Marilyn Manson

In this week’s blog I would like to talk about one of the most bizarre and interesting individuals in all of music history. The artist named himself after a famous actress (Marilyn Monroe) and an infamous murder (Charles Manson) hence Marilyn Manson. This guy has been selling records since the 90’s and has been considered by many to be the man at the center of the darkest genres of the counter-cultural world. He has been criticized for doing obscene things at his concerts, influencing sex and violence, distributing disturbing artwork, and has been accused of being a Priest of Satan. I used think of the guy as just another freak-show in the music world, but as I took a closer look at his personal life it seems that many of the negative assumptions about him and his music are misinterpreted. He does not claim to be a priest of Satan, he grew up with parents who were both Christians and for a time went to a religious school.
What too made think differently about Manson was when he made his appearance on The O’Reilly Factor a few years back. Most people who are asked upon to go on that show get frustrated with O’Reilly because all he does is try to make them look bad. From listening to the lyrics in Marilyn Manson’s songs I thought Manson would have flipped out on O’Reilly, but he did the opposite. He was very out spoken answered all of O’Reilly’s questions without any hesitation, frustration, arguing, or cursing. He was also very polite which totally dumbfounded O’Reilly who seemed to have just wanted to make him look bad. But, what I found most interesting is when Manson talked about how things in music can be misinterpreted which is what we have been talking about in class. Some of his songs have been criticized for promoting suicide yet; he claims his songs are about getting through suicidal situations. He also stated that he uses profanity in his music only to get his message out (which is uniform for most protest music today) and he disapproves of instances (like Columbine) when people use violence to get their message out. So while Manson still is one bizarre dude I don’t think of him as a violent Satanist anymore.