She Said What She Said: Doja Cat and the Latest Wave of Satanic Panic

The visuals for "Paint the Town Red" shocked and startled audiences. The imagery of Doja Cat standing next to the grim reaper and riding a beast seemed to be too much for some in a way that felt all too familiar. From the Satanic panic of the 1980s to the Illuminati conspiracy of the 2010s, there has always been a moral outcry of musicians using visuals referencing the occult.

With the "Demons" singer coming to Kaseya Center on Tuesday, November 21, now seems like the perfect time to unpack the rollout of her fourth album, Scarlet.

Though Doja Cat signed to RCA Records in 2014, she wouldn't see any success until the release of "Mooo!" four years later. The humorous viral song, with the earworm of a hook — "Bitch, I'm a cow" — quickly caught the attention of internet-savvy millennials and zoomers. While many would have fallen off after one viral hit, her label quickly repackaged her debut album, Amala, to include the track and kept the momentum going with the release of Hot Pink in 2019. The follow-up proved Doja Cat's pop-star potential thanks to the track "Say So," her biggest hit to date, topping the Billboard Hot 100 in May 2020.
With the rush of new success also came contention between her and her fans, especially about her appearance. In August 2022, she shaved her head and eyebrows, shocking fans as she claimed she "never liked having hair." The new look had many fans questioning her mental health and even giving her parasocial diagnoses in the process. The extreme reactions to how she appeared would continue into January 2023, when she had an all-red, jewelry-encrusted Schiaparelli look during Paris Fashion Week. Once the photos came out, she was labeled demonic by some. The theme of Satanic allegations would continue when she got tattoos inspired by Fortunio Liceti's 1616 artwork De Monstris.

But the ever-online Doja Cat has never been afraid to argue with someone online. "If somebody wants to fight me on the internet, I will gladly join in, balls to the wall. It's fun for me," she told Variety's Chris Willman earlier this year. She isn't lying. From telling her fan base to get a job for calling themselves "Kittens" to refusing to tell fans she loves them, she is never afraid of setting a defiant tone online.

The rollout to her most recent album, Scarlet, was a dedication to the trolling that had taken place over the last year. In a now-deleted tweet, she confessed: "This Illuminati sit is so funny to me I'm gonna keep doing deliberate weird ass shit just to make those people uncomfortable. I've found a new outlet of joy." In Scarlet, she uses demonic imagery for the shock factor, taunting her critics. It's a playbook used by many of her contemporaries, from Lil Nas X twerking on Satan in the video for "Montero" to the religious undertones of Sam Smith's "Unholy." Still, despite its proliferation, the reaction to Doja Cat's use of demonic imagery shows it continues to incite a moral panic.

The backlash was immediate, with audiences torn by what they were seeing. Die-hard fans who had not felt ostracized by any of her rants loved the music, but others, particularly those of the Christian faith, had a problem with the visuals.
During her promotion for the new album, she created an alter ego, Scarlet, covered in blood and showed behind-the-scenes photos where she looked like a creepy fallen angel on the set of her "Demons" video. In response to her first few singles, people have even begun interpolating her songs to make them sound more wholesome to religious audiences. However, Doja Cat refuses to play into the narrative that she didn't create for herself. In one response to a fan calling her out for having a "demonic spirit," she quickly responded, mocking them for their sensitivity. "Y'all so bitchhmade you probably couldn't make it through an episode of 'Goosebumps', fuckin pussies," she wrote.

But strip Scarlet of its imagery, and you'll realize the album and its content go beyond the superficial backlash. Its ultimate goal is for Doja Cat to dip further into hip-hop and carve out her lane in rap while shedding her pop persona at the same time. Even the 35-year-old herself admits the song "Demons" is about the critiques she has been getting from the fans over the years and not about, well, demons.

Much like the Satanic panic of the '80s, this latest wave seems to be more of the same: alarmist rhetoric by some to inspire controversy where there isn't any.

Doja Cat. With Ice Spice. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 21, at Kaseya Center, 601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 786-777-1000; kaseyacenter.com. Tickets start at $44.75 to $174.75 via ticketmaster.com.