the NachtKabarett

Marilyn Manson's 'The Rape of the World' tour, since it first began in June 2007, has presented in live audio/visual form many of the themes Manson has spoken of and alluded to since Eat Me, Drink Me's inception. The core three, along with the usual occult and esoteric evocations, are Alice in Wonderland / Lewis Carroll as extension of the Phantasmagoria film script, Vampirism and Manson's hero, David Bowie. All three themes are referenced both in overt and in subtle overlapping manners.

As a preamble it is prerequisite to note that Manson has quoted to the press as hiring the tour director for Bowie's infamously theatrical 1974 'Diamond Dogs' tour as his own for The Rape of the World. Since mid 2004 Manson has spoken of Bowie's seminal 'Diamond Dogs' album/era as the foremost significant influence on his musical and visual direction.

The allusions begin before the concert even starts. The music which plays whilst the crew is setting the stage hearkens past references to Manson's performance such as the original Patti Smith recording of 'Rock 'n' Roll Nigger' along with allusions to vampirism, albeit tongue-in-cheek, such as 'Cry Little Sister' by Gerard McMann, the title theme to the 1987 teen vampire hit The Lost Boys.

Since early 2007 Manson has mentioned several films as being inspiration to the new era. These include Bonnie & Clyde, Harold & Maude, Badlands and other fatalistic love-unto-death movies, along with the 1983 vampire film starring David Bowie, The Hunger. The film opens with a cameo appearance by the founders of goth-rock, Bauhaus, playing their timeless goth anthem 'Bela Legosi's Dead'. As the song progresses scenes interlude of vampiric love, murder and feeding in a nightclub setting. It is not a stereotypical vampire film in that the word 'vampire' is not spoken once throughout the entire film and the would-be vampires do not feed by fangs but with an artfully concealed knife inside of an ankh pendant, the Egyptian symbol of eternal life. After both Bowie and Catherine Deneuve lustfully feed from two victims the title and opening credits roll with the classical soundtrack of Schubert's Trio In E Flat, Op. 100, which the film also closes with.

The last song which plays to the audience before the lights go out is 'Bela Legosi's Dead' by Bauhaus, immediately followed by Schubert's Trio In E Flat, Op. 100 in a pitch black concert hall with all that is visible being two dripping black M's staining the stage curtain, the exact order as The Hunger begins. Shrieks and dissonant chords follow until the shroud drops with Manson howling the opening lines of "If I Was Your Vampire", making the circle of vampiric allusions complete.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, a book Manson has made no secret as being a fan of since 2000. The prominent butcher knife is an obvious allusion made during the performance of 'If I Was Your Vampire'. Right, a still frame from the film Phantom of Paradise which, discussed years prior in The CELLULOID section of The NACHTKABARETT, has been a visual reference Manson has paid homage to since The Golden Age of Grotesque (Thanks to Vaughn Michael for posting this on the BABALON forums).

A further reference on The Rape of the World tour from The Phantom of Paradise, specifically this above scene, is discussed further below.

To reiterate from the first words of this section, just as the name 'Marilyn Manson' is a dichotomy of opposing elements, the term 'Eat Me, Drink Me' is itself a union of opposites as one, the cake, made Alice grow while the other, the bottle, made her shrink. In other words, the album title can dually act as an extension of the black/white, good/evil dichotomy that Manson continually portrays. Eat Me, Drink Me can be seen, to philosophize on a deeper level, as the union of expansion and contraction.

This theme can also be seen within the live performances as the theatrics of the concerts illustrate Manson growing and shrinking during the show.

As 'Heart Shaped Glasses' is performed, another dual Bowie / Alice reference is enacted by Manson. A robotic Evan walks onstage pushing a cart with a lit birthday cake. Manson rips off her head, which is wearing heart shaped glasses, and sings the rest of the fatalistic love ballad to it.

Vigilant fans may remember, the precursor to this performance took place on the 2003 Grotesk Burlesk tour where a stocking and lingerie clad android waitress pushed a cart holding a bottle of absinthe across the stage while Manson sung 'Tourniquet'. Throughout the song Manson progressively tore off her limbs and ultimately beheading her, placing each appendage onto the tray in front of her dismembered torso.

Discussed earlier in regard to the albums connections to Lolita, Nabokov also wrote the novel Invitation To A Beheading, both which Manson has cited as being inspirational in the era and additionally having its title referenced in Eat Me, Drink Me's title track.

Along with the signature line of "Off with her Head!", as an epithet directed at Alice by the Red Queen, this performance is another allusion to Bowie and his infamous Diamond Dogs tour. During Bowie's performance of the song Cracked Actor, he sat in repose while singing to a skull. Though Bowie has performed the song in this manner in years since, the images contained herein are from the Diamond Dogs tour which was documented in the 1974 BBC documentary 'Cracked Actor' which infamously depicts not only the theatrical greatness of the tour but Bowie's decline into cocaine addiction.

Manson has made innumerable references since the band's inception to Bowie inspiration on his performance. The first overt reference to 'Cracked Actor' however was the chorus of the song 'Vodevil' on 2003's The Golden Age of Grotesque:

Still frames from The Phantom of Paradise, as noted above. The fictitious band, 'The Undead' (the name of which, of course, ties into the tour's vampiric imagery, where the guitarists have knives as guitar heads and the lead singer has a knife base microphone, summarily amputate, impale and then decapitate members of the audience (the body parts are ultimately amalgamated in a chamber to create an Frankenstein-esque rock star). The 1974 film is noted a handful of times within The NACHTKABARETT as containing a variety influential aspects on Manson.

The Celebritarianism themed elements are also omnipresent within the Eat Me, Drink Me tour. Chris Vrenna's double synthesizer stand acts dually as the Celebritarian double-cross symbol onstage. Along with a very subtle nod, the raining pills projection screen during 'The Dope Show' features a large white soma pill, a la the Mechanical Animals disc, with a Celebritarian double-cross as its "manufacturer's" imprint which reads 'Eat Me' on the reverse side.

One of Manson's first overt allusions to Elvis was circa the Mechanical Animals era. While performing The Dope Show on the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards the censors only allowed him to be filmed (at least predominantly) above the waist, finding his adrogynous and anamorphic guise, as on the cover of Mechanical Animals, too extreme for network television. Manson, days later on an MTV interview remarked that he smiled on the censorship as it made him "feel like Elvis". For those who don't (but should) know, while performing on the Ed Sullivan show on national TV in the 1950's Elvis was only allowed to be filmed from from the waist up, the powers-that-be believing that his gyrating rock 'n' roll hips inspired the teenage audience to engage in premarital sex. "The King of Rock 'n' Roll" has been an infrequent but perpetual iconic reference for Manson, personified him in photoshoots, being friends with Lisa Marie Presley and later appearing on the 2002 TV special 'Elvis Lives' as an interviewee for Elvis' reign over on rock music.