This essay analyses and assesses the influences of music using contemporary artists such as Marilyn Manson and Ozzy Osbourne. The essay will examine concepts of how alternative music and their artists affect basic values. The areas that will be investigated will be rock music's subcultures and how the media presents them.
In order to understand the influence of artists such as Marilyn Manson have on the youth today, the subculture that Manson is apart of will be examined and compared to the image the media presents as today's youth. Also being assessed will be the shock effects Ozzy Osbourne had on the youth in past years. .
The subculture that Marilyn Manson is a part of, and promotes, is that of Modern Satanism. This subculture, also promoted by Ozzy Osbourne in the past, has caused rock artists to be blamed for very serious incidents such as suicide and murder.
One incident in October 1984, a nineteen-year-old teenager shot himself in the head. When the coroner came to investigate the scene he found headphones still upon the victim, playing the song "Suicide Solution". Once the media got hold of the story instant blame was pointed at the rock star with some suggestions that Ozzy's songs even contained tones known as "hemi sync" that would cause a person to be unable to resist what was being said in the song. Such far out suggestions in the media can not only turn the world against one artist but against the rock genre as a whole. .
The media can influence the public to such an extent that Ozzy, the bat eating, suicide causing rocker, nearly twenty years on is know seen as a loved celebrity to a majority of social groups because of the way he is represented in a reality television program, a show not just watched by the world of rock but the world on a whole. The world that once wanted to stop his music has now done a 180 and made him four or five more recognised than what he was, as well as richer.
