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Heaven's Gate cult doc on HBOMax
Posted on 12/7/20 at 12:40 pm
Posted on 12/7/20 at 12:40 pm
Has anyone watched this yet? I think it just came out this weekend. I watched all 4 episodes yesterday and that is some wild shite. It's crazy what a person can convince other people to do. At the same time, I also felt sorry for them (not the leader, the followers) because they were obviously missing something in their lives.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 12:42 pm to lsuwontonwrap
I'll try and watch it this week. I remember it vividly
Posted on 12/7/20 at 12:44 pm to lsuwontonwrap
I haven't seen it, but it was a prominent story when I was in college. I got the impression that basically, it's as if Jim Jones went to a Star Trek convention.
The spoof Keds (making fun of Nike) commercial that SNL did was one of the funniest things I'd seen in a while. I don't think it can be found on the internet, though. I've tried.
The spoof Keds (making fun of Nike) commercial that SNL did was one of the funniest things I'd seen in a while. I don't think it can be found on the internet, though. I've tried.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 12:49 pm to lsuwontonwrap
quote:
It's crazy what a person can convince other people to do
I say this every day about Trump and his cult
Posted on 12/7/20 at 12:57 pm to lsuwontonwrap
People blamed Art Bell till his death over his giving credence to the Hale-Bopp comet "companion".
It's why I don't laugh off the current conspiracy theorists and fake news sites that incite people into doing stupid things.
It's why I don't laugh off the current conspiracy theorists and fake news sites that incite people into doing stupid things.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 1:30 pm to lsuwontonwrap
I haven't seen it yet but I watched the NVIXM series with India Oxenberg and I'm no longer surprised what people are willing to go along with when they have some "hole" to fill
Posted on 12/7/20 at 1:39 pm to Fewer Kilometers
Yeah they touch on the Art Bell thing, but the reality is- they were saying for 20+ years that they were going to eventually kill themselves. No one took them seriously.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 2:40 pm to blueboy
quote:
I got the impression that basically, it's as if Jim Jones went to a Star Trek convention.
Close. Gay son of a Pentecostal preacher hooks up with a astrology obsessed nurse at a psych ward and together they start a new religion.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 3:38 pm to Poker_hog
quote:Sure, but they were also obsessed with Star Trek and sci fi in general. They did numerous videos of themselves bidding farewell to the earth.
Close. Gay son of a Pentecostal preacher hooks up with a astrology obsessed nurse at a psych ward and together they start a new religion.
And again, NBC has scrubbed that fake SNL "Keds" commercial from the internet. It made fun of the fact that the dead people were all wearing the same kind of sneakers, and included actual police footage of the suicide victims. If you can find it, in its original form with the John Lennon music, you are a superstar.
Here's the cold open they did a few days after the mass suicide.
Heaven's Gate Cold Opening
Posted on 12/7/20 at 3:38 pm to lsuwontonwrap
Marshall Applewhite, the cult leader, was a music professor at the University of Alabama in the early 1960s.
My mom sang in a chorus he directed for a community Christmas concert when we lived in Tuscaloosa in '63.
My mom sang in a chorus he directed for a community Christmas concert when we lived in Tuscaloosa in '63.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 4:11 pm to lsuwontonwrap
Last Podcast on the Left has a few good episodes on Heaven's Gate.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 6:26 pm to blueboy
quote:
Here's the cold open they did a few days after the mass suicide.
they showed a brief clip in the doc and the family members were pretty hurt (understandable)
eta: not sure a bit about a mass suicide would land well these days
This post was edited on 12/7/20 at 6:27 pm
Posted on 12/7/20 at 7:26 pm to lsuwontonwrap
quote:That's why they scrubbed the Keds commercial. It used numerous images of the suicide aftermath. I've seen a version of it with different music somewhere, but the "Revolution" version exists now only in memory.
they showed a brief clip in the doc and the family members were pretty hurt (understandable)
Posted on 12/7/20 at 7:40 pm to YNWA
quote:
I say this every day about Trump and his cult
It really is remarkable, isn’t it?
Posted on 12/7/20 at 7:48 pm to lsuwontonwrap
Cults prey on lost souls. It’s easy to think how can anyone ever fall for something like Heavens Gate, you have to realize that the cult leaders are mass manipulators who exploit damaged people. People who have no where else to go and finally for their first time feel welcomed and wanted. That is the biggest tragedy behind every cult.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 7:49 pm to blueboy
I think it said at the end, while showing some Nike shoes sticking out from under a sheet covering a dead body, “Keds: worn by level headed Christians since 1984” ... I don’t remember the year but it was essentially hilarious.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 8:25 pm to pevetohead
quote:
People who have no where else to go
That's what was weird about HG. Some of these people had families who missed them and wanted them to come home. The doc had recordings of phone calls and letters.
*spoilers*
One woman lost both of her parents to it. Her mother abandoned the family and the father killed himself later after the big suicide.
Posted on 12/7/20 at 11:01 pm to Fewer Kilometers
quote:
People blamed Art Bell till his death over his giving credence to the Hale-Bopp comet "companion".
That's incredibly naive and misleading, if anyone truly did blame Art Bell. When he hosted Coast to Coast, it was an entertaining latenight show that covered everything from movies and music to UFO's. He reported that there were some people out there who thought an unidentified object was trailing the comet. That's about it, and it was one of probably a thousand far out topics mentioned on his show that year. More often than not, Art played the role of skeptic to his guests and "independent researchers" who called in. No one sought out this obscure former music teacher to join his cult as a result of listening to a popular radio show heard by millions.
I don't know how anyone could honestly blame him unless they were desperate to lay some flimsy rationale for censorship in order to shield one's inferiors from dangerous thoughts.
Posted on 12/8/20 at 1:17 am to lsuwontonwrap
I think if you look at all cults and extreme religious sects you find a lot of similarities. They all use a few convincing hooks that are engrained in the base human psyche.
The initial hook that sells the product (for example, join this group or you are going to hell - people who have guilty consciences are extremely susceptible).
The sense of exclusivity and the idea they (and their members) are special because of their collective special purpose.
Finally the sense of community is the thing that probably has the most staying power for many of these cults. Members of cults aren't all losers. There are a lot of smart and successful people out there that simply haven't fit in to the mainstream.
Some of the most fascinating examples of these (outside of the Heavens Gate) are of course the Manson Family and and the Bhagwan Osho movement.
The initial hook that sells the product (for example, join this group or you are going to hell - people who have guilty consciences are extremely susceptible).
The sense of exclusivity and the idea they (and their members) are special because of their collective special purpose.
Finally the sense of community is the thing that probably has the most staying power for many of these cults. Members of cults aren't all losers. There are a lot of smart and successful people out there that simply haven't fit in to the mainstream.
Some of the most fascinating examples of these (outside of the Heavens Gate) are of course the Manson Family and and the Bhagwan Osho movement.
This post was edited on 12/8/20 at 1:28 am
Posted on 12/8/20 at 4:14 am to PowerTool
I stayed up late watching some of the Geminid shower tonight, so it seems as good a time as any to look up some of the history of the Heaven's Gate cult.
A newspaper search gave me an idea of just how long Applewhite and his cohort had been building their following. Apparently, they were already getting the attention of local police and reporters by recruiting followers in the early to mid 70's. Long before he knew about Hale-Boppe, I'd wager.
This 1975 UPI wire story was really eye opening:
Original headline: "UFO Mystery Couple Identified as Texans; Record Clouded"
Early on they had demostrated that perfect combination of con-artists and true believers who aren't bound by laws and ethics of this realm. The kind of people who knew how to gather others who were desperate to belong to something that was exclusive and special, as bountyhunter put it.
This Folsom, California newspaper article from 1975 is really unsettling; Applewhite already had followers abandoning their lives and mysteriously disappearing with him to reach the next level of alien life, just a couple years into his weird journey:
I'm tempted to do an HBO Max trial just to watch this documentary.
Hayden C. Hewes, quoted at the end of the second article, wrote about UFO's for decades and died in 2017: obit
A newspaper search gave me an idea of just how long Applewhite and his cohort had been building their following. Apparently, they were already getting the attention of local police and reporters by recruiting followers in the early to mid 70's. Long before he knew about Hale-Boppe, I'd wager.
This 1975 UPI wire story was really eye opening:
Original headline: "UFO Mystery Couple Identified as Texans; Record Clouded"
Early on they had demostrated that perfect combination of con-artists and true believers who aren't bound by laws and ethics of this realm. The kind of people who knew how to gather others who were desperate to belong to something that was exclusive and special, as bountyhunter put it.
This Folsom, California newspaper article from 1975 is really unsettling; Applewhite already had followers abandoning their lives and mysteriously disappearing with him to reach the next level of alien life, just a couple years into his weird journey:
I'm tempted to do an HBO Max trial just to watch this documentary.
Hayden C. Hewes, quoted at the end of the second article, wrote about UFO's for decades and died in 2017: obit
quote:
Steiger and Hayden Hewes were the initial, primary interviewers of the Heaven’s Gate leaders
This post was edited on 12/8/20 at 4:17 am
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