Marilyn Manson’s "Don't Answer the Door" at first sounds like a scene straight out of a horror movie or the poetic mind of Edgar Allan Poe, where the subject is trapped inside while voices scream from the outside. But when you look closer at the lyrics, it looks to actually be a song about survival, getting sober, and taking back control of your life. Instead of being a song about hiding in fear, it is about setting hard boundaries. It shows that true power doesn't come from fighting your past mistakes, but from locking them out completely so you can heal. The song starts by setting up a safe space away from the rest of the world: “Unscrew the lightbulbs / In your eyes / Let my darkness inhale you.” Here, Manson is setting up the idea that he is deliberately choosing to take sanctuary in a place of darkness by removing himself from an artificial light. In this darkness, away from all the noise, he can finally listen to his inner voice. This imagery perfectly mirror...
When on February 1st 2021 Marilyn Manson was called out by name on social media by Evan Rachel Wood and a number of other women for alleged abusive behavior, and in the lawsuits that followed months later, one of the most common terms used to describe this abusive behavior was "gaslighting", which is an umbrella term that includes grooming, controlling, brainwashing, love bombing and manipulating with a goal to get someone to question their own reality, memory or perceptions. The association of Marilyn Manson with gaslighting began with Evan Rachel Wood's 2018 congressional testimony , in which she described that the abuse she suffered by her then anonymous abuser was centered around gaslighting. She said: My experience with domestic violence was this. Toxic mental, physical, and sexual abuse, which started slow, but escalated over time, including threats against my life, severe gaslighting and brainwashing, waking up to the man that claimed to love me raping what he beli...