimed that Lady Gaga's performance would exalt her as a "goddess of Satan".
"But now we hear about Lady Gaga who admittedly was part of the whole Pizzagate situation with the spirit cooking lady, the Aleister Crowley events, she admits she has someone sleep in her room with her at night because she believes a demon's going to attack her ... The organizers of the Super Bowl are deciding to defile America and break our will by having us bow down to this, and she's reportedly going to be ... on top of the stadium ruling over everyone with drones everywhere, surveilling them in a big swarm to just condition them that, 'I am the goddess of Satan, ruling over you with the rise of the robots' ritual of lesser magic."At the 5:27 mark, Jones demonized Gaga as a poisonous woman that "they" are forcing on the public to compel them into moral disintegration.
"Lady Gaga's a joke, and anybody that worships a fallen, twisted pile of crap like her has a real problem. Look at her! But again, it's them force-feeding you. They know she's weak. They know she's bad. She's poison! They're forcing you, the Golden Child, the future of humanity, the poison so they can make you fall."Third, during the February 7th edition of Pass the Salt Live, Dave Daubenmire accused Lady Gaga of celebrating Satan during her Super Bowl halftime show. At the 2:02 mark, he claimed that the god she was honoring was Lucifer. (Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.)
"The scriptures tells us that Satan comes as an angel of light, so Lady Gaga, she disarmed everybody when the first thing she started to do the other night at halftime was sing 'God Bless America', and from that point on, she went into ‘This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land’ and we were all hooked. Oh ... she’s honoring God. We didn’t ask which god, did we? We didn’t ask which god. See, that name, God, that doesn’t mean a whole lot. There’s a lot of gods. He said he’d have no other gods before him, so Lucifer could be a god. Do you understand that, folks? Do you understand that, how they lured us into the celebration of Satan right in front of us?"At the 2:50 mark, he blasted Lady Gaga's song "Judas" as anti-Christian.
"Lady Gaga, during that performance, sang a song called 'I Love Judas'. We know who Judas is, right? Judas is the one who betrayed Jesus, right?"Daubenmire claimed that Lady Gaga performed a "demonic service" at the Super Bowl as part of a bait-and-switch gambit at the 8:44 mark.
"I think it was a classic bait-and-switch, and by that, I mean this. They told us all week that she was going to come out, and she was going to go against Trump, and she was going to stand up against the deplorables, and so everybody's wait to see how she's going to do this, come out against Trump, and she did the bait-and-switch and went strictly to a demonic service right there in the middle of the Super Bowl."Lady Gaga is in good company. Accusations of Satan worship against musicians are nothing new. Even Madonna and Katy Perry have been the targets of similar accusations by fundamentalists.
I get the impression that the Religious Right does not like bold women performers who push the envelope. These fundamentalists see such women as the embodiment of all their fears about independent women, female sexuality, and unbridled fun. Rather than accept these performers' stage acts as harmless reflections of changing values, they demonize them so that they do not have to wrestle with changing ideas about what is acceptable for women. And the rest of the world laughs at their superstitious nonsense.
Reflections of changing values - excellent observation, Ahab.
ReplyDeleteTim -- Some people just can't accept the positive changes taking place around them.
DeleteYeesh. If Lady G reads this stuff, one could imagine her being a bit concerned about her safety.
ReplyDeleteThis extreme, hateful, vicious language (and the other such examples here) suggests to me that what's really going on is that, when Trump "won", the fundies thought their long national nightmare of uppity women and rampant gays was over, and things would soon get back to what they think of as "normal". But their targeted groups, especially women, have refused to knuckle under and have instead become more activist, visible, and determined than ever, threatening to push back hard against any moves toward the fundie agenda (to attack abortion, gay rights, and separation of church and state). This must be extremely frustrating for them, to the point that they're starting to have public meltdowns about it.
Well, they ain't seen nothin' yet.
Infidel -- The misogyny of the Right has been an ongoing thing, as has their habit of blaming infernal beings for everything that offends or confuses them. That said, I'm sure the pushback from women, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized groups has aggravated their anger. As they get angrier, we can expect their rhetoric to become even more absurd, or even more disturbing. Probably both.
DeleteThe religious right is buckling down more and more- too bad so many of them are in powerful positions, making life harder for the rest of us. Things have to change!!
ReplyDeleteGaga was brilliant. She'll continue to be a positive influence for change.
Heather -- I respect Lady Gaga for her activism, and I like her music. She's definitely helping things change for the better.
DeleteIt's so strange, how the attitudes of the Religious Right are on the decline in society, but Religious Right figures now have powerful political positions thanks to the Trump administration. It's a paradox that still throws me for a loop.
These accusations against Lady Gaga don't surprise me - as you say, accusations of Satan worship against musicians are nothing new. A long time ago now, back in my first year at university, morbid curiosity saw me attending the on-campus screening of some weird fundamentalist "documentary" (I use that term very loosely!) about rock music and the occult entitled "Hell's Bells". This "documentary" accused pretty much everyone who'd ever picked up a musical instrument since, oh, probably the 1950s or so of being in league with Satan - even Whitney Houston! (Sadly, I don't remember what mind-blowing bit of "logic" they used to make that particular claim!) In hindsight, the whole thing was pretty hilarious, though at the time, being much more naive, I found it all rather scary. Often I suspect that the fundamentalist Christians who make these wild accusations just hate all music period, like many Islamic fundamentalists do (at least the latter individuals are more honest about it!).
ReplyDeleteIn a way, you've got to hand it to these folks for somehow managing to keep the Satanic Panic alive after all these decades - that's got to be some kind of (dubious) achievement! It's almost as impressive as the way they've managed to keep the fear of Communism alive in so many quarters, even though the Soviet Union hasn't existed for 25 years now!
Zosimus -- If all of the great pop musicians were in league with Satan, I'd have to conclude that Satan has excellent taste in music.
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