Rosemary's Baby

The Satanic Panic, a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of ritual Satanic abuse, began in the United States in the early 1980s. Rosemary’s Baby—along with several other popular horror novels published around the same time, including William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist—was part of a complicated set of sociocultural and political factors that ultimately coalesced around the Satanic Panic. At the same time, a reactionary fundamentalist Christian movement began gaining power in the United States. Members of this movement took the threat of Satanic cults seriously, believing such groups were referenced in Christian scripture. As fundamentalists were invited into the political arena in the 1970s, their anti-Satanic stance became more visible, and their ideas were disseminated through television broadcasts and print publications. More Americans began to fear the rise of Satanic cults in their own communities. The 1960s also saw the rise of the anticult movement, a coalition of concerned parents, religious leaders, former cult members, and professional therapists, whose collective goal was to remove young people from cults. Stories of alleged kidnapping and brainwashing were popular in more sensationalistic media outlets, and as these stories spread, more Americans accepted the existence of Satanic cults without question.

However, while many such accounts were proven false, there were documented practitioners of Satanic worship during this period, and their existence helped fuel what would ultimately become the Satanic Panic. Anton LeVay founded the Church of Satan in 1966, and its radical rejection of Christianity has a symbolic significance within American social life. Anton LeVay served as a consultant on the film adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby, further cementing the cultural role the idea of Satanic worship would play for years to come.