Charles Manson vs. The Media. Who’s Better at Brainwashing?
“Oh hey Charlie”, I hear in the background as I sit on the couch with my then-boyfriend, smoking cigarettes and chatting casually with the twins. The twins were teenage girls that we newly befriended. Their mother was on the phone in the background. Once in a while bits and pieces of the conversation would drift in and out as she sauntered around the house.
“How are things, Charlie?” And although I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, it sounded normal enough that I paid no attention to it at all, until the girls went to smoke a cigarette outside and my boyfriend leaned into me and whispered, “You know who she’s talking to right now don’t you?” I glanced sideways at him, an eyebrow raised. “No… (Why would I? What do you mean?).”
“Charles Mansion. ‘Charlie’ is Charles Manson.”
…
My eyes and ears perk up like he just inserted pop-rocks in my veins. My brain exploding into a dizzying fireworks display that light up the words: “HOLY FUCKING SHIT.” Pop. Pop. Pop.
He continued, “You’ve never noticed the “X” carved on Cappy’s forehead? “Cappy” was, of course, short for “Capistrano”; that is, “Catherine Gillies”, of the (in)famous Manson family.
“I just thought they were wrinkles…” and in a flash, all the pieces start coming together. It all made sense now, this family that abruptly moved in behind us (they were always moving apparently), the girls’ love of the outdoors (we lived in a small town in the mountains and they would go live off the land as naturally as little mountain lions), their mutual love of/obsession with the Beatles, their confident but slightly detached dispositions. Their “hippy-ness”, so genuine that it seemed like they had the souls of oak trees.
My emotional responses upon learning this news went something like this: “OMG!” (shock) > “No fucking way!” (disbelief) > “Are they dangerous? (fear) > “This is so fucking cool!” (acceptance) > “I have to know more.” (engagement). This happened in the span of about 1.2 seconds.
As soon as Cappy got off the phone, I was on her like a Barbara Walters zombie on meth. This was about 20 years ago, so the details are a bit fuzzy now, but I’ll never forget the major points of our conversation because it blew my mind — and I can say now, in all the clarity that comes from hindsight, that she was one of the first people to really get me thinking about the media and how their portrayals of a situation or persons can be so far distorted from the “truth”, and how easily many of us as media consumers digest information without any mastication at all — as a society, we rarely chew it or taste it for ourselves — we swallow it whole and never really think about it again, but it stays with us and colors everything we encounter going forward.
Stories are powerful.
I am grateful for her for seeding in me a wormhole of thoughts that made me more cognizant about whose truth we are consuming, rather than the idea of a single truth to any situation.
This is a summary of what Cappy said:
- It’s bullshit that Charlie is in jail and that they will never let him out because he didn’t kill anyone.
- He was up for another parole hearing but he knows they will never let him out so he’s just going to do some crazy shit to at least make it entertaining.
- She was upset that she didn’t get to go on that infamous night, and the only reason she didn’t was because the car was full.
- Manson never told/demanded/ordered anyone to go kill anyone. They were all high as eagles and they decided to go all by themselves, and then only afterwards did they blame Charlie for masterminding the event.
Imagine my brain trying to reconcile all this information after years of simply accepting that Charles Mansion was a “psychopath”, a “serial killer”, a “mass murderer”, a “cult leader”. I mean, he is quite literally the poster-child for these labels. Charles Manson is a cultural icon because of these (largely unchallenged) associations that we have about him, and it’s been going strong since the 60's. But according to Cathy, this association was complete and utter bullshit.
Imagine if this happened today. A car full of young people go and kill a bunch of celebrities. Then they say someone else made them do it. Wouldn’t they have to prove that? Wouldn’t there need to be coercion at least? I could tell you to go and rob a bank for me right now but it’s your choice to do it or not unless I threaten you and you felt like your safety or the safety of those you cared about would be jeopardized by your lack of compliance. So regardless of whether Mansion made the suggestion or not, the point is that a suggestion does not a mass murderer make.
You could argue that Hitler didn’t do the killing himself either, but was obviously a murderer, and you’d have a good point, but the difference here is the power construct. Hitler established a system by which others carried out his deeds or met with punishment. Did Manson? Maybe… we can certainly speculate, but where was the proof of that needed for a conviction like this? Life in prison because of some finger pointing? We have criminals these days that have raped and murdered and they are repeatedly set free to do it again. And Manson is jailed for life because some people (who, btw, were just caught red-handed for killing a house full of people and were clearly on a lot of drugs) said that he made them do it? The actual murderers remain relatively anonymous to the public (I‘d be willing to bet that the majority of you couldn’t name a single person who was actually there at the scene of the crime), but almost everyone has that crazed image of Charles Manson with his spastic hair and buggy eyes etched into their collective memories. This doesn’t seem bizarre to anyone else?
All evidence point to Manson simply being a very outspoken loud-mouth, with no real power or leverage in place for that type of control. They did not fear him (to that degree, if at all. If they did would they be calling him in prison to say hi?), they did not obey his every command (was there prior evidence of this type of control? No). The media’s portrayal of him as the “leader” of this “cult” was a product of sensationalist journalism that pitted conservative American ideals against what people feared was the worst of the counterculture revolution.
And Manson himself didn’t help his own cause by stepping into the center of an angry mob with nasty words for them. His narcissism and need for attention, in short, sealed his fate, and his place in pop-culture and history. But being a loud-mouth wasn’t, and still isn’t, a crime. Due process and good judgement in this case were thrown out in favor of appeasing the media frenzy and validating societal fear.
We used Manson, and projected him as a cultural symbol that we could mock at our leisure, and any reconsideration of that automatically gets you cast into the crazy crowd. Clearly, you must eat cat turds as snacks and discuss conspiracy theories all day.
Additionally, Manson doesn’t even fit the formal definition of a “serial killer” according to the FBI and John Douglas (arguably the most famous profiler ever — he inspired Silence of the Lambs and Mindhunter and basically founded the art and science of profiling). To be classified as a serial killer/serial murderer, you have to at least have murdered twice (which is not the same as killing two or more people, which could be a multiple homicide or spree killings but not serial killings). The murders must have some period of time in between them. So again, the title does not fit. Moreover, there is usually a MO (modus operandi) and/or a “signature” with serial killers. John Douglas differentiates these as follows:
“MO refers to the techniques the offender employs to commit the crime. Signature refers to the elements not necessary to carry out the crime, but what the offender has to do to satisfy his emotional needs. If a bank robber tape over the lens of a surveillance camera, that’s MO. If he feels a need to tear his clothes off and dance naked before that same camera, that’s signature. It doesn’t help him commit the crime — in fact, in this case, it hurts him — but it’s something he has to do to make the experience emotionally satisfying.”
Manson fit none of the above criteria.
To be clear, I’m not taking a position here on whether he’s innocent or guilty. I don’t know, I wasn’t there (but I obviously have my opinions). But Cappy was, and if (just if…) what she’s saying is true, then maybe there are some long-held assumptions we’ve swallowed that we should regurgitate and reconsider.
So who’s a better cult leader? Manson, or the media? You decide. No really, YOU decide.
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