Manson essay

The video “The Dope show” is a song featured on the ‘98 album mechanical animals by Marilyn Manson it is directed by Paul Hunter. The song expertly utilises alienation and isolation as a theme to illustrate postmodernism. Manson also employs intertextual and black humour by referencing spin and making a parody of it, the audience are expected to understand the joke and engage more with the video, as they feel like they relate to him by their mutual share of interest of reading spin, which ties in with the uses of gratification theory of self identification.

Manson uses a variety of personas from the beginning till the end of the video. Manson appears — red-haired, with his entire body, including prosthetic rubber breasts, covered in white latex paint — as an androgynous extraterrestrial wandering around the Hollywood Hills. He is captured, studied in a laboratory. Manson stated in an interview that the media are so consumed by the look of an artist and resort to being shallow rather than judging by talent, this could be shown as a way of rebelling and not conoforming to the ideological views.