Back in the ’90s, no two words struck more terror into the hearts of parents than “Marilyn Manson“. For mums & dads in the pre-Y2K years, finding a Manson CD tucked away in their kid’s room was in many cases worse than finding their hidden stash of weed, ciggies and porn combined.
The goth king represented the absolute embodiment of their antisocial, trashy and satanic nightmares. From his grotesque demeanour to his filthy antics and heavy-as-hell music, the self-styled Antichrist Superstar has been accused of everything from corrupting the youth to subverting the image of our beloved Mickey Mouse.
But his particular brand of shock has also well surpassed the kind of whacked-out shit that’s triggered his CDs to be banned and burned globally (although there’s been plenty of that, too). Take his freshly-spawned album Heaven Upside Down, for instance, which not only proves that Manson is still the same lightning rod of controversy he’s always been (he’s still pissing off Jesus Christ some 23-years later, but now Trump supporters have also been added to the list) but takes the pageantry, debauchery, violence and punk spirit of his much-frothed earlier work and twists it in thrilling new directions.
Yep. The God Of Fuck has fucked with pop culture more than pretty much any other artist you can name, and he continues to do so in new, unpredictable and — yep — shocking ways.
Check out just some of them, below.
Times Marilyn Manson F*cked With Pop Culture
Those bloody stage antics...
...Which even got him thrown in jail one time!
Then, when we expected more sex and gore, he gave us straight fire...
... Not to mention some ass
... And bewwwbs.
Manson could go from hailing satan one minute...
...To chilling with wholesome Disney icon Mickey Mouse the next...
...To bastardising the visage of said mouse the very next minute
Whether it's wiping his arse with the American flag...
Or portraying a straight-up white supremacist on 'Sons Of Anarchy', Manson just keeps toying with our expectations.
And he hasn't just taken over our TV screens, Manson has infiltrated pretty much every corner of pop culture. From movies...
To video games...
...To alcohol.
But one of the times he fucked with us most was when he let us see him without makeup.
And despite controversy being the fire that forged him into a bonafide superstar, Manson has never been afraid to stand up against the lynch mob on behalf of his music, or his fans.
In fact, the time he fucked with pop culture the most? Revealing that he's actually a deeply intelligent and well-spoken dude, with some powerful insights into music's relationship with society