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Evan Rachel Wood, please wake me up when this video endsThere are certain things that I know exist, but never want to see. The clubbing of baby seals. The exact ingredients in a hot dog. The sex life of 38-year-old shock rocker Marilyn Manson and his 19-year-old girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood.
Tragically, it's too late for me on the latter. Though, if it were possible, I would pull a Superman and fly around the world to turn back time and then, right at the moment when I was about to hit "play," poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick instead. Because, believe me, that kind of "My eye! My eye!" pain would be preferable to the real "My eyes! Sweet fancy Moses, my eyes!" pain I experienced when I foolishly watched Marilyn Manson's latest video, "Heart Shaped Glasses."
Clearly, this video is done for effect, since everything and anything Marilyn Manson does is supposed to SHOCK (yes, all caps) us into believing he is the antichrist of rock. "Look, I'm so evil! Evil, I tell you! Evil!" I realize they're just playing roles (him: the devil; her: Lolita) in some grand gothic kabuki theater from hell. Whatever. How he has managed to attract a series of way-hotter-than-him girlfriends through the years is beyond me.
But it's not the ick factor of a man dating a woman nearly 20 years his junior (seriously, check out the happy not-yet couple a mere seven years ago above), or the eww response to watching them simulate (dear God, I hope) sex for the cameras that bothers me most. What really disturbs me is how quickly the wheels came off my Evan Rachel Wood adoration bus.
I mean, really, what happened? In those seven years, the former child actor has gone from innocent and sweet to moaning and blood soaked. And you thought your adolescent years were tough. I've always liked Evan; I think her acting shows a sensitivity and precociousness that bode well for her continued career. Her tender, open portrayal of questioning teen Jessie on Once and Again forever won her lesbian fans. Plus, she has a habit of picking films where she kisses other girls, from Thirteen to Pretty Persuasion.
Now, this isn't even the first time Evan has appeared in a music video with a real-life boyfriend. She loved and lost with former (and considerably more age-appropriate) boyfriend Jamie Bell in Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends." But this is the first time I've watched an Evan Rachel Wood performance and thought: "Wow, that was awful. Just awful." Sigh. Submitted by on May 9, 2007 - 9:45am. |
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Manson & Wood (the Ick factor)
Well...
While there is a significant age gap, it still shouldn't be much of a surprise: girls have gone for rock stars, regardless of their looks, since rock n roll began. Maybe he's smart and interesting and creative as well.
That said, watching them have sex (fake or not) is simply nauseating.
And the song blows.
Don't really get it! Looks
Ehh...
I'm not real keen on the age difference there myself, but I doubt it will last.
I must admit the look she has in the first pic is working.
pic
urgh.
Urgh.
that explains it all in a word really, doesnt it?
Urgh.
And i loved her in thirteen. M eand my friend watched that film over and over for weeks! She is such a good actress. Hopefully she will wake up and realise that if she isnt into girls she should at least limit herself to guys her own age, and ones that are a little less freaky at that!
~I've been watching your world from afar, I've been trying to be where you are, I've been secretly falling apart...~
*gag*
Ugh. Watching this made me want to vomit. I'm going to go wash my eyes out with bleach.
The age difference just adds to the icky-ness factor. She's barely legal.
ARRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH
Over to the dark side
When I first heard about this, I refused to believe it, but now that I think about all the interviews I've seen/read with Evan Rachel Wood, as well as the roles she chooses and how she plays them, I'm actually not that surprised. She always struck me as dark and complicated, which is why I like her, so I can only assume that this is just a further manifestation of that internal darkness.
And although I don't yet entirely get the appeal of Marilyn Manson, I do agree that he's a really smart guy.
"Out of the box is where I live." -Starbuck
Porn!
Oh bloody hell, this is soooo wrong! That video just wrong
Evan Rachel Wood is like my favourite actress and very hot and 'Brian' is an old disgusting STD machine!
She is the same age as me and i would never go for him
and the song sucked and i do have a few albums of his but he sounds like an emo!
*pukes*
"in some grand gothic kabuki
Yikes!
removed
*blink*
I thought to myself, "Well, it can't be that bad... can it? How bad could it really be?"
I watched the 08:07 version...
...that was...
I could live the rest of my life and probably not come across anything more horrifying than that video.
~It means pride.~
New Link
Sorry, the YouTube link was taken down, but (sadly) you can still watch it HERE. Proceed at your own risk...
---------------------------------------------------
Why I Don't Sleep Much: Dorothy Surrenders
grand gothic kabuki theater from hell...
...sounds so much more glamorous than anything I've ever seen from Marilyn Manson. I don't suppose I missed much in missing the video.
Don't know why people are so very put off by the paring, though...the age difference is, if acceptable to the people involved, a non-issue, and Mr. Manson is, while remarkable physically unattractive, and nothing extraordinary as a musician, a smart guy, as others have pointed out- but then so was the real Alice Cooper, all those years ago. Ms. Wood, an unremarkable, bland, if somewhat promising actor who occasionally makes interesting choices, is, to my mind, a big step down from Ms. Von Teese, herself a step down from Ms. McGowan, especially the curvalacious Ms. McGowan of those years.
It won't last, but if they're happy...
Hmm...actually, a couple of thoughts
The song reminds me all of The Cure's songs. Anyone else?
The video isn't the worst thing I've ever seen. I'm hoping it's not just me: don't they look like lesbians? I mean, Marilyn Manson looks like a woman, and Evan Rachel Wood is a woman . . . so in a way, isn't that better visibility for us? Just a thought.
I'd also like to comment on Marilyn Manson's attractive/unattractiveness: he looks like a really skinny woman. That's hot to some people.
Oh My...
Errm.
Well. Okay.
Evan's my age, only a few months older, and I'm not quite sure what to make of this. My first reaction is disgusted, but solely because of Manson. He's just not an attractive man. The age difference is not such a big deal to me, but I still can't get rid of that ewww feeling.
Eww. Gross.
Your blog: honest and hilarious
well well well
smart guy?
No one said being smart was
No one said being smart was a moral virtue, just that it might make someone interesting enough for another person to want to date.
"Out of the box is where I live." -Starbuck
my eyes! my eyes!
omg i really wish i had never seen that. first of all the whole simulated act was completely unecessary for the video but i guess he had to do something to detractf from the awfulness of the actual um i guess he calls it "music" and why did we need almost 4 minutes of the nonsense before the song even began?
normall i have no problem with age differences i mean love is love (so long as you're of age) but this is CREEPY i mean old men with young girls generally disgusts me (so maybe i have a double standard) but this is the worst coupling i've ever seen. She needs to work out her issues fast and run for the hills.
"But I dream of flight, not to be as the angels are, but to rise above te smallness of it all. The smallness that I am. Against the daily death the iconography of wings."
I agree, he does look like a
I agree, he does look like a woman. that actually helped with the video though i don't think i'd like him to qualify as a lesbian. I havn't really been following Evan Rachel Wood's films, but she did catch my attention before, so I don't think this vid's harmed much of me sensitivities in the sense of her with him given his other freak shows (only coz he's called it that) i've had to watch. I didn't like his other songs, but i liked this one quite unexpectantly, i even think its one of those rare moments where he's being sweet in his own goth way. awwww.....
and oh, look. in the first pic she has heart-shaped glasses!!
Meh...
Sad...
I debated about watching the video and then...decided I would see why so many people were having such a strong reaction. I had my first sexual experience when I was nineteen and it seemed so playful...and so sweet... (the "young bohemian" days )...but this portrayal of Evan's "loss of innocence" seemed so tragic...so wrong. I felt as if I was watching something I shouldn't have seen and it just made me sad.
I realize it's just a video and that Marilyn Manson and Evan Rachel Wood are just playing parts (although they are together now ), but watching this video was just...painful.
ew...Barf!
Marilyn Manson
I'm still mulling over whether to devote seven minutes of my life to watching this video, so just a few general comments...
Is it possible that Evan (Evan Rachel?) is using this particular appearance as an opportunity to change her image, like when Britney Spears stopped spouting off about virginity and started eschewing underwear?
Is it possible that Brian/Marilyn is just too cheap to hire an actress who is not his barely-legal real life girlfriend?
Is it possible that one day in the future Evan will look upon this video and think "Oh my God, what the hell was I thinking?"
If it’s her choice…
Wow, nice to see that even where’re not above judging someone (Manson) for something they can’t control like the way they look.
I’m fine with most of the article because, it’s a fair point, but:
“Since everything and anything Marilyn Manson does is supposed to SHOCK (yes, all caps) us into believing he is the antichrist of rock.”Look, I'm so evil! Evil, I tell you! Evil!"
Um, yeah ok, whatever you say. Good journalism there. How many albums, books, paintings, interviews (Wikipedia articles even) did you read, look at or listen to before you came to that conclusion. I really hope that statement was just a joke fuelled by media enforced public opinion or I might be inclined to point out how incorrect or at least how incredibly simplistic and unintelligent that assertion is.
That’s like someone saying, “Jane Austin…she wrote about chicks trying to get married and stuff,” please.
well...
I took the discussion of his looks as more about his image than his actual physical appearance. I find his use of make-up and style of clothing unappealing, and can understand how some people are moved to active nausea by it. I don't have a problem with people commenting on an image that is deliberately contrived to shock mainstream aesthetic sensibilities.
1. This is a blog, that's meant to be snarky and entertaining and wittily phrased. 2. If you read/listen to interviews with Manson, he'll talk about how he likes to shock to make his point. He called himself a "poster child for fear" in Bowling for Columbine, and his body of work certainly supports a conclusion that he enjoys playing "devil's advocate" to the mainstream.
I’m not trying to bite your head off, but…
Yes, I know it’s a Blog. But if you read my post you’ll notice that nowhere did I complain about other people’s opinions of the Reverend Manson (you know, all the bits that say he’s ugly and his music sucks) I was just pointing out a factually incorrect statement.
“An image that is deliberately contrived to shock mainstream aesthetic sensibilities”
I’m going to disagree with you here; I don’t necessarily think Manson’s image is about shocking mainstream sensibilities and while a lot of his stuff is confronting, and yes he does like doing that kind of thing, you’re saying that that’s the only reason he does it and that’s simply not true. In his albums his image and actions and video clips and so on are used as a way of telling a story, making a point and exploring an idea, Manson does, after all write concept albums (an album held together by a narrative or theme, like Ziggy Stardust or Pink Floyd’s The Wall). Accordingly, the image he creates around himself through his different characters (The Worm, The Disintegrator, Adam Kadmon, the Arch Dandy, the androgynous alien Alpha or addict rock star Omega) are all part of that story; I’ll try and show you what I mean with an example.
In his Mechanical Animals tour, on the stage behind him at one point was a giant lit up billboard with the word drugs written in huge letters. It made a lot of people (especially the ones who take out fake affidavits to have his concerts banned) rather angry, and I can see how this kind of thing gets mixed up in peoples opinions of him. What most people didn’t realise was that Mechanical Animals was an incredibly complex album, a lot of which dealt with the effects of addiction and excess (represented in the album as a woman named Coma White) which was highlighted through the character Omega, a drug addicted rock star; hence the big billboard with the word drugs behind him, because Manson was performing as his character Omega. It’s like in Pink Floyd’s The Wall when Pink starts calling for all the gays and Jews and so forth to be put against the wall. We all know that that’s not the opinion of the band and that they certainly aren’t Nazi skinheads, it was just part of the story the album was conveying.
And besides, even when he’s not being outrages, in terms of image, he generally dresses as any other Goth rocker would, which isn’t really that shocking and only brings me back to the point that calling him a shock rocker doing a bunch of stuff just to piss off (excuse my language) mainstream society, it just…it ignores the creativity and complexity and the meaning of the work he produces.
ok so its strange
Hmmm...
I see your point (about "passing judgment"), but IMHO it has less to do with his "look" and more to do with the implications of the material. I am probably too sensitive about such things, but we often hear about people who rob "children" of their innocence and while I am well aware that Evan Rachel Wood is an actress and this is "her choice"...the video is quite disturbing, because it sets up that Lolita/Demon type of scenario and in a sense tries to glamorize it.
I guess it is just best for me to avoid watching his videos, but I do worry about how his material will be perceived by those who do watch it (young girls, starving for love and attention, who identify with Evan's character and "creeps" who identify with Marilyn Manson's character)!
I don't know.
Perhaps I'm making too much of this, but...
If this wasn't a music video...
If this were actual footage of a real event...
Wouldn't you find it disturbing?
Don't you think that some people have a difficult time separating fantasy and reality?
That's what troubles me.
Hmmm, Lolita. Interesting take
“It has less to do with his "look" and more to do with the implications of the material”
Well, when you figure out what the album is about please tell me because one thing I know as a Marilyn Manson fan (see icon), is that his material is never quiet what it seems and that there’s always something more hidden below the surface. His albums are always filled with allusions and references to the album as a whole and motifs and themes and narratives, all of which cover a wide range of topics. There are plenty of websites still trying to decrypt all the layers of meaning in albums he released years ago.
“I guess it is just best for me to avoid watching his videos, but I do worry about how his material will be perceived by those who do watch it”
I think the main problem is Manson’s music is always really only going to be for the people who are either into that kind of music or actually get what he’s on about. And everybody else who might only hear one song here or there or see something in the media about him is left thinking that that’s all he’s about (which is usually somewhere along the line of a freak), when it’s really like seeing just a small part of a large picture.
You shouldn’t shy away from his work, I highly recommend watching the video clip to the song Coma White over at Youtube, fantastic song, well, if you’re into rock. He recreates the Kennedy assassination in the clip, and no it’s not for shock, the entire Kennedy assassination plays a very important role in this phase of Manson’s music. It’s about the way in which celebrity and especially death (Kennedy, Cobain, Lennon and even parallels are drawn to Jesus) are sensationalized and worshiped in our society, with these figures becoming even greater in death then they where in life.
It’s also about a girl named Coma White, but from there the songs a lot more difficult to work out. I don’t mean to go on I just wanted to point out that something semingley shocking (recreating the Kennedy assassination) really has much more meaning then most would, on the surface be able to see.Fair Enough
I have never had a desire to listen to Marilyn Manson's music, but to be fair...I will listen to the song you've recommended.
I realize my response is based on an emotional reaction to something that troubles my spirit, but when it comes to posts on a topic...I value different opinions (even if I don't necessarily agree).
Eh.
The video's alright. The little pornish prologue is pointless, considering that they just splice it into the video while he's singing (and the song itself is fine... I generally like his music). The blood play is excessive, especially considering the way they end things. But, hey, what's the point of symbolism if you can't bash your viewers over the head with it?
The video's concept itself is nothing new. Certainly nothing shocking about it, and the story's been done about five billion times. It's like an American classic now. The only difference is that Manson is showing more sex (it's always been there) than normal. And I'm sure there have been other bands in recent years that have done something similar.
I haven't found his videos to be particularly provocative in awhile, but I can see how they still would be for lots of people, or viewers discovering him for the first time. By now, though, Marilyn Manson = imagery you don't get anywhere else. I figured that out 10 years ago. Maybe I'm jaded in that they don't squick me anymore. In the meantime, I like the music enough when I hear it, but wouldn't go out and buy a CD or anything.
The relationship... well, I personally find Marilyn Manson pretty physically repulsive 95% of the time, but hey. To each their own. I'd rather Evan Rachel Wood were dating me, but what can you do?
well
If this wasn't a music video...
If this were actual footage of a real event...
Wouldn't you find it disturbing?
if it were a real event evan is 19 so legally so its her decision and she has a responsibility to herself to consider the reprocusions of her actions I mean if she was being forced into it that would be a different matter but from what i could tell she wasnt doing anything that she hadnt consented to
Don't you think that some people have a difficult time separating fantasy and reality?
I agree some people do have trouble distinguishing the two but cant this question be asked of all entertainment forms not just a manson video? More to the point is there really a solution to this problem
As for robbing children of their childhoods i dont think Manson can really be blamed for that although i can apprieciate that some of his material isnt suitable for everyone i honsetly believe that there are far more mainstream mediums that have far greater impact than manson ever could
gotta love it
No ick factor for me.
I find Marilyn Manson attractive and I like his taste in women. Rose McGowan, Ditta Von Teese, and now Evan Rachel Wood all get grins of approval from me. As a bonus I am fond of blood. This contained no ick factor whatsoever for me. I like it.
I love Evan.
She is amazing.. but her being with Marilyn Manson - thats wrong.