Cheap, easily purchased firearms. Bomb-making instructions on the Internet. Ultraviolent pop-culture images. Oppressive teenage cliques. Stressed-out, neglectful parents. Stressed-out, angry kids.
Nobody yet knows why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 classmates and a teacher before shooting themselves; and it’s possible we never will know. Even more disturbing, nobody knows what we should do if we are to avoid further tragedies of this kind.
On the other hand, it does seem rather obvious to most people — though not Charlton Heston or Bob Barr — that TEC-9 pistols and sawed-off shotguns should not be available to children or to most adults. As for all the other prescriptions offered by preachers, pundits and sociologists in the tragedy’s aftermath, let’s just say that they will probably have as much effect as such exhortations usually do. It’s tempting to leave the subject at that, move on to more intelligible phenomena and wait for the inevitable depressing sequel.
But Klebold and Harris did leave behind a few tantalizing hints about their state of mind as they plotted to blow up their school and blow away their classmates, hints that we would be wise to consider. Documents seized from the suspects’ homes by Jefferson County sheriff’s investigators indicate that they were obsessed with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. They seem to have planned the assault to commemorate the Nazi dictator’s 110th birthday. Eyewitnesses say that they purposely executed Isaiah Shoels, a diminutive black football player, as well as two girls who were known as devout Christians.
The killers’ fascination with Hitler and their targeting of Christians and blacks, combined with their apparent preoccupation with “industrial” music, together suggest the possible influence of a fascistic youth subculture that has inspired horrific violence elsewhere. Clues about what appeals to the “Trench Coat Mafia” and other young alienated wannabes can be found in publications like Hit List, a zine that covers punk, metal and other categories of the counterculture. The first issue, featuring a burning church on its cover, came out last February with an almost eerily prescient theme: “The Politics of Black Metal.” The lead article by Kevin Coogan, an expert investigator of the far right, plunges into the dank milieu where screeching, atonal bands with names like Mayhem, Morbid Angel, Deicide and Darkthrone exploit Satanic, pagan and Nazi imagery to create an atmosphere of shock.
Both the sound and the fascist fetishism date back to the early days of punk rock, when Malcolm McLaren marketed swastika accessories in his trendy London boutique, Sex. Coogan identifies the early post-punk group Throbbing Gristle, which glamorized the Nazi SS and Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda, as the precursor of certain ugly elements in today’s “industrial” scene. A more current example is the suddenly infamous Marilyn Manson, whose stage name refers not only to the murders inspired by imprisoned maniac Charles Manson, but to Manson’s ravings about race war and Satanic revolution, which have long enjoyed an audience on the countercultural fringe.
Offensive as this crap was (and is), most of it represented nothing more troublesome than a few twisted losers trying to outrage the liberal mainstream. Cultural transgression has gotten more and more difficult in recent decades, as material like the movies of John Waters and now “South Park” have become widely accepted. (The same problem is faced by radio personalities, visual and performance artists, from Howard Stern to Damien Hirst, who win attention by promoting scatological and sadistic themes.)
“Black metal” is a smaller subset of industrial music, sometimes pervaded by strands of occultism, Satanism, Nordic paganism and far-right, white-power politics. Many if not most black metal bands are simply poseurs concealing their lack of talent behind ghoulish makeup and synthesized noise. But at another level, this quasi-underground has provided an environment where real live fascists can disseminate hate literature and encourage serious violence among vulnerable, disturbed young people.
The most notorious example of the latter was a wave of church burnings in Norway and Sweden between 1993 and 1995 by black metal gangs. That outbreak culminated in the stabbing murder of the leader of one band by another; the killer, a Nazi pagan named Varg Vikernes, is now lionized in some black metal circles as “the Manson of Norway.”
In 1996, a couple of years after that Scandinavian crime spree, six Florida teenagers torched a church, blew up a bottling plant and fired a lethal shotgun blast in the face of a high school band director. According to police, their intended finale was to turn Disneyworld into a killing field of black tourists. They called themselves the “Lords of Chaos” — a name memorialized in the title of a recent popular book about the violent fringe of the black metal scene by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind.
Moynihan is much more than a mere chronicler of black metal excesses. He is the leader of Blood Axis, an American Nazi-Satanist band that toured Europe last winter, and more importantly, a prominent figure linking the music scene to fascist and occult circles. Moynihan once said he rejected Holocaust revisionism about the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews because “I’d prefer it to be true.”
Before “Lords of Chaos,” he published “Siege,” a collection of writings by former American Nazi Party member James Mason, who admires David Duke and regards hate crimes as “white self-defense.” In interviews with right-wing music zines, both Moynihan and Mason have openly advocated lethal violence against “the system” — and they particularly admire “lone wolves” like the Columbine killers. Commenting on Varg Vikernes in 1995, Mason said that “killing any number of people and blowing up any number of buildings” is “ultimate heroism.” But, he added, “We need a lot more of this simultaneously, not one here, not one there, but in concert.” (Incidentally, he happens to reside in Denver, not all that distant from Littleton.)
Of course, none of this proves that black metal mania motivated Klebold and Harris, nor is it meant to suggest that the suppression of Satanic or even Nazi-oriented countercultures is warranted. Forbidding such obnoxious expressions only makes them more transgressive, and hence more attractive to adolescents seeking to assert their rebellion. And the death lyrics of metal music may even provide a harmless outlet for kids who might otherwise find more destructive diversions. Michael Moynihan himself once complained about “cartoonish and stupid” music about murder that was “just fantasy” by people who “would never actually go out and do what they were talking about.”
Yet it’s also clear that the metal underground may serve as a recruiting and propaganda instrument for sinister political forces, much as white-power music has both here and in Europe. For adults who hope to prevent the next high school atrocity, it is a phenomenon that deserves attention.
Remember Marylin Manson, that relic of Clinton-era shock rock, better known these days as Evan Rachel Wood’s ex-boyfriend? The man born Brian Hugh Warner must be really desperate for attention these days, because he’s managed to put together a music video so offensive and misogynist it makes “Smack My Bitch Up” and “Stan” look like promos for the Oxygen network.
“Running to the Edge of the World,” which Manson released on his Web site days ago, revolves around the ever-popular snuff-movie theme. The singer sets up a video camera, and the first several excruciatingly slow minutes feature the 40-year-old clenching his fists, looking mopey and singing about “destruct-shuu-uuuuuuuuun.” But as Manson croons, “Sometimes hate is not enough,” the camera pans over to a frightened, locked-up Evan Rachel Wood look-alike in her underwear and Manson beating her, repeatedly, in the face. I counted 10 distinct blows. But wait, there’s more. He also grabs her by her bra, thereby giving her an opportunity to run her hands all over her naked, bloodstained breasts. The clip ends — spoiler! — on her limp body, bloody panties around her knees. Also, spoiler — the song itself sucks.
Gee whiz, was it so long ago that Manson was frolicking with the real Wood in semi-clad, plasma-drenched bliss? Guess something had to change after Manson told Spin earlier this year that “I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull in with a sledgehammer.”
Manson may be about as relevant today as a VHS of “Dawson’s Creek” and a bicep full of tribal tattoos. And paying his loathsome shtick any notice might be construed as giving him exactly what he wants. But the fact that anybody would be hungry enough for controversy that he’d create this grim little six and a half minute bit of torture porn doesn’t make the final product any less revolting.
You can make meaningful songs about sex and death. Exhibit A: Eighty percent of the blues canon. You can create interesting videos that dance around themes of violence. And it may be healthier to fantasize about pummeling your girl than actually doing it. But in Manson’s black-gloved hands, it’s not artistic expression; it’s not thought-provoking music. It’s not outrageous and envelope-pushing. It’s a cynical exploitation of abuse served up as entertainment. And it’s just gross.
Startling news for all those adolescent boys getting all hot and bothered by Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in the upcoming “Tomb Raider” sequel.
Much of the time, Lara Croft is being played by a man, baby.
According to the London Daily Mail, Jolie’s body double for some of her more perilous stunts is a fellow outfitted with Croft-like brown hair, designer sunglasses and tight garb.
Oh, and a couple of other things, too.
“We managed to fit him with a pair of false breasts, which didn’t look too bad,” an insider on the set recently told the tabloid.
But then there were a few other problems.
“When it came to Lara’s tight-fitting trousers there was very little we could do about this guy’s shape,” the source said. “His relevant bits were strapped down, and it can’t have been very comfortable for him, but with clever camera angles and lighting, the audience will never know the difference.”
Now they will.
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Eminem: Mama’s boy?
“People should know that when they look at Eminem and think what a cool, tough guy he is, they should remember that he actually lived at home with his mom until he was 26.”
– Eminem’s mother , Debbie Mathers, on her son’s reluctance to cut the umbilical cord, on Peoplenews.com.
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Say his name … correctly
Dear David Letterman.
The next time Jake Gyllenhaal — or his sister Maggie, for that matter — is on your show, please try to pronounce his name correctly. It would mean a lot to the young actor.
“My last name simply means ‘golden hall’ in Swedish but it really gets butchered in English,” Jake, who has appeared in “The Good Girl” and “Lovely and Amazing,” told celebrity researcher Baird Jones the other night at the premiere party for “The Secretary,” in which Maggie stars.
“Sometimes it just comes out funny, like when I was on David Letterman plugging my next movie, ‘Moonlight Mile,’ and Letterman kept calling me ‘Jill-and-Ham’ the whole time,” he says.
Other people find a way to get ‘guile’ or ‘jilted’ in there, but Gyllenhaal would like you all to know, it’s pronounced Gill-en-hall.
Are we clear now, Dave?
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Angst over angst
“They only go to me for angst.”
– Ralph Fiennes bemoaning the dearth of comedy parts he’s offered, in the London Express.
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Juicy bits
Guess what? Marilyn Manson’s been painting something other than his face. The goth rocker has painted a series of watercolors depicting people who look like him, people who look like corpses and then people who look like Hitler … only with a female body. His work is now on sale as part of an exhibit called “The Golden Age of Grotesque” in Los Angeles. “I make things that most people would consider grotesque a little bit prettier,” Manson told the press. And I must say, Hitler, as depicted by Manson, does have a nice set of jugs.
On to happier news … A film version of “Bewitched” — starring Nicole Kidman. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the ex-Mrs. Cruise is in talks to make the most of her perky nose and play the role of Samantha, everyone’s favorite newlywed witch. Producers are also said to be courting Mike Myers to play her befuddled husband, Darren. Or is that Darwood?
And heeeere’s a denial from Johnny Carson that he’s seriously ill. Carson’s people have confirmed that, yes, Carson is suffering from emphysema as the National Enquirer reports, but that no, he’s not, like, dying or anything. “I’m dealing with it the best I can and it is not causing me any major problems,” Carson told the press this week. I guess we’ll know it’s bad when Ed McMahon stops laughing.
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Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.
She may look like she never eats, but Kate Moss is, in fact, eating for two now.
That’s right: The stick-figure model is ripe with child.
In an interview with the London Mirror, Moss confirmed that she and her boyfriend of more than a year, magazine editor Jefferson Hack, are looking forward to becoming parents in October.
“I couldn’t be more delighted,” the superskinny supermodel told the tabloid.
Moss apparently declined to comment on rumors that she and Hack are planning to wed — or on whispers that she has significantly toned down her hard-partying lifestyle.
Anyone in the market for a maternity-underwear model?
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The sanest woman in Hollywood
“I don’t think there is anything good about fame. ‘Tables in restaurants.’ People say that but, then again, why don’t you just call the day before? Or go eat somewhere else?”
– Jodie Foster on the invariably losing nature of the fame game, in the Toronto Sun.
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Lucky Liza?
Some honeymoon.
Not only have Liza Minnelli and David Gest spent the first days of their marriage tirelessly working the interview circuit in London to maximize their wedding press bounce, they were almost robbed to boot.
Word out of Britain is that, as the couple was being driven away from one of their many TV appearances in a chauffeured car, some pesky youths reached in through a window while the car was stopped at a light and tried to grab the $15,000 diamond crucifix Minnelli was wearing.
Luckily, the couple’s driver figured out what was going on and managed to make a speedy getaway, leaving the kids empty-handed — and Minnelli a bit shaken up.
“It was incredible. It was so terrifying,” Minnelli told the London Evening Standard. “There were these three kids who just picked on us at the lights. They obviously saw what I was wearing and tried to grab it … It was really horrific, very frightening.”
Gest, however, was far less freaked by the attempted manhandling of his wife’s property. “We’re New Yorkers,” he told reporters, “so nothing scares us.”
Let’s just see how the rest of the honeymoon goes.
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Found art
“I am equally the artist as much as I am a work of art.”
– Marilyn Manson on himself (what else?), on NME.com.
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Burnin’ down the house
Oops! ain’t the half of it.
Is Britney Spears showing the strain of her new alleged singlehood or does she just have a few things to learn about fire?
According to Spears’ mother, Lynne, the pop princess almost burned down the New York apartment she was staying in the other day after she lit a candle in front of an air vent and then split the scene.
During Britney’s four-day stay in the Big Apple, she and her friends “shopped every day!” Britney’s mom writes on her daughter’s official Web site.
They went “out on the town a few times too,” she says, adding that “one of those nights, they all came in to a real mess! Brit had left a candle burning in front of an air vent. The wall caught on fire, and the fire department had to come to put it out.”
That’s certainly one way to meet one of New York’s Bravest … but it’s not the first time Spears has had bad luck with a flame.
“This is the second time this has happened,” writes Lynne. “Brit left a candle burning in her bathroom in our Louisiana home” and “caught her bathroom on fire.”
Well, we can only assume she had her reasons for lighting a match in there.
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Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.
We know Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz are Hollywood royalty, but who knew they even sit on the throne together?
The cozy couple are so attached to each other, they’ve reportedly begun to coordinate their trips to the bathroom.
At a recent Los Angeles dinner with Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, the London Express reports, Cruz announced that she had to use the facilities and Cruise rose to go too.
“They were both holding hands until they had to go their separate ways,” a source told the paper. “When Tom finished his ablutions before Penelope did, he patiently waited for her and they went back to their seats hand in hand, where they continued to cuddle and kiss as they chatted with Steven and Kate.”
Well, you know what they say … the couple that pisses together kisses together. Or something like that.
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More terlet talk
“She actually sneaked into my room once and cellophaned my toilet. Puh-lease! She’s strictly amateur night.”
– George Clooney on Julia Roberts’ inadequacy as a practical joker, in Controversy magazine.
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Look who’s livin’ like a Bing!
A blow for those of you still holding out hope that Hugh Grant would reunite with Elizabeth Hurley and act as in loco paternis to her unborn child.
The actor has just plunked down about $5 million for his own bachelor pad in Kensington, West London, Peoplenews.com reports, thus adding weight to his claims that fatherhood is simply not his bag.
The deluxe two-bedroom penthouse apartment reportedly comes complete with a hot tub on its terrace and is tricked out with remote-control-operated windows, stereo and giant master-bedroom movie screen. Maybe if Hurley’s kid came with remote-controlled diapers …
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Victim of the TV mafia
“There’s a terrific line from ‘Godfather 3′ — ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.’”
– Eriq LaSalle on how he feels to be headed back to “ER” even though his character, Dr. Benton, had been written out of the show at his request, in Variety.
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Juicy bits
Guess who’s checked into the heartbreak hotel: Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley. After 10 blissful months together, the disparate duo is dating no more. “Nicolas Cage and Lisa Marie Presley ended their 10-month relationship two weeks ago,” their publicists told the press. “They hope to remain friendly.” Cage, for his part, was reported to become quite friendly with any number of comely young women at a Super Bowl party last weekend, and Presley’s been spending some friendly time with her ex, John Oszajca. So they neither of them’s exactly all shook up.
Ever wonder what Marilyn Manson was like as a kid? VH1 has taken it on itself to head back to the goth rocker’s hometown to talk to family and friends about his early years, when he was known as Brian Warner and presumably had normal eyeballs. “He was just like any normal kid growing up in the Midwest,” Manson’s childhood buddy Charles Days recalls in “Driven: Marilyn Manson,” which will air later this month. “He had the poofy hair, too — the 1980s hair, mud flaps on the back. The look for our group back then was a jean jacket, collar up, maybe even a Bon Jovi T-shirt underneath.” So his Satan worshipper look actually sounds like an improvement.
Mike Myers, you’ve got a diehard fan in Britney Spears. Spears recently told London’s Radio 1 that she was “so excited” to appear in the Austin Powers film formerly known as “Goldmember,” she could barely contain herself. “I’ve seen the first two films and I think he’s the funniest man in the world,” she said. Which doesn’t mean the role came easily to her. “It was hard to keep in character,” she confessed, “trying to be this sexy vixen while he pelvic-dances and cracks me up.” Oops, let’s take it again …
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Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.
God wants you to vote for Will Smith?
Smith apparently thinks so. The rapper-actor says he feels destined to be U.S. prez. And he doesn’t care how randomly ambitious that might sound to you.
“People say that’s arrogant, and when you see it in print, it is arrogant,” Smith told Oprah Winfrey recently. “So I’ll sit here before you and say what I truly believe. I think that I have a wonderful delusional quality. You know, that I honestly believe. As I sit here, you know I’m silly and I joke, but I honestly believe if I set my mind to it, I could be the president of the United States.”
One person’s delusion, he says, is another’s destiny. “I don’t believe that God has blessed me with the gifts that he’s blessed me with just to be an actor or just to be a rapper,” Smith insists. “I think the connection that I have with people I want to use for more than making money.”
Now where have we heard that before?
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In case you wondered …
“I’m very much a people person.”
– Brad Pitt on his love of the human race, in the Calgary Sun.
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Merchant’s missionary zeal
Celebritus humanititis strikes again.
Like David Schwimmer and Will Smith before her, former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman Natalie Merchant has been felled with the dread disease that causes the rich and famous to pledge their readiness to give it all up for the good of humanity.
Displaying a sure symptom, Merchant tells the Associated Press she’s been thinking about casting aside her meaninglessly lucrative career as a singer to work with disadvantaged children.
“I’m surprised that I ever earned a living this way. I just joined a band to get out of my hometown and see other places,” she informs the AP.
And while she plans to put out at least two more albums, Merchant figures she’ll hang up her touring shoes within the next few years. “I don’t see myself at 45 living on a tour bus and leaping up and down on stage,” she says.
So what will she do instead? “I’ve thought of starting a nonprofit theatre group or some type of travelling arts group,” Merchant muses. “I feel like the experience with theatre and dance is not available to many kids who are economically unable or isolated.”
Hey, what’s the matter here?
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Manson’s Marquis cut
“I think it will make people want to have sex.”
– Marilyn Manson on his upcoming album, which includes “very groove-oriented beats” inspired by the Marquis de Sade, in the Alternative Press.
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Juicy bits
Pee-wee porn or poor Pee-wee? That is the question now that former “Playhouse” denizen Paul Reubens has found himself back in the headlines. It seems Reubens, who only recently appeared to have put that notorious public masturbation episode behind him, has landed back on the wrong side of the vice squad. According to the New York Post, the L.A.P.D. recently searched Reubens’ home for child pornography and carted off thousands of videotapes and scads of racy photos, magazines and books — along with three computers containing what the National Enquirer has called “lewd material.” Reubens’ spokesman insists the comedian is innocent of child porn charges and says the seized goods were the quirky comedian’s “vintage kitsch and erotic art and photography collections which Paul has collected for over 30 years.” The L.A.P.D. is said to be “cataloguing” its finds. A dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.
Flashback. “Hogan’s Heroes” is headed back to the big screen. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Russell Crowe is set to star in a film version of the 1960s TV show about the wacky hijinks of the American colonel Hogan and his hapless German captors. This is not to be confused with the upcoming biopic of “Hogan” star Bob Crane, starring Greg Kinnear. I see nossink.
In more family-oriented revival news, a live-action movie of “The Jetsons” is reportedly headed your way. Based on the classic ’60s cartoon about a family of the future, the film will be directed by Rob Minkoff, the man behind “Stuart Little” and “Stuart Little 2.” Jane, stop this crazy thing!
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Miss something? Read last Tuesday’s Nothing Personal.
