Marilyn Manson; Is He Really What Society Perceives Him to Be?

Marilyn Manson: is he Really What Society Perceives Him to be?

When the world hears the name Brian Warner, most of them think of a nobody that doesn't affect their lives. Yet when they hear his pseudonym some shudder, others disapprove of him and most say that he is the incarnation of Satan and represents all that is evil. The name that I am referring to is the Reverend Marilyn Manson. Some people follow his ideas and listen to what he has to say, they defend him in conversations and do not judge him but see him as a musician with a message. Others don't speak of Manson, they are indifferent to his message and what he does, they believe that everyone has a right to their own opinion and that it does not concern them. Most people say that his whole image is nothing but a gimmick to make money by influencing confused teens. These are lies, Brian Warner is a man with a message, he is not a gimmick to make money but simply expressing himself in the way he sees fit.

As a child, Brian Warner attended Heritage Christian school. He was an outcast, not very well liked, yet rebellious. Every Friday, the teachers would give lectures on musicians that related to the Apocalypse and "Satan's followers and worshippers" such as Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. He began to think that this was really supposed to happen and the end of the world was coming.

"I became obsessed with it watching movies like The Exorcist and The Omen and reading prophetic books like Centuries by Nostradamus, 1984 by George Orwell and the novelized version of the film A Thief in the Night...Combined with the weekly harangues at Christian school, it made the Apocalypse seem so real, so tangible, so close that I was constantly haunted by dreams and worries about what would happen if I found out who was the Antichrist was. Would I risk my life to save everyone else? What if I already had the mark of the beast somewhere on me-underneath my scalp or on my ass where I couldn't see it? What if the Antichrist was me? I was filled with fear and confusion..."

His questions were incessant and he would not find any answers in his teachers, so he turned to this forbidden music out of rebelliousness and a curiosity for the truth. Manson began to like the music and follow the bands, he owned many of their records.

In his search for the truth, his curiosity landed him in some very perculiar situations that are seen as traumatizing, such as one incident when he entered the forbidden basement of his grandfather and found pictures of beastiality, old porno films was stuck under the stairs as his grandfather was masturbating.

"His pants were down around his knees, a magazine was spread over his legs, and he was hacking and moving his right hand rapidly on his lap. At the same time, with his left hand, he was wiping phlegm from his trecheostomy with a yellow-crusted handkerchief. We knew what he was doing, and we wanted to leave right away...After several excruciatingly slow minutes, a gruesome noise leapt from his throat, like the sound a car engine makes when someone turns the key in the ignition when it's already on. I turned my head away...When I looked again, he had lowered his handkerchief, the same one he used to wipe away his phlegm, and was sopping up his mess."

He began to become more reserved in his fantasies. Because of his lack of popularity, he was humiliated in front of his peers at school several times and wanted to get himself expelled. He soon realized that this was impossible, even after putting a used dildo from his grandfather's basement on the teacher's chair, because his parents paid to send him to the Christian school. Brian eventually transferred to a public school where he was beat up for coming from a sissy Christian school. He became friendless and in search of answers. Just as those answers were coming to him at the end of high school and he began to make friends and to have sex, he had to move to Fort Lauderdale, Florida because his father had obtained a new job.

"As I lay in my bed that last night in Canton Ohio, I hated my parents more than I had ever hated them before. I was finally beginning to fit in in Canton, and now I had to live on the outskirts of frat-boy Fort Lauderdale because my father had gotten a new and boring job as a furniture salesman. I had made it through the darkest places-from haunted houses to high school gyms. I'd had bad drugs, worse sex and no self-esteem. It was all over and behind me, and now I had to start all over again. I wasn't excited to move. I was bitter and angry-not only just at my parents, but at the world"

With nothing to do and high school finished Brain became a drifter composing bad and disturbing poetry. He turned himself inward and let all his hatred out in the form of his appearance. He became what is known to society as a freak or a Goth. People that heard his poetry bluntly told him that is was worthless and magazine editors constantly rejected his efforts to get his work published. He was told several times that he had a good voice and he should start a band. Manson on a trip to New York, wrote his first song in the hotel room: "Cake and Sodomy" (see annex A for lyrics). The band was formed in 1989 as a new age industrial metal group. "I needed a secret identity in order to write about my music in the 25th parallel" (p.85 of the Long Hard Road Out of Hell)

"The name Marilyn Manson really described what the music was always intended to be: a juxtaposition of opposites. Taking two things that normally don't belong together, Marilyn Manson. At the same time it was also my statement on growing up in America. Those were two icons that were memorable for me as a kid and both equally as famous for their own separate reasons. I always thought that was an interesting look at American culture"

Brian was looking to push the envelope in his performances and come out naked, receive fellatio on stage and performed animalistic acts such as cutting himself on stage or asking people to spit on him, like in his movie entitled: "Marilyn Manson-Dead To the World". People began to become interested in his sound and his way of thinking. This was the beginning of his immortality as a man.

Marilyn Manson was the spawn of a traumatizing childhood. As a boy Brian was shunned and witnessed traumatizing acts. He was violated by a neighbor, who was sent to military school for his actions and came back and killed Brian's only best friend, a dog named Aleusha. He was harassed and laughed at for his scrawny appearance and beaten