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T A B L E_T A L K

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Search BarnesandNoble.com for Marilyn Manson
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R E C E N T L Y

The prisoner of Pennsylvania Avenue
By Margaret Talbot
The many ordeals of Hillary Clinton should make us ask: Is it time to retire the concept of the first lady?
(12/14/98)

My Advent adventure
By Anne Lamott
Trying to find the patience and faith of the season when all of God's spokespeople are in bad moods
(12/10/98)

Imaginary friend
By Andrea Cooper
A mother confesses that she would find her 4-year-old's make-believe companion heartwarming if her own mother hadn't talked to imaginary people too
(12/09/98)

Making the list
By Polly Shulman
Your kids might not admit it, but there's a lot to be said for a present whose batteries don't run out and that you can take anywhere
(12/08/98)

Jews for Jesus
By Danny Miller
For my Holy Spirit-possessed sixth-grade teacher, it wasn't enough to sing the songs for our school's Christmas parade, we had to feel them
(12/07/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK HOT FLASH ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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S A L O N
E M P O R I U M
FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

BY FIONA MORGAN
At the age of 14, sitting in a mall food court in North Texas, I showed my mother some song lyrics by a band called Nine Inch Nails. She put on her glasses and read them -- songs about obscenity, anger, despair, mutilation, addiction. "This is how I feel," I said. She looked surprised, and that surprised me in turn. She didn't know I felt this way? She didn't feel this way, at least a little bit? "I had no idea you felt this bad," she said. But even though it made her nervous, it made me feel like I could talk to her. She hadn't recoiled. She hadn't condemned my music -- the totem of my teenage identity.

In the twisted world of adolescence, songs about rage, violence and self-destruction make you feel better. They acknowledge and sometimes even exorcise the hypocrisy, loneliness, hostility and fear that many teenagers feel in mercilessly high relief. My mother's openness and trust strengthened our relationship. Yet she probably wondered why the emotionally obvious, undeniably crude lyrics appealed to me more than, say, the poetry in my English book. She worried that I was adopting the do-what-thou-wilt philosophy of the lyrics ("God Money, I'd do anything for you"). Yet it was precisely the acknowledged melodrama of these songs, their self-mocking sincerity, their confusion of irony and earnestness, that spoke to me.

Identity and music are linked in adolescence, and it's not a connection exclusive to any particular genre. The bathroom graffiti at my middle school will be forever emblazoned on my memory: "Ropers rule," referring to the country music crowd, who all wore skin-tight Wranglers, was replaced a few days later with "Stoners rule," a message from the heavy-metal contingent, who wore the most offensive T-shirts and refused to cut their hair. The most surreal tag was "Christians rule," scrawled in marker above both of the previous pronouncements.

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Late this October, in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, 17-year-old Jay Fieldon Howell was arrested and charged with stabbing a 14-year-old girl in the neck in front of a satanic altar he'd built in a backyard shed. The girl survived the attack, and Howell could face up to 99 years in prison for injury to a child. The two kids had been watching a Marilyn Manson video together moments before the alleged attack. Manson is a shock rocker whose Gothic (or "goth"), glam-rock act has made him the devil du jour of the Christian right. Some members of the community in Fort Worth and the neighboring city of Arlington are drawing a connection between the attack and Howell's attachment to Manson's music.

Howell had been under psychiatric care since he was 8, but recent psychological evaluations didn't indicate violent tendencies, according to his mother, Cindy Crews. He was dabbling in Satanism, having decorated his room with an altar, black candles and the numerals 666. "He seemed normal with his peers because his peers have all the same interests also," the Forth Worth Star-Telegram reported Crews as saying. "He just wanted to be his own self. He felt he had a right to have his own beliefs -- dress how he wanted and follow his interests."

Though many in the area think Howell's interests were not "normal" at all, the case hits close to home for those parents who don't think their children are capable of violence, but are unfamiliar with the music and cultural trends their children are experimenting with. Some school officials see a lack of responsibility on the part of parents who buy Manson's records for their children without considering the influence he might have on their behavior. Last month, one area school district banned Marilyn Manson T-shirts.

In response to the Howell case, the local Tarrant County nonprofit Crime Prevention Resource Center put together a two-hour training session for school officials, law enforcement officials and parent groups to warn them that Manson's music could trigger violence among teens already prone to destructive behavior. They pass out copies of his song lyrics, including "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" and "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)," and discuss his intentionally shocking stage acts. "We have fragmented personalities out here," program director Ramon Jaquez told Salon in a phone interview, "and music sparks the fuse that sets them off."

N E X T_ P A G E: Parents of Manson fans should consider hospitalizing their children