Marilyn Manson will performing at Arizona Bike Week in Scottsdale, Arizona on Saturday, April 5th 2025! Though Manson had not been previously scheduled for this event which is just a few weeks away, yesterday Arizona Bike Week made the following announcement on their social media pages: "Five Finger Death Punch had to cancel their performance due to a family matter, but we’re thrilled to announce Marilyn Manson will be taking the stage in the RockYard on Saturday, April 5th!! Saturday ticket holders will be receiving an email regarding this schedule change." Due to the lineup change, this will be Marilyn Manson's first headliner at a festival since his return to the stage last year. Regarding the nearly last minute schedule change, Arizona Bike Week producer Lisa Cyr told the Arizona Republic the following: “It’s been a little crazy, obviously. A lot of scrambling. But we’re pretty excited with the way it all turned out. Marilyn Manson, I hear that his last few tours hav...
II. EPISODE ONE (A)
In the first of three episodes for the docuseries Marilyn Manson: Unmasked, we are introduced to Marilyn Manson in a shocking way from the very beginning. I'm not sure the origins of the video clip, as I've never seen it before, but it is around 1995 and it shows him wearing an Adam Ant t-shirt with red lipstick smeared around the area of his mouth as he is being interviewed in a fairly crowded room of bandmates and groupies, while he randomly lights a fire in the middle of the floor. The first words spoken by Manson are the following: "Marilyn Manson is about transcending morality and sexuality; no boundaries, grey area - that's us." As he says this, two women are standing in front of him making out with each other. When he is asked: "Any accessories?" he replies: "Accessories? These two girls are accessories," pointing towards the two girls getting it on with each other who are now behind him. Then when asked: "What's your favorite way to orgasm?" he responds: "Anal sex accompanied by erotic asphyxiation. I like the thrill of not knowing if they're gonna pass out and die."
This clip is how we are introduced to Marilyn Manson, and it is clearly meant to set him up as a provocative individual from the outset. If you are not familiar with Manson and you only know that there are a bunch of sexual allegations against him which include rape and pedophilia, then his introductory words will sound like a confession. This is what I believe is the intention of the documentary filmmakers. It is a long running mantra of Manson accuser Evan Rachel Wood and publications like Rolling Stone that he was a "monster hiding in plain site," who told us for years in interviews and books and music who he really was, but fans never took what he said seriously or at least understood him to mean something else. This clip, which is clearly edited, will be repeated in the documentary several times to highlight the narrative that Manson was telling us all along that he was as horrible as his accusers say he was.
Does this edited clip in fact prove that Manson was telling us all along, since at least 1995, who he really is, that he was an abusive sexual deviant who had no morals or boundaries in his sexuality, which could include rape and pedophilia? Despite what the filmmakers would have you believe through their edited propaganda clip, this is absolutely not the case.
For example, in an interview with Jam Magazine in February 1995, Manson explained how it was people who were trying to push conservatism and political correctness that inspired him to create the Marilyn Manson persona, and that he relied on them to push his agenda of becoming a rock star like they relied on him to push their agendas by giving them someone to blame for the evils of society. "They made Marilyn Manson. Marilyn Manson, to me, is a representation of my generation, my culture," he said. Conservatives and the political correctness movement before Manson had a platform of fear in which they targeted various people and things to push their agenda, so Manson came along and finally said to them that they could instead just use him as a scapegoat, and by doing so they will help him rise to become an Antichrist Superstar figure with apocalyptic significance. By provoking conservatives and the politically correct, Manson was able to achieve his goals.
In the Jam Magazine interview, Manson is asked where is the line between the image of Marilyn Manson and the real person? He claims to be an "entertainer." Though he likes to stir up trouble for trouble's sake, at the same time he seems sincere about his social agenda. "Basically, I live this life, I'm stuck in this life," he says. "I don't exactly know how to describe it, but Marilyn Manson is a 24-hour thing. It's not something I can turn off." He says further: "America will paint me out to be this terrible person, responsible for teen suicide, mass murder. I want to call their bluff. 'I am the All-American Anti-Christ. Go ahead, be afraid. I am going to do all the things you think I'm going to do.' To them, it's the end of the world. To me, it's just starting trouble. I don't always have a good reason for the things I do. It's just to cause a little chaos. America needs it. Everything is so uptight. I do what I do. If I go to jail for it, so be it."
In 1995 it was common in interviews for Manson to repeat the phrase: "Marilyn Manson is about transcending morality and sexuality; no boundaries, grey area - that's us." However, there was usually more context to this, just like we read in the Jam Magazine interview, where he says: "People have been questioning my sexuality. Am I gay, straight, bi-sexual? To ask me that is to be ignorant to what Marilyn Manson stands for. Marilyn Manson transcends morality, and sexuality. He's a grey area. I don't like putting a label on anything... Anyone who knows me knows I like girls." We thus see that Marilyn Manson the entertainer, whose persona is meant to provoke people who push their morality through fear in order to become an object of their fear, was saying things in 1995 what conservatives feared most in order to get a reaction from them. The reality however is that he was a walking contradiction, as the interviewer mentions, to which Manson agreed, saying: "Within my personality, there's a balance between the Marilyn side and the Manson side. It's not as easy as the off-stage me and the on-stage me... I try to be honest, but sometimes I act how I'm expected to act. I'm here to entertain. A lot of bands these days don't want to admit that. They think it's being phony. But in a lot of ways admitting it is more honest than those who try to deny it. I'm saying, look, everyone's a hypocrite. I'm willing to go beyond it if you can admit it."
In a February 1995 interview with RIP Magazine, Manson elaborated further: "In 1990, when this whole thing started coming down, I was just writing lyrics. I had no intention of singing or starting a band. The name Marilyn Manson is something that came to me - through watching talk shows and reading Hollywood babble and that type of propaganda and sensationalism. I realized that Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson were the two most outstanding people from the '60s. I think Marilyn Monroe really epitomizes movie stardom. As I got into the idea further, I started realizing that the extreme positive and negative that I was trying to outline with these two names. There was a lot of beauty to be found in Manson. There was a lot of ugliness to be found in Monroe. The lines crossed. I resided in that grey area; that what I was doing transcended morality and sexuality."
Within this context, Manson's words from 1995 that open the docuseries make a lot more sense. No longer are you manipulated by the filmmakers into being provoked to think the worst possible thing in what he is saying, but you now understand the essence of who he is and what he was doing. He was provoking people's fears to make him a poster boy of their fears, which would in turn cause people to become fascinated with him, just like people are fascinated with movie stars and serial killers such as Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.
Despite this, Marilyn Manson is telling people to be their own individuals and think for themselves, to formulate their own beliefs and morals as they see fit. Commenting on his 1996 album Antichrist Superstar 20 years after its release in an interview from 2016, Manson explained: "I consider the record to be a ritual to bring about the apocalypse. Each time someone plays the record, it takes them one step further away from God and one step nearer to becoming an individual. In Christianity’s eyes, a nation of individuals is the apocalypse, because they will no longer have moral control."
In the Jam Magazine interview, Manson is asked where is the line between the image of Marilyn Manson and the real person? He claims to be an "entertainer." Though he likes to stir up trouble for trouble's sake, at the same time he seems sincere about his social agenda. "Basically, I live this life, I'm stuck in this life," he says. "I don't exactly know how to describe it, but Marilyn Manson is a 24-hour thing. It's not something I can turn off." He says further: "America will paint me out to be this terrible person, responsible for teen suicide, mass murder. I want to call their bluff. 'I am the All-American Anti-Christ. Go ahead, be afraid. I am going to do all the things you think I'm going to do.' To them, it's the end of the world. To me, it's just starting trouble. I don't always have a good reason for the things I do. It's just to cause a little chaos. America needs it. Everything is so uptight. I do what I do. If I go to jail for it, so be it."
In 1995 it was common in interviews for Manson to repeat the phrase: "Marilyn Manson is about transcending morality and sexuality; no boundaries, grey area - that's us." However, there was usually more context to this, just like we read in the Jam Magazine interview, where he says: "People have been questioning my sexuality. Am I gay, straight, bi-sexual? To ask me that is to be ignorant to what Marilyn Manson stands for. Marilyn Manson transcends morality, and sexuality. He's a grey area. I don't like putting a label on anything... Anyone who knows me knows I like girls." We thus see that Marilyn Manson the entertainer, whose persona is meant to provoke people who push their morality through fear in order to become an object of their fear, was saying things in 1995 what conservatives feared most in order to get a reaction from them. The reality however is that he was a walking contradiction, as the interviewer mentions, to which Manson agreed, saying: "Within my personality, there's a balance between the Marilyn side and the Manson side. It's not as easy as the off-stage me and the on-stage me... I try to be honest, but sometimes I act how I'm expected to act. I'm here to entertain. A lot of bands these days don't want to admit that. They think it's being phony. But in a lot of ways admitting it is more honest than those who try to deny it. I'm saying, look, everyone's a hypocrite. I'm willing to go beyond it if you can admit it."
In a February 1995 interview with RIP Magazine, Manson elaborated further: "In 1990, when this whole thing started coming down, I was just writing lyrics. I had no intention of singing or starting a band. The name Marilyn Manson is something that came to me - through watching talk shows and reading Hollywood babble and that type of propaganda and sensationalism. I realized that Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson were the two most outstanding people from the '60s. I think Marilyn Monroe really epitomizes movie stardom. As I got into the idea further, I started realizing that the extreme positive and negative that I was trying to outline with these two names. There was a lot of beauty to be found in Manson. There was a lot of ugliness to be found in Monroe. The lines crossed. I resided in that grey area; that what I was doing transcended morality and sexuality."
Within this context, Manson's words from 1995 that open the docuseries make a lot more sense. No longer are you manipulated by the filmmakers into being provoked to think the worst possible thing in what he is saying, but you now understand the essence of who he is and what he was doing. He was provoking people's fears to make him a poster boy of their fears, which would in turn cause people to become fascinated with him, just like people are fascinated with movie stars and serial killers such as Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.
Despite this, Marilyn Manson is telling people to be their own individuals and think for themselves, to formulate their own beliefs and morals as they see fit. Commenting on his 1996 album Antichrist Superstar 20 years after its release in an interview from 2016, Manson explained: "I consider the record to be a ritual to bring about the apocalypse. Each time someone plays the record, it takes them one step further away from God and one step nearer to becoming an individual. In Christianity’s eyes, a nation of individuals is the apocalypse, because they will no longer have moral control."
And when asked in an interview from 1994 what Marilyn Manson is about, he replied:
"We're about that balance, you know. For example, this really comes into play here in Salt Lake City. It's a very moral, christian sort of environment, so we're that balance that has to go against that. We're the devil's advocate, the accuser, the opposing side, you know, the underdog. That's kind of always our goal is to be on that side of the fence. We really represent individuality. Kids should think for themselves. Not to be like your friends who think they're individuals, but to be like you. Not to be like us, but to be what YOU are. Our music doesn't have anything to do with the way you look, or anything like that, it's what's in your head. Break out of the herd mentality and realize that it's the here and now. That there's no afterlife that's going to justify or punish. You have to make what you've got now work for you, and realize that everything pretty much is a lie, everything's a hoax. That's why Marilyn Manson is such a beyond fake stage name, it is to represent that it's so fake that it becomes real at that point. If you realize your hypocrisy, then you go past it. A lot of people in this city that have prohibited us from playing are sort of cheating themselves with self-deceit, saying, 'It's OK for us to do this behind closed doors, but they can't do this here.' Really all it comes down to is money, and someone here was at risk of losing money, obviously. I don't think it was ever about morals, because morals are always decided by who has the most artillery or money. It's not really about what really matters, nobody really cares about the kids here, nobody cares about exposing the kids to this obscene Marilyn Manson show, they just care about money. We, on the other hand, actually DO care about the kids, and what we're saying is a very harsh reality, and it's not diluted and wrapped up in lies like their parents are giving them. That's why their parents don't like it, because we're ruining their game, their big scam. I mean, the bottom line is that if any one does find what we do offensive, they should just turn it off. There's a lack of listener responsibility. People always want to put the responsibility on artists, or movies, or T.V. It's kind of late for that, you know. I was brought up with all of these things: T.V. and violence and sex, drugs, rock & roll, caffeine, sugar, all these things. We've turned out a certain way and we've become accustomed to it, and now they've decided, 'well, this isn't going to work. Let's use Nutrasweet, let's have less violence.' It's too late for that. You've made us out like this, and you have to deal with it. It's not that bad. I'm not saying we're 'bad' from our perspective. We're moral people. We're not trying to be immoral. We're just showing them that not everyone has the same morals. This is what we believe, and you believe what you want."
And in a 2017 interview, when asked, "Do you believe in the only Aleister Crowley quote most people know: Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the law?” Manson replied:
"I do have ethics. I do have a natural code where I will try my best to not hurt people that don’t deserve it. If someone tries to hurt people that I love or me, then I’m going to defend myself from that in every sense of the word. And I think any person should. But I’m not looking to cause harm. I’m just looking to cause chaos, and I don’t really have to try. And it’s a better time than ever to remain who I am. I’m as real as it gets. I’m not trying to be someone I’m not. I wanted to be someone I wasn’t when I was younger. I became that. Now I am that. And now I have to live by that. And I like being that. And I want to be the best at it. So that’s a little bit different than trying to be something you’re not."
Marilyn Manson has tackled these issues for decades, so this is a very short summary of a much bigger moral philosophy that he has been trying to teach. It is far deeper and has much more far reaching implications than what Evan Rachel Wood or Rolling Stone could even begin to comprehend. Their goal is to create a moral panic around Marilyn Manson, trying to bring his words and image and art down to the lowest common denominator which is where they reside because they refuse or unable to fully comprehend Manson's depth of thinking. They are far left feminist activists looking for a scapegoat and boogeyman to virtue signal their movement and themselves. Because Manson is such an easy target, they became hyper-focused on him despite their lack of evidence to support their accusations. They put out documentaries because they know they can cleverly edit clips to make Manson say whatever they want in any way they want him to say it. By lazily removing any sort of context, they manipulate their viewers into leading them to fill in the blanks with the worst possible scenarios that have no basis in fact.
So much of this docuseries Marilyn Manson: Unmasked does what I described here, that I thought it was best to focus on some essential aspects of the moral philosophy of Marilyn Manson before I proceed, though it is far from exhaustive. My goal is to show that you can't just put out edited propaganda clips without context and pretend you now understand Marilyn Manson. There is a lot more to it than that. In fact, it only reveals how agenda driven this docuseries is, and how stupid they think their audience is to go with the flow of their manipulation.
Next time I will cover the rest of part one of the three-part docuseries.
III. EPISODE ONE (B)
"We're about that balance, you know. For example, this really comes into play here in Salt Lake City. It's a very moral, christian sort of environment, so we're that balance that has to go against that. We're the devil's advocate, the accuser, the opposing side, you know, the underdog. That's kind of always our goal is to be on that side of the fence. We really represent individuality. Kids should think for themselves. Not to be like your friends who think they're individuals, but to be like you. Not to be like us, but to be what YOU are. Our music doesn't have anything to do with the way you look, or anything like that, it's what's in your head. Break out of the herd mentality and realize that it's the here and now. That there's no afterlife that's going to justify or punish. You have to make what you've got now work for you, and realize that everything pretty much is a lie, everything's a hoax. That's why Marilyn Manson is such a beyond fake stage name, it is to represent that it's so fake that it becomes real at that point. If you realize your hypocrisy, then you go past it. A lot of people in this city that have prohibited us from playing are sort of cheating themselves with self-deceit, saying, 'It's OK for us to do this behind closed doors, but they can't do this here.' Really all it comes down to is money, and someone here was at risk of losing money, obviously. I don't think it was ever about morals, because morals are always decided by who has the most artillery or money. It's not really about what really matters, nobody really cares about the kids here, nobody cares about exposing the kids to this obscene Marilyn Manson show, they just care about money. We, on the other hand, actually DO care about the kids, and what we're saying is a very harsh reality, and it's not diluted and wrapped up in lies like their parents are giving them. That's why their parents don't like it, because we're ruining their game, their big scam. I mean, the bottom line is that if any one does find what we do offensive, they should just turn it off. There's a lack of listener responsibility. People always want to put the responsibility on artists, or movies, or T.V. It's kind of late for that, you know. I was brought up with all of these things: T.V. and violence and sex, drugs, rock & roll, caffeine, sugar, all these things. We've turned out a certain way and we've become accustomed to it, and now they've decided, 'well, this isn't going to work. Let's use Nutrasweet, let's have less violence.' It's too late for that. You've made us out like this, and you have to deal with it. It's not that bad. I'm not saying we're 'bad' from our perspective. We're moral people. We're not trying to be immoral. We're just showing them that not everyone has the same morals. This is what we believe, and you believe what you want."
And in a 2017 interview, when asked, "Do you believe in the only Aleister Crowley quote most people know: Do what thou wilt shalt be the whole of the law?” Manson replied:
"I do have ethics. I do have a natural code where I will try my best to not hurt people that don’t deserve it. If someone tries to hurt people that I love or me, then I’m going to defend myself from that in every sense of the word. And I think any person should. But I’m not looking to cause harm. I’m just looking to cause chaos, and I don’t really have to try. And it’s a better time than ever to remain who I am. I’m as real as it gets. I’m not trying to be someone I’m not. I wanted to be someone I wasn’t when I was younger. I became that. Now I am that. And now I have to live by that. And I like being that. And I want to be the best at it. So that’s a little bit different than trying to be something you’re not."
Marilyn Manson has tackled these issues for decades, so this is a very short summary of a much bigger moral philosophy that he has been trying to teach. It is far deeper and has much more far reaching implications than what Evan Rachel Wood or Rolling Stone could even begin to comprehend. Their goal is to create a moral panic around Marilyn Manson, trying to bring his words and image and art down to the lowest common denominator which is where they reside because they refuse or unable to fully comprehend Manson's depth of thinking. They are far left feminist activists looking for a scapegoat and boogeyman to virtue signal their movement and themselves. Because Manson is such an easy target, they became hyper-focused on him despite their lack of evidence to support their accusations. They put out documentaries because they know they can cleverly edit clips to make Manson say whatever they want in any way they want him to say it. By lazily removing any sort of context, they manipulate their viewers into leading them to fill in the blanks with the worst possible scenarios that have no basis in fact.
So much of this docuseries Marilyn Manson: Unmasked does what I described here, that I thought it was best to focus on some essential aspects of the moral philosophy of Marilyn Manson before I proceed, though it is far from exhaustive. My goal is to show that you can't just put out edited propaganda clips without context and pretend you now understand Marilyn Manson. There is a lot more to it than that. In fact, it only reveals how agenda driven this docuseries is, and how stupid they think their audience is to go with the flow of their manipulation.
Next time I will cover the rest of part one of the three-part docuseries.
III. EPISODE ONE (B)