Tattoos, Music, Self Mutilation
Marilyn Manson - Music, Tattoos, Satanism
In the Bible, the word Antichrist is only used as a description of people who don't believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ. He is not described as one satanic entity - as the beast of Revelation which many people believe - but as a person, any person, who deviates from the Christian orthodoxy. But through years of myth-making and fear sowing, Christianity metamorphosed antichrists into a single Antichrist, an apocalyptic villain. After years I began to realize that the Antichrist is a character - a metaphor...The apocalypse doesn't have to be fire and brimstone. It could happen on a personal level.
- Marilyn Manson
Marilyn Manson is correct in this view even though he makes so many people feel uncomfortable. It would be too easy to agree with America's right wing and TV evangelists who have been decrying Manson's effect on America's young people since he debuted at number three on the pop charts with Antichrist Superstar in 1996 and went on to sell millions of albums, or to dismiss him as a Gothic rock icon who just sets out to shock.
Manson's art is a self-conscious satire on American culture, a country that aborts its own young by the tens of millions, a culture that doesn't care for its youth, youth who in turn do not care about anything. Manson has simply told the truth. In his own sick, twisted, ironic way, he has told the truth and has given millions of young people what they want: a New Age Messiah.
Brian Warner aka Marilyn Manson grew up in Canton, Ohio, the son of Episcopalian parents. An early girlfriend's family were members of healing evangelist Rev. Earnest Angely's church where Warner attended services each week. He also attended Heritage Christian school in Canton. Manson tells of his sixth grade teacher, Ms. Price, warning him about the coming Antichrist, "If you do deny Christ and take this tattoo on your hand or forehead, you will be allowed to live. But you will have lost eternal life."
According to Manson - "It was then that I began having nightmares - nightmares that continue to this day. I was thoroughly terrified by the idea of the end of the world and the Antichrist. So 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, which described very graphically people getting their heads cut off because they hadn't received 666 tattoos on their forehead.
Manson's describes himself as an adolescent "worm" with no self-esteem, surrounded by a thoroughly dysfunctional family, a cross-dressing grandfather, an alcoholic Agent-Orange affected Vietnam veteran father, and hypocritical emotionally abusive Christians at school and church.
Self-mutilation soon became a trademark of both Manson and his fans. Blood letting on stage and scarring of the skin and numerous tattoos of demonic figures began to appear on his body. Marilyn Manson is a rarity in the world of rock - an epistemologically consistent Satanist. "I believe I am God. I believe everyone is their own God. I dreamt I was the Antichrist, and I believe it."
What will the 21st century hold? Manson offers, "We can't go any further without starting over. It's like, what sexual positions are left, what other violence can you show, what other drugs can you do, what other things can get pierced? It's all been done. Sickly enough, maybe what America needs is for everyone to become a Christian so we can all be excited by the taboos once again."
The aspect of Manson's lyrics that offends most Christians is their brutal obscenity. We are also disturbed by the mirror reflection of the culture of death, his popularity with millions of youth. Yet these are not so frightening as the picture of where this generation of young people may be headed without Jesus Christ.
Parodying the storm that erupted amongst fundamentalist in the 60's when John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were "more popular than God," Manson mentions the success of Antichrist Superstar: "Now I was bigger than most of the musicians I used to idolize. To some people, I was even bigger than Satan."
"Each age has to have at least one brave individual that tried to bring an end to Christianity. No one has managed to succeed yet, but maybe through music we can do it" says Marilyn Manson.
Marilyn Manson - Music, Tattoos, Satanism
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