arts advocates together and galvanized support for
the NEA and the federal role for arts support in the
United States. Indeed, state legislatures across the
country granted arts councils $292 million in 2000.
Still, those who brought the 1990 obscenity charges
against the Contemporary Arts Center claim that
the trial worked to their advantage simply because
their primary intention was not to close art muse-
ums but merely to force them to act responsibly in
their selection of art, which, they argue, was the ulti-
mate outcome.
Further Reading
Danto, Arthur C.Playing with the Edge: The Photo-
graphic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe. Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1996. Offers a
lucid discussion of Mapplethorpe’s works. Illus-
trated.
Gurstein, Rochelle. “Current Debate: High Art or
Hard-Core? Misjudging Mapplethorpe—the Art
Scene and the Obscene.”Tikkun(November/De-
cember, 1991): 70-80. Gurstein, who teaches his-
tory and other subjects at Bard Graduate Center
in Manhattan, argues against avant-garde artists
such as Mapplethorpe who she believes invoke
free speech rights to justify what she considers vio-
lent, dehumanizing, or pornographic works.
Merkel, Jayne. “Art on Trial.”Art in America(Decem-
ber, 1990): 41-46. Not only details the events of
the Mapplethorpe obscenity trial but also argues
that it was not so much Mapplethorpe on trial as
art in America.
M. Casey Diana
See also Art movements; Censorship; Child por-
nography; Conservatism in U.S. politics; Culture
wars;Holy Virgin Mar y, The; Homosexuality and gay
rights; National Endowment for the Arts (NEA);
Photography; Republican Revolution.
Marilyn Manson
Identification Industrial metal band
Date Formed in 1989
The band established itself in the American music scene by
courting controversy through provocative lyrics and shock
metal antics during its shows. Thematically, the band grap-
ples with the subjects of death, violence, drug use, youth
alienation, and American religious culture.
Marilyn Manson is an industrial metal band influ-
enced by the shock rock bands of Kiss and Alice
Cooper and by the glam rock of David Bowie. The
band was established to be shocking to the public as
a whole, as demonstrated by the stage names the
band adopted for its early acts. The idea behind
the stage names was to reflect the dichotomy of
good and evil in American popular culture. For
example, “Marilyn Manson” links Hollywood sex
symbol Marilyn Monroe to serial killer Charles
Manson; “Gidget Gein,” stage name of one of the
band’s bassists in the 1990’s, combines the names
of the television character Gidget and serial killer
Ed Gein. The early stage act in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, had band members dressing in androgy-
nous costumes on a stage decorated with bloody
crosses, naked women, and animal parts. In 1992,
Trent Reznor of the industrial band Nine Inch
Nails helped to popularize Marilyn Manson by
coproducing its first three albums. The band’s de-
but album,Portrait of an American Family(1994),
had limited commercial success. Following its first
headlining tour, the band released the extended
play record Smells Like Children (1995), which
contained the hit single remix “Sweet Dreams
(Are Made of This).” With Antichrist Superstar
(1996), the band became popular in the main-
stream.
A considerable portion of the band’s popularity
derived from the protest of parents and religious
groups who foundAntichrist Superstarobscene and
anti-Christian. Singles from the album, including
“The Beautiful People” and “Tourniquet,” contrib-
uted to the protests, as did the lead singer, Marilyn
Manson (Brian Warner), who stoked protests with
provocative comments about the need to end Chris-
tianity. To promote the album, the band headlined
the Dead to the World tour, which featured an elabo-
rate goth-inspired stage show, which was picketed by
protesters and even banned in some cities. In 1998,
the band releasedMechanical Animals, which fea-
tured the hit singles “The Dope Show,” “I Don’t Like
the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me),” and “Rock Is
Dead.” As the band began its Rock Is Dead tour in
1999 with Hole (led by Courtney Love) and Monster
Magnet, the Columbine massacre caused the band
to cancel the rest of the tour dates out of respect for
the victims. In the immediate aftermath, Marilyn
Manson and its music was often cited as a contribut-
ing factors in the rampage.552 Marilyn Manson The Nineties in America