Popular shoemaker Converse is at the center of a controversy as Americans express their concern and disgust when it has launched a new line of sneakers that feature a pentagram instead of the iconic Chuck Taylor star. This is in collaboration with Rick Owens, a fashion designer, with the logo of his brand DRKSHDW.
“This is kind of ridiculous. They’re shoes. Why are there demons involved?” This is one comment posted at the Instagram account of the shoemaker.
“This is sad, I grew up wearing Converse but seeing satanic marketing through your shoes, I won’t be buying into this. God help you!” Another Instagram user commented this on the same account.”
Converse reiterated in its social media launch post that, “The aesthetic is all about disrupting formality—embracing traditional structure and then blowing it up. Rick Owens crafts a Chuck 70 unlike any other. And it’s only the beginning for Converse x DRKSHDW.”
Converse posted what Owens wrote, “I’ve been using this pentagram for a long time because obviously, it has adolescent occult associations.”
Owens reiterated that he prefers “geometric diagrams like that because, in a very primal way, they are a culture’s grasp for control. And a way to organize thoughts and systems.”
He further said, “And a pentagram, in this day and age with all of its associations… I like the fact that it refers to an alternative system. And that suggests openness and empathy. It suggests the pursuit of pleasure, this pursuit of sensation. But one of the main things that I think it suggests is empathy and a consideration of systems of living that might not be standard. So that leads us to be more accepting and tolerant of other systems, which I think is a good thing.”
At the early part of this year prior to the collaboration of Owen with converse, Rapper Lil Nas X launched his partnership with MSCHF, a company that does shoe customization. MSCHP retrofitted 666 pairs of Nike Air Max 97s with 60cc of red ink and a drop of human blood in the soles. The company further added a pentagram pendant on top of the laces and embroidered a reference to Luke 10:18 along the sides. “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”
At the time the shoes were launched, Lil Nas X introduced her single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” that showed the rapper giving Satan a lap dance prior to killing him. The shoes and music video were launched a week before Palm Sunday.
Secular Aggressiveness into Mainstream Culture
Secular culture never stops in its push. Now, it has become part of mainstream culture.
Americans were only exposed to the pentagram in the late 1990s and early 2000s when school districts prevented the Satanic symbol from infiltrating classrooms across the nation.
In mid-2000, a federal judge ruled in favor of two student teachers that the First Amendment protects their rights when they want to wear the Wiccan symbol while working.
Currently, this is now being promoted in mainstream culture.
Now it’s being promoted in mainstream culture.