Marilyn Manson has established a persona that is capable of operating inside and outside of the containment of heternormative rhetoric of contemporary culture. He is simultaneously entwined in popular culture and an icon of subculture. The performance methods employed by Manson as the cultural other allow him, arguably, to exist as an ungendered body, vacillating between expectations of categorization. By evaluating the ways in which Manson presents himself through costume and dress we can argue that his character floats nebulously between the binaries of Western constructed expectations of the masculine and feminine. In particular, attention will be given to his famed era of Mechanical Animals where he steps furthest out of what is expected of a male/masculine artist with the introduction of Omēga. Supplementary material is offered by two albums additional eras, Antichrist Superstar and Holy Wood that provide further examples of non-human identities adopted in order to distort interpretations of Manson’s identity. Manson’s visual presentation from 1996-2001 renegotiated the cues that identify categories of sex, gender and sexuality. With the help of queer, gender and fashion theory Manson’s aesthetic can be unpacked as a significant site of transgressive performance. In this study Manson’s body, costuming and constructed context will be evaluated in an effort to understand how he used American anxieties with the intention to broaden the conversation of human identity.
About the presenterEmily Birzak
Pursuing an M.A. in History of Design and Curatorial Studies at Parsons School of Design with an auxiliary focus on the consumption of American visual and material culture, particularly its effects on identity.Find me sharing @birzake on Instagram.