Disposable Teens
Separating the art from the artist is no simple task.
‘You said you wanted revolution, man
And I say that you're full of shit.’
~Marilyn Manson, Disposable Teens
Evan Rachel Wood publicly accused ex-fiancé Marilyn Manson of abuse Monday, posting publicly about the manipulation and suffering she endured while in a relationship with the musician over a decade ago. Manson and Wood met and began dating when she was 18 and he was 36. Wood had already spoken out about the abuse but hadn’t named her abuser. It was widely assumed she was referring to Manson and this confirms that theory.
Yesterday, on Instagram, she named Manson publicly. Four other women joined her with similar accusations.
In her 2018 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Wood described graphically the abuse she experienced without ever naming her abuser. Warning: This is very graphic.
"My experience with domestic violence was this," she told the committee, "the toxic mental, physical and sexual abuse which started slow but escalated over time, including threats against my life, severe gaslighting and brainwashing, waking up to the man that claimed to love me, raping what he believed to be my unconscious body.
"The worst part: sick rituals of binding me up by my hands and feet to be mentally and physically tortured until my abuser felt I had proven my love for them. In this moment, while I was tied up and being beaten, and being told unspeakable things, I truly felt like I could die, not just because my abuser said to me, 'I could kill you right now,' but because in that moment I felt like I left my body, and I was too afraid to run."
I’ve read the full transcript of her testimony and it’s shocking and sad and horrible all at the same time.
Today, Wood wrote posted this:
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner,” she wrote, “also known to the world as Marilyn Manson. He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.”
Several other women made similar statements which you can read here.
Update: Marilyn Manson has responded, also on Instagram, writing: “Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how - and why - others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”
Obviously we have no way of knowing the full truth behind all of this when it’s a he-said/she-said situation. You’ll have to make up your own mind. /End Update/
I bring this up for a couple of reasons. First of all, because it’s something I think people should be aware of—especially fans of Marilyn Manson. There are always two sides to every story, of course, but I think the fact that Wood testified to this abuse without ever naming her abuser speaks a great deal to its validity. That other women have come forward is also important. This is the latest in a long line of #MeToo moments that have seen celebrities and powerful executives exposed as abusers.
I don’t believe that we should simply “believe women” all the time, as women can also be abusers—something that we’ve seen in multiple cases in the past few years, including women who have groomed victims for abusive men. The NXIVM sex cult scandal is one example I can call to mind, in which several female members of the cult were also charged, all of whom helped cult-leader Keith Raniere prey on women. Or Ghislaine Maxwell who was charged with helping billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein pursue and reel in his victims. We should listen to women and support them and if there is evidence of abuse then we should demand justice. But false accusations also exist, and we should always be careful to not rush to conclusions.
Anyways.
The question I find myself asking with these stories is how and where we draw the line when it comes to fandom. Can we still be fans of Marilyn Manson’s music now that we know this terrible thing about him? Can we jam out to songs we’ve listened to now for decades knowing the horrifying ways he’s treated women? I’m not sure there’s a hard line to be drawn here honestly.
Consider the case of Bill Cosby. Cosby was ultimately accused and convicted of raping numerous women after drugging them, leaving the nation shocked and reeling. Here was America’s Dad, beloved comic and sitcom star and Jell-O Pudding guy and best-selling author, now suddenly America’s Rapist. What a fall from grace.
Can we still enjoy Cosby’s jokes? Is it still fun to watch The Cosby Show? Hell no. When I see Bill Cosby now, I’m just creeped out. But that’s partly because he was once a funny dude. It’s a lot harder to laugh at a guy’s jokes when you know he’s a serial rapist.
Manson is a bit thornier because he’s already dark and his music is dark and while it’s distressing to learn that someone we thought was only pretending to be a monster actually is a monster, it’s still . . . I’m not sure. It shouldn’t be but it’s just different. Maybe it’s more about music versus comedy. When I hear The Beautiful People or Disposable Teens I don’t recoil in disgust. They’re good songs written by a bad dude (or an allegedly bad dude, at least).
So where do we draw the line?
It’s easy to say that Manson himself is a piece of shit abuser who used his power, status and influence to physically and psychologically torture a girl half his age. He brought all the classic manipulative abuser tools to bear: Threats, isolation, threats of self-harm, gaslighting, rape. It’s gross. Deeply, deeply gross.
I’d say it’s more akin to Roman Polanski than Bill Cosby. Polanski hasn’t been back to the United States in decades because he’s on the run from the US government for having sex with a minor—a fact that didn’t stop him from winning Best Director in 2003 for The Pianist.
The acclaimed movie director has actually been accused multiple times of having sex with minors. Does that make Rosemary’s Baby or The Pianist any worse? Do we say to ourselves, “The director of these movies is a piece of shit rapist, I can’t enjoy these films anymore.” Do we even think about it when we’re watching those movies? In 2003 I was 22 years old. I didn’t even know who the director of The Pianist was when I saw that movie.
I’m not sure that’s how it works. But yeah, I guess a part of me feels a little uncomfortable with his movies now, just like a part of me feels uncomfortable listening to Marilyn Manson, and that’s at least a little bit because they both get royalties for me consuming their work. But does it mean I don’t like those films or those songs? No. Bad people, it turns out, can still make very good art. Marilyn Manson has written a lot of great songs.
Separating the art from the artist is never easy. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. A lot of artists, actors, musicians, poets are weird or eccentric or say stupid or offensive things from time to time, but never cross the line Manson or Cosby crossed. I don’t want to “cancel” people for wrong-think or making tasteless jokes. I’m not a fan of cancel culture at all, but I think when people’s actions are actually harmful—rape, inciting violence, whatever—that changes the equation. You have to start questioning whether consuming their (commercial) art is in and of itself an enabling act.
Then there’s the question of history. A lot of old Disney stuff is kind of racist. It’s a product of its time, though. Do we condemn it and ban it and sweep it under the rug? Or do we watch it and critique it and talk about it openly? People, too, are a product of their time. I was raised on John Wayne movies and I want to show all the ones I loved to my kids even though John Wayne said some very problematic stuff back in the day. Was he just a product of his time? Probably. Does that let him off the hook? No, not really. But it doesn’t mean we can’t watch John Wayne movies anymore. Hell, Westerns are pretty fraught when it comes to racial issues, which is another whole can o’ worms we can get into some other time.
Or what about Mel Gibson? He’s said some truly ghastly things, often when drunk, often about black people and Jewish people. He’s also responsible for making one of my very favorite films of all time in Braveheart and I think he’s one of the best directors out there. Apocalypto was a brilliant, complicated movie that I think really humanized the native people it portrayed; Hacksaw Ridge is one of the better war movies about pacifism and non-violence that I’ve seen. But man, even for me, even for a big fan of his work, it’s hard not to think about the really awful stuff Mel Gibson has said in the past. And here we start to tip-toe into a conversation about forgiveness and redemption and it’s just going to have to wait. This is already running long.
I don’t have answers. I hope powerful people who think they can get away with abusing those with less power pay a price for it. Whether we’re talking about sexual and emotional abuse, or political or economic abuse, there should be consequences. The problem I see too often in our culture these days is a lack of proportional responses. The tendency on social media to treat all sins the same—as though making a bad joke a decade ago is on par with rape and torture—is a destructive tendency. It does more harm than good. Anyone with any stain, with any wrong-think, with any opinion that’s outside the acceptable range can be cancelled, shunned, dogpiled, bullied into submission.
Meanwhile, the actual abusers tend to fly under the radar—or over it. They keep getting away with their abuse, enabled by powerful connections and lots and lots of money.
Update:
I think it warrants just quoting Manson himself when he was interviewed not long after the breakup with Evan Rachel Wood:
The interviewer asked Manson what his lowest point was after the breakup.
He replied: “My lowest point was Christmas Day 2008, because I didn’t speak to my family. My walls were covered in scrawlings of the lyrics and cocaine bags nailed to the wall.
“And I did have an experience where I was struggling to deal with being alone and being forsaken and being betrayed by putting your trust in one person, and making the mistake of that being the wrong person. And that’s a mistake that everyone can relate to. I made the mistake of trying to, desperately, grasp on and save that and own it. And every time I called her that day — I called 158 times — I took a razor blade and I cut myself on my face or on my hands.
“I didn’t want people to ask me every time I did an interview, “Oh, is this record about your relationship with your ex-girlfriend?” But that damage is part of it, and the song “I Want to Kill You Like They Do in The Movies” is about my fantasies.
“I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer.”
These are clearly not the words of a man in a stable state of mind, and the sheer level of violence in his thinking about Wood certainly lends validity to her claims. Having fantasies about smashing your ex’s head in with a sledgehammer just because she left you is not normal or healthy.
The song he wrote about the breakup mentioned above. Also not exactly working in Manson’s favor here.
At the top of this piece you’ll see a picture of Evan Rachel Wood as Dolores from Westworld. While that show definitely went downhill, the first season remains one of my very favorite seasons of television of all time. I think I’d watch it with a new set of eyes now, knowing what Wood went through in her relationship with Manson. She had a lot to draw on for her role as an AI robot often used for sport, raped and murdered over and over and over again for the pleasure of the rich and powerful. That must have been tough.
Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment if you’d like to share you thoughts on this grim business.
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In this Salon article (http://www.salon.com/2011/06/07/bad_people_great_books/) , the “bad” lives of “great” authors are discussed, including those of T.S. Elliot (anti-semite), Ezra Pound (Fascist), and Charles Dickens (cruel to his wife) – and what the implications are for their writings and our appreciation thereof:
“Still, there’s much to be said for getting past this form of hero worship. Bad eggs like Naipaul aside, most writers, like most people, are a mixture of the reprehensible and the admirable. Our own personal lives require that we learn to love people flaws and all. When you idealize someone, you can’t truly know him or her, and that makes real, adult love impossible.
Most people begin figuring out how to do this in their teens. It’s not an easy transition. Suddenly, every bad quality in our parents — people who were like gods to us as children — becomes a glaring, intolerable betrayal. They must be repudiated! We don’t realize until years later that this is the first step on the long road to seeing our parents as they really are and forgiving them for being human.
Similarly, needing to believe that your favorite author lived in an exemplary way, embodying all the virtues of his best work, is an adolescent desire, passionate but ultimately unfair. Learning the truth is disillusioning at first, but enlightening in the end. Part of the sadly underrated process of growing up is realizing that people, the world and life are no less beautiful and amazing for being imperfect.”
Excellent piece -we all struggle with this.