A Different Kind of Comeback At first glance, Henri Alexander Lévy's music video for Marilyn Manson's "Front Toward Enemy" appears surprisingly restrained. Considering the title and the confrontational tone of the song, one might reasonably expect a visual statement built around warfare, retaliation, or public vindication. Instead, the music video repeatedly turns away from those expectations. It lingers on a child dressed in military attire, a motionless body on an examination table, shelves of psychology books, childhood trophies, playground equipment, and a cabinet filled with carefully arranged artifacts. None of these images directly illustrates the lyrics, yet none of them feels arbitrary. By the time the music video ends, it becomes clear that Lévy is asking the viewer to consider something more complicated than revenge. That immediately distinguishes the video from the song itself. Borrowing its title from the M18A1 Claymore mine, whose front face bears th...
When Marilyn Manson was first named and accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault on social media in February 2021, and I read through the various statements against him, my suspicions immediately arose when they started using common language and describing something similar in style to how Bram Stoker slowly but ultimately reveals in his novel Dracula that Dracula is a vampire preying on and controlling his victims. And when the court complaints against Manson were being made public months later, and you can even see it in Evan Rachel Wood's documentary Phoenix Rising , they went even further in narrowing down every aspect of their relationship to Manson as them gradually realizing he was a monster and he was someone they needed to escape from. For those unfamiliar with the novel Dracula (though I'm sure everyone knows the basic story), here is a brief summary to help you understand how it unravels: Brief Summary of Bram Stoker's Dracula In Bram Stoker's horror no...