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.
Just this week, he dropped a gory AF new video for the sinister industrial creeper that is ‘SAY10’ that sees him murder Jack Sparrow himself, Hollywood A-lister Johnny Depp — yet another subversive curveball in a career built on subversive curveballs.
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...
Manson completely threw the rulebook (and some would argue, sanity itself) out the window when it came to live performances. His bizarre and grotesque theatrics reached their bloody zenith during a 1995 gig in San Francisco where he plunged a broken beer bottle into his own chest, leaving him with -- as he recalls in his autobio -- "one of the deepest and biggest scars on the latticework that is my torso." -
...Which even got him thrown in jail one time!
In 1994, the singer was arrested at a show in Florida for allegedly "jacking off with a strap-on dildo... and urinating on the crowd". Turns out the dildo was just a figment of police's imagination, and Manson was simply wearing black rubber undies with a "dick hole", as he explains in his book. Nonetheless, his onstage behaviour still earned him a night in the slammer. -
Then, when we expected more sex and gore, he gave us straight fire...
Like the time he teamed up for a surprise duet with Eminem on 'The Way I Am', representing a venomous and unified "fuck you" to a society that vilified their music for its own deep-rooted social flaws. -
... Not to mention some ass
Speaking of MTV, Manson stripped down to shake his bare backside to the shock of fans everywhere back when Miley Cyrus was still in nappies. There may not have been any twerking involved, but it represented a powerful subversion of gender & beauty norms on one of the biggest stages in pop culture. -
... And bewwwbs.
Manson's female, alien-like nude body on the cover of his 1998 Mechanical Animals album was confronting enough to get the LP banned in multiple department stores, including Target. Fucking with society's established ideals of beauty, gender and sexual identity in this way remains one of the shock rocker's greatest achievements. and it's certainly left a lasting impact on pop culture. -
Manson could go from hailing satan one minute...
True story: Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey requested a meeting with Manson back in 1994, and on the spot decided to make him a certified reverend in the Church of Satan. -
...To chilling with wholesome Disney icon Mickey Mouse the next...
They do share the same initials, after all. -
...To bastardising the visage of said mouse the very next minute
Hear that? That's the sound of Mouseketeers screaming in terror for all eternity. -
Whether it's wiping his arse with the American flag...
Star-spangled bum-rag anyone? -
Or portraying a straight-up white supremacist on 'Sons Of Anarchy', Manson just keeps toying with our expectations.
How good was that show, though? -
And he hasn't just taken over our TV screens, Manson has infiltrated pretty much every corner of pop culture. From movies...
Remember his brief but memorable turn as this creepy guy who gets framed for murder in 1999's dark chick flick Jawbreaker? -
To video games...
Yep. That's Manson who voices the human-hating alien Edgar in the 2005 first-person sci-fi horror shooter game Area 51. -
...To alcohol.
Yep. After years of being obsessed with absinthe, Manson went ahead and started brewing his own. And at 66.6% alcohol volume, Mansinthe is guaranteed to God-Of-Fuck you up. -
But one of the times he fucked with us most was when he let us see him without makeup.
Fans couldn't believe what Marilyn Manson actually looked like under all that paint when he appeared in an episode of comedy series Eastbound & Down, looking like just another regular jackoff. Or, to be more specific, a ginger Severus Snape. -
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.
Like the time he faced a group of Christian mums head-on during an appearance on American TV talk show Phil Donahue, after they accused him of corrupting their children with his "violent" music. -
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
Take a gander at his interview in Michael Moore's groundbreaking doco Bowling For Columbine - where he discusses his music being blamed for the horrific Columbine school shootings -- to see this in action. Manson is the demonic poster child for a society that habitually judges books by their covers. But luckily for us, he's proven the naysayers fucking wrong time and again.
