the NachtKabarett

• fr
• pt
• ru

Marilyn Manson's 'The Rape of the World' tour, since it first began in June 2007, has presented in live audio/visual form many of the themes Manson has spoken of and alluded to since Eat Me, Drink Me's inception. The core three, along with the usual occult and esoteric evocations, are Alice in Wonderland / Lewis Carroll as extension of the Phantasmagoria film script, Vampirism and Manson's hero, David Bowie. All three themes are referenced both in overt and in subtle overlapping manners.

As a preamble it is prerequisite to note that Manson has quoted to the press as hiring the tour director for Bowie's infamously theatrical 1974 'Diamond Dogs' tour as his own for The Rape of the World. Since mid 2004 Manson has spoken of Bowie's seminal 'Diamond Dogs' album/era as the foremost significant influence on his musical and visual direction.

The allusions begin before the concert even starts. The music which plays whilst the crew is setting the stage hearkens past references to Manson's performance such as the original Patti Smith recording of 'Rock 'n' Roll Nigger' along with allusions to vampirism, albeit tongue-in-cheek, such as 'Cry Little Sister' by Gerard McMann, the title theme to the 1987 teen vampire hit The Lost Boys.

Since early 2007 Manson has mentioned several films as being inspiration to the new era. These include Bonnie & Clyde, Harold & Maude, Badlands and other fatalistic love-unto-death movies, along with the 1983 vampire film starring David Bowie, The Hunger. The film opens with a cameo appearance by the founders of goth-rock, Bauhaus, playing their timeless goth anthem 'Bela Legosi's Dead'. As the song progresses scenes interlude of vampiric love, murder and feeding in a nightclub setting. It is not a stereotypical vampire film in that the word 'vampire' is not spoken once throughout the entire film and the would-be vampires do not feed by fangs but with an artfully concealed knife inside of an ankh pendant, the Egyptian symbol of eternal life. After both Bowie and Catherine Deneuve lustfully feed from two victims the title and opening credits roll with the classical soundtrack of Schubert's Trio In E Flat, Op. 100, which the film also closes with.

The last song which plays to the audience before the lights go out is 'Bela Legosi's Dead' by Bauhaus, immediately followed by Schubert's Trio In E Flat, Op. 100 in a pitch black concert hall with all that is visible being two dripping black M's staining the stage curtain, the exact order as The Hunger begins. Shrieks and dissonant chords follow until the shroud drops with Manson howling the opening lines of "If I Was Your Vampire", making the circle of vampiric allusions complete.

To reiterate from the first words of this section, just as the name 'Marilyn Manson' is a dichotomy of opposing elements, the term 'Eat Me, Drink Me' is itself a union of opposites as one, the cake, made Alice grow while the other, the bottle, made her shrink. In other words, the album title can dually act as an extension of the black/white, good/evil dichotomy that Manson continually portrays. Eat Me, Drink Me can be seen, to philosophize on a deeper level, as the union of expansion and contraction

This theme can also be seen within the live performances as the theatrics of the concerts illustrate Manson growing and shrinking during the show :

As 'Heart Shaped Glasses' is performed, another dual Bowie / Alice reference is enacted by Manson. A robotic Evan walks onstage pushing a cart with a lit birthday cake, or a bottle of Manson's own absinthe depending on the show. Manson rips off her head, which is wearing heart shaped glasses, and sings the rest of the fatalistic love ballad to it.

Vigilant fans may remember, the precursor to this performance took place on the 2003 Grotesk Burlesk tour where a stocking and lingerie clad android waitress pushed a cart holding a bottle of absinthe across the stage while Manson sung 'Tourniquet'. Throughout the song Manson progressively tore off her limbs and ultimately beheading her, placing each appendage onto the tray in front of her dismembered torso.

Discussed earlier in regard to the albums connections to Lolita, Nabokov also wrote the novel Invitation To A Beheading, both which Manson has cited as being inspirational in the era and additionally having its title referenced in Eat Me, Drink Me's title track. Interestingly enough, Nabokov happens to have been the first translator of Carroll's 'Alice In Wonderland' into his native Russian (as well as Edgar Allan Poe's works), as revealed by Manson in his 2007 SPIN magazine cover feature, which could explain this similarity between some aspects of both books: the trial and condemnation to death by decapitation in a fictious country and society the protagonists fail to become part of.

Along with the signature line of "Off with her Head!", as an epithet directed at Alice by the Red Queen, this performance is another allusion to Bowie and his infamous Diamond Dogs tour. During Bowie's performance of the song Cracked Actor, he sat in repose while singing to a skull. Though Bowie has performed the song in this manner in years since, the images contained herein are from the Diamond Dogs tour which was documented in the 1974 BBC documentary 'Cracked Actor' which infamously depicts not only the theatrical greatness of the tour but Bowie's decline into cocaine addiction.

Manson has made innumerable references since the band's inception to Bowie inspiration on his performance. The first overt reference to 'Cracked Actor' however was the chorus of the song 'Vodevil' on 2003's The Golden Age of Grotesque:

The Celebritarianism themed elements are also omnipresent within the Eat Me, Drink Me tour. Chris Vrenna's double synthesizer stand acts dually as the Celebritarian Double Cross symbol onstage. Along with a very subtle nod, the raining pills projection screen during 'The Dope Show' features a large white soma pill, a la the Mechanical Animals disc, with a Celebritarian double-cross as its "manufacturer's" imprint which reads 'Eat Me' on the reverse side.

One of Manson's first overt allusions to Elvis was circa the Mechanical Animals era. While performing The Dope Show on the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards the censors only allowed him to be filmed (at least predominantly) above the waist, finding his adrogynous and anamorphic guise, as on the cover of Mechanical Animals, too extreme for network television. Manson, days later on an MTV interview remarked that he smiled on the censorship as it made him "feel like Elvis". For those who don't (but should) know, while performing on the Ed Sullivan show on national TV in the 1950's Elvis was only allowed to be filmed from from the waist up, the powers-that-be believing that his gyrating rock 'n' roll hips inspired the teenage audience to engage in premarital sex. "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" has been an infrequent but perpetual iconic reference for Manson, personified him in photoshoots, being friends with Lisa Marie Presley and later appearing on the 2002 TV special 'Elvis Lives' as an interviewee for Elvis' reign over on rock music.

January 2008 sees the tour take an unexpected new turn, as former bassist Twiggy Ramirez reunites with the band he had left in 2002 after the 'Holy Wood' era (which also means Skold's departure from the band). To finish where they left off, the band changes its setlist with more songs from the three albums Manson and Twiggy co-wrote (including the song Little Horn, the lyrics of which have been used as the working title of this leg of the tour 'Everyone Will Suffer Now'), and revives elements of its past iconography such as the Shock US flag above, emphasizing the apocalyptical dimension already present in the show.