Heaven’s Gate. Wild Wild Country. Waco docu-series. Children of God. Jonestown. Holy Hell. Prophet’s Prey. A. The Vow.
Does any name seem familiar? You ought to have heard about these. It’s quite difficult to have missed them. They’re all documentaries about religious cults. People have always been drawn towards religious cults. But they’ve become pretty popular, especially since the pandemic. Quarantining has given people quite some time, maybe too much time that has led people to mull over things they’d not as much otherwise.
Religious cults are bizarre and strangely fascinating, which makes them thrilling subjects for documentaries. Sure, they’re quite entertaining to watch but they also make you question things about yourself that you usually dare not to. Not for fear of having terrible answers to them, but because there are no answers. Which is far more infuriating than the former. Humans are social animals, says Plato. And by the virtue of the fact that we are social animals, we give a sense of belonging and emotional connections way more importance than we ideally should.
We’re seven billion on a planet and yet each and every one of us, at least once if not several times have felt frightfully out of place. The “in a room full of people but still extremely lonely” is too common a phenomenon. Conformity and subjugation are something we find comfort in. Even though we don’t like to admit it. We also like to think of ourselves as individuals with a good moral compass and a fair sense of judgement. And being a faithful devotee of a religious cult not only sustains all the above-mentioned but also enhances it. Not only does being devoted make us feel damn good about ourselves but it also gives us a place in the world, it gives us a community and a purpose to life that seems righter than a right angle. It’s as close as one can get to a utopian world. And ultimately, we all crave what we don’t have.
Young people in general are very impressionable, but they are even more so in today’s day and age. Most people these days seem to have more or less no direction in life. Every second individual seems to be having a perpetual existential crisis. In a world of endless options for every tiny thing from hobbies, occupation, faith, and pronouns, to even types of cereals, I mean heck did you know Nickelodeon has Green Slime flavoured cereals? It can be paralyzing to choose. Indecisiveness might be ‘relatable’ but it certainly isn’t sexy. Conviction, on the other hand, is. But it’s something rarely any of us have.
Being in a friendly congregation (cults never refer to themselves as a cult) with a charming leader who seems to have not just conviction but divine conviction certainly does give a meaningful form and function to a person’s life. A viewer would not be able to access a religious cult that is in an entirely different continent, but these documentaries not only provide a glimpse of how it might be to be a member but also shows the cult leader in action who by the way is almost always oddly charismatic.
These documentaries can have varying impacts on people. Some might feel better about themselves as they watch and know that they’d never fall for this bullshit. But then there might be some who find great value in it that help them in their lives, for better or worse. Whereas some might just come out of it with a series of questions, ‘Why would someone give up their freedom for a faith? ‘Does having faith really change your life for the better? ‘Is religion the only thing to turn to when one feels like an outcast in society?’ ‘How could people be so ridiculously daft to have fallen for this rubbish?’ Either way, it’s certainly an interesting ride.