Marilyn Manson
Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes

The countless attacks on morality and decency that Marilyn Manson perpetrated around the turn of the millennium are reminiscent of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's thirty-two failed uprisings. From 1994, for about ten years, the Reverend did the possible and the impossible to overthrow the bigoted beliefs of American society, to change the rules of the game, and to provoke a reaction from the apathetic and disillusioned youth of the '90s; for half of the time, from 1996 to 2001, it can safely be said that he succeeded fully.

Aided by his Obi-Wan Trent Reznor and supported by trusted musicians (among whom Twiggy Ramirez, his David Ellefson, the keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy, a fundamental element of the band both musically and conceptually, and the semi-wasted talent of John 5, stood out), for five years Manson was the public enemy number 1 of American pop, probably the most perfect and memorable it has ever had. Three impeccable albums in a row, supporting an organic discourse of sardonic nihilism in constant and unpredictable evolution: eroding the foundations of propriety was the mission, broadening the scope of the conflict an imperative. He had astounding charisma, a breathtaking stage presence, but most importantly he had the intelligence to know which nerves to touch and the wit to counter every increasingly hysterical accusation thrown his way. In those years, Brian Warner was seriously perceived as dangerous: a lot of people were ready to swear he was indeed the Antichrist risen to corrupt the souls of the innocent (thanks also to the cabalistic/esoteric bric-a-brac iconography Gacy brought with him), and he reveled in this role, competing with himself to come up with a new, ever more extreme provocation. Provocations almost never gratuitous, however, but part of a grander and more complex plan; whether this ultimate goal was the great moral revolution to destroy the decrepit Western hypocrisies or simply to rake in a disaster of money was a matter of debate even then.

Marilyn Manson's reign of terror ends exactly on September 11, 2001, the day America discovers it has a far more formidable and concrete enemy than a rock singer ranting about Christ and Satan. More urgent and dramatic issues instantly claim the crowd's capacity for indignation, and Manson is almost immediately downgraded and reduced to an overly exuberant clown. He himself is at a loss: not only is he caught off guard like all Americans, but he has seen his scepter as the ultimate scarecrow accused of all the world's evils revoked. Taken by surprise, uncertain, Manson does what a character of his kind should never do: he retreats. The Golden Age Of Grotesque (2003), buoyed by the remaining wave of the Reverend's evangelistic charisma, is still relevant but really is the last dance, and is perceived as such by almost everyone: in terms of evolutionary tension and firepower it's a clear step back from Holy Wood. The common feeling is that Marilyn Manson is finally ready to become the parody of himself, and indeed that's what happens. He starts picking petty fights with everyone, loses band members one by one, cocaine addiction is out of control, begins the relationship with Dita Von Teese; he loses all the otherworldly allure that made him a unique attention magnet and becomes just another celebrity to be slaughtered at the tabloid butcher's block. At this point, the ex-Antichrist becomes the totem of misunderstood youths all over the West, a banner where the very last minor strain of emo, dark, goth, bimbimetal, and generic disaffected rally around, a fetish to display alongside Jack Skellington and Emily The Strange. The colonel has finally returned to Macondo.

In 2007, Brian Warner reaches his personal nadir: the farcical marriage with Von Teese ends in a humiliating public divorce that becomes one of the media feasts of the year, lawsuits rain down from all sides, paparazzi hound him with a ferocity second only to that reserved for the dynamic duo Spears/Hilton, and he loses, after 17 years, Madonna Wayne Gacy, the last remaining member of the original lineup (he's also one of those who sues him, incidentally). Warner begins to age, gain weight, and really let himself go, not for the sake of the scene: it’s depressing to see the androgynous Luciferian alien of Mechanical Animals reduced thus. Amid this total defeat, Manson releases his saddest album (not bad: sad), Eat Me Drink Me, mournful even beyond the author’s intentions: it is his most intimate, sincere, and human work. The songs are melodic and sweet like never before, and it's disconcerting to see the demigod who was the ultimate nightmare of the morally righteous ten years ago so beaten and defeated. The girls go wild, the critics tear him apart, he manages to achieve one last, to date, gold record. From there, Marilyn Manson ceases to be relevant even as a celebrity: like Aureliano Buendía had locked himself in the lab to make his gold fish, Manson, too big to be forgotten, retires into a dignified irrelevance. He becomes one of those generic Rock Institutions(TM) from which nothing unexpected is expected, just a decent craft album when he feels like it and a tour in the arenas every two or three years. His war is more than lost: it was misunderstood, not understood, defused, rendered superfluous and obsolete. "Ah, Aureliano, I already knew you were old, but now I realize that you are much older than you look".

Celebrity Deathmatch is a claymation show that aired on MTV between 1998 and 2002. For the entire duration of its first incarnation, Celebrity Deathmatch was the vox populi of American gossip: it consisted of exaggerated and grandguignolesque wrestling matches between the most prominent figures in the stardom of the time, almost always based on real feuds and squabbles between celebrities. Like Marilyn Manson (and contemporary South Park), the show bases its astonishing success on mockery of the status quo through unfettered, irresistible, and all-encompassing satire that doesn’t hide extremely keen intelligence. Celebrity Deathmatch is full of flashes of genius: I remember the Backstreet Boys merging into a human Megazord, or Rage Against The Machine against THE MACHINE, a killing machine that, of course, slaughtered them without pity. The relationship between the show and the singer is a match made in heaven: Manson appears very often; he has the role of The Rock of the situation, the favorite people's champion who rights wrongs and puts the boasters in their place.

"Astonishing Panorama Of The Endtimes" is the peak of their collaboration. Manson wrote it specifically for Celebrity Deathmatch; it ends up on a celebratory compilation and at the end of The Last Tour On Earth but is exclusively premiered in an episode, in the form of a real animated concert (which is interrupted by Ricky Martin, then punched out by Manson in the main event). The "performance" also becomes, with added sequences, the music video for the single.

Few things capture 1999 America with such clarity as this clay concert, with an apocalyptic Ministry-like ride driven by John 5's unmistakable guitar, which in music and lyrics is an exemplary concise summary of Marilyn Manson as the Antichrist: an amazing panorama of the End, as the title suggests. The triumph of that wild millenarian vision that the Reverend had been preaching and hoping for years. To my eleven-year-old eyes, it was roughly the most astonishing thing seen so far. WOW! The coolest singer in the world presenting his fiercest new track on the coolest show on TV!! EXCITEMENT!!!

Celebrity Deathmatch didn’t last long. It was resurrected in 2006 for a couple of seasons, but the magic was gone; they tried again ten years later, but nothing came of it. Today it survives in the nostalgia of those who experienced it at the time. We've said above about Marilyn Manson: by now, he’s long since calmed down and is a serene fifty-year-old who on stage reprises a toned-down version of the character everyone remembers, for a steadfast fan base still quite large. In the last two years, he’s come back into the spotlight for some messes with old sex and harassment stories. Sic transit gloria mundi.

"...but the same concentration provided her with the calm she needed to acknowledge the idea of defeat. It was then that she understood the vicious circle of Colonel Aureliano Buendía's gold fish".