Music / Portrait of an American Family

Cake and sodomy, anyone?

Burn the witches, burn the witches, don't take time to sew your stiches

Burn the witches, burn the witches

Good is the thing that you favor, evil is your sour flavor

You cannot sedate all the things you hate

— "Dogma"

Portrait of an American Family is the debut album of American rock band Marilyn Manson, released in 1994 by Nothing and Interscope Records.

The album originated under the name The Manson Family Album in 1993, but due to dissatisfaction with its overly polished sound, the band reproduced and remixed the album with assistance from producers including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who had signed the band to his Nothing label. Parts of the album were made at Reznor's home studio at 10050 Cielo Drive, where members of the Charles Manson family committed the 1969 Tate murders. (Reznor would famously later use this studio to create the NIN album The Downward Spiral.)

The album introduced the nightmarish tones and biting critique of modern American culture/media that would become the central ethos of the band, and contains a wide array of cultural references from lyrical Shout-Outs to a copious amount of samples (many of them from offbeat films). It also caused a bit of Executive Meddling due to the inclusion of references to Charles Manson and its controversial artwork.

The album was released to modest success, but has gotten warmer reception over the years, being deemed by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time.

The album is known for its singles "Get Your Gunn", "Lunchbox", and "Dope Hat".

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Tracklist:

1. "Prelude (The Family Trip)/Rowing Song" – 1:20
2. "Cake and Sodomy" – 3:46
3. "Lunchbox" – 4:32
4. "Organ Grinder" – 4:22
5. "Cyclops" – 3:32
6. "Dope Hat" – 4:21
7. "Get Your Gunn" – 3:18
8. "Wrapped in Plastic" – 5:35
9. "Dogma" – 3:22
10. "Sweet Tooth" – 5:03
11. "Snake Eyes and Sissies" – 4:07
12. "My Monkey" – 4:31
13. "Misery Machine" – 13:11

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Trope Hat:

The album as a whole

• Album Filler: The telephone that just keeps on ringing for several minutes (!) near the end of the album.
• Arc Words: The line "You cannot sedate all the things you hate" (appears in "Dogma") is printed in the booklet. It basically sums up the album's themes in a nutshell.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Credits Gag about Manson himself:
  AND MR. MANSON: ACCUSATIONS, CHILD MANIPULATIONS, BACKWARDS MASKING, POLAROIDS
• Art-Style Dissonance: The whole album. It gives off juvenile vibes with references to clowns, organs, candy etc., but introduces very dark themes like abuse, Subverted Innocence, drugs, hypocrisy, degeneracy and even more.
• Concept Album: All the songs are connected under witnessing the corruption in American society — namely from religion and media — as refracted through the lives of an average American family.
• Credits Gag: The personnel on the album is listed, according to their contributions, but some of those are clearly intended to be taken as a joke. Manson is for instance credited for "accusations, child manipulations and backwards masking". This is a Call-Back to the Spooky Kids demos, which also did this.
• Creepy Doll: On the album cover, four of them.
• Demoted to Extra: Roli Mosimann was chosen to produce Portrait of an American Family due to his work with Swans, but he turned in a flat and lifeless mix. Trent Reznor (who agreed with Manson that the mix "sucked") brought them to LA for seven weeks of remixing and re-recording, and Mosimann was demoted to "engineer" in the album credits. Daisy Berkowitz, after enough backstabbings to be legally a pin cushion, released this mix, which also has a previously unheard song, "Filth". One can judge it for themselves.
• Family Portrait of Characterization: The cover artwork already makes clear that the "portrait of a American family" will not a positive one, already implying repression, moral indifference and a Dysfunctional Family.
• Grotesque Gallery: The cover art is a bunch of creepy dolls in a small living room that represents a typical American family, arranged in a way that gives vague associations to the classical Couch Gag.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Present throughout the album, that combines deliberately juvenile music with dark themes and tones, but the most striking example is "Dope Hat".
• Nuclear Family: Parodied with the cover artwork and deconstructed throught the song lyrics. The typical American family is deeply flawed, repressed, over-obsessed with TV and hypocritical with its morals on this album,
• Refuge in Audacity: Well, it's a Marilyn Manson album. The interior photography features fake Polaroid pictures of an apparently mutilated female body. Several lyrics uses horror imagery or provide ideas to shock and provoke the listener into thinking in a different manner. Nevertheless, some of the earlier controversial ideas weren't used. For example, Manson planned to use a picture of himself nude as a baby for the album cover. Neither did they use artwork by serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
• Sampling: The album makes heavy use of sampling
  • "Dope Hat" has the samples "The great hoodoo!" and "Prepare to meet your doom", spoken by Charles Nelson Reilly in the TV series Lidsville.
  • "Go on and smile, you cunt!" in "Cake and Sodomy" are taken from Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris.
  • "Organ Grinder" samples "Lollipops for the kiddie winkies", a line from The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
  • "Lunchbox" samples "Fire" by Arthur Brown.
  • "Get Your Gunn" has a sample from the press conference in which politician Budd Dwyer committed suicide on live TV in 1987.
  • "Wrapped in Plastic" has samples from Twin Peaks.
  • "Dogma" has the sampled line "Burn, you fucker!" from Pink Flamingos.
  • "Snake Eyes and Sissies" has a sampled quote from serial killer and rapist Richard Ramirez during a court appearance.
  • "My Monkey'" has several audio quotes from Charles Manson.
  • "Cyclops" had a distorted and slowed down sample of the preacher from Poltergeist II: The Other Side singing "God is in his holy temple".
  • The line "We're gonna ride to the Abbey of Thelema" in "Misery Machine" references Aleister Crowley 's "Abbey of Thelema" and samples of "Beep Beep" by The Playmates and a quote from the John Waters' film "Desperate Living".

Individual Songs

• Animal Motifs: Several references to monkeys are made on this album, it has been suggested this represents drug addiction.
  I do a crooked little dance with my funny little monkey (Organ Grinder)
  The rabbit's just a monkey in disguise (Dope Hat)
  I had a little monkey, I sent him to the country and I fed him on gingerbread (My Monkey)
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Inverted in "Organ Grinder", which starts with the line: "I am the face of piss and shit and sugar".
• Burn the Witch!: In "Dogma", although it's more metaphorical as cancelling different opinions.
  Burn the witches, burn the witches, don't take time to sew your stiches
  Burn the witches, burn the witches [...]
  Burn your bridges, burn your bridges, don't take time to sew your stiches
• Continuity Nod:
  • "Dope Hat" would later be remixed on Smells Like Children as "Diary of a Dope Fiend".
  • "Organ Grinder" has a sample from the Child Catcher's speech in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a film Manson would reference again on the album cover and title of Smells Like Children, as well as on the track "Shitty Chicken Gang Bang".
  • The line "We're gonna ride to the Abbey of Thelema" in "Misery machine" references Aleister Crowley 's "Abbey of Thelema". Crowley would be referenced again on the album Smells Like Children, which has a track named "Diary of a Dope Fiend", in reference to Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend.
• Corrupt the Cutie: Children are corrupted into doing everything forbidden in "Dope Hat"
• Date Rape: Alluded to in "Cake and Sodomy" where the Deep South seems to treat rate rape as something not too bad.
  Virgins sold in quantity, herded by heredity
  Red-neck-burn-out-mid-west-mind, "who said date rape isn't kind?" [...]
• Deep South: The deep south gets the worst treatment in "Cake and Sodomy", which deals with the perversity and moral hypocrisy of the "white trash".
  Bible-belt round anglo-waste, putting sinners in their place
  Yeah, right, great if you're so good explain the shit stains on your face
• Depraved Kids' Show Host: The stage magician in "Dope Hat" is turning a kid's show into something that's close to a drug feast.
• Double-Meaning Title: "Get Your Gunn". This may be seen as a misspelling of "get your gun", as in "grab a gun and be Trigger-Happy". It may also be seen as a reference to Dr. David Gunn, who was murdered by a pro-life activist, thus meaning "kill your abortion doctor".
• Dramatic Unmask: In "Organ Grinder", the titular organ grinder unmasks himself.
  I wear this fucking mask because you cannot handle me
  Here is my real head
• Drugs Are Good: "Dope Hat" is about a stage magician who pulls drugs out of his hat instead of rabbits. This also parodies any G-Rated Drug, as it directly speaks to children which might mistake rabbits with drugs.
  Fail to see the tragic, turn it into magic
  My big top tricks will always make you happy
  But we all know the hat is wearing me
  My bag is in the hat, it's filled with this and that
• Electronic Speech Impediment: "My Monkey" has sped up voices.
• Emotion Suppression: A central theme throughout, what you suppress comes back to haunt you. Most present in "Dogma":
  You cannot sedate all the things you hate.
• Expy: Manson himself in the various roles he takes is an expy of Willy Wonka, who represents everything that's forbidden and hidden away from youngsters, this mostly relates to the main characters of "Dope Hat" and "Organ Grinder"
• Hypocrite: A central theme throughout the album, Manson attacks the hypocrisy of talk show America, present the most in "Get Your Gunn", which was insipired by a real-life event where a pro-life activist killed a man. Manson called this the ultimate hypocrisy.
  I eat innocent meat, the housewife i will beat
  The pro-life I will kill [...]
  pseudo-morals work real well on the talk shows for the weak
  But your selective judgements and goodguy badges
  Don't mean a fuck to me
• Improbable Weapon User: In "Lunchbox", using a mundane lunchbox as a weapon to fight off bullies.
• "I Want" Song: "Lunchbox", which is from the perspective of a bullied school boy who wishes to be a big, powerful rock star that no one will be able to intimidate.
• Kids Are Cruel: "Lunchbox" is about a school boy who is bullied and uses his lunchbox as a weapon^note a popular schoolyard "trick" during Manson's childhood years was for kids to stuff the metal boxes with rocks as an improvised weapon, which would inflict horrific damage to act revenge upon his attackers.
• Kill the Cutie: "My Monkey", about a dead monkey.
• Moral Myopia: Deconstructed and parodied in "Dogma", which makes a point against those who believe what is good for them is also good on principle.
  Good is the thing that you favor, evil is your sour flavor.
  You cannot sedate all the things you hate
• Motif Merger: Very extraordinary and unique metaphors can be found on this album:
  • "Cake and Sodomy": the absurd obsession with television leads metaphorically using it for sex, at least implying Anatomically Impossible Sex:
    VCR's and vaseline, tv-fucked by plastic queens
  • "Get Your Gunn": It turns out you can actually "record" someone with your fist, invoking Talk to the Fist:
    I am the VHS, record me with your fist.
• Mundane Made Awesome: In "Lunchbox", the titular lunch box is good enough to fight bullies.
• My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting: Manson criticizes his country's society, especially religion, mainstream media and mob mentality.
• Pose of Supplication: Implied and invoked in "Cage and Sodomy", as a gesture of moral indifference. Although the lyrics might also imply a Twisted-Knee Collapse, the message stays the same.
  White trash get down on your knees, time for cake and sodomy
• Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: The premise of "Dope Hat", with the difference that the hat contains drugs.
  The rabbit's just a monkey in disguise
  Stars and pills and needles dance before our eyes
• Real Life Writes the Plot: "Get Your Gunn" was inspired by the 1993 murder of American physician David Gunn, who was killed by an anti-abortion activist. Manson described the murder as "the ultimate hypocrisy I witnessed growing up: that these people killed someone in the name of being 'pro-life'." The same song also samples R. Budd Dwyer's public suicide, as aired during a televised press conference in 1987.
• Religion Rant Song: "Cake and Sodomy", which was inspired by Manson watching public access TV in a motel, seeing Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson preaching on one channel, asking for the viewer's credit card number, and then flipping to another one where a man masturbated and then asked the same of his audience.
• Russian Reversal:
  • In "Dope Hat", the hats wears the Stage Magician.
  But we all know the hat is wearing me
  • "Misery Machine":
  When you ride you're ridden.
• Shout-Out:
  • The album intro, "Prelude (The Family Trip)" is a shoutout to Willy Wonka's scary riddle/song during the tunnel ride in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with exactly the same lyrics as both in the novel as well as the film. The music video of "Dope Hat" also has Manson playing the part of Wonka during the tunnel boat ride.
  • "Misery Machine" is a reference to the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo.
  • "Wrapped in Plastic" takes its name from Laura Palmer of the aforementioned Twin Peaks, and how her body is found wrapped in plastic sheets in the show's pilot.
• Stock Sound Effects: The album ends with ringing telephone sounds, and a very angry woman being heard yelling "Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother that I HATE YOU!"
• Take That!: After a telephone ringing for ever on the final track the voice of a woman is heard, complaining to never call her again, because then she will take legal action against the band.
• Wrench Whack: The song "Snake Eyes and Sissies" is about a psychotic guy, and mentions using a wrench as a weapon in its beginning.

Music Videos

• Surreal Music Video: "Dope Hat" is basically a reference to the boat ride in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with the boat entering a World of Chaos setting through the mouth of what sppears to be Charles Manson, many surreal images like fish coming out of a melon and Manson appearing as Willy Wonka. It's about drugs after all.

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