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Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s

Kier-la Janisse (Editor),

Paul Corupe (Editor)

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Oct 24, 2018 Ross Blocher rated it really liked it

Satanic Panic details the cultural fears surrounding magic, music and the occult in the 1980s. It was a "panic" because none of these fundamentalist fever dreams were ever based on credible threats, and society eventually had to turn to other scapegoats when the doomsday predictions failed to materialize. The book is a series of essays by many authors, each exploring a different aspect of this period, with roots in the 60s and 70s and a lingering paranoia that has never fully dissipated. While m Satanic Panic details the cultural fears surrounding magic, music and the occult in the 1980s. It was a "panic" because none of these fundamentalist fever dreams were ever based on credible threats, and society eventually had to turn to other scapegoats when the doomsday predictions failed to materialize. The book is a series of essays by many authors, each exploring a different aspect of this period, with roots in the 60s and 70s and a lingering paranoia that has never fully dissipated. While most of the narrative occurs in the US, some chapters detail extensions of the panic into Canada, the UK, and Australia as well.

For me, this was a fun combination of recollection (as someone who was born in an evangelical Christian setting and witnessed enough Satanic fear to last a lifetime) and discovery of phenomena I'd never experienced. You'll learn about Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan), Michelle Remembers (a book full of falsely recovered memories of ritual abuse - a term originating with its author), horror paperbacks, Dungeons & Dragons, Jack Chick tracts, mind-controlling Saturday morning cartoons, films like Evilspeak and 976-EVIL that preyed upon combined fears of technology and occultism, dark killers such as Ricky Kasso and Richard Ramirez, Geraldo Rivera's embarrassing Devil Worship: Exposing Satan's Underground NBC special and its copycats, metal music and its Christian clones, MTV, cult cinema, Christian radio shock jock (now exorcist) Bob Larson, comedian and former Satanist (ahem... exposed fraud) Mike Warnke, the famous McMartin preschool abuse case (an outlier of a chapter, arguing that some of the abuse was likely real, contra popular consensus), and even the Tom Hanks comedy The Burbs. It's a fascinating collection of stories and subjects, and is richly illustrated with various photos, illustrations, covers, posters and still frames. The quality of the essays are mixed, and many passages are repetitive. Each author seems unaware of the ground covered by others: it's an aspect that could have benefited from more editing and oversight. The text is also in wide blocks of sans-serif font, which made for somewhat uncomfortable reading.

Despite these small misgivings, it's a must-read for anyone interested in magic, the occult, pop culture and the history of moral panics. It's informed me greatly on the topic, and I've come away with piqued interest in many additional movies to watch and books to read. ...more

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Oct 12, 2018 Cara Blocher rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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