Cultural Analysis

I’m just going to start off by saying that Marilyn Manson and IS a nu metal band, regardless of what you think, for several reasons that go beyond my scope of nu metal understandability. For those not familiar with Manson, he is a “shock rocker” who employs the use of dark lyrics, often anti-religion and in particular anti-Christianity. Their music is pretty often defined as industrial metal because of the use of down-tuned guitars, sampling, and heavy bass, but adding in synthesizers and distorted vocals. Thus, Marilyn Manson’s Antichrist Superstar is one of the most prominent nu metal albums, and often regarded as Manson’s greatest work of art.

Antichrist Superstar is a concept album, telling the story of how the protagonist, The Worm, leads a revolt against the elite, due to his disgust of what is wrong with the world, and eventually comes into political power, through his disciples who know him as “The Antichrist Superstar.” In the Manson-esque way, he employs his anti-Christian stance as the protagonist proclaims himself as the Antichrist and comes into power through some of the ways that Jesus gained his following. Through the protagonist’s story, Manson says a lot about the religion of Christianity and subverts all of the Christian culture’s dominant ideologies.

Since the dawn of America, over 238 years ago, Christianity has been the dominant religion of the country, and the ideologies of the religion have been imposed on American since the forefathers signed the Declaration. Manson undermines Christian culture by exposing the faults, in particular, the hypocrisy of followers of the Christian religion. Manson also uses the album to make fun of the religion and the idiocy of its followers as The Worm wants his disciples to look at him as a symbol of hope in gaining a prominent status in society and overthrowing the elite. However, the followers do not view him in this way and see him as a god and are fully content with maintaining their low status in society, symbolizing Christian’s blind faith in God, as Christians are content with following an arbitrary set of rules and guidelines determined by a book thousands of years old.

The lyrics contained in the album constantly describe and reflect the degradation and downfalls of Christianity. A particularly great example, the line “I shed the skin to feed the fake” from the title track “Antichrist Superstar” takes the Christian ritual of taking communion, or eating bread and drinking wine as symbolism for “taking in” Christ, and flips it to say that his skin is being used to feed the hypocritical followers of Christ. Manson is able to directly criticize Christian culture by degrading the followers of The Antichrist Superstar, and therefore the followers of Christ. Another great example of undermining Christianity is in the song “Mister Superstar” when The Worm is gaining popularity and disciples, they tell him that they’ll “kill [themselves’ for [him]” and that they’ll “do anything for [him].” Manson makes fun of the die-hard Christians who are martyrs, by saying that the Antichrist Superstar “never wanted this,” symbolizing that having followers who would do anything for their God, even to the extent of dying for them, was never Christ’s intention or message.

Some of the lyrics, such as those in “The Beautiful People” do not directly subvert Christian ideals, but do so indirectly through the undermining of other problems that The Worm saw, such as capitalism and its effect of creating materialism throughout all the elite and wealthy. Manson describes the wealthy elite The Worm wants to overthrow as “The Beautiful People” and the poor as “The Horrible People” in the song. Early in the song, The Worm sees that “the weak ones are there to justify the strong,” meaning the poor are there to reinforce the wealthy’s socio-economic status. Manson addresses the widening income inequality gap that is a direct effect of capitalism with these lyrics, but ties it to Christianity when he says “The beautiful people, the beautiful people/ It’s all relative to the size of your steeple.” Here Manson connects the wealthy and Christianity, and since money buys power, Christianity is able to have influence due to the amount of money involved. This is not false, as of all the millionaires in the world, over fifty six percent identify as Christian, a fact reinforcing Manson’s wealthy-Christians-ruling-capitalistic-economies comparison.

One of the most interesting aspects of this album is not how the lyrics undermine Christian culture, but the music. When The Worm is first looking at everything he hates in the world, the music is heavy-hitting, vulgar, and extremely fast. But, the music slows as the story progresses, as The Worm slowly begins to gain power in “Tourniquet,” and picks up again at the climax of the story when the protagonist becomes the Antichrist Superstar. What is most interesting is when The Worm realizes that even with all the power, nothing has changed. People are still the same mindless followers and content in their meaningless life, and as The Worm begins his downward spiral into depression in the song “Minute of Decay” when he believes he failed at his goal, the music changes tempo and slows drastically, the songs become softer and the vocals become smoother. Then, in “The Reflecting God” when he sets out to try one last time to achieve his goal, the sound is back to the heaviness of the first few tracks, as The Worm succeeds in his mission, when his followers finally begin to see his message. Finally, with himself and his supporters in full power, The Worm states that for those who do not already follow him or understand him, they will be recruited and understand his message as he is martyred, in “Man That You Fear.” The song takes a final slow and soft sound as The Worm is seen to be pleased with his goal and how he changed the world. As the story follows The Worm gaining power in the way that Christ did, the music follows the “excitement” of the process, and to believers of the Christian faith, could be seen as a mockery of the story of Jesus.

Reception of Manson’s album by the Christian culture was exactly as expected. Accusations of spreading Satanism and “corrupting our youth” were placed on Manson, so far as to even blame Manson for the Columbine Massacre two years later. Did the album have a large impact on Christian culture? Obviously not, as it still the dominating religion today, but can we say that it had no impact on the culture and ideologies surrounding Christianity? I think that the album reinforced religious intolerance and the ideological fear of maybe, just maybe, Christianity isn’t true, and that any other religion or non-religion might possibly have truth behind it.