There’s no need to recount why Marilyn Manson has been in the news. You can see the allegations made against him by former finance Evan Rachel Wood and others here. Suffice to say they are beyond disturbing so if you aren’t in the know, tread carefully.
Fallout against Manson has been swift. He was immediately dropped by his American record label and his talent agency. Starz and AMC immediately removed him from the TV shows he was appearing in as well (American Gods and Creepshow respectively). It would not be surprising to see other companies sever their relationship with him in the coming days.
None of the allegations have been proven in court and Manson (real name Brian Warner) denies them. Some of the accusations go back years and statutes of limitations have expired on many. The entire situation is a legal quagmire that could easily take years to sort out. If ever.
But in reliable fashion, many on the body Internet have immediately weighed in and declared Manson a victim of cancel culture run amok. He’s the real victim here! the apologists scream. This is a campaign of character assassination and smears! They also add that Manson’s lost business contracts and opportunities are exactly what the accusers wanted. It is they who are waging a campaign of harassment and destruction. The insinuation being that the entertainment industry is complicit in the ruination of men by weakly caving to cancel culture demands.
There are two points that need to be made.
If there’a anything the entertainment industry is not known for, it is taking care of its female (and minority and LGBTQ) members. Hollywood, TV, the music industry and professional sports (among others) have always been a boys club. The unwritten rule for women looking to forge a successful career was to just accept it and play along with the harassment and even worse. They were told not to rock the boat. They were told to to play nice with the boys, no matter how rough they got or how free they were with their hands (or other body parts). And never, ever tell.
While predators like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Brett Ratner, Louis C.K. and Kevin Spacey were all eventually brought down (with some finally living in cages where they belong), they ruined countless careers and lives before they were brought to task. And for everyone who has faced a reckoning, there are dozens of other predators on the hunt.
So claiming that dropping Manson like a hot potato was somehow coyly playing into cancel culture’s hands is both stupid and ignorant.
The second point is a defence of the companies that cut ties with Manson. While much has been said about the ethical ground they’ve found themselves standing on, they made calculated business decisions.
Like everything else, the entertainment industry is and always has been about the bottom line. Right and wrong come a distant second to what affects the stock price and the annual Profit And Loss statement.
Dropping Manson was a business move, plain and simple.
We’ve covered this ground before. Extensively. We’ve seen it with the likes of Roseane Barr, James Gunn and more recently Johnny Depp. The second a celebrity or artist becomes a liability, they’re dropped faster than a naval anchor during shore leave.
Everyone in business with Manson made an assessment of the continuing their partnership. The pros of waving goodbye outweighed the cons, plain and simple. The economics made the decision.
Look at it another way. Manson (or more importantly his brand) was an investment. While doing things like pulling a fake gun on a journalist before flicking his genitals, admitting to highly questionable and borderline deviant sexual encounters in his biography or rubbing his genitals on security guards fed into his shock rock-death metal brand, it made him a riskier and riskier investment. The companies that cut ties with him the past few days were likely not the first ones to do so.
When the allegations by multiple women were made, his risk outweighed his benefit. The organizations that dropped Manson are all publicly traded companies who are responsible to shareholders. If ratings on the TV shows he appeared in began to plummet or the record label began to suffer as a result of a possible boycott-all very real possibilities-what would they tell their investors? Worse yet, how would it look if they decided to divorce themselves from Manson after the damage to their bottom line became public? It would be a PR nightmare of biblical proportions.
The worst possible scenario would have been to do nothing and this time next year the allegations are proven true. Imagine if the day before the next Marilyn Manson album drops, CNN breaks the news that he’s been found guilty of an assortment of sexual crimes? What happens when high profile names begin leaving a talent agency because they can’t abide being represented by the same company that represents Manson (in effect dodging a bullet to their own personal brands)? What happens when AMC tries so sell the Creepshow’s streaming rights to Netflix ? “Wait, isn’t Marilyn Manson in some of those episodes? Can’t really omit the ones he’s in without ruining the whole season’s story, can you? Yeah, thanks but we’re gonna take a pass.”
This is a double edged sword. Manson sold tens of millions of albums and made an unimaginable fortune by feeding into his persona. All the antics and controversy helped paint a portrait that his fans ate up, trading money for another taste of his brand. And as long as that equation tilted in their favour, Manson had no shortage of partners to share the pie.
The entertainment business is nine tenths public perception. It lives and dies by how people see it. As a result of how people perceive Manson post allegations, he became a liability no one was willing to carry on their books. The sword was swinging their way now.
Simply put, doing nothing was going to be an expensive decision while abandoning him protected other investments. If you don’t mind someone successfully living by the sword for three decades, you don’t get to complain when they die by the same blade.
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