They Finally Got Him. No They Didn't.
How the canceling of Marilyn Manson is the final rebuke of the Counter-Culture of the 90s, and how this may not be the best idea.
Marilyn Manson © Bil Brown
It was 2001, when my oldest daughter was in her mother’s tummy in Chicago I would take walks on Miracle Mile daily, often going into the Tower Records that was a great resource for not only music but film and pop culture books. I remember my not-yet-wife at the time was a big fan of Marilyn Manson, so for her birthday I picked a copy of his biography, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell. The dedication was striking although typical Rock Star in so many ways, “TO BARB AND HUGH WARNER MAY GOD FORGIVE THEM FOR BRINGING ME INTO THIS WORLD.” Of course, to his fans they would have thanked his parents, but thus the myth of Brian Hugh Warner as Marilyn Manson would go, may God forgive his parents, or so he wanted you to believe.
The book itself was essentially a self-determined fan-fiction from Brian with some historical-biographical points. It started in his grandfather’s cellar, where a decrepit old man had stored artifacts from his self-described sexual debachery-filled past (Described by Brian at least, who knows if it was real or not, let’s say it was.) The first few pages described not only his Grandfather’s fascination with 16mm porno films and sex toys of all sorts, but also things that even an average porn survey would find disturbing — bestiality. Brian would describe it, “early-seventies photos of women straddling giant horse dicks and sucking pigs’ dicks, which looked like soft, fleshy corkscrews. I had seen Playboy and Penthouse before, but these photographs were in another class altogether. It wasn’t just that they were obscene. They were surreal—all the women were beaming real innocent flower-child smiles as they sucked and fucked these animals.” In essence, the beginning of the book, like the beginning of Marilyn Manson’s career was telling you this is no normal story, that his lineage wasn’t normal. You are in for a ride, likely into someone’s idea of hell.
Now I may want to mention here, there were a few Rock-Star-Moments in the book, but one in particular stands out. The chapter, “Meat and Greet with the Fans” describes bringing a deaf fan into the studio with Manson, his band and NIN front-man and producer of AntiChrist Superstar Trent Reznor, and proceeding to humiliate her with Surreal onslaught of raw meat, group sex, urine, and did I mention sex.. then document it on not only film and video but photograph and sketches, having her fuck or at least suck members of the band. Pogo wanted to have sex with a deaf girl so he could scream whatever obscenities he wanted and she wouldn’t be offended. Manson would relate the incident to the interviewer who was evidently penning at least this section of the book how he felt about it, “I should mention that I do not feel that she was being exploited by any means because, despite however many cameras, street musicians, and sketch artists were in the room clapping and dancing around to Slayer or whatever was playing at the time, she was very excited to be a part of it. I think she, too, found it to be art and was having a good time.”
The book was also filled with Warner’s nightmares. One in particular included his grandmother:
“I find my grandmother, on my mother’s side, in my room. She is lying on a hospital bed covered with tubes that stick out of nearly every part of her body, which is crisscrossed with wires held in place by duct tape. A round flexible canister on the side of the bed is pumping air into her and the equipment keeping her alive is making whirring noises and electronic pulses. I hear a crash in the closet, and the door opens to reveal my dad lying in a bed. He’s only thirty, his hair is messed up, and he seems to have gone mad. I talk to my grandmother, and she keeps reassuring me that everything is okay, that I did good in life, and that she isn’t mad at me. She has a big bandage over her eye, and it falls open. Inside is yellow pus, which runs over her face and soaks into the pillow, staining it yellow. I bend over her to find out that she has no eye.”
So, in Brian Warner’s personal mythology his Grandfather would be the hoarder of a failing age’s inability to acknowledge its own perversity and his grandmother essentially kept alive by proxy reality medicine. Manson, the rock star, would embody these and be the perversity while women would both be there to praise him and die a horrible death, or maybe kept alive to suffer as a spectacle.
California State Senator Susan Rubio, an advocate for survivors of sexual abuse, in a letter dated January 21, 2021, after hearing multiple allegations of abuse by Manson asked Monty Wilkinson the Acting Attorney General of the United States and Christopher Wray the Director of the FBI to have Brian Hugh Warner investigated as a serial offender of domestic violence and abuse. In her letter she stated she was a survivor of domestic violence who advocates for victims in her role of California State legislator. She wrote, “If these allegations are true, and no investigation is undertaken, we will be failing the victims and allowing a possible perpetrator to continue abusing unsuspecting victims. That must not be allowed to happen.”
On February 1, 2021, Manson’s former finance Evan Rachel Wood would release a Instagram video naming her abuser. Wood had spoken before the US Senate Subcommittee on Domestic Violence and did not name her assailant, however most everyone knew who she was talking about. Her relationship with Manson started when she was 18 years old and he was 36. Directly following Wood’s video, multiple women came out with their own accounts in Instagram posts about varying abuses and some that seem to be consistent between them, including a “Bad Girl Room” where he would lock away his lovers if they were insubordinate or otherwise doing something bad. A sort of solitary confinement, or seeming so.
The same day as the multiple allegations came to light, Manson’s label Loma Vista Recordings ceased their contractual relationship with him with, “no plans to continue any further projects.” His episode of the hit television series American Gods is canceled. Pornstar Jenna Jameson said on Twitter Manson dreamed of “burning her alive.” In his own Instagram statement Manson said:
“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how – and why – others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”
As of this writing we will see how his defense holds up. The thing is, he may be deluded into thinking they wanted everything they got, but he’s not completely wrong. After three decades in the public eye Marilyn Manson, the penultimate shock-rocker next to Alice Cooper, isn’t shocking anyone. So, regardless of why his time of reckoning is now and maybe deserved, it is peculiar timing. Why now?
“I’ve thought about being the Antichrist ever since the word was first taught to me at Christian school. In the Bible, the word antichrist is only used as a description of people who don’t believe in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. He is not described as one satanic entity—as the beast of Revelation which many people believe—but as a person, any person, who deviates from the Christian orthodoxy. But through years of myth-making and fear-sowing, Christianity metamorphosed antichrists into a single Antichrist, an apocalyptic villain and Christian bogeyman used to scare people much as Santa Claus is used to regulate children’s behavior.”
— Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (1997)
My friend Nicole Blackman was a music publicist in the 1990s, mostly for Goth Industrial Indie or Alternative Music bands like KMFDM (which she as a poet did a track for, “America” with the line, “America.. we get the celebrities we deserve.” She also briefly helped Interscope Records, Manson’s label, promote his early tours up until Anti-Christ Superstar. Nicole would say to me, “Manson is easy, all you have to do is send a fax (remember those) to local church groups and they will do all the publicity you need.” Full disclosure, I’ve been to Manson concerts in cities like Chicago, New York, Louisville and abroad in Prague. The Prague show is something I would like to highlight, because as popular as he was worldwide, the Anti-American stance of his show imagery just doesn’t work outside of the USA. Marilyn Manson IS the celebrity WE deserve. Three decades of teen rage proves this.
The controversy doesn’t end with Evangelicals, or start with Columbine, Manson is exactly who he said he was: the Antichrist.
At the turn of the century, Manson was very useful to the left. With the power of the Evangelicals who only since the 1980s were even developed enough to be a political force, Manson’s antics were welcomed as a sort of anarchy. Michael Moore interviewed Manson in his 2002 Bowling for Colombine movie, “I am the poster boy for fear, because I represent what everyone’s afraid of. Because I do and say what I want. Things like [Columbine] represent two talking points, violence in entertainment and gun control, how perfect that that was the two things that we were going to talk about in the upcoming election.”
Manson of course plays with politics, but only when it serves him. In a 2017 NME interview he wailed when the writer asked the question about his video that had a Trump-like man symbolically decapitated, “The only thing it had to do with politics was what people wanted to make it. It could be a preacher, it could just be a businessman. It could be anything, but in no way does it say it is Trump. But of course when you release it on election day, it makes a statement.”
Manson has always been in control of his statements, but none of them are particularly political, always with the addition of his own eccentricity and research addressing the American cultural miasma. Sodomy (which is still illegal in 14 states), sadomasochism, fascism (as many Rock Stars play with from Roger Waters to David Bowie), and the destruction of God and the American Family. Sometimes considered the philosopher of rock, he was even given an honorary priesthood in the campy atheist Church of Satan by its founder Anton LaVey. But, again, this was all ideological. His early heroes being figures like Beat novelist William S. Burroughs and surrealist Salvador Dali. He was even a writer for music rags before fronting Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids. Brian Warner became Marilyn Manson because of the American softness and tragic life of Marilyn Monroe and the cultist Charles Manson and his family. Point for point even his name would inspire the depth of his reverence for the outsider, and his dedication, revealing the American lie of Exceptionalism. Unless, you can say tragedy zealots were exceptional.
In 2016, Manson said to Globe. “Right now we’re in such a state of confusion when it comes to religion, politics, sexuality, and how they all tie together, and it’s being turned into a circus and a sideshow — and that’s something that I’ve been described as a ringleader of”, and maybe he is. Especially now.
In the playbook of ridiculous sexual relationships, E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey there is this passage:
“[Ana] “You’re a sadist?”
“I’m a Dominant.” His eyes are a scorching gray, intense.
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
“It means I want you to willingly surrender yourself to me, in all things.”
I frown at him as I try to assimilate this idea.
“Why would I do that?”
“To please me,” he whispers as he cocks his head to one side, and I see a ghost of a smile.
Please him! He wants me to please him! I think my mouth drops open. Please Christian Grey. And I realize, in that moment, that yes, that’s exactly what I want to do. I want him to be damned delighted with me. It’s a revelation.”
The only difference between the doomed romantic relationships between Manson and his many loves since Dita Von Teese, including the relationship that would inevitably destroy his marriage with Von Teese — Evan Rachel Wood, was Manson is a sadist, not just a dominant. Make no mistake, the allegations toward Brian Hugh Warner are very real, if the context will be lost on most people.
Do I believe Marilyn Manson did what his accused said he did, of course I do, in fact Manson hasn’t as of yet denied it from what I can gather — he only used one powerful word to describe his transgression: Consent. Anything beyond that is something no one other than a legal team and a judge can prove otherwise. Consent is defined by law, nothing else — Trial by Twitter has yet to hold-up in court. In the case of Brian Hugh Warner, if this goes to court, it will be California State law regarding his plea of consent based on evidence.
I will get back to this in a moment.
The idea of sadomasochism heralded from the books of a certain Marquis de Sade and his writings, specifically Justine and Philosophy of the Bedroom, illustrated the idea in lurid detail. Sade, a nobleman and a politician, was a known ‘pervert’. In fact his kinks, although not an overt act of politics, had political overtones and were dangerous to the idea of the French state. As the playwright Peter Weiss wrote, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, “What's the point of a revolution without general copulation copulation copulation?” What in deed, Sade would spend years of imprisonment wondering just that.
Donatien Alphonse François de Sade was imprisoned for 32 years of his life, ten of which was in the Bastille. His incarceration was by Royale decree, the lettre de cachet, a writ signed by the monarch against his political enemies. Part of his imprisonment was because he was considered insane. There was no formal charge against him. He was imprisoned because the head of state didn’t like him. He was dangerous. After the revolution became a delegate to the National Convention representing the far left aspect of French politics at the time and was later imprisoned by Napoleon for the writing of Justine and other works. We don’t know if this was a political imprisonment but we can surmise that it wasn’t about bad prose. The Marquis de Sade’s last relationship was with a 14 year old girl, that lasted for four years until his death.
“What can never be proven or verified in the present, must be believed, because it is absurd.” (Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels)
Gnosticism is the earliest dissent against the equally absurd early Christians. Gnostics share only the same God as Christianity, and the same basic structure. Make no mistake, it is heresy, a heretical, group of ideas mostly forgotten until 1945 with a discovery in Egypt of 13 books in a sarcophagus. To those that follow the Gnostic ideas, it is the truth that the fake news—do not want us to know.
“That which is hidden will be revealed." that is, if you are in the know. A typical Gnostic mantra, also a Nazi one.
In the 1990s, Rock N Roll (the waning musical choice that was made popular by Trent Reznor’s NIN and was being replaced quickly by the dominance of Hip Hop, shoe gaze and grunge) was an aggressive neo-gnostic perspective. The Gnostic Rock Star filled stadiums replaced the Revivalism offshoot of Christian politics, Pentecostalism. In Marilyn Manson, we got the pulpit of the God of Fuck. with a bit of Industrial noise covered by post-glam metal and a lot of call back to surrealism and German-expressionism in its delivery. It was a cultural manifest destiny, or rather, it was a lot of fun, maybe too much fun.
In The Perverts Guide to Ideology, Slovenian super-philosopher Slavoj Žižek in talking about the Industrial rock band Rammstein names a reason to rock’s flirting with the Gnostic fascist ideology, we need it:
“The minimal elements of the nazi ideology enacted by Rammstein are something like pure elements of libidinal investment. Enjoyment has to be as it were condensed in some minimal ticks, gestures which do not have precise ideological meaning. What Rammstein does is it liberates these elements from their nazi articulation. It allows us to enjoy them in their pre-ideological state. The way to fight nazism is to enjoy these elements, ridiculous as they were here, by suspending the nazi horizon of meaning. This way you undermine nazism from within.”
The idea is rock’s worst, most desperate moments that incidentally draw attention to it and fill stadiums stops the onslaught of the worst of humanity. We have to watch the full destructive power of a controlled fascism in order to walk away from actual fascism. But do we? Are we that evil at heart?
No, I’d posit we aren’t. But whether Manson and other rockers acknowledged at the time is what they were doing was attacking the very heart of American Exceptionalism in the latter 20th Century. The self-centered, aggrandized even, idea of American politics and commerce had fully been realized and was on the down-swing. By attacking the idea of the family unit, religion, and government Manson gave his fans — the teens and young adults that like the Gnostic followers of old “understood” — a way to express themselves. Where would they put this feeling otherwise? Who would they take it out on?
She tells me I'm a pretty bullet
I'm gonna be a star someday
Mother says that we should look away
She tells me I'm a pretty bullet
An imitation ChristI've got love songs in my head killing us away
Do you love your guns?
(Yeah)
God?
(Yeah)
The government?— Marilyn Manson, Guns, God and Government
Eleanor of Aquitaine was the richest woman in the Western World during her lifetime. Her eight children would become Kings and Queens and monarchs of all sorts throughout Europe. She was the main monarch during the 2nd Crusade, the most successful one, and she also invented what would become neo-feminism in the Court of Love.
The pretext of the myth of the Court of Love was that during the second Crusade many of the lords and noblemen were gone to war and the women were left with running the manors and kingdoms. Often, and clandestine, these women would take on lovers, Knights and other noblemen that were left behind or just returning from war. Eleanor herself was a product of both marriages and annulments, and was often considered the more capable ruler. As the story goes, she commissioned the cleric Andreas the Chaplin (Andreas Capellanus) to write a treatise, tongue in cheek, about how a man was to act towards a woman of her court. She herself was said to have at least 60 ladies in waiting and various others in her personal court. History Answers website states the history:
Andreas Capellanus did indeed write such a book: known as De Amore, or ‘About Love’, it was inspired by Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, translated as ‘The Arts Of Love’. The premise of the work is that of the author informing his pupil, Walter, of the dangers of love that await him. Whereas in Ovid’s work the pursued woman was at the mercy of her would-be suitor, Andreas Capellanus turned this concept on its head in his revolutionary text: in De Amore, the woman was in control, taking charge of the developing relationship, her admirer in turn her vassal, the one who must prove himself worthy of her. De Amore consisted of three books: the first discussed the origins of the concept of love and how it should be defined, while the second consisted of a series of dialogues or conversations, showing how the process of romance should take place. The third book in turn was made up of cases from the supposedly ‘real life’ Courts of Love, presided over by Eleanor and her associates.
The judgements of the court were based, according to the author, on a series of 31 articles, that included among them such pearls of wisdom as, ‘Moral integrity alone makes one worthy of love’ and ‘The true lover believes only that which he thinks will please his beloved’. Eleanor is specifically referenced in several places throughout the text, including the case of a woman who refused to take back a former lover. He had previously asked for, and been granted, her permission to show his affections to another, but returned to his original mistress, having remained faithful during his absence, begging to be reinstated. The woman, however, was having none of it, and the man went before the courts to plead his case. Eleanor is said to have declared in favour of the knight, as he had indeed remained faithful. Her daughter Marie is also referenced, on one occasion asked to settle whether true love can exist between man and wife, ruling in the end with the rather galling verdict that it is actually impossible.
In the days, weeks, months and maybe years leading up to the Canceling of Brian Hugh Warner initiated by his ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood there was a change brewing. The #metoo movement had taken down incredibly powerful men like producer Harvey Weinstein and actor Bill Cosby. This wasn’t just trial by Twitter, it went to the courts, pushed by powerful district attorneys, government officials, state and US Government Senators and Representatives. The movement itself was predicated by the almost impossible task of doing the same to a US President, as Donald J. Trump during his election was accused by more than 14 women, or stopping the ascension of a Supreme Court appointment that was by all indications a horrific abuser in his college fraternity. Nevertheless, the #metoo moment started Cancel Culture and became a powerful political tool that included the taking down of not only bad men, but known racists, homophobes, transphobes, and generally bad people in the public eye. Rich and powerful bad people.
In the 2020 election it is said that women, specifically suburban women, were the force that refused Donald Trump and elected Joe Biden to the Presidency of the United States, and his Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman, Black and Asian ever to hold that office. Who were their opposition? Neo-Nazi Proud Boys and former or current Pentecostals — everything Manson was once used to affront. In the insurrection-like attack of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 to try to stop the counting of the Electoral College votes that would make Biden President we saw what could happen if we continue to adhere to a form of fascism, something Manson replaced with cartoonish violence.
Just a few weeks after the world was shocked by the probable coup attempt of the US, starting with Senator Susan Rubio’s January 21st letter to the acting AG of the US and the head of the FBI asking for an investigation into the alleged terror Brian Warner and his alter-ego Marilyn Manson inflicted on numerous women, the iconic singer, performer and actor was to be taken down. In a way, this was less dramatic than when Weinstein or Cosby was dealt with — because no one who knew anything about Manson would disbelieve the allegations. He had been telling us, in no uncertain terms, for decades who he was.
No matter what we know, and who he seems to be, it still doesn’t answer the question even Manson himself seemed to ask: “Why now?”
Today I got a ballot in the mail, as many in California did. This is a Special Election Ballot for a seat on the California Senate for Los Angeles. The 2020 election is over but change on the legislative front is ongoing. 66% of the new legislators including judicial positions in California are held by women.
In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Evan Rachel Wood’s Phoenix Act into law. When Wood found out other women were experiencing the same type of behavior from Manson, she wanted to bring him to justice. She was told the statute of limitations was over, asking what she could do, she was told only one thing. Change the law. She did.
The law extends the statute of limitations from three to five years, and has a few other exceptions to the statute of limitations:
The State first discovers DNA evidence sufficient to charge the perpetrator;
The State first becomes aware of the existence of an audio or video recording, photographs or written or electronic communication that provides evidence sufficient to charge the perpetrator;
a person confesses to the offense;
three (3) or more victims present other evidence against the same perpetrator
To recap:
California Senator Susan Rubio, a naturalized immigrant from Mexico and an advocate for Domestic Abuse survivors was instrumental in building the legal case against Manson.
Almost simultaneously to the Instagram statement by Evan Rachel Wood naming her abuser, four other women came out with their own abuse stories. Within 48 hours there were more than 30 responses of similar abuse, or support, all plausible, and corroborated.
Rose McGowen, a former lover of Manson and advocate for Women’s equality in Hollywood, came out in support, although said her experience with Manson wasn’t like that. Ex-Band members and assistants corroborated with stories including at least one, Wes Borland, that said they witnessed Evan Rachel Wood being abused. They called keeping it quiet, “The Code”.
By Wednesday Manson had lost his record label, a spot on American Gods and then his CAA agent.
Wednesday evening Dita Von Teese, Manson’s Ex-Wife, made a sole statement that stated she had not experienced the same type of abuse in their seven years together. She said they split because of drug abuse and infidelity. Evan Rachel Wood was evidently the infidelity.
As of this writing many more accounts have surfaced and more are expected.
On February 2, United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one day after Evan Rachel Wood’s post calling out Manson, went on Instagram Live and did two very important things. She was discussing the Capitol Riot and calling out the Congress people supporting Trump. She said she was a survivor of sexual abuse, and two, said that the trauma inflicted upon her by members of her own congressional body were exactly the same thing as sexual trauma.
Ocasio-Cortez's video has been shared widely , over 1 million Instagram views. Clips have been viewed more than 3 million times on Twitter. Ocasio-Cortez specifically named Senator Ted Cruz of Texas as someone that was exhibiting the behavior of an abuser. As well, Republican Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Republican Alabama Representative Mo Brooks were named as giving the insurrectionists power by their votes against certifying Biden after the insurrection attempt.
Make no mistake, calling the insurrection out in the same breath as condemning sexual predators is not a flippant response by the sophomore representative. It is an emotionally powerful plea to the people of the US, and a warning to those that defy it to understand that the shift of power is happening. That men, powerful men, are not going to be able to be abusive predators in the emerging social contract.
“Sacrifice won't suffice
Resurrection needs your death to happen twice”
— Marilyn Manson, Children of Cain
All said and done, Brian Hugh Warner is just a rock star, an aging one. One that hasn’t made as culturally relevant an album since the late 1990s, but has consistently produced good if not great albums (albeit more and more personal and distanced from his initial indictment of Guns, God and country). By all indications he has metaphorically died and been reborn multiple times over his career. He has also been accused and sent to court many times before now.
Unless the Phoenix Act can be invoked and Marilyn Manson can be brought to justice, Brian Warner will go free.
For those that were allegedly abused, the fight is much longer. Manson called “consent with like minded people” as his defense. Outside of the obvious social constructs, consent has many forms and definitions. Legal consent is defined in many ways.
California Penal Code 261.6 gives the state's definition of consent as part of a statute about crimes against people involving sexual assault. It defines consent as a person's positive cooperation in act or attitude in accordance with an act of free will.
However this is convoluted, because of other the forms of consent. Types of consent include implied consent, express consent, informed consent and unanimous consent. In contract law consent is “when two parties entered into the contract there should agree upon the same thing in the same manner” in other words there would be a shared philosophy or idea between the people involved.
The legal definition of consent also relates to minors: minors under the age of 18 cannot give consent to an adult, that is considered statutory rape. In some states, this extends to 21, and anyone over 10 years senior to an individual 21 or under is committing a felony if they have sex.
A charge related to statutory rape in California is the charge of lewd acts with a minor child, under Penal Code 288. PC 288 defines a “lewd act with a minor child” as either: touching a child for sexual purposes, or causing a child to touch him/herself or someone else for a sexual purpose. Depending on the facts of a case, a conviction of lewd acts with a minor can lead to life in the California state prison system.
Marilyn Manson was called out on Instagram by a few different accounts for approaching underage girls.
One account described how he made her do sexual acts on video for him and his friends for money when she was 16 and 17, and took $10,000 from him over a year’s time from his personal PayPal. She continued to provide the videos to him because she and her family, “needed the money.” When she turned 18, Manson was alleged to ask her for more videos and threatened to release her previous videos on the popular adult video community site PornHub if she did not. She said he would use defunct messaging apps like AOL messenger or others to communicate with her, or call her directly to cover being able to trace him.
Another account related incidents of sexual activity with a minor as far back as 1995 when Manson was in his 20s. The woman said she was 16, and Manson was interested in her sister who was 13, “in braces and looked like she was 11.” This was when on tour with The Spooky Kids and incidents like this are similar to ones described in his autobiography co-penned by Neil Strauss in 1998.
When Manson first started the public relationship with Evan Rachel Wood she was 18 years old and he was 36, in Wood’s statement she said that Manson had been “grooming her since she was a teenager.” Grooming is a technical term in sexual abuse cases where a minor child is engaged in a relationship with an adult in secrecy. The abuse includes gaining the trust of the child by gift giving, isolating the child, making the abuser the most important part of the child’s life, sexualizing the relationship (not necessarily actual sex) and maintaining control by loss of needs the abuser met, threats, actual violence or humiliation.
“Antichrist Superstar was about using your power, not your misery, and watching that power destroy you and everyone else around you. What was happening to me now seemed to be some kind of perverse combination of both types of self-destruction.”
— Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (1998)
Marilyn Manson is not a Mensa level genius, via current IQ testing. At allegedly 148 he is up there, and very gifted, but not a genius. He suffers from Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, what that means is his heart beats faster than normal. It’s not life threatening. Although Manson has been nominated multiple times (in 1999, 2001, 2004, and 2014), he has never won a Grammy.
Brian Warner is a cutter. For years he has scarred himself. Notably, when Evan Rachel Wood left him interview after interview he stated he was, “in a bad spot for a long time.” People have reported that he has at least threatened to kill himself, often with others or within a suicide pact with someone he is romantically entangled.. “I will do you first, I don’t trust you.” he has said in a text message.
Manson penned an article for Rolling Stone in 1999, on Columbine. In it he said something that would be his stance and defense of most things:
“America loves to find an icon to hang its guilt on. But, admittedly, I have assumed the role of Antichrist; I am the Nineties voice of individuality, and people tend to associate anyone who looks and behaves differently with illegal or immoral activity. Deep down, most adults hate people who go against the grain…
Rather than teaching a child what is moral and immoral, right and wrong, we first and foremost can establish what the laws that govern us are. You can always escape hell by not believing in it, but you cannot escape death and you cannot escape prison…
In my work I examine the America we live in, and I’ve always tried to show people that the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don’t expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue – it’s been happening every day for a long time.”
Evan Rachel Wood in her Instagram indictment of Brian Hugh Warner called out the “many industries that have enabled him.” Which industries were that? It wasn’t just his direct management, his paid assistants that were a revolving door, the tour roadies and corporate funded stages of the world, television and film, but what about the Hot Topic, blame the shopping centers for Mall Goths, and later Napster or iTunes that pushed him. Marilyn Manson never won a Grammy, but he fulfilled a need.
Manson is marketable. He is talented. He fulfilled a need and was sold to us and we bought it.
Can we blame Spotify or SoundCloud for Daniel Hernandez , known professionally as Tekashi69 or 6ix9ine? He also had issues with sexual assault, even performance sexuality with minors and still was able to make a music video while on house arrest. As gross as it is, he still sells to fans. Can we blame Manson again for Columbine? Will he become the poster demon for serial domestic violence? Does he deserve it, do we deserve him? Even if justice is served, as it should be COLD, what spectacle will ensue with. someone with this much celebrity. Many people didn’t know Weinstein, it had been years since Cosby had his day, Manson still gets a voice in today’s press.
We have to look deeper, and address what it is about us as a people that want the Antichrist Superstar. The aggression. The masculinity, or in Manson’s case the sometimes androgynous Rock God like Bowie. What draws us to Horror imagery? The threats of murder. What draws us to people that are defiant and fucked up? What is it about those that defile that gives us something to hate so much we love it?
Until we understand what it was about Brian Hugh Warner that drew him to his grandfather’s basement. Until we understand the repression that is innate in our puritan culture that makes things unknowable or hidden, and the more hidden the more fascinating. Until we understand why it is we covet youth, sexualize it and celebrate those that undeniably have an issue. Until we go deeper, we will continue to have someone like Manson exalted.
We gave Marilyn Manson the little power he had.
Bil Brown, Los Angeles, February 4, 2021
FIREEEEEEEEEE HOLY SH*T!!!!!!!!!!!