Weekly Cult Roundup
Here's what I watched and read this week.
This is a weekly roundup of all the culty media I consumed this week. Subscribe so you never miss it.
Watched
They have their own newspaper that prints only the good news. They have a radio station that only plays the hits from the ’50s and the ’60s. There’s this deliberate gulf that they’ve created between their world and ours.
Some Kind of Heaven might best be described as an elderly Stepford Wives-esque documentary. Set in The Villages, an enormous retirement community in Central Florida, the film tracks several residents who are not acclimating to the community. I first learned of the town during the 2016 presidential election when Trump won 69% of their votes. Then and more recently, there were claims that Pro-Trump Village community members were part of a cult. While I am interested in this idea, the documentary zooms in on the lives of several residents who cannot adjust to the perfection of this planned community. There is something culty about the collectivity that the planned community demands of residents. Scene after scene, smiling residents go on about how perfect and peaceful the community is and how grateful they are that their every need is met within the confines of the community. However, the primary subjects of the film are struggling with depression, addiction, poverty, and legal troubles, and have nowhere to turn.
Read
However, some cult leaders have convinced their followers that the end times will arrive as environmental hazards and their only recourse is to commit to their faith. - Dr. Ashely Tisdale
Former politician Khem Veasna has invited his tens of thousands of followers to await the end of the world together on his farm in rural Cambodia. Around 15,000-20,000 people may have gathered at Veasna’s home following his Facebook post claiming, “a “black hole” in his spine has been sending him a message about an impending flood that would wipe out the earth.” Okay? As with many doomsday group leaders, his farm and home is the only location that will survive this catastrophe. Veasna is pairing the fear of deadly floods with distrust of the Hun Sen government to lure in a devout and paranoid following. We discussed the use of natural disasters as cult leader tools in “The Sky is Falling and Melting A Little.”
P.S.
Some Kind of Heaven has me really interested in the subtle cultiness of “over-planned” communities. Maybe next Tuesday’s post will have something to do with planned communities and/or the structural organization of some well known cult compounds? In the meantime, review my newsletter on Dark Tourism and the Ethics of Visiting Communes.
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