Marilyn Manson has said that his songs come from his dreams. His video
makes the meaning of this song seem very different from my interpretation.
But my interpretation remains compellingly true for me. And it (the
interpretation) begins with a dream.
When I was a child, I dreamed I suddenly turned into a monster. I
towered over my parents and knew they "knew" I was evil so I had to
destroy them or they would destroy me now that they saw that I was
a
monster. The
Man That You Fear reminds me of my dream. The child, grown big
and powerful, terrorizes his feeble, old mom. I can just see her scurrying into dark corners of her home as this hulking shadow of a man walks slowly and ponderously through the house. What an image! Why would anyone want do do such a thing?
Why hurt your own mother, the woman who gave you birth; the woman who cared for you throughout your childhood? She even loved him, according to the lyrics. Apparently, the narrator of the song hates her bitterly. He has waited until he grew
strong and powerful enough to turn the tables on her. Manson has said in an interview that he abused his mother at one time:
"My father had a very violent temper, and he was never home," Manson remembers. "So I was kind of a mama's boy. But I had a weird relationship with my mom as a kid because it was kind of abusive - but on my part. I wish I could go back and
change the way I treated my mom because I used to be really rude to her, and she didn't really have any kind of control over me."Rolling Stone, 1/23/97
So we know there is an autobiographical element in the song.
Consider the line, "sticking to my pointy ribs are all your infants in abortion cribs."What a wealth of meaning comes through that one line, alone! When I hear that line, I can feel the shame
Manson must have felt; shame for his mother. She is not a "natural mother." She destroys her young. She "poisoned all (her) infants to camouflage (her) scars." Rejecting and feeling ashamed of one's own mother is, itself, poison. It eats into
the soul, causes one to feel hopelessly tainted and flawed. Unlike Trent
who can say right out lines like "my whole existence is flawed" and "the tainted touch of my caress," the shame projected in this Manson song goes too deep for direct utterance. At
the point of the song, Manson, or the person within himself he is dramatizing, is overpowered by his shame.
I don't believe Manson is in the same place as the person "speaking" in the song. I believe he has gone beyond that stuck point. However, the brilliant way in which he conveys the reality of that point in time will forever haunt me.
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