Marilyn Manson
Nothing/Interscope
2003
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This is an album where the stereo makes a big difference. I played it on someone else's stereo, because there is just no way to pick up the disciplined bass, rhythm and lead guitar appropriately on many stereos not specifically built for heavy metal/rap types of music. The reviewer will make no secret that subjectively Marilyn Manson is where it should be for revolutionaries today in their mood--brutally energetic. As the vocalist says about himself, he is a "grenade." At the same time, while the art form is the weight-lifter's equivalent of rapidly twirling 500 pound weights in mid-air with two fingers, the politics stand undeveloped relatively speaking. Thus, the music ends up being the greatest waste of potential in a decade. That can be a compliment to the musical form or a criticism of the politics. Marilyn Manson is aware that hard-driving music like this should be associated with something in particular--sex, politics and social commentary coming to mind. What ends up happening is mostly sex drive and misogyny--an updated and more intelligent version of Guns n' Roses. So we end up agreeing that the album is "perpetual rebellion with absolutely no cause" as the lyrics in "The Bright Young Things" go. Playing with cross-dressing images, devil images and Nazi uniforms--Marilyn Manson evokes hatred from the redneck crowd as to be expected. It seems that no artist has done anything "original" in a bourgeois way without provoking the redneck crowd.
While pop stars Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson also play with cross-gender make-up and looks, it seems that the rednecks really noticed a combination of gender-related ambiguity and Satanic images in Marilyn Manson's case. Yet much of the same crowd will find that Manson puts forward an ultra-normal heterosexual music for many songs. This leaves them in a bind of rejecting ultra-heterosexual brutal misogyny while calling the band "fags." Lifting something from the "Church of Satan," Marilyn Manson says in "Slut Garden" that "I memorize the words in the porno movies/It's the only thing that I want to believe/I memorize the words in the porno movies/This is a new religion to me." On the plus side, MIM will say that people who worship Kim Jong-il or pornography are at least worshipping something concrete while most people are praying to non-existent entities that cannot help them with anything. "[Interviewer:] There is a lot of talk about George W. Bush and his ultra conservative politics. You're far from conservative, but when he was elected, you said something along the lines that it would suit you, since art develops better in a conservative and repressed environment. Now that he has been in office for a while, do you still agree? Is it worth the price? "[Marilyn Manson:] From the perspective I have now, I can only say that it is quite a sacrifice. I see it as a sacrifice for the future. What happens now in America is some sort of groundwork. We do make experiences and learn to deal with repression, and hopefully we can pass our experiences on to the following generation and help them to avoid making the same mistakes. Maybe through being suppressed, people will unite and think about ways to stop the suppression. It might sound cruel, but without pressure a lot of things wouldn't have happened. Maybe – hopefully – it is a wakeup call. I always said that we have become too comfortable. Maybe that's the price we pay. I mentioned before that I think people forgot how to think for themselves. Maybe now they realize that they have to learn how to think again, accept responsibility and not simply believe everything the media or politicians tell them." (1) In one concert, a fan observes that Marilyn Manson wiped his ass with the U.S. flag.(2) He admits being an American anti-American, stuck in-between and looking at the dominant culture from the outside. Claiming to be the anti-Christ, Marilyn Manson says, "If you haven't yet realized that CHRISTIAN AMERICA's good-guy badges, pseudo-morality and selective judgement decides FOR us what's 'right' and what's 'wrong' according to what benefits them. (e.g. Don't spend your money on that, it's evil! Give it to jesUS (sic) ). . . . . $alvation1 F*CKING A-men."(2) For this sort of thing, Senator and Al Gore's running mate in 2000 Joseph Lieberman called Marilyn Manson the "sickest" band out there promoted by a "mainstream" business. In the battle between Amerikan liberalism and Christianity, Marilyn Manson plays the trump card of sex, which is why many believe that Christian reactionaries cannot win the "culture wars." It is not for nothing that the reactionaries spend all their time baying at Jane Fonda. Likewise with Marilyn Manson, how can these red-blooded males disagree with "Ka-boom, ka-boom"? After wimmin recite reasons for fucking Marilyn Manson in "Para-Noir," Marilyn Manson says, "I don't need a reason to hate you the way that I do." In contrast, MIM would say there is no point in hating wimmin for having no developed sense of sexuality parallel to men's. If most wimmin have always historically fucked for extrinsic reasons--reasons external to the sex itself--men can look back historically and blame their own property system. It was the patriarchy that originally took the right to property and government power away from wimmin. It is the patriarchy that created prostitution thousands of years ago as the oldest profession, in a system where money can connect with anything. It is only now in times of unprecedented humyn advance and prosperity that nine digit figures of wimmin we call the gender aristocracy can possibly entertain what is entertaining only. In Vodevil, it's "kiss baby kiss/bang baby bang/suck baby suck" and more of the same in song getting a lot of airtime, "Mobscene." This is all standard rock patriarchy that the rednecks usually love. We should be clear we defend Marilyn Manson against Joseph Lieberman and redneck Amerikkka, especially for the time being when there is so much trouble with music in general. Only later in the dictatorship of the proletariat will we be able to revise Marilyn Manson songs to take out the misogyny. On the gap between form and political content, at least one critic(3) says that with Marilyn Manson often portraying Nazis, Christians and other pathetic characters, the gap is intentional. These people have uniforms but no political understanding or direction. Our conclusion is different: some Marilyn Manson music is indeed giving much-deserved criticism of the sort pointed to by the critic, but the misogyny in most of this album is intentional. The hard-driving energy in this band needs to flow somewhere else, but in the current system it has to come out as saleable hatred of wimmin. We encourage Marilyn Manson to look a little deeper at how sexuality came to be what it is now. Outrage with the state of gender relations is correct, but the outrage uninformed by correct theory is counter-revolutionary.
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