"We are a symptom of your
Christian America. . .":
An Introduction to Marilyn Manson
by Krista May
I want to know, um, why it is
that you all seem to have
Satanic signs all over you . . . .
Does this music cause you
to do what you do?
--Marilyn Manson
("Sympathy for the Parents," Smells Like Children)
(Picture Source: Heath, Rolling Stone)
I'm becoming what I used to be afraid of. . . . The Antichrist isn't just me, or just one person. It's all of us, a collective state of mind that America needs to have awakened in them. I want to wake it in them.
--Marilyn Manson
(The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, 247)
With the release of their latest CD, Mechanical Animals, Marilyn
Manson is beginning to break into what may be loosely termed "the mainstream."
The recent disaster-prone Marilyn Manson tour (which included Manson injuring himself on stage, Hole cancelling less than mid-way through the tour, and the last five tour dates being cancelled due to concerns for the general safety of the band and fans after the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado) , along with a recent
Grammy nomination for "The Dope Show," have pushed the band onto
the front pages of major cities' entertainment pages; for once, mainstream
media is taking note of the band--not for being Satan's disciples, but for
their shift in musical direction and for the band's drama with diva-in-arms,
Courtney Love. Musically, Mechanical Animals appeals to a larger
audience than previous Manson CDs, as it finds the band moving in a more
"melodic" direction.
Many of Marilyn Manson's new listeners share Chris Heath's view of the band's pre-Mechanical Animals material: "Between the few fine songs, there was too much death-metal riffing, distorted shouting and industrial rancor; [I] had few problems with Manson styling himself as the Antichrist, but rather more with Manson's role as the anti-tune" (37). Consequently, Manson's latest musical offering has also alienated many of those die-hard death metal fans who have been with the band since its debut release in 1995. In a recent issue of Guitar World, several disgruntled fans declared their disgust with the band's new direction and the magazine's choice to feature guitarist and base player Twiggy Ramirez on the cover. Patrick Halloran (Vernon Hills, IL) writes that "Marilyn Manson keeps changing not because they reflect the state of current rock, but because they want to sell more records. . . . Manson, himself, used to say he was sick of all the metalhead posers out there, but now he has become one" (24). "You should be dedicating your magazine to real guitarists and musicians," writes Alan (via e-mail), "not sellout bands like Marilyn Manson and their shock rock crap. Personally, I think he's doing it to piss people off, not for the music" (24).
Marilyn Manson's recent popularity has gotten me to think more seriously about the ways in which this highly controversial band "fits" within the larger landscape of mainstream popular music and how, at the same time, they appear to exist outside of the mainstream. For example, can we really consider Marilyn Manson to be "mainstream" if most of their songs are considered too offensive to be played on the radio? What does it mean to "sell out"? Does a rise in popularity necessarily coincide with mainstreaming? These are all questions that deserve to be asked, but not questions that I'm chiefly concerned with here. What interests me about Marilyn Manson is their appropriation of clichéd criticisms of the band and their music. Feeding off the attacks of those who would like to see the band wiped out by an apocalyptic army of Christian soldiers, Marilyn Manson have gotten more popular with each CD. What interests me about Marilyn Manson is their self-consciousness about this process and how it has produced them.
(Picture Source: Marilyn Manson Official Site)
***
I began to take note of Marilyn Manson when I first heard their version of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," a single from the band's second CD, Smells Like Children (1995). Having gotten through the most awkward and unpleasant years of my life, a.k.a. the high-school hell years, with the help of the Eurythmics and other post-punk, new wave sensations, I was excited about hearing a new take on an old favorite. An interesting song, the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams": "Some of them want to abuse you / Some of them want to be abused...." Ah! An ultra-cool, Euro-tech anthem of deviant pleasures (sexual and otherwise). And the video? Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox in a field, Dave typing away at his synth-computer keyboard, and Annie posing as the very much in-control, business-suited boss/dominatrix. Sex and the boardroom, illicit and surrealistic pleasures (and then that cow wanders in!). All in all, I'd found the song and its video very appealing. As a very awkward and anxious teen-ager, I was attracted to the eerie and (then) mysterious sounds of Stewart's synthesizer; the hypnotic coyness of Lennox's voice and her flair for gender-bending; and the song's understated intonations of deviant pleasures.
Fast-forward to just over ten years later, and I'm hearing Manson's version of "Sweet Dreams" for the first time. Instead of the Eurythmics' eighties techno-vibe, I hear some very bizarre back-masking sounds and a metal guitar riff. The lyrics are familiar, but now creepy--a sort of moaning, sometimes sneering-whispered, death chant turns into a raw-throated scream: "Some of them want to use you / Some of them want to get used by you / Some of them want to abuse you / Some of them want to be aaabbbuuussseeddddd!" Pounding drums back the keyboards' scratchy shrillness (no hummable synthesizer-melody here!). "Is this what I think it is?" I soon realize that, indeed, this is "Sweet Dreams," and that this must be Marilyn Manson. (Since I don't have the luxury of cable television, I can't say much about the video, which I've seen only once.) Having never heard the band's music before, I didn't even know that they were a band--I thought this was one person, Marilyn Manson. I'd seen pictures of this pale, anorexic guy with black makeup dripping down his face (à la Alice Cooper), scratches and scars on his bare torso, and long, black hair. I'd heard t.v. evangelists call this guy evil and Satanic, and so I immediately liked him without ever having heard any of his music; anyone who sends Pat Robertson into an uncontrollable tirade is automatically someone I admire and respect.
I immediately loved Marilyn Manson, whoever he was (or they were) because he was (they were) making Christians uncomfortable. I'd grown up being fed the message that all of the music I liked (rock 'n' roll) was Satanic; that rock stars were drug-addicted hedonists; and that if I listened to such music (much less enjoyed it), well, eternal hellfire would certainly be the outcome. The tirades against Marilyn Manson sounded like what I'd heard so many times before (about KISS, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, etc.--all bands I loved--same narrative, new rock star/band, ad nauseum). Like I said, I immediately loved Marilyn Manson (who, by the way, was made a minister in the Church of Satan by Anton LaVey and makes no bones about being a hedonistic who takes all kinds of drugs!).
And, thank goodness, I am not alone. When I read Marilyn Manson's biography (and, yes, by this time I'd realized Marilyn Manson was one guy, a.k.a. Brian Warner, and also a band of interesting characters with sex symbol-serial killer pseudonyms!), (1) I discovered that religion had also left its imprint on the adolescent Warner, who was striking out at organized religion in a very intelligent way. I whole-heartedly agree with Courtney Love, who has said of Marilyn Manson, "I think they're nothing but good for the world. They shock people's parents. Halle-fuckin'-luja" (qtd. in di Perna 89).
(Picture Source: Marilyn Manson Official Site)
***
I think it's safe to say that most of those
Americans who are at least somewhat in touch with popular culture have at
least heard of Marilyn Manson, even though they may not have ever listened
to any of their music, and the Christian right has had a hand in propelling
these poster-boys for the Antichrist into rock superstardom. The liner notes
of Portrait of an American Family respond directly to fundamentalists'
attacks on the band and their music:
YOU SPOONFED US SATURDAY MORNING MOUTHFULS
OF MAGGOTS AND LIES DISGUISED IN YOUR SUGARY BREAKFAST CEREALS. THE PLATES
THAT YOU MADE US CLEAN WERE FILLED WITH YOUR FEARS. THESE THINGS HAVE HARDENED
IN OUR SOFT PINK BELLIES. WE ARE WHAT YOU HAVE MADE US. WE HAVE GROWN UP
WATCHING YOUR TELEVISION. WE ARE A SYMPTOM OF YOUR CHRISTIAN AMERICA, THE
BIGGEST SATAN OF ALL. THIS IS YOUR WORLD IN WHICH WE GROW. AND WE WILL
GROW TO HATE YOU.
Indeed, Marilyn Manson are progenies of
Christian schooling, the heterosexual family unit, and media-induced hypnosis--the
middle-class, heterosexual, Christian experiment gone monstrously awry.
Of course, there's really nothing new in saying that a culture produces
its worst nightmares: there are volumes written about the cultural production
of serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, alcoholics, junkies, the mentally
ill, queers, sado-masochists, Satanists, etc. (and Marilyn Manson have,
at one time or another throughout their careers, been labeled as all of
these). By defining such embodiments of otherness as "deviant,"
the dominant culture defines itself and its boundaries, creating institutions
to contain that otherness. Marilyn Manson exploit this process in the production
of their music. The band's juxtaposition of sex symbol and serial killer
pseudonyms indicates the extent to which they self-consciously appropriate
apparently dichotomous cultural constructions and then challenge the boundaries
that society has established as appropriate. What may at first appear dichotomous--the
beautiful, sexy, suave, and rich sex symbol vs. the ugly, terrifying and
depraved serial killer--are indeed manifestations of the same thing: the
cultural celebrity. Mixing things up like this makes people uncomfortable;
it's not clear where one construction ends and where the other begins.
For example, one of the most "upsetting" aspects of the band's transgression of boundaries involves gender-bending. Twiggy's appearance in a dress, Marilyn's body-morph on the cover of Mechanical Animals--these things upset a lot of people because it challenges a chief method that they use to make sense of themselves and the world around them. Is it a he or a she? A boy or a girl? This is the first question people ask parents of a newborn, the first thing parents want to know about their child (and this isn't always so clear--doctors often make the decision); and it's the first thing we're conditioned to recognize about a person. When confronted with a person of indeterminate gender, many react by othering that individual who doesn't "fit" neatly into the category of either "male" or "female." Add gender-bending to Marilyn Manson's other self-described performances of otherness (Antichrist, sodomite, serial killer, etc.), and you have something that really shakes people up.
The band's music also challenges the way that we tend to categorize music because they "upset" musical genres. Certainly, most would agree that Marilyn Manson is a rock 'n' roll band. However, are they metal? Goth? Neo-glitter? Pop? With Mechanical Animals, Marilyn Manson restyles themselves as Omega and the Mechanical Animals, a neo-glitter band reminiscent of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Omega, like Ziggy, inscribes him/her/itself as a martyr to drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll; at the end of the CD, we're wondering if Omega (again like Ziggy) will be another rock star casualty. (In the middle of the liner notes, we see Omega as male/female/beast--a body that deconstructs the human/animal binary.)
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972.
(Picture Source: The Ziggy Stardust Companion--A David Bowie Website)
The CD's last song, "Coma White," is ambiguous in the world of Omega and the Mechanical Animals, as they conclude that " . . . all the drugs in this world / Won't save her from herself." The coma itself is an ambiguous space (as well as the first name of a recurrent voice, Coma White), for waking from the coma could represent a (positive) rebirth into feelings and emotion, as well as eternal oblivion. Omega and the Mechanical Animals live in a "Posthuman" world, inhabited by those like Coma White, who repeat the mantra "All that glitters is cold, all that glitters is cold." Indeed, "Posthuman" is a sort of love song for Coma White, who is both "pilgrim and pagan / . . . a saint like Jackie-O." Aside from Omega's reflection of Ziggy, David Bowie's influence can also be found in the music: in "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)," you can hear "Fame"'s funk-infused back-beat; Marilyn's voice on "Fundamentally Loathsome" sounds especially Bowie-like in its affectation; and "The Last Day on Earth," a narrative of physical, psychological, and emotional alienation, could easily serve as a 90s version of "Space Oddity."
Omega, 1998.
(Picture Source: Mechanical Animals)
While many hardcore death metal fans view
Marilyn Manson's musical transformation as evidence of the band's "selling
out," I think that this latest album is just the latest musical incarnation
of a band who challenges musical boundaries. Even in their earlier material,
Marilyn Manson were experimenting musically. On Smells Like Children, for
example, the band incorporated snippets of a press conference into "Sympathy
for Parents" and a cover of "Cake and Sodomy" (re-titled
"White Trash") by Tony F. Wiggins, which, as a folk-style remake
of a Marilyn Manson "classic," challenges our notions of musical
genre. I realize that Marilyn Manson may be manipulating the system to make
them more famous, and maybe this could be viewed as "selling out."
However, simply writing off Mechanical Animals as too mainstream isn't giving
it the chance it deserves. Besides, just because you don't like the neo-glitter
Manson doesn't mean you won't like the band's next incarnation (whatever
that might be!). Discography References
Smells Like Children. Nothing/Interscope Records. INTD-92641. 1995.
Antichrist Superstar. Nothing/Interscope Records. INTD-90086. 1996.
Mechanical Animals. Nothing/Interscope Records. INTD-90273. 1998.
di Perna, Alan. "Skin Tight." Guitar World. January 1999:
48+.
Halloran, Patrick. Letter to the Editors. "Sounding Board." Guitar
World. January 1999: 24.
Heath, Chris. "Marilyn Manson." Rolling Stone. 15 October
1998. 36+.
Manson, Marilyn, with Neil Strauss. The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.
NY: Regan Books, 1998.
1. At the time Mechanical Animals was released, Marilyn Manson was:
Twiggy Ramirez, guitar and bass; M. W. Gacy, keyboards; John 5, guitar;
Ginger Fish, drums; and Marilyn Manson, lead vocals. As far as I know, this
is also the line-up that is currently on tour, although Marilyn Manson's
guitar players seem to change quite regularly.