Marilyn Manson has been very talkative lately. He's been giving interviews to promote his upcoming album, Heaven Upside Down, and in the last few weeks settled a beef with Justin Bieber, revealed he and Trent Reznor are on good terms, and why it took him so long to release this album.
In his most recent piece of press, Manson spoke to NME, who showed him photos of people Manson might be familair with to get his opinion on them. He gushed about Johnny Depp and Charlie Hunnam but when he got to KISS, all he had to say to describe them is “four gay dudes in Halloween costumes.” This is a bummer.
Beyond the obvious joke of "who is Manson to make fun of anybody's appearance nowadays," Manson's wording here is bothersome. I'm not saying Manson is homophobic, clearly he is not, but using "gay" as an insult is even more uncreative than using faggot as an insult.
Let's break down the joke for a second. What does "four gay dudes in Halloween costumes" mean? Is he implying just by looking at these four, you can tell they have sex with other men? How is this possible by just looking at them? What signals do they give off? I think the joke Manson was making is these look like four flamboyant dudes in Halloween costumes. Gay does not mean flamboyant. Flamboyant does not mean gay. You can be gay and not flamboyant and you can certainly be flamboyant and not gay. Words matter, Manson. You know this! Manson, more than most rock musicians, has a huge following in the LGBT community and this little throwaway of a joke can do more to alienate your base than you think.
Anyway, just needed to get that out of my system. Before commenters overreact, nobody is calling for a ban on Manson or anything, I just wanted to point out how dumb his comment was. Thank you for your time. If you're going to bitch about how we should be writing about new music instead, hit the main page, where we already posted a bunch of new songs today.
Heaven Upside Down comes out October 6. Amazon is offering a pre-order of the CD for $13.52.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/_MPaH9QXiEw[/youtube]
[via MetalSucks / ThePRP]
