Marilyn Manson: Coma White Meaning
Coma White Lyrics
She's standing on an overpass
In her miracle mile
[coma:]
"You were from a perfect world
A world that threw me away today
Today to run away"
A pill to make you numb
A pill to make you...
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1TOP RATED
#1 top rated interpretation:"Coma White" seems to have a double meaning. Those that have read the tenth chapter of "Holy Wood" know what I'm talking about.
The first meaning, of the album and the "storyline" of the triptych, is that Coma White is a character. Judging from the lyrics, it's a safe bet that she was perhaps the girlfriend of Alpha/Omega, whom I view as being both symptoms of disassociative personality disorder (multiple personalities). At the end of "Mechanical Animals", Alpha/Omega has snapped, and is now leaving his life of fame, drugs and stardom. Coma White is left behind, a memory of the "perfect" world; a world that is perfect because of the make-up on television. It's all hollow and white.
The general concept, however, is aimed at humans, and addiction. People become dependent on things. I remember an interview in which Manson says something like "Antichrist Superstar was about losing your feelings; [Mechanical Animals] is about what happens you get them back." Coma White is the mess after someone gets over their delusions of grandeur, their central pleasures, portrayed as drugs in the song and album. -
2TOP RATED
#2 top rated interpretation:First off, notice how 'soma' and 'coma' are spelled almost exactly the same. Some is a drug that if you take enough,litterally puts you in a coma like sleep. On the streets it's called the 'coma drug'. I think that the girl is looking back on all of the mistakes she's made,averything she's done ect. ("she's standing on the overpass in her miracle mile") she's thinking of suicide. "a pill to make you dumb,a pill to make you numb, a pill to make you anybody else but all the drugs in this world won't save her from herself" (I relate to that so much sometimes) so I beleive that she uses to try to run from herself, her own problems, to be someone else. I agree with the first poster about the dolls meaning a loss of innocence. Like she knew too much, she couldn't go back and change anything,so she was waiting to fall again. In short, she commits suicide. In the song coma black (the sequel to come white) I think that the person who loved her before is mourning her,and thinking of there own suicide ("this was never my world you took the angel away I'll kill myself to make everybody pay").
It's a very kick ass song, coma white and coma black. -
3TOP RATED
#3 top rated interpretation:Ok here it goes Jackie Kennedy's (JFK's wife) knew of FKS's afffairs with other women ironically enough !"Marilyn"! Monroe, but still kept he composure in the public eye, hence : There,s something cold and blank behind her smile.
she lived in a perfect world she grew up wealthy, and she was the wife of the fucking president of the united states hence :You were from a perfect world A world that threw me away today Today to run away"
it's kind of sad but all her life she was all ways in hell with her dads abusive relationships with women, all of her husbands were womanizers and cheated on her, her only way to cope with the pain and depression was her drug of choice, books, literature, art and culture, she used these things to fill a void in her life, but even all of the "drugs" she couldnt like to herself the problem was still there, around her and in her head hence: A pill to make you numb, A pill to make you dumb, A pill to make you anybody else, But all the drugs in this world, Won't save her from herself
the assasination of JFK had to be a mind fuck to her and a dagger to the heart because no matter how much of an ass he was to her she still loved this dude, of course she cried, depression set in she wanted to die, tears leaking from her eyes, crying like a kid who lost its doll (polaroid), hence:
Her mouth was an empty cut, And she was waiting to fall,Just bleeding like a polaroid that Lost all her doll
this song is in my opinion about her but more about the feeling of hopelessness, depression and sorrow, and emptiness, pain, plain and simple wanting to die that every person in this world at one time or another feels, he merely uses her as analigie, that's why he used to shooting of JFK in his video.
oh yea the El DÃa de los Muertos (day of the dead) parade going on kind of plays into him wanting to be dead he sees himself on the cross, in pictures and so forth , I dunno that's a hard one maybe that's just an element of the video who knows -
I think this song is about Marilyn Monroe. First, the name "Marilyn Manson" is derived from Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Second, there are many JFK references in the video itself. Third, in all pictures of Monroe she is smiling, but we all know that she was on drug, along with specularion that it was the Kenedy's who killed her, or "threw her away." Which brings us to the actual song lyrics "There's something cold and blank behind her smile..."You were from a perfect world A world that threw me away...
A pill to make you numb
A pill to make you dumb
A pill to make you anybody else
But all the drugs in this world
Won't save her from herself..." -
I kinda think it's about someone who becomes dependent, but not necessarily addicted to them (ex: someone who can't sleep without sleeping medication) and she's just getting sick of it.
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I know that this maybe ridiculous but this sentence 'Just bleeding like a polaroid that'
(polaroid is a camera)
In the video of Coma White,when Marilyn Manson is passing through people,camera shows a woman,who takes his picture,then marilyn manson suddenly dies.
I think this might be related. -
I think Coma White is a dual-aspect symbol. First, Coma is a woman, giving her a human face. Secondly, she stands for an intangible perfection. She is a rising celebrity (signified by the 'miracle mile' reference; the miracle mile is a highway in California. This is before 'Coma Black' in Holy Wood, when she actually becomes a star in Hollywood).
She stands on the overpass because, like the Tarot references in Holy Wood, 'death' is not literal, but figurative. She's about to lose her innocence. She's about to enter the celebrity world, a world of drugs and fame. No matter what, Coma White cannot return to her innocent state once she 'jumps'.
The song's tragic tone emanates from her naivity. At this stage, she could take any pill--one to make her numb, one to make her dumb--but one way or another, she's still going to jump. Her vision of Hollywood is that it's perfect; that her life will be complete when she becomes a star. Yet it's tragic because the life of a celebrity is just the opposite; everyone watches constantly, waiting for you to make a mistake. The only thing left to do once the rise to fame is complete is to 'die' (either figuratively or literally). See Britney Spears--she became famous, but her fame picqued when she started acting crazy a few years back. Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, et. al were cemented into fame upon their suicides. America loves martyrs more than anything else.
Coma doesn't know this. No matter what, she will take the plunge into Hollywood and become a celebrity. Her ambition and naivety blinds her to the fact that she's signing her own death warrant (and not even all the drugs in this world can match the rush she gets when she imagines being famous). -
Most people say drug abuse and suicide, i say the opposite
the first few lines are about reflection over one's life, the start of the chorus (but you were from a perfect world) is about the life that most would say is good, that marilyn realized was bs and threw away, that others are thrown away from
a pill to make you numb, painkillers, to take the pain out of reality
a pill to make you dumb, ritalin, a pill that makes your mind move slow enough that they comprehend you, but kills your intellect IF not used in proper cases, but they are rare
a pill to make you anybody else, we use these drugs to help make people fall in line, anti depressants to make people ignore the fact they should be depressed about things that are fucked up, painkillers for the same, things that mess with who you are so you can be who they want you to be. -
Last night i found out a lot more about the Mechanical Animals album and there is al ot to do with the number 15 and in the hidden messages inside the book. They talked about coma white as if it was a person (a girl). One of them says "I no longer knew if Comawhite was real or just a side effect."
My thoughts are he was taking a drug and seeing some girl and he called her comawhite. In the hidden track the 15th track he talks about her and he calls her comawhite. In the song he could be singing about how she was from a perfect word that world being the world he was in while he was on this drug. -
It's obvious. It's about the end of the United States. "A pill to make you numb, a pill to make you dumb, a pill to make you anybody else, but all the drugs in this world won't save her from herself".. Her being the USA. That's why in the video, it shows the assassination of JFK, or the reproduction of that event. He's saying you can do whatever you want, but it's the end.
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You can't just take the song by its self and try to figure out what it means. Every song on the entire album of Mechanical Animals has to do with each other, and I'm pretty sure that there are some links with Antichrist Superstar and Holywood.
But to say that this song is based on a specific outlook on the world is pretty dumb. It's obvious enough that there's an ongoing story, so to get the entire gist you have to look at everything as a whole.
I'm pretty terrible at interpretations, but something tells me that whoever he's calling "Coma White" isn't a specific someone as much as the world as a whole. That's just the feeling I get off the entire album. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I believe, from my own interpretation, that it is his reaction to a relationship gone awry(because of the time frame of this album). He thought that she was the perfect girl and that everything was perfect, and then she threw him off by breaking it off with him and in doing so, also put herself into a state of extreme depression. Having taken anti-depressants before myself, it's almost impossible for the chorus to not make me think of them. It made me feel literally numb to emotion and dumb to anything that was happening around me. Thus, her thinking that a pill making her feel like someone else would fix the problem only made it worse in the end(standing on the bridge). Her numbness to emotion and loss of social functionality put her into into "coma white." She was "white" (like a see-through ghost)with apathy from being numb to the world around her and her inability to move on from her addiction(whether it may be to a substance or obsessive compulsiveness in a relationship with someone). While this is somewhat of an abstract and personal relativity to the lyrics, I think it's at least plausible.
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I think it's about not a specific person, but everyone.
If this world is so perfect whats wrong with us?
If we do not feel in a coma... Then whats the next best thing?
Drugs, they can be given to us or we can abuse them.
No matter how numb you are from the drugs, don't meant the actual pain went away. And when the pills wear off were dead.
" She was waiting to fall". -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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I agree with all the interpretations. I think that because of the quote- ""Manson himself once also described Coma White as being: "a girl, a drug, an emotion, or you"."" everyone is supposed to relate to coma white. Everyone has or will have this great depression in their lives when they are willing to do almost anything to get rid of pain. People tend to look toward the easy,temorary, relief- drugs/alcohol abuse, sometimes if a big relationship is over- through sex and such of trying to replace...a "void" I guess you'd call it. Sometimes others think of suicide.
I think coma white is an average girl who has a lot of skeletons in her closet and now she's really REALLY regretting them- so much that suicide is pretty much her answer, after nothing else worked. -
This is just in response to the last interpretation about Jesus and JFK. Manson is not portraying them as people that died for what they believed in but rather people that will live forever in a sense. Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, they all died at 27, and their image will always be 27. Jesus and JFK also died young but more important they all died while they were at their peaks before they had the chance to be has beens.
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I think this music has a double meaning of sorts, the lyrics seem to be about a girl on drugs, perhaps the sort of thing that she turned to drugs due to depression, a sort of way to save her from her pain, but such things are never a cure, they only make you feel better for a little while, that's why he says all the drugs in this world couldn't save her from herself.
Also if you watch the clip, it shows a thing of Manson being assassinated, a sort of play on the Kennedy assassination, and then being put up on the cross, Manson has compared Kennedy to Jesus, he said he's like the new jesus, as they both died for what they believed in, and I think the whole Kennedy assassination thing is suppose to be showing how Kennedy is just like jesus, which is why he's on the cross near the end of the clip.
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