Blame It On... Marilyn Manson?

When a crime is committed, the first thing everyone focuses on is who committed the crime. Once that’s out of the way, people’s interest turns to wondering why the crime was committed. It’s natural for people to want to know the reasoning behind someone’s actions. There’s always a desire to place the blame somewhere, perhaps because it makes us feel better to do so rather than dealing with not knowing why something happened. Over the past couple of years, we have seen more and more people quick to blame music for crimes committed. The lyrics from popular music and the messages they give out supposedly drive these people to commit crimes or to certain actions. For example, some people feel that rap music can be blamed for the increase in teen pregnancy. One of the most popular accusations towards music has been that of Marilyn Manson.

Marilyn Manson is an American musician and artist who is known for his controversial stage persona and image. For years now, he has been perceived as a bad influence on children with his lyrics and his image. Marilyn Manson was publicly blamed for the Columbine massacre in 1999. Reports surfaced that the 2 killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were fans of Marilyn Manson and that he had somehow influenced them into committing the crime, killing 12 students, 1 teacher, and injuring 24 students. When it later became clear that neither killer was in fact a Marilyn Manson fan, the crowd shifted their attention towards blaming video games. Manson was also blamed for a shooting in 2007 at Cleveland High School, where a student named Asa Coon killed 5 people, including himself. Coon was indeed a Marilyn Manson fan, and was wearing a Marilyn Manson shirt the day of the shooting. Therefore, it must be Manson’s fault, right? Manson was also blamed for a rise in teen suicides in the mid-90s.
It’s interesting that people are so quick to blame these incidents on popular culture, such as music, movies, video games etc. Even if the cultural product is encoded with a particularly violent message, it could be decoded in different ways. There are thousands of Marilyn Manson fans out there. Are they all going around shooting up schools? Millions of people play violent video games. Do we see them all going around killing people? These people that want to blame all the world’s wrongs on the messages encoded in these cultural products don’t take agency into account. People act of their own free will. They decode the message, see the ideology represented, and have the power to oppose it. Regardless of the fact, however, people are never going to stop looking for something to blame when they don’t know why something happened. Perhaps it’s easier for them to blame these different aspects of popular culture than to look for some deeper meaning.