In a recent podcast interview about narcissistic abuse, Evan Rachel Wood said that Marilyn Manson described in his autobiography how the Brian Warner part of him was dead and whatever he had become was now his true self. Her purpose was to show that Manson completely abandoned his humanity and truly came to embody a disassociated narcissistic monster. But is this what his autobiography actually said or even implied? No, of course not. He says something along those lines, but she completely twists it to make a point that fits her narrative rather than the actual facts. What Manson actually describes in his autobiography is that he went through a personal apocalypse. He writes: "When I first conceived of Antichrist Superstar , I set out to create an apocalypse. But I didn’t realize it was going to be a personal one. As a child, I had been a weakling, a worm, a follower, a small shadow trying to find a place in an infinite world of light. In the end, in order to find that place...
It is my intention to explore the Marilyn Manson album One Assassination Under God - Chapter 1 in its entirety, one track and music video at a time. There are two things I want to establish before I begin: 1. I believe the album takes place in the Holy Wood "universe", which Manson described as an "alternate dystopia of Hollywood where everything is taken to the extreme," and which was first explored in Antichrist Superstar , Mechanical Animals and Holy Wood - the so-called Tryptich - and continued to pop up on other albums. 2. I also believe that the album is a metaphor which can be applied to Manson's life, but not only. This also aligns it with what the Tryptich essentially is as well. My thoughts for the interpretation of the album will probably evolve over time, especially since this is only the first half of the story, as Manson mentioned in a statement, and we will have a much clearer picture of the entire story when Chapter 2 is released some time in ...