Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death)

Concept

for a complete overview of the Trilogy see Triptych.

Holy Wood was Marilyn Manson's first album since the Columbine tragedy and the ensuing moral panic, for which the musician and the band served as a scapegoat, being held culpable by various media outlets, religious figures, pundits and politicians who made sensationalist allegations that the band's music and imagery enabled the mindset of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold despite reports to the contrary that the two despised their music. Consequently, much of the album's content addresses the issue and launches several counterattacks criticizing the values and culture of Conservative Christian America, parents, and the mass media and the even more harmful roles they play in the glorification and acceptance of wholesale violence into the "mainstream" compared to music, movies or video games. Furthermore, the record underlines American society's common obsession with firearms, religion and media martyrs. A facet of America he labeled Guns, God and Government. He places special focus on famous and infamous people who have been 'canonized' by the press into "martyrdom" through their highly publicized tragic deaths, on TV or print, throughout popular culture history resulting in cult-of-personality celebrity worship by the public. To this effect, he alludes to assassination icons such as President John F. Kennedy, John Lennon and Jesus Christ whose crucifixion he opines,

"I think the image of him dying on the cross is very violent. It's very sexual. It's very phallic...The crucifix is the most successful piece of merchandise ever created...I think that image has caused more pain and suffering than a swastika or the hammer and sickle [and it has turned] Christ [into] the first celebrity".

-Marilyn Manson, Marilyn Manson: The Beliefnet Interview (2001)

Within Marilyn Manson's album triptych, Holy Wood is the prequel to Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar despite the two latter album preceding Holy Wood in release date. The main character in the over-arching storyline is 'Adam Kadmon', who was previously metaphorically portrayed by Manson as the androgynous alien/rockstar 'Omēga' in Mechanical Animals and 'The Worm / Antichrist Superstar' in Antichrist Superstar. It is worth noting that each of the concept albums are linked together abstractly in a fourth larger storyline encompassing all three albums. However, Adam Kadmon does not becomes Omēga and Omēga does not become the Worm/Disintegrator/Antichrist as each album is meant to possess its own individual storyline. While Manson intended his trilogy to be a single body of work, the storylines of each albums do not follow one another sequentially. They are three individual works that are connected only thematically to form the fourth larger encompassing story. Essentially, the triptych is the story of three different individuals with little to no connection to each other, which, when taken together, tells a much larger story about the human condition in modern-day America.

A major literary device utilized on the album is the song cycle structure also seen in Antichrist Superstar. Here, there are four which form the framework of the storyline: A: In the Shadow, D: The Androgyne, A: Of Red Earth and M: The Fallen.

Holy Wood follows the story of an abstract character named "Adam Kadmon" as he threads his way through the apocalyptic "Valley of Death", which is a dwelling for society's outcasts. The anti-hero finds his will to power, rises up and leads a revolt against "Holy Wood" (or, "the Valley of the Dolls"), a satirical version of traditional Hollywood who oppress the Valley of Death, and ruled by the corrupt President White and his daughter Coma White . In the story, his revolution is a success, and Holy Wood is eradicated, resulting in the disenfranchised becoming the mainstream and the status quo. This newfound power and glory proceeds to erode them of their original guiding principles, turning them into the same superficial, back-stabbing and sycophantic monsters as the previous denizens of Holy Wood. For this reason, Adam Kadmon is disillusioned and at the end of the last song is heard playing Russian roulette with a revolver. His fate after the fifth cock of the pistol is deliberately left unknown.

The tragic and ill-fated character Coma White (from Mechanical Animals) is paralleled on this album by "Coma Black", which Adam has a quasi-romantic interest for.

As is par for the course with Manson, the album is teeming with subtle and not-so subtle historical allegories to examine and prove its contentions. As such, it alludes to several social, political and cultural icons, such as John F. Kennedy, John Lennon, as well as others who endured infamous, violent deaths and assumed "martyr" status in American socio-political and socio-religious culture. This is in part a response to the sentiment that the Columbine massacre was an attempt by two disaffected and disillusioned teenagers at "15 minutes of fame". Manson illustrates the irony that the media's vulture-like behavior and coverage turned the incident into a ratings frenzy, giving Klebold and Harris exactly what they wanted. According to him, the media views tragic death as a form of entertainment for public consumption.

Explaining this point in the song "Lamb of God", Manson sings:

"If you die when there's no one watching,

Then your ratings drop and you're forgotten.

But if they kill you on the TV,

You're a martyr and a lamb of God."

The Nobodies attempts to explain the probable mindset of the teenaged killers:

"We are the nobodies, wanna be somebodies.

When we're dead, they'll know just who we are."

Further criticism by Manson on the public's response to the killings (found within the song) include the stanza:

"Some children died the other day;

We fed machines and then we prayed.

Puked up and down in morbid faith;

You should have seen the ratings that day."

Throughout the album Manson also attacks what he sees as the three core preoccupations of conservative American society: "Guns, God and the Government".

In "The Love Song", he criticizes parents by comparing children to bullets, mothers to a gun and fathers to the arm that pulls the trigger.

After the shootings, the media widely reported that listening to Manson's music drove the boys to kill, though in fact they didn't appear to be fans of the band. An interview with him about the Columbine shootings was featured in the Michael Moore documentary Bowling for Columbine. When asked what he would say to the boys if he had the chance to talk to them, Manson replied, "I wouldn't say a single word to them; I'd listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did."