It was April 2020. Covid19 was blanketing the nation, dolphins were gliding through the Venice canals, and I was utterly fixated on the 2018 true crime docuseries Wild Wild Country, about the rise and fall of the infamous Rajneeshpuram cult.
I wasn’t alone. The true crime sub-genre that focuses specifically on cults has been around for decades. But in 2018, with the release of Wild Wild Country, cult-related media took off. During the pandemic, the sub-genre containing shows like Heaven’s Gate and The Vow hit an unstoppable stride and has maintained a powerful upward trajectory since, sprouting spin-offs and sub-genres such as the “Cult Scam” Genre (Escaping Twin Flames) and even the “Maybe Cults Ain’t So Bad” Genre (The Goop Lap).
I can so vividly recall watching the first episode of Wild Wild Country with my parents, sharing boxed wine in the living room, pausing periodically to kill mosquitos that had snuck into the house from outside. On the screen, Rajneesh cult members wore flowing garb, moved in ecstasy to the music, basked in the sun, and screamed at the stars, utterly uninhibited.
“I can imagine joining something that like,” I said, half-joking.
“I was thinking the same thing,” my mother replied.
***
True crime is typically known for its fascination with missing and/or murdered white ladies. The genre has been around since (well, probably the beginning of time, but certainly as early as the 1600s, and truly hitting its stride with hit books like Truman Capote’s seminal In Cold Blood (1965)). But there was a spike in true crime media sparked by the smash hit Making a Murderer in 2015. Today, the genre is pointedly considered a “wine mom” interest by critics, fans, and programmers alike: bored housewives listening to podcasts like “My Favorite Murder” while they cut the crusts off their kids’ PB&J’s. A tired and overly simplistic characterization, to be sure, but it’s worth noting: Women love true crime. Some psychologists theorize that this is because we are predisposed to be victims of violent crimes ourselves. True crime teaches us the warning signs, what to do if we are stalked and abducted, and what not to do. Whether you see true crime as a useful tool for survival, copaganda symptomatic of a rotting and apathetic society, or something in the middle, the truth is undeniable. The people— not just women— love true crime. A YouGov survey found that forty-two percent of men, vs. fifty eight percent of women, enjoy watching true crime. A whopping percentage for any genre.
In some senses, a cult is a true crime scenario that people willingly walk into. Is the answer to our sudden spike in fascination with cults that simple? Are we all terrified of falling into a cult, becoming bewitched by a scam? Are we desperate for “how-to’s” to keep us safe from brainwashing? Or is there something deeper at play?
One of the most impactful true crime cult shows I’ve ever seen is Stolen Youth (2023), a harrowing docu-series about a cult started by a student’s father at Sarah Lawrence College. I happened to watch Stolen Youth at the same time I was reading the 1974 smash hit book Helter Skelter, a door stopper of a legal tome about the Manson Murders. In comparing the two, I was struck by a stark difference in tone. While Helter Skelter is majestic in scope, scrupulously detailed, its distance from its subject is tangible. While the real inner psyches of the Manson Girls remain a mystery to me, through Stolen Youth I was truly able to understand how those kids were indoctrinated into Larry Ray’s cult. By piecing together bits of audio and iPhone footage, the filmmakers create a fly-on-the-wall, immersive cult experience. In turn, the likes of Squeaky Fromme suddenly felt much less mysterious to me; by understanding the kids who were bewitched by Larry, I felt I understood those who were bewitched by Manson, too. The success of this subgenre relies on the audience being able to truly understand someone else’s psychology, so it’s no wonder that cult media is more gripping now than it was before we had access to each other’s thoughts the way we do now with social media and self-surveillance. It seems that we have gone from a place of anthropological viewing of cults to survivor-driven narratives. Gone are the dry dictionary definitions of cult mentality, and, in their place, raw footage of cult survivors struggling to reclaim their power, repeating the mantra: It could happen to anyone. Really, it could.
The Vow, one of the most popular true crime cult shows ever, is, like Stolen Youth, intensely up close and personal. The Vow illustrates the rise and fall of the NXIVM cult, a pyramid scheme that evolved into sex trafficking, extortion, and sexual exploitation of children. In a rich and shocking twist, current members of the cult become interview subjects during season two to defend their organization. Nancy Salzman, cult leader Keith Reniere’s right-hand-woman, is one such interviewee, adamantly defending herself and NXIVM after two season’s worth of survivors share their undeniably horrific experiences. She makes a feeble case for all the good that NXIVM did: it brought people together! It cured a man of his Tourettes! If Keith Reniere had devised a complex sex trafficking scheme… she didn’t know! But toward the end of the season, after she is sentenced to prison, Salzman breaks down. She confesses: “I didn't know what was right and wrong anymore... Maybe I should go to jail.” She understands that she has propagated and nurtured an unfathomable amount of pain. With that realization, she cannot turn back. This is just the beginning.
Similarly, toward the end of Stolen Youth, the camera crew visits Felicia, one of Larry’s most heavily brainwashed disciples. She is steadfast in her continued devotion to him, even as he sits in jail and she awaits a possible conviction for supporting him in his crimes. As the episodes go on, however, we watch as she embarks on the complicated work of deprogramming from Larry’s psychological torture. She describes a memory, then stops and points out her own confusion, grinning. “This is Larry Brain,” she says as she untangles her own beliefs from his. It’s going to be a lifetime of work. But she’s doing it.
Watching people deprogram from cults in real time is the closest we get to really understanding how the unthinkable— the descent into cult— actually works. When the people in cults are just like us, we are no longer impartial observers. Suddenly, we are looking in a mirror. It’s hard to look away. It’s also the kind of skin-crawling voyeurism we crave most.
After watching Stolen Youth, I was so shaken that I wrote, in my Notes App, a list of “Things I Know to be True.” The idea that I, too, could be susceptible to cult was terrifying. Right? Or was it, just a little bit, tantalizingly exciting?
It’s hard to look at these media trends without looking at society as a whole. It seems that we have never been more collectively disillusioned with the structures in place around us than we are in 2024. Most traditional true crime fits squarely into the narrative perpetuated by our broken system, the one that says if you obey the rules you will be okay, and if you don’t, the good guys will avenge your death. Look at Don’t Fuck With Cats, American Murder, The Ted Bundy Tapes. However subversive and formally interesting these shows are, they all end up boiling down to the cops solving the case and peace and order prevailing. Today, in our fractured era, viewers are saying no thank you to this tired narrative. So, where do we turn?
According to Amanda Montell, the author of Cult-Ish, “Historically speaking, people’s attraction to cults (both the tendency to join and the anthropological fascination with them) tends to flourish during periods of larger existential questioning.” We do crave the order of a neat true crime ending, but we just can’t stomach it in its current form anymore. Is there a different way to satiate that existential questioning budding within us all? I’m not going to join a cult (probably), but the elation my mother and I felt while we watched Wild Wild Country says it all. We’d just spent a long day lathering our junk mail with hand sanitizer and eating bean soup, reading articles about viral loads and office closures. At 9pm, we turned on the TV and were suddenly faced with a real-life story: a group of lost and lonely people suddenly connected, intrinsically, in a sick, but nonetheless exhilarating, utopia.
About the Author
Celeste Amidon is an Austin based writer with extensive experience writing about and thinking about TV (and… of course… watching it). She spent two years working in Programming at The History Channel, an experience she’s written about in Not Here to Make Friends. You can read more of her writing in POLYESTER, Gulf Coast, CUSPER, Off-Chance, and keep an eye out for more upcoming work in Broad Sound.