The Golden Age of Grotesque

• Release date: May 13, 2003
• Genre: Rock, Industrial Rock
• Length: 57:32
• Label: Interscope
• Written by: Marilyn Manson, John 5, Tim Skold, M. W. Gacy

Track List

Introduction

In previous records, Manson used art to discuss various topics: religion, American culture, Hollywood, politics, etc. In The Golden Age of Grotesque, art became the subject itself. Inspired by the art movements that developed in post-WW1 Germany, in an environment of political and economic instability, and under the looming shadow of the rising Nazi party, The Golden Age of Grotesque is a celebration of the creative spirit that created all the innovative and boundary breaking art of Berlin's Golden 20s, art which was ultimately deemed degenerate by the Nazi party and heavily suppressed.

This album is also about relationships, a topic that in the past Manson only touched on in passing, and usually took second stage to the main concept of the record. This time around, relationships became more of a main feature, with Manson tying the subject to the city of Berlin:

Finally, the album has a lot of sexual themes, both in lyrics and in the accompanying visual art. In the album announcement in early 2002, Manson described the album as

This newfound obsession with sex is also rooted in the culture of post-WW1 Germany, as during that era Berlin has become known as the sex capital of Europe.

One thing all of these themes have in common is Manson's relationship with Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese, who would later become his first wife. Although their marriage was short lived, she was one of the most meaningful relationships in his life, and in many ways, The Golden Age of Grotesque was a tribute to her world, for she embodied all of its themes through being a Burlesque performer: the time period, the eroticism, and the relationship.

Berlin and Hollywood

By Manson's own admission, Berlin and Hollywood are the two most important cities that inspired The Golden Age of Grotesque, with Berlin being the particularly important one of the two. The following is the historic background that's relevant to this album:

Weimar Republic Berlin

The Weimar Republic was the name of the government that was enacted in Germany in 1919, after the first World War. It was a parliamentary democracy whose constitution was written in the city of Weimar, hence the name. The post-war social, economic, and political situation this republic inherited was incredibly difficult. Since Germany was on the losing side of the war, it was forced to sign a peace agreement whose conditions were incredibly unfavorable. Known as the Treaty of Versailles, this peace agreement required Germany to accept full blame for starting the war, severe limitations on its army, various territorial losses, and be required to pay huge amounts of money in reparations (equivalent to $650 billion dollars in 2025's money). This was on top of the fact that much like the rest of Europe, Germany's economy was already utterly wrecked by the war, with tremendous inflation that reduced the local currency from 1USD being worth 2.4DM, to 1USD being worth 4.2 trillion DM.

And yet, despite these dire conditions that became known as the Crisis Years, and whose peak was in 1923, the situation eventually stabilized thanks to loans from the United States and a reschedule of the reparations that made paying them bearable to the German economy. Germany began to recover and even prosper in some industries, and entered a period of artistic flourishing, whose roots started all the way back in the Crisis Years. Berlin in particular became a cultural capital of art and nightlife, full of jazz clubs, theater and Cabaret shows, new and experimental art movements like Expressionism and Dada, and world leading cinema. This period in Germany's history became known as the Golden 20s. In interviews, Manson often pointed the connection between the hardships of the Crisis Years and the cultural flourishing that matured out of it, saying that "People were living like there was no tomorrow and they were creating dangerous art because they didn't know if there would be a tomorrow".

Berlin was also a hub of queer culture. This was partly because the Weimar Republic was much more tolerant towards gays and lesbians than the previous government (although male homosexuality was technically illegal under paragraph 175 of the Reichsstrafgesetzbuchf, enforcement was very lax in big cities, and many gay clubs, bars, and magazines operated openly. Lesbianism was never criminalized under paragraph 175), and partly because Berlin saw a general explosion of sexual liberation and loosening of sexual mores, of which the queer scene was but one part. During those times, Berlin became known as the sex capital of Europe, which was both a celebration and a critique. On one hand, women and queers enjoyed new sexual freedoms, and a bustling night life where these new freedoms could be celebrated and experimented with quickly developed. New avenues of artistic expression opened up as sexuality became the new spice of the local performance arts such as cabaret and burlesque. On the other hand, many lamented the rampant prostitution and drug use that washed over Germany, and the endless expansion of sexual fetishes that was enabled by the entertainment industry.

Unfortunately, Germany's period of prosperity was a fragile one. Germany's entire economic stability depended on financial support from the United States, and when the United States was hit by the Great Depression in 1929, Germany's economy collapsed. Businesses started failing, unemployment skyrocketed, and the government was destabilized over its inability to handle the new crisis. The Nazi Party successfully exploited the situation in order to gain political influence and eventually seized control of Germany.

While the Great Depression was responsible for eliminating the economic flourishing of the Golden 20s, it was the Nazi party that was responsible for eliminating its cultural flourishing. The Nazis considered a lot of the modern art that was created during the 1920s as dangerous, subversive, or degenerate, and took actions to suppress it and the people who made it. Artists who were Jewish, leftist, avant-garde, or simply too modern, were dismissed from teaching positions, banned from exhibiting, and often forced to flee Germany.

Books that the Nazi party considered "un-German" were burned, plays by avant-garde writers were banned, jazz music was labeled "negermusik" (Nigger music), the youth who frequented swing clubs were harassed by the Nazis, and the film industry has been subverted into making propaganda movies. In 1937, the Nazis staged the "Degenerate Art Exhibition" in Munich, where they showed confiscated works of "wrong" art in mocking displays. The exhibition ran alongside the Great German Art exhibition, which showed the "correct" art that Hitler approved of.

Hollywood

Hollywood is featured less prominently on The Golden Age of Grotesque than Berlin, but it is part of the album's inspirations, nonetheless. While Berlin had its Golden Twenties, overseas Americans enjoyed their Roaring Twenties, a period that was analogous to Germany's period of excess and modernity, but in a different, America-specific way. While Europe was licking the wounds from the recent World War, America, who joined the war quite late, came out of it relatively unscathed. It did not experience the same economic downturn that plagued all of Europe and was actually enjoying a period of the exact opposite: the stock market was booming, new industries emerged, existing industries grew, and the United States became the world's leading creditor as it poured investment money into Europe.

Like Berlin, the United States enjoyed its own taboo-breaking cultural boom, although perhaps not one as eclectic as that of Germany. America's primary cultural export at that time was jazz music. As it was the hip new thing, an entire culture of nightlife developed around it, and unwittingly became the focus of the older generation's ire, who felt it represented the moral decline of society. They hated its association with speakeasies (illegal bars that served alcohol during the Prohibition), they hated the fact that black and white musicians played together in the same ensemble, and they thought that swing dancing- a type of dancing developed alongside swing jazz- reeked of sexual promiscuity.

The 1920s was also the period when the Walt Disney company was founded. Mickey Mouse, its most iconic creation, made its debut appearance in 1928. The Walt Disney company became a juggernaut of art and capitalism, and an American symbol, and all of this is represented on the album in the song lyrics for Ka-Boom Ka-Boom, and in the Mickey Mouse parody that Manson developed in collaboration with Gottfried Helnwein and became a feature of the live show.

America's golden age came to a halt in 1929, when a stock market crash wiped billions of dollars in wealth and heralded the Great Depression, which lasted for a whole decade.

Other scenes of decadence

While Hollywood and Berlin are the primary cities represented in The Golden Age of Grotesque, the British scene of The Bright Young Things also makes a short appearance in the song by the same name. The Bright Young Things was a group of bohemian socialites in the London area, who became famous for living a life of flamboyant parties and endless play. Their lifestyle mirrored the American and German cultures of decadence that inspired the record, and they are discussed in more detail in the analysis for the song itself.

Degenerate art

Berlin's Golden Twenties produced a wide variety of groundbreaking and rebellious art, including music, cinema, novels, paintings, and performance arts like cabaret and burlesque. The specific art movements that are relevant to this album are described below:

Dada

Dada was an art movement that developed during the first World War, initially in the Berlin and Zurich areas, and later in a more international capacity. Its entire ethos was rooted in opposition to what people then called the Great War. Many Dada artists blamed nationalism and colonialism for starting the war. In addition, they also loathed the way that the spirit of rationality was used in the service of the war: how logic was used to justify the war, and how logic was used to make the war machine bigger, more efficient, and more lethal.

In protest, Dada artists created art that embraced nonsense and irrationality, deliberately breaking established conventions of aesthetics and common societal sensibilities. It was the ultimate rebellion, one that shot from all cylinders and in every direction, a mad cry against the horrors of the war and everything that allowed it to happen. Even art itself was questioned. For example, one of the most famous Dada sculptures is Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, which is nothing more than a porcelain urinal with the words "R. Mutt" written on it. This challenged the idea of what makes something art, making a statement the artist's choice, not the artist's craftsmanship, is what makes something into art. Another Dada work that challenged art itself was Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance by Hans Arp. Hans created it by tearing pieces of paper, allowing them to randomly fall on a canvas, and then gluing them where they landed. This too forced the viewer to ask: is this art or not? Is it art because the result has artistic merit, or is it not art because art must be the fruit of the creative process, which is clearly absent when the content of the work was decided by chance?

As an art movement, Dada encompassed many forms of art, including poems and music, but its most enduring artistic legacy is in the realm of the visual arts. In particular, Dada artists were very fond of making collages of various flavors. Some glued together photographs and drawings, others created collages from actual physical objects, and some made collages out of words themselves. The French avant-garde poet Tristan Tzara described this process of creating a Dadaist poem in the Dada Manifesto:

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are - an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

The Golden Age of Grotesque features the spirit of Dada in many places: lyrics feature invented words, childish nursery rhymes, and even passages deliberately designed to not have a specific interpretation. The stream-of-consciousness absurdist film Doppelherz that accompanied the album can be considered an example of nonsense as art. The album art appears to be inspired by the word-collage techniques of Dada, and the title track features a saxophone that is deliberately played "wrong". There is even some Dada in the era's costume designs:

The Golden Age of Grotesque era features two women wearing bras and underwear designed to look like naked breasts and exposed genitals, challenging the idea of whether this is nudity or not much in the same spirit that Dada artists like Marcel and Hans challenged if something is art or not.

Jazz

Jazz music originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Luisiana around the turn of the 20th century. It is characterized among other things by complex chords, improvisation, and "swing time" grooves. Its golden age was in the 1920s and 1930s, during which it gained international acclaim and became popular around the world, beloved by the youth to whom it was the new cool trend, and disliked by the older generation who felt that the culture surrounding it represented decadent values and promiscuity.

A noteworthy feature of the culture that developed around jazz was swing dancing, a type of fast paced and wild style that had the potential to be acrobatically impressive if the dancers were up for it. A famous example of particularly wild swing dancing can be found in the American comedy film Hellzapoppin, which Manson references in the title track.

When the Nazis rose to power, jazz music was one of the forms of art they deemed degenerate and aimed to suppress, so continuing to listen to it became a form of rebellion to the many fans of jazz living in Germany. Known as Swingjugend (swing youth), these teenagers and young adults were mostly apolitical; all they wanted was just to be left alone and be allowed to enjoy the music they liked, but that didn't stop the Nazis from targeting them anyway, so as a result the Swing Kids did harbor a lot of resentment towards the Nazi party. The phrase "swing heil!"", a parody of the Nazi "sieg heil" greeting, became one of the ways they expressed their disdain to the Nazis among themselves.

References to jazz and swing dancing can be found in lyrics and in the music video for mOBSCENE.

Theater

The Golden Age of Grotesque is deeply inspired by the wide variety of theater shows that made up the nightlife entertainment of the 1920s and 1930s. Cabaret, Vaudeville, and Burlesque are some of the styles that feature on this era either by direct mention or by association, but as you'll see throughout this article, any style of live theater was a possible source of inspiration, including minstrel shows, Broadway, revues, circuses, and so on...

Cabaret

Cabaret originated in France where it was initially a kind of tavern that also served food. In the 18th century cabarets evolved into small and intimate entertainment venues where that featured live performances for a crowd of people seated at dinner tables. The concept made its way to Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Throughout its history, cabarets were popular places for artists to hang out, and were at the heart of counterculture, often featuring political satire and mocking the people in power. The live show was usually conducted by the Master of Ceremonies, who introduced the acts and entertained the crowds between numbers, and featured music, dancing, theater, and comedy. It was aimed at mature audiences, and some cabarets (but far from all cabarets) did feature erotic performances. The German flavor of cabarets was unique in its prominent use of dark humor.

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was to the United States what Cabaret was to Europe. Like Cabaret, it was a variety show, but unlike Cabaret it was a show for large venues, and it did not feature a whole lot of taboo breaking material, aiming instead to be family friendly. By being a "clean" show, Vaudeville was able to reach a large demographic of audiences, and during the height of its popularity between 1880-1920 Vaudeville was the dominant form of entertainment in the United States, earning the title of "the heart of American show business".

The Vaudeville concept was all about hosting guest performers. There was no single, cohesive show with a permanent cast that repeated each evening (like in a revue). Instead, vaudeville venues composed tonight's show by booking multiple acts separately. These were often travelling performers who toured from venue to venue, and could be just about anything: magicians, animal acts, dancers, musicians, comedians, jugglers, acrobats, and various novelty performers.

Despite being advertised as "clean" entertainment, Vaudeville eventually developed sexual overtones. It saw a growing interest among the audience in seeing the female figure, and this made all female-led performances to be more popular than male-led performances, even if there was nothing even remotely sexually suggestive about them. The sexuality was snuck into Vaudeville's family-friendly limitations with a variety of excuses about artistic merit. For example, a belly dancing act would be billed as exotic culture, while informally being sexually exciting. This was ultimately allowed by venue owners because they had to balance their goal of clean entertainment with appealing to what drew in the crowds, and sex drew in quite a lot of crowds.

Burlesque

Burlesque was initially an artistic style of comedy that parodied the source material. It was especially interested in absurd exaggerations, such as treating something common with grand literary manner (Alexander Pope's The Rape of The Lock being a classic example), or applying a very mocking tone to a serious subject. The theatric version of burlesque transformed high art like opera or ballet into a comedic, often risqué satire of the source material. When the style was brought overseas from Victorian England to America, it merged with elements from minstrel shows and other local theater styles to create the more erotic variant that the name Burlesque is associated with today. Initially, American burlesque shows featured a mix of sexually suggestive comedy, sketches, dances, and female nudity, but by the 1920s the striptease elements of the show completely overshadowed its other aspects, and burlesque became mostly a glorified striptease show.

The striptease variant of burlesque is featured in the live show for the Golden Age of Grotesque era.

Song Analysis

Thaeter

This track is an instrumental. The name is a wordplay on the word theater, meant to resemble the German word "Täter", which means "offender" or "perpetrator".

Samples

The squeaking sounds during seconds 14-17 are from the very first scene of Federico Fellini's movie 8½, a movie about a famous director struggling through a creative block in the face of the great expectations that everybody of his next film. This is a subject that was very relatable to Manson, since he too was dealing with a creative block when he started working on the album (see analysis of This Is The New Shit for more detail), and he too was facing unusually heightened anticipation from the fans, as this was to be the first Marilyn Manson album after the conclusion of the Triptych, his grand trinity of albums that started with Antichrist Superstar. Placing a reference to the first scene of 8½ in the first scene song of the record is therefore a kind of behind-the-scenes easter egg that tells us what headspace Manson was in when work on the album began.

This Is The New Shit

The Golden Age of Grotesque was Manson's first album since completing the Triptych- a trinity of concept albums that explored complex topics such as religion, celebrity, the power of media, American culture, and violence. It represented 7 years of social commentary, and fans were very curious to see what else he could possibly cover next, now that "the great work" has been completed. As it turns out, Manson himself had the same questions, and he worked them out by writing this song:

mOBSCENE

This song invites you, the outsider, to the mobscene, a world of creative lunatics that celebrate obscene art and live like there's no tomorrow.

Samples

An elephant roar at 3:02.

Doll-Dagga Buzz-Buzz Ziggety-Zag

This song's name is a collection of drug related terms. Dagga is a type of marijuana, Buzz-Buzz is a term for getting high, and a Zig Zag is a brand of rolling papers. A doll is slang for any drug in pill form, especially amphetamines or barbiturates. Its origin is the novel Valley of The Dolls, which tells the story of 3 women who try to forge a career in the entertainment industry, and each one eventually descends to barbiturate addiction.

Much like the previous song mOBSCENE, this is another song that describes the culture of creativity, hedonism, style, degenerate art, and rebelliousness that Manson wishes to celebrate on this record.

Use Your Fist And Not Your Mouth

This song is about fighting. Fighting to not be caught up in the socio-political battleground of modern America, fighting for a better tomorrow, fighting for a revolution, Communist Manifesto style.

When discussing this song in an interview for BBC 1 radio, Manson said that:

The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to formalize in writing what the goals and positions of the communist party are. It describes human history as a landscape of class antagonism between the oppressors in power, and the oppressed that must work for them. It focuses on the socio-economic environment that was created following the industrial revolution, and explains how it pushed the oppressor-oppressed dynamic to its most extreme manifestation yet. Whereas in the past manufacturing was the domain of craftsmen, who only needed to buy a few tools for their workshop to start working, the industrial revolution introduced mass manufacturing on a scale that no craftsman could ever compete with, using factory machinery whose price was out of reach to the vast majority of people. This concentrated all the manufacturing capabilities in the hands of a small rich elite (which the manifesto calls the bourgeois), and reduced what used to be craftsmen who worked for themselves, to nothing more than menial workers who work for others; replaceable due to the generic nature of their work, paid no more than a basic subsistence salary, and utterly at the mercy of the whims of the market. The authors call this class of people the proletariat. According to the authors, the path to fixing this was for the working class to seize political power and become the ruling class, so that they could take the means of production from the rich and convert them to public property.

The Golden Age of Grotesque

This song is the ultimate period collage. While previous songs such as mOBSCENE and Doll-Dagga Buzz-Buzz Ziggety-Zag describe the creative spirit of the era, this song describes the era itself. In interviews, Manson said that during the making of the record he sometimes would describe the music he wanted the band to create in terms of images. For this song, the image he had in mind was a burning piano.

Lyrics	Commentary
All our monkeys have monkeys We drive our deathcrush diamond Jaguar limousines We're not fantastic motherfuckers, but we play them on TV It's A Dirty Word Reich, Say what you like. It's A Dirty Word Reich Say what you like.	This verse is about the German golden age. All our monkeys have monkeys Manson has a history of referring to humans as 'monkeys' in lyrics, so this lyric seems to say, "all our children have their own children", meaning that we are the grandparents. This dates the people that the song talks about as belonging to a bygone era, perhaps one in which people drove Jaguar limousines... We drive our deathcrush diamond Jaguar limousines Jaguar is a British manufacturer of luxury cars. It was founded in the early 1920s under the name Swallow Sidecar, and was renamed to SS Cars in the 1930s, before eventually rebranding as Jaguar Cars after the end of World War 2 in order to avoid being associated with the Nazi SS. During their SS Cars years, the company logo was the letters SS inside a hexagon, which is the shape Manson is referring to when he calls it a "diamond" car. I was not able to find any meaningful associations with the term "deathcrush", so that seems to be just a stylistic adjective. We're not fantastic motherfuckers, but we play them on TV A variation on a famous joke, which is arguably used with irony, because you could say that playing fantastic motherfuckers on TV in itself makes them fantastic motherfuckers. It's kinda like Manson's line from the movie Doppelherz: "I'm not really tall and handsome, I just look that way". It's A Dirty Word Reich, say what you like. A bit of self-censorship as can be expected from someone living in the oppressive Nazi 3rd Reich. It's a fucking Reich indeed. The idiom "say what you like" is used to emphasize one's certainty about the truth of what they say. There's a nice bit of irony in using it in this context, since the people in the fascist 3rd Reich literally couldn't say what they liked.
We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI And we aim to depress The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS This is the Golden Age of Grotesque	We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI And we aim to depress Low art is degenerate art. Gloominati is a play on Illuminati, a secret society that was formed in the 18th century in Bavaria. The name "Illuminati" is of Latin origin, meaning "enlightened", which would make the meaning of "gloominati" to be "endarkened". The stated goals of the original Bavarian society were to oppose superstition, religious influence over public life, and abuses of power by monarchs. However, ever since the organization was outlawed and effectively suppressed in Bavaria, it became a boogeyman for conspiracy theorists who believed that the organization continues to operate underground and is pulling the strings on world events such as the French revolution and assassination of JFK. Calling themselves gloominati invokes the idea that this group of degenerate artists is a secret society as well, which is something they would have to be in order to operate in censorial Nazi Germany. Their "aim to depress" is the goal of spreading their low art gloom around. Scabaret Sacrilegends is a combination of cabaret + scab and legends + sacrilegious. It speaks of the way art tends to be subversive, and sacrilegious, and beyond the norms of common sensibilities, but that is what makes it great, and its creators legends.
The devils are girls with Van Goh's missing ear You say what you want but filth is all that they hear And I've got the jigger To make all of you bigger, so "Ladies und Gentlemen...drop your pissroom bait And make sure you're not late, you tramps and lunatics." Here's A trick that's gonna make you Click.	This verse is about all the traps of temptation that exited in the golden age. The sexual temptations, the consumerist traps, the FOMO of the nightlife. The devils are girls with Van Goh's missing ear Vincent van Gogh was an influential Dutch post-impressionist painter, who is also infamous for an incident in which he- in a fit of severe mental breakdown- cut off his left ear and gave it to a prostitute. So, in other words, the devils are prostitutes. It is not clear why Van Gogh chose to give the ear to a brothel worker, but it is well documented that he frequented brothels often as a way to alleviate his dearth of intimacy, so it could have been him depositing it in the hands of those who provided him with human connection. At any rate, symbolically this line invokes the trope of the devil seductress, who exploits her sexuality in order to make men give away too much of themselves. This theme continues in the next line: You say what you want but filth is all that they hear The client, who falls in love with the prostitute, may speak in terms of affection, romance, or in Van Gogh's case, even art (he painted some of the prostitutes he was in contact with), but to them that is all part of the sexual transaction between them. And I've got the jigger To make all of you bigger ... Here's A trick that's gonna make you Click. These two lines are taken from the book The Mechanical Bride, by media analyst Marshall McLuhan. This book is a collection of essays analyzing pop culture, and the relevant essay for these lyrics is called Men of Distinction, in which McLuhan is analyzing a whiskey commercial. It is only natural that Lord Calvert is the whiskey preferred by so many of America's most distinguished men. For this "custom" blended whiskey... so rare... so smooth... so mellow... is produced expressly for those who appreciate the finest. ...says the commercial. To this, McLuhan writes: SNOB APPEAL might seem to be the most obvious feature of this type of ad, with its submerged syllogism that since all sorts of eminent men drink this whiskey they are eminent because they drink it. Or only this kind of whiskey is suited to the palate of distinguished men, therefore a taste for it confers, or at least displays an affinity for, distinction in those who have not yet achieved greatness. If greatness has not been thrust upon you, it is no fault of this ad, which generously thrusts the inexpensive means to greatness upon you. From that paint of view there is nothing basically different here from the glamour ads, where chic models in posh surroundings prove their automatic mastery over any and every male by embalming themselves in some cream, deodorant, pancake mix, soap, hair wash, or other. Here, it is: "what's in the jigger that makes him bigger?" instead of "what's the trick that makes her click?" In other words, these lines describe the marketing traps that pressure men and women into buying things. "Ladies und Gentlemen...drop your pissroom bait And make sure you're not late, you tramps and lunatics." This part is in quotes, and appears to be the words of a barker- a man whose job was to stand outside of a show to attract customers- urging the crowds to not miss the show. "Ladies und Gentlemen" is a typical way for a barker or MC to address the crowd. The "und" is a German "and", evoking Cabaret in 1920s Berlin. A pissroom is a vulgar term for a bathroom, and "pissroom bait" is something that baits people to the pissroom. In the context of this song, what Manson means is "trashy entertainment bait". The barker is accusing the potential audience of having taken the bait to see low quality entertainment, and essentially says: forget this crap, come see a real quality show. And hurry up, don't be late or you'll miss it. Finally, he finishes by calling the crowd tramps and lunatics, which could be interpreted either as a provocation "prove to me you have class by visiting a quality show", or as a badge of honor that the announcer is bestowing upon the audience, an invitation to join the cabaret-as-freakshow where the cool outsiders like them belong.
We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI And we aim to depress The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS This is the Golden Age of Grotesque It's a Dirty Word Reich, Say what you like.
So my Bon Mots, Hit-boy Tommy Trons, Rowdy rowdies, Honey-fingered Goodbye Dolls:	This verse is about the American golden age. A bon mot is a witty remark. A rowdy rowdie is a rough, boisterous individual, like a gang member or a drunkard. This adjective was especially common in the 19th century. In the 1980s the suffix "tron" became a popular emblem in the United States to indicate high technology, particularly of the mechanical flavor (think advanced robotics or machination). A Tommy Gun is the nickname of the Thumpson submachine gun, an automatic, mechanical weapon, very tron-like. So, Tommy Trons seems to be another way to say Thumpson submachine gun. This gun is very iconic for the 20th century; it was used in World War 2, and is associated with the American mafia in the 1940s. Calling this gun a "hit-boy" is both a play on the gun's personification due to the human name, as well as a variation on "hit man", the mob slang for 'assassin'. So far this is a very masculine description, painting the picture of wisecracking, rowdy gangsters with Tommy guns. The next line is of a more feminine nature. A doll is American slang from the 1930s-1940s for an attractive woman. A "final number" was a common feature of Broadway shows, particularly in its golden age (1940s-1960s). This was a routine designed to commemorate the ending of a show, before the audience has to say goodbye to the cast, so this seems to be what Manson is alluding to with "goodbye dolls", imagining a chorus of attractive girls performing the final number- the goodbye number- in a Broadway musical. "Light fingered" is an idiom for "thief", and "honey-fingered" seems to be a play on that phrase. The honey part invokes the allure of sweetness, which implies theft through seduction. Not necessarily literal theft of property, but more in the sense of "stealing your heart away". It's a fitting quality for a "goodbye doll" to have, and this concept of the seductress performer is a character trope that can be seen in multiple Marlene Dietrich movies, most notably The Blue Angel, but also Seven Sinners and Morocco. These two lines- the one about the wisecracking gangsters, and the one about the seductress performer dolls- are connected by the role that organized crime played in the American nightlife in the early 20th century. Since clubs and entertainment venues were cash heavy businesses, they were a great opportunity for mobsters to use as a money laundering operation, or as silent partners who skimmed off the profits. The whole nightlife business was so lucrative that mobsters would often own or finance the clubs and venues, not just leech off other people's businesses. During the prohibition, they also made money from illegally supplying alcohol, and running speakeasies (illegal bars). All of this is to say that the mafia and the entertainment industry were very connected to one another.
"Hellzapoppin, open your Third Nostril, Put on your black face and your god is gone."	The first thing to notice is that this section is in quotes, like a statement. It's following a colon, meaning it's a statement on the two lines that came before it. In the following analysis, we are going to find out what kind of statement this is. Hellzapoppin is a 1941 American musical comedy film, which is an adaptation of a musical revue that ran on Broadway from 1938 to 1941. The stage show had an utterly bonkers style of humor, featured improvisations and constant updates to the material to remain current, and blurred the distinction between where the show ended, and where the audience began, by planting hidden cast members among the audience to use in "fourth wall breaking" gags. All of this was well adapted to the movie version, making it one of the craziest movies of the 1940s. The movie is also famous for a particularly chaotic swing dance scene that inspired the swing dancing on the mOBSCENE music video. Overall, in the context of the song, I think it represents chaos, not just because of the contents of the movie, but also because the name Hellzapoppin is a colloquial phrase from the late 1800s that meant "events are unfolding in a chaotic manner". The Trinariciuto (three-nosed person) was invented by the Italian journalist and cartoonist Giovannino Guareschi as a criticism of communists. The concept was that the third nostril would be needed to expel cerebral matter to make room for party directives. In other words, it was used to call communists brainwashed by ideology. So "open your third nostril" is a call to become brainless. Blackface was the practice of performers (usually white), painting their faces black to portray African Americans. It was particularly popular in minstrel shows, an American form of theater from the early 19th century that featured comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people of African descent. In these shows, black people were depicted using unflattering stereotypes that presented them as lazy, stupid, cowardly, and other unflattering etceteras. Over time, as minstrel shows started to die out, blackface transitioned to other performance venues such as vaudeville, until eventually a shift in public opinion started viewing blackface as racist, and the practice died out. In other words, minstrel shows were degeneracy as entertainment. So far, we have this sequence: chaos is breaking loose, empty your brain, put on a mask of degeneracy, and the conclusion is: and your god is gone. This is a statement that says, "god has left you because you descended into degeneracy". This might seem like a weird conclusion, given that The Golden Age of Grotesque celebrates the nightlife of that era, and these lines are quite critical of it. But the important difference lies in the quote marks. The quote marks are a framing device that distances these words from the rest of the lyrics. It's not Manson, the narrator, condemning; it's the voice of moral idealogues speaking. It's the way moralists, priests, and fascists viewed cabaret decadence: "This is degeneracy, you've abandoned God, you're imitating inferiors, you're brainless".
We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI And we aim to depress The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS This is the Golden Age of Grotesque We sing: La la la la lala la We sing: la lal la la la La la la la lala la We sing: La la la la la

(s)AINT

Ka-Boom Ka-Boom

According to a Metal Hammer interview, this song was written as a reply to someone in Manson's music label who complained that the album had no 'ka-boom'. Aside from the in-joke, it has a theme of "this is what we the children grew up to be". Some of us grew up to be society's tasty degenerates (that would be Manson and the band), and some of us grew up to be pompous fools (like the record label executives), but fundamentally we're all still children, just adult ones.

Slutgarden

This song is about the dark side of sexual hedonism. It describes a sex addict that will say and do anything to get sex, and is a terrible person to be in a relationship with because he only thinks about himself. The name of the song invokes the metaphor of a gardener that grows himself a collection of sluts.

♠

The official name of the song is the symbol. In practice, people call this song Spade. This song is about a man who murders the women who dare to leave him.

Samples

The song begins with a sample of a woman talking, supposedly taken from an instructional video for women in abusive relationships (the page in which the discovery was announced is long gone, so I am unable to track the video down myself). The full quote is this (in the song, the quote becomes unintelligible at the end of the bold text):

"Both of us aren't going to last. I'm not going to talk to him. I tell him to feel while I have a bad idea about doing this. He molds and twists trying to keep back the feelings welling up and up. But I realize why he did this to me. Don't listen to them when they ask for forgiveness. Don't accept their apology. Take what you need from them and let them know you have someone else. The tears you shed are the tears of millions. It all ends now."

Para-noir

The Bright Young Things

The Bright Young Things was a group of bohemian socialites in 1920s London, who were famous for living a lifestyle of endless play and excess, with flamboyant dress parties, elaborate city treasure hunts, and alcohol and drug use. Their exploits were enthusiastically covered by journalists, and even novelists, making them celebrities and common features in tabloids. The term "bright young things" was coined by the press, and was based on a brightness "mania" that swept post-World War 1 England. Today, when someone is called bright, it means they are intelligent, but back in the 1920s, the word "bright" was a buzzword that represented a sort of optimistic exuberance that followed the darkness of World War 1. So, the proper way to look at the term would be something like "the awesome young things".

Despite the brightness, the bright young things were really a tragic group. Their lifestyle often led to financial ruin, broken relationships, addictions and poor health. Their "bright" lifestyle was in many ways nothing more than an escapism from the dreadful reality of post-World War 1, and was both emotionally and spiritually empty underneath the glamor. When their star began to die out, many of them spiraled into a decline from which they couldn't recover, having gone all-in on a lifestyle that no longer sustained them, and unable to realize that the party was truly over.

Nevertheless, despite their problems, The Bright Young Things as a group represent a lot of the things Manson himself practices and celebrates. They were creative and rebellious, very liberal (some of them were openly gay, even though homosexuality was illegal at the time), and lived a life that was one big performance art. When Manson appeared as a guest on Uranium, he addressed the crowd (which was dressed according to early 20th century fashion) as Bright Young Things:

Manson's song seems to be a modern reimagining of the bright young things, not a faithful description of the original 1920s scene. While a lot of the lyrics are celebratory, some are critical, and it seems like the song is making a distinction between what the lifestyle is supposed to be, and what it ends up being: a vacuous disappointment.

Better of Two Evils

An ego boasting song claiming that being the devil is better than being a celebrity.

Vodevil

This song is about dealing with all the shit that comes with being a celebrity. The song name is a play on Vaudeville, a type of variety theater that was popular in the United States and Canada between the 1880s and 1930s.

Obsequey (The Death of Art)

This track is often classified as an instrumental because its lyrics were never officially published, and it kinda sounds like it doesn't have any. Although it features quite a lot of chatter, it is spoken word, not singing, and it is also buried in the mix, which makes it sound like it is a sample used for background noise. However, the album notes credit Manson as lyricist on this track (as opposed to the album intro Thaeter, which is a true instrumental and does not credit Manson as a lyricist), which means that the chatter is not a sample but the actual lyrics.

Since the words are buried in the mix, are split into left and right channels that talk over each other, are purposefully undisclosed, and also quite jumbled and nonsensical even if you do transcribe them, it seems reasonable to conclude that they are not meant to be experienced as lyrics, but rather as random chatter. They're a form of auditory art, not literary art. The echoes of the age of grotesque, coming from the crowd attending its funeral:

Obsequey is an archaic word that means "funeral rite", which fits in with the "death of art" part, as well as the fact that it comes at the end of the record, since death is a kind of ending. The Death of Art is also the name of one of Manson's paintings, which depicts the Dome of Berlin burning. The fire was the result of the Allied Forces bombing the city of Berlin during World War 2, and it resulted in the loss of many books that were stored in that building. Overall, this track is about the end of a golden era of creativity, one that died in censorship and aerial bombings.

The lyrical transcription below is not comprehensive, but is as much as I was able to make out. A comprehensive transcription is probably not feasible since a lot of the words are fragments of sentences and not all of the words are intelligible. I can't help but wonder if this was meant to be a Dadaist poem in the style of Tristan Tzara where words or fragments of phrases are mixed up and pulled out in random order (see the Dada section in the introduction for a more detailed description of the process).

Artwork

The artwork for the era was developed in collaboration with Austrian Irish artist Gottfried Helnwein. Initially, the plan was for the front and back cover to feature Manson wearing Mickey Mouse ears, one image being white, and the other black. However, worries about how Walt Disney might react prevented that from happening, and instead we got the same concept for the front and back cover, but without the ears.

The Mickey Mouse concept remained part of the Golden Age of Grotesque era via the live show, where it was sometimes displayed in the backdrop, and also recreated by Manson as one of the stage costumes.

The artwork layout and song names are organized in the style of Dada collage art:

The uniforms that the band members wear feature the same shoulder pieces as the Nazi Wehrmacht marching band.

The picture of Manson wearing a navy suit is a tribute to Marlene Dietrich, who Manson referenced multiple times in the diary entries he used to write on his website during the making of the record.

Marlene Dietrich was one of the biggest German movie stars to come out of Germany's Golden Twenties. After appearing in various stage productions and silent films in Germany, she was discovered by Hollywood at the start of the 1930s, and emigrated to the United States. Her breakthrough film was as Lola Lola in the film The Blue Angel, where she played the headliner of a local cabaret in Weimar Germany. Her navy suit look that Manson is recreating is from the film Seven Sinners. Aside from being an iconic actress, she was also known for her gender-bending fashion statements, and her principled stance against Nazi Germany.

During the 1930s, the Nazi party had tried to encourage her to return to Germany and appear in their film productions, but not only did she refuse, she also renounced her German citizenship after becoming an American citizen. During World War 2, she was active in helping sell war bonds, and toured both the US and war-torn Europe to perform in front of soldiers. At one point, she even visited Germany "out of decency", only a few kilometers away from the front lines. In 1947, she received a Medal of Freedom for her "extraordinary record entertaining troops overseas during the war".

A detail that can easily be missed in Manson's portrayal is that he has tears streaming down his face. What is he weeping for? Marlene Dietrich? Something else? Well, if we look at the collection of photos created by Manson and Gottfried that did not make it into the album booklet, there is also a picture of Manson with Mickey Mouse ears, also weeping. This helps us narrow down the weeping to a more specific interpretation: since both Mickey Mouse and Marlene Dietrich represent art, and Marlene Dietrich was born in Europe (Berlin to be specific), and she is someone who vehemently opposed what the Nazis did, it seems reasonable to interpret the weeping to be mourning the death of art caused by the Nazis.

The Marilyn Manson logo for the era is stylized after the wings of the Nazi eagle. The diamond shape could be inspired by the diamond shape of the Swastika, or possibly the logo of Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, a German film and television production company that is known for the silent film classic Metropolis and Marlene Dietrich's breakout film The Blue Angel. Like all the German studios in the 3rd Reich, it was Nazified and used to produce propaganda films. Combining elements from the Nazi eagle with elements from UFA logo represents the battle between art and censorship.

Another hint that the diamond may in fact be linked to UFA can be seen in its use on the cover of This Is The New Shit single, where we see Manson in his Marlene Dietrich tribute inside of the diamond. To me this is reminiscent of the logo of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, another film studio that was established in the 1920s. If intentional, this would further emphasize the connection between the diamond and film making.

The icon near the lyrics for Ka-Boom Ka-Boom (also featured on Manson's navy uniform) is most likely taken from Disney theme parks, where it was used before and after The Golden Age of Grotesque as a dingbat for Disney's more spooky attractions, such as Mickey's Halloween Party and The Haunted Mansion. While it's hard to say that this dingbat is strongly associated with Disney, it is nonetheless quite specific in its design, and there are almost no examples of it being used generically in other places. Also, in the album artwork, it is placed next to the lyrics of the most Disney inspired song on the whole album, further cementing the connection.

The artwork also features many portraits of Manson in various makeups. Though these images are rather generic and it's difficult to say something informed about them, I can offer some personal interpretation:

This image reveals the human artist behind the makeup mask of the performer.

In this image Manson is wearing a transparent mask. To me it is in the vain of the same ironic playfulness as Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (is it art or is it not art?), or Hans Arp's Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance (is it art or is it not art?), or the Golden Age of Grotesque's bra and panties that look like exposed breasts and bottoms (is it nudity or is it not?). Here, the transparent mask forces us to ask: is he masked or not?

Finally, Manson looking at himself using an ornate golden hand mirror, brings to mind decadence, a motif of the 1920s. The fact that he is checking himself out while in full makeup connects this image to the performance arts, the stage upon which the decadence of the 1920s was celebrated.

Doppelherz

Doppelherz is a surrealistic film directed by Marilyn Manson. It was filmed during the making of The Golden Age of Grotesque and was released as part of the album's original pressing on a bonus DVD. The film features a disorienting stream-of-conscious type of narration by Manson, over a repeating soundtrack and surrealistic images with very little coherent plot. It can be viewed as another example of Dada, being a case of nonsense as art. What coherent plot it does have, follows a sequence of events in which Manson and his band members are driving in night, come across conjoined twins, kidnap them, and bring them to Manson's place, where he spends time in bed with them. Since the meaning of Doppelherz is "double-heart", and the twins literally have two hearts, it seems that the film is named after them.

The credits at the end of the film feature the following statement:

DOPPELHERZ
A film about the Golden Age of Grotesque, created during the making of this album, and birth of a new era for its creator. The audio recording that accompanies this took place on April 1st, 2002, and remains in its entirety. This is thought by many to be the most rare look into the mind of the person we know as Marilyn Manson. It is also believed (but will not be confirmed or denied by Manson) that these words were intended to be his last, meant only for those who were listening... particularly his beloved feline familiar Lily White.
The film offers no explanation, nor needs one. Many thanks to those who helped make this, the beginning, not an end, to the most amazing era of Marilyn Manson.

In the spirit of the surrealistic nature of the film, I will not attempt to explain it, but I will point out its references and some of the more obvious ideas:

In a scene that features Manson with his band members John 5 and Tim Skold, Tim Skold's appearance is like a white canvas with a line drawn over it. This is the same outfit he was wearing for the premiere of the movie Resident Evil, which he and Manson scored, so since Doppelherz is a very dimly lit movie, for better visibility I will provide an image from the premiere instead of Doppelherz. This look is a recreation of Günter Brus' Vienna Walk, and Self-Painting, Self-Mutilation performance (these are two different performances, based on the same concept).

The car Manson and his band drive is a 1939 Chrysler Imperial Sedan.

On their trip, Manson and the band encounter a pair of conjoined twins. The twins are conjoined at the arms, forcing them to stand back-to-back like a mirror image of one another. This concept is vaguely reminiscent of the conjoined twins from the 1932 film Freaks, which featured twins conjoined at the hip and buttocks, an abnormality that often forced them into a side-by-side or back-to-back position.

The twins are wearing tops and bottoms that are designed to look like naked breasts and female genitals. As discussed in the introduction section about Dada, this forces the viewer to ask: is this nudity or not? ...and is very Dadaesque in spirit.

The image of Manson with a prosthetic nose is inspired by a common trope from cabaret and theater of depicting foolish and horny men with an elongated nose. It seems to be an allusion to an erection, perhaps in conjunction with the "lead by the nose" idiom. Examples of this used in non-horny contexts (general baffoonery), can be seen in the 1930 German film The Blue Angel, and the 1929 American film Applause.

The scene of Dita VonTeese injecting her thigh with a needle is a recreation of the painting Dangerous Passion by Atelier Manassé.

Beyond the record

The Golden Age of Grotesque yielded 3 music videos, 2 singles, and one B-Side (Baboon Rape Party). A year prior to the release of the album, Manson had his first art exhibit, also called The Golden Age of Grotesque.

Music Videos

mOBSCENE

The conjoined women is an artistic representation of conjoined twins. In the 19th century, it was very common for circuses to feature freak shows, where human oddities were presented to the audience to gawk at. Conjoined twins are one example of the kinds of people that were featured. One famous example of that can be seen in the movie Freaks, which is about a travelling circus freak show that features conjoined twins in the roster. The women who played the conjoined twins were actual conjoined twins themselves, Daisy and Violet Hilton, who were born joined by the hip and buttocks. In the early 20th century, they worked as vaudeville performers, singing, playing instruments, and dancing. At the height of their career, they were the highest paid act in vaudeville.

The fat woman, like the conjoined twins, represents another "human freak" worthy of being displayed in a 19th century circus show. If this sounds far-fetched, here she is contrasted with Chauncey Morlan, who was exhibited in circuses as the world's fattest man in the late 1800s. The notion of what constitutes "unusually fat" was very different in those days.

In various interviews, Manson described the dancing girls in the music video as being inspired either by Busby Berkley, or by the Rockettes. The synchronized high kicks while standing in line are certainly based on the Rockettes, an American precision dance company famous for their kicks. The rest of the choreography pays tribute to Busby Berkley (within the limits of what is possible in a music video). Busby was a dance choreographer known for creating incredibly elaborate dance spectacles where the dancers would form complex geometries and kaleidoscope-like patterns using their bodies. A lot of it is out of scope for a production like a music video, but a tribute to that seems to have been Manson's intent.

The girls in the mOBSCENE music video are dressed in the style of military pin-up, and feature makeup that is based on Gottfried Helnwein's rendition of the three witches from Macbeth (which is why Manson named this scene Macbeth meets Busby Berkley in the making-of featurette).

The wounded child holding Manson's head is another one of Gottfried's contributions to the music video. The wounded child has been a recurring theme in Gottfried's work, arguably the imagery he is most obsessed with. It represents innocense betrayed by the atrocities of the world. While Gottfried's images are often not specific about the kinds of atrocities he is alluding to, from reading about his background growing up in post-Nazi Vienna as well as his interviews, the horrors of World War 2 are absolutely one of these alluded-to atrocities. Together with Manson's head, which represents the decapitated head of the artist, we get an image that laments the human tragedy, as well as the cultural tragedy, caused by the Nazis, whose policies destroyed art as well as life.

The dance scene is an example of Swing Dancing, a type of dance that was popular among fans of jazz music. In an interview for the Radio 1 Rock Show Manson commented that:

Swing-dancing was like slam-dancing when it first came out, it was like a punk rock sort of thing and it's very violent. That's why I included it in the video too - these people kicking each other in the behinds and what have you.

According to the making-off featurette, this scene was inspired by the famous swing dancing scene from Hellzapoppin, a 1941 comedy film.

The woman performing a sexy dance in a martini glass is Dita Von Teese, Manson's girlfriend at the time, and future first wife. Dita is a burlesque performer, and the dance in a martini glass is a staple of her burlesque show. In this case, instead of a martini, the green liquid inside the glass is absinth. The ritual of preparing an absinth drink involves slowly dripping water on a sugar cube over the drink, until the sugar cube is fully dissolved in the liquid, hence why Dita is performing with an oversized sugar cube.

Manson was a big fan of absinth during the Golden Age of Grotesque era (and afterwards), and in 2007 even created his own brand of absinth called Mansinth in collaboration with Lion Spirits and Matter-Luginbühl AG (a Swiss distillery).

As discussed in the section about artwork, the navy suit costume is a tribute to Marlene Dietrich. See the artwork section for more information.

The woman with a bird cage over her head is a recreation of André Masson's Mannequin.

The live show equipment, such as the amplifiers and Manson's microphone, are designed in the Art Deco style, which was a popular before World War 2. Below are some Art Deco style amplifiers.

This Is The New Shit

In this music video we see Manson arriving at a location, preparing for a show with the band, and then performing in front of an audience in a faithful recreation of his real live show for the era, with similar sets and costumes. The entire aesthetic of the video, and especially the live show, takes design cues from Nazi Germany: the Nuremberg rallies, the neoclassical architecture, and the military customs. At the end of the video a black face Mickey Mouse appears. For analysis of the live show aspects depicted in this music video, see the Tour section.

This music video was filmed at Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels, Belgium. Points of interest from the parc that are featured in the music video include:

Cinquantenaire Arch

AutoWorld

The Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History (northern Bordiau Hall)

Given that this music video draws a lot from Nazi aesthetic, it's possible that the location was chosen at least in part because of the similarity between its architecture and Nazi neoclassical architecture. Aside from that, the location doesn't appear to have a significant connection to the history of World War 2.

The car Manson arrives in is the 1939 Mercedes 770K Grosser, a luxury car that was used by Hitler and high-ranking officials in the Nazi party.

The exaggerated hand movements of the women might be inspired by the exaggerated arm movements of military marches. In military marches the hands usually move back and forth, not side to side, but Manson's version is a parody so it can be different.

Every time Manson says "violence" in this music video he censors himself by putting a hand over his mouth.

The live show set (best seen in full in this live show screenshot) is inspired by the neoclassical architecture style favored by Hitler. The Nazi party used architecture as a kind of propaganda tool in itself, aiming to create architecture that reflected Aryan values: order (through emphasis on symmetry), power (utilizing grandiose scale to create awe and make the person feel small), historic legacy (by borrowing features from ancient Greek and Roman architecture), and permeance (through the use of strong, durable materials).

The spotlights in the Manson show (on the left) are reminiscent of the Cathedral of Light spotlights that were a feature of the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg.

The drum design is similar to the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) design.

(s)AINT

The (s)AINT music video was self-funded by Manson, because his record label wanted nothing to do with it, and it's no wonder. Shot in a hotel room, the video features Manson cutting himself, doing drugs off a bible, scenes of bondage, cunnilingus, nudity, Manson having sex with both men and women, Manson masturbating, vomiting, and ending the video by drowning in a bathtub. In an interview, Manson described the music video as "an uncompromised look at me - at my absolute worst and lowest point: that I have to look up to see shit, that I'm below that". In another interview, Manson commented that:

While this music video seems somewhat off-brand for the era, since it doesn't really include any of the era's symbolism, we can still tie it in with the inspirations of the album via the subject of decadence and degeneracy, as all the vices engaged with in the music video- the sex, cocaine, and alcohol, were easily available in 1920s Berlin.

Asia Argento, who directed the video, provided this commentary in an interview:

The video included a surprise collaboration between Manson and Brad Stewart, better known as Gidget Gein, who was Marilyn Manson's first permanent bass player. Gein was fired from the band right before the release of their first album due to his drug use becoming a major liability to the function of the band. Since then, he continued to make music and even branched into other creative outlets that included visual art. One of his sculptures, called "In Case of Emergency Break Heart", is briefly featured at the 0:38 mark. In the music video, he is seen injecting something into Manson's arm, presumably heroin, given that this was Gein's drug of choice.

A bunch of Manson's paintings can be seen scattered around the room:

Die Deutsche Kampferin (The German (female) Fighter in English)

Manson's commentary on the painting:

The name comes from what I believe was a women's magazine during the Third Reich that was kind of like the Cosmopolitan of propaganda, and it was about being a strong woman for Germany. That painting was sarcastic. I started painting it right when I came home from the Magic Castle, because I'm a member there, and I wanted to do something that tied in '30s Hollywood and Berlin, and Charlie Chaplin was definitely an inspiration.
I thought the flowers in the background were a cross between columbines, which some people don't know are flowers, and palm trees. It was also around the time of the Columbine event, which I was blamed for. It's so ironic now that the movie, Bowling for Columbine, has made people see how ridiculously the media treated the whole thing now. People don't realize how it almost completely destroyed my career. My life was at risk, and I basically wanted to give up. It's great that I've kind of come full circle.

The Enabler

Manson's commentary on the painting:

Everybody's reaction is that it's a self-portrait, but it's actually of a friend of mine who used to be my assistant. His name is Jonathan (Pavesi). He was a really weak-willed kid who was probably eighteen when I met him, and I put him through him hell. He had to wash paint out of the crack of my ass and clean up my vomit. At one point, when he was working with me, he would get really mad because I would have physical altercations with him when I was coming on and off stage sometimes. I told him I would pay him 100 dollars if I ever hit him unintentionally, and then I got drunk one time and laid 500 dollars on the table and beat the shit out of him.
Now he's more of a masculine, intelligent, great friend of mine. I took a photograph of him, and the way I lit it, with just one bulb overhead, made his face shadowed like that. He looked like a really mean person. An ex-girlfriend of mine gave him the label The Enabler, because any time you go through any kind of rehabilitative program, you're supposed to get rid of the person who enables you with unhealthy elements, so that's the joke behind the title. That piece is one of my favorites.

Skoptic Syndrome (Jack)

This is a portrait of Manson's grandfather Jack Warner. Jack had a hole in his neck that was created surgically to help him breathe.

The Eve of Destruction

Tour

In an interview, Manson said the following about his live show for the era:

The tours for the era were called the Grotesque Burlesque Tour. The live show featured two types of sets, one designed to resemble a Nuremberg rally, and the other meant to look like a burlesque venue. In the show, the Nuremberg and Burlesque sets appear in the reverse order of their historic occurrence. Instead of a bustling Burlesque scene that was suppressed by the Nazis, the show starts with a Nuremberg rally and then transforms to Burlesque, as if in triumph of art over censorship.

Two dancers, Andrea Sikie and Vanessa Huntoon, were featured heavily in the show, in a variety of roles: playing Hitler Jugend styled drums while wearing Nazi uniforms during the Nuremberg section of the show, recreating the military pin-up Rockettes from the mOBSCENE music video, playing Siamese twins during Para-Noir, playing piano during The Golden Age of Grotesque, and doing sexy dances in the panties and bras made to look like exposed breasts and genitals during the burlesque section of the show.

The podium, a staple of Manson's live shows, was used in the most Disney inspired section of the show. Used during The Fight Song near the end of the show, it was performed with Manson's blackface Mickey Mouse look, and introduced by Manson singing the Disney song It's A Small World After All (sometimes changed to a depraved new world). There were two versions of the podium:

The early legs of the tour featured a white podium that resembled the bow of a ship. This might have something to do with the fact that the first public appearance of Mickey Mouse was in the short movie Steamboat Willie, where Mickey Mouse is working on a boat. On later legs of the tour, the podium was replaced with a black one adorned with a Totenkopf with Mickey Mouse ears. In both cases, large banners of Manson's blackface Mickey Mouse were draped on each side of a podium, as if for a rally. Both versions are ultimately a parody of fascism, with the Totenkopf one being particularly on the nose about it, since the Totenkopf became associated with Nazism after WW2. Putting Mickey Mouse ears on a Totenkopf is symbolically the same as putting them on a Swastika.

As Manson put it in an interview:

The fact that the song that is performed on the podium is The Fight Song adds additional layer of anti-fascism sentiment to the whole performance, as does the black face itself:

Blackface was initially used in American minstrel shows to depict unflattering stereotypes of African Americans for entertainment. It was degeneracy as entertainment. So ridiculing fascism using degenerate entertainment, or rather degenerate art, can be seen as an extra layer of 'fuck you' to the movement that tried to get rid of art it viewed as degenerate.

Other period specific gimmicks during the show happen during the performance of the title track, where Tim Skold plays an upright bass, the dancers pretend to play a piano, and Manson finishes by playing a saxophone in an offkey manner. This is the show's tribute to jazz, where an upright bass and saxophone are common instruments, and which predates electronic keyboards. During the performance of Sweet Dreams, we get a touch of decadence when Manson opens a bottle of champagne.