Phoenix Rising, Evan Rachel Wood’s two-part documentary about domestic and sexual abuse by shock rocker Marilyn Manson, has a recurring theme. Wood, the 34-year-old actor, has old photos from the early stages of her relationship with Manson, whom she met at the age of 18 in 2006 (he was 37) – a cherub and teenager before, atrophied and empty after.
The film selects diary entries that describe her emotions as he turned her against friends and family. There are so many press and paparazzi pictures of them together that the public admiration for this pair – a gorgeous Hollywood Lolita with a Middle American nightmare in goth makeup – is now even more nauseating. During filming from 2019 until Wood publicly identified Manson by the name Brian Warner on Instagram in February 2021, several other women and former associates of Manson gave details that either reflected her experiences or confirmed her memories riddled with recurring trauma, sleep deprivation and drugs. she says that Manson forced her.
I can’t stop thinking about this proof; most of the women don’t have the kind of documentation that Wood has to corroborate or support their own memories, let alone serve as material for the authorities. As we’ve seen time and time again in first-person narratives based on the revelations of the #MeToo movement, there is power and catharsis in revealing, in telling one’s story. But despite all Wood’s personal testimony, her processing of years of memories through the language of trauma and therapy for herself and for us, the desire for legal action – the basis of the Phoenix Rising narrative – comes down to documentation, files, photographs, a case. .
As the star of the HBO series Westworld, Wood wields considerable power in her own right and has little incentive to blame Manson for the sake of publicity, as he argued in a libel suit filed earlier this month (conveniently in time, as Wood told The Cut earlier). this week for the release of the documentary). So it’s depressing to see how little changes over the course of three hours of film spanning months of running the system and how much comes down to the perception of the story’s credibility. To date, 16 women have accused the 53-year-old Manson of sexual harassment, including Game of Thrones actress Esme Bianco, whose story bears a striking resemblance to Wood’s, and four women have sued for sexual harassment. Manson denied all allegations and was not charged with a crime. His defamation lawsuit alleges that Wood and her friend, activist Ilma Gore, concocted a plot to defame him and forged an FBI letter confirming Wood’s allegations. (Gore, Wood told Cut, is no longer affiliated with Phoenix Law, Wood’s non-profit organization, to change the statute of limitations for abuse cases.)
Rising of the Phoenix, directed by Academy Award-nominated Amy Berg (Open Secret, The Case Against Adnan Syed), is the latest in a series of #MeToo-era documentaries that uncover patterns of abuse by beloved public figures, tracing the shadow of sexual trauma and outlined cultures that turned a blind eye. This includes Leaving Neverland, a 2019 HBO series that features two detailed accounts of alleged child sexual abuse by Michael Jackson; Catch and Kill: Podcast Tapes, about Ronan Farrow’s 2017 investigation into Harvey Weinstein, which helped spark the flood of recognition that became the #MeToo hashtag; On a recording that follows former Def Jam executive Drew Dixon as she contemplates telling her story of alleged rape by music mogul Russell Simmons in the New York Times. There are Lifetime’s Surviving R Kelly, Showtime’s We Need to Talk About Cosby, and Athlete A about journalists, lawyers, and gymnasts who exposed the systematic abuse of US Gymnastics Dr. Larry Nasser’s cover-up. Released last year, HBO’s Allen vs. Farrow was both an investigation into allegations that director Woody Allen molested his daughter Dylan and a personal account of Dylan’s life, twisted by trauma, rework, and years of public scorn and dismissal.
Some of these projects are better than others at balancing the messiness of experience, the often cyclical nature of pain and abuse, and the clarity of ethics. Some justifiably defend themselves against retribution. All of them deal with the legal and emotional consequences of speaking out against a famous person. Various alleged crimes and contexts, of course, but they all basically deal with intimate trauma: how it manifests and transforms, how a person lives with it, how long it takes to begin to understand.
Wood’s claims, to be precise, are consistently horrifying. These included: that Manson repeatedly drugged, manipulated and coerced her on the set of his 2007 music video “Heart-Shaped Glasses” and “virtually raped” her on camera; that Manson controlled her food intake, raped her in her sleep after giving her sleeping pills, tortured her with a taser, beat her with a “Nazi Holocaust-era whip” while she was tied to a kneeling machine, and fed her methamphetamine and other drugs without her knowledge. Together with several other women, some of whom appear in the film during the meeting, Wood outlines a pattern of love bombardment, isolation, control, and abuse.
Phoenix Rising, like others, depends on disclosure, catharsis that tells its story, and cunning publicity navigation. But it also seems like the outer limit of what a #MeToo documentary can do. Five years of listening, five years of listening to the same patterns and realizing how predators operate within cultures and systems, how messy personal life can be, and yet it doesn’t make it any less wrong. What are we to do now? As shown in the documentary, Wood succeeded in getting California’s Phoenix Law passed, which increased the statute of limitations for domestic violence cases from three to five years and required police officers to receive additional training on intimate partner violence. She cooperates with the LAPD in investigating the Manson case and is interviewed by the FBI, which is shown silently in the film.
Evan Rachel Wood. Photograph: Olivia Fujeirol/APBut it still comes down to attention. By the end of the film, fearing for his safety and hiding with a child in Tennessee, Wood decides that a public statement is the best way forward. “If there is no public outrage about this and about the crimes he committed, and if people do not come forward, then there is no real incentive for law enforcement to do something,” she says in the footage in which she draws a grenade. Instagram post. “And we could just stand in line at the DMV for two years waiting for something to happen.”
The Law of the Phoenix seems eminently reasonable, an opportunity to better shape the laws for the human experience and what these films, detailed investigations, podcasts, testimonies bring to consciousness over and over again: trauma is messy, idiosyncratic, fluid, chameleonic. A person’s ability to see clearly is a slow process, even with therapy and time. “People underestimate the power of an injury like this and what it does to your body and your brain,” Wood told Trevor Noah on the Daily Show this week. “That’s what the laws don’t reflect: the impact of trauma on the brain.”
Wood was in orbit around Manson for almost four years; when she began work on the Phoenix Law amid the #MeToo movement, the statute of limitations in California was one to three years. “One to three years is nothing for a survivor,” she told Noah. “It’s far from enough.”
Manson is still single (and partnered with Kanye West), which is his right considering he was never charged and never convicted of a crime. Phoenix Rising, for all its intricate and compelling personal elements, ultimately comes down to this fact. What if the criminal justice system does not account for the long trail of injuries? What is fair, what is right? And is it worth it? Five years and many thematically similar documentaries, we still don’t have good answers.
Information and support for anyone who has been raped or sexually assaulted is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers phone support at 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In Australia, support is available on 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html.