I Don't Always Lead A Cult, But When I Do...

The perfect embodiment of a hippie 70s spiritual, white robed, naked, yogi, Utopian, vegan cult is The Source Family. We have seen so many parodies of this style of cult in pop culture, on the first watch of their documentary The Source Family, it seems like a joke. While The Source Family weren't the first hippie cult, they were surely a huge cultural influence considering they originated in Hollywood, CA and made their living serving vegan foods to the rich and famous on the Sunset Strip.

The leader/father/god was James Baker, who's life reads like a Dos Equis commercial, or a Bill Bradsky skit (got to love Will Ferrell SNL circa 1999). He's a war hero, jujitsu champion, murderer, millionaire, restaurant tycoon, and self proclaimed god.

The Source Family (2012) by Maria Demopoulos and Jodi Wille, is an amazingly thorough documentary due in part to the member, Isis Aquarian. She is the family historian for the Source Family, and always had a camera or a tape recorder in her hand. This cult wanted everything documented. You've got weddings, home births, meditations, musical performances, outings, shifts at the Source Restaurant... even death...

But on the topic of birth, something I've noticed about these types of cults is that the women members are always pumping out kids like nobody's business. It comes from an Adam and Eve complex where women, as individuals who can make more people appear out of their vaginas, are expected to help increase the population of believers. These children are only going to know the reality that you make for them in the first few years, so that will totally prime them for becoming built-in loyal followers.

No matter how "progressive" a cult of this nature appears to be, the birthing and the isolation appears completely anti-feminist. It's the idea that:

1. It's convenient that the female members are ladies, so they can give birth. So why don't you already?

and

2. Since we're so into ancient religions and practices, dressing like druids, and going back to nature, shouldn't we just throw away decades of advances in a woman's right over her body? Did ancient women take the pill? I didn't think so. So why don't we just do it and let's not worry about who's kid it is or who's going to take care of it, because we'll all "take care" of it. You've got so many hang ups man. I mean worrying about controlling the ability to not be pregnant is just a jail you put yourself in.  Think about it.

It is still an odd concept to grasp that these children were born into this; that they didn't have a choice and, at least till the cult disbanded, knew this as their way of life. There are so many horror stories about the children of cults, however many of those come from the more subversive ones . The Source Family never had any real serious issues with child welfare in comparison to, let's say, Jonestown. It looked like everyone in the Source Family had a healthy relationship with the nude form, which you can twist into sexual perversion if you want to, but it was the 70s and hippie parents outside of cults were trying to establish a healthy body image that was removed from shame and dirty fifthly sex too.

The one thing that happened in the Source Family that would be considered the endangerment of a child, is the lack of conventional medicine. Of course. One member left the group because his young son was very sick with an infection and they strongly disagreed with him going to a hospital or being treated with antibiotics. Of course.

Oh - and then there was the statutory rape. The Source Family attracted under aged women, and the first birth in the Source Family mansion was from a 16 year-old girl. Which you get to watch in the documentary! 

There's footage of the Source Family band, YaHoWha 13, recruiting - err a - performing at a high school. While James Baker paced around the stage talking about how great his cult is, I knew that Will Ferrell should play him in a movie. Or even just a Funny or Die short. As it happened I could picture him with long grey hair and beard doing a combination of Terrence Maddox the inappropriate nude model and Prof. Roger Clarvin the sexually open professor inclined to call his wife "la-vah."

Will Ferrell era SNL FTW!

During that whole scene I couldn't understand how they were allowed to perform at high schools. Can you even imagine being told that there was a special treat for everyone at 1:30, and that was a cult playing improvisational psychedelic music? And it was a cult? The Source was well known in California. Actually at that time in the 1970s the idea of a group of young people lead by a creepy guy who was pursuing a music career should have reeked of Manson. And I don't believe attendance was completely voluntarily. If you look at the number of kids there, and the looks on their faces, the principle probably ordered them into the court yard, made them sit Indian style, and said you're gonna listen to these damn hippies and their music and you're going to like it!

This involves a kind of lack of insecurity that can never reach high school kids.

Aside from making a bunch of hippies say "what was I thinking" or creating more kids that have embarrassing stories about open nudity in their households, The Source Family as a cult was pretty harmless. People who chose to leave weren't hounded or threatened, or even damned to hellfire. No one was murdered, just hearts broken, because sharing a man/god with 12 other women sucks.

 

A Fire You Can't Put Out

"This process is necessary to prevent such a terrible thing to ever happen again."

- Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission Chairman William H. Brown III, 1985

Being nostalgic for the 90s is what people do now, and I'm no exception. I was 6 in 1993, so I was somewhat aware of the news but definitely not all the shady details. The ESPN 30 for 30 documentary by Brett Morgan called June 17th, 1994 is amazing to watch if you know about the white Bronco chase with OJ Simpson, but didn't know it was one of the biggest days in sports history. Seriously - so many things were happening that day and history was being made, but OJ really cluttered up the news. It's a superb documentary, and the kind where the director lets the found footage do all the talking - which is my favorite style of documentary - but this isn't about June 17th, 1994. 

That doc about the 90s spurred me on to watch a doc about another event that happened in my lifetime, but was too young to understand. I started searching for Waco.

Director: Wiliam Gazecki 1997

On YouTube I found Waco: The Rules of Engagement. Directed by William Gazecki, the film mostly conveys an anti ATF stance, where footage and phone conversations between the cult group, the Branch Davidians, and the FBI show that the US government ruthlessly attacked women and children in the name of suppressing a group that was stockpiling weapons. During the 51 day siege, there were disputes over who fired the first shot, the ATF insisting one of the Davidians fired first, prompting the incessant teargassing and machine gun fire that would eventually set the compound ablaze and kill 76 people.

While the leader David Koresh was infamous for allegations that he was sexually abusing young female followers, certain scenes from the subsequent trial, implied that discussion about the sexual perversions of David Koresh were considered a diversion from the serious transgressions of the ATF. For instance, the ATF's defense brought in a witness who was molested by Koresh years before when her family was in the cult. While her testimony was tragic the prosecution questioned the relevance and reminded the defense that despite what David Koresh may have done to those poor people, the ATF was still under fire for possibly contributing to the effective execution of those individuals who were victimized by Koresh as they described. This thorough film makes a point to stay on track and focus solely on the siege and it's aftermath.


 With this still fresh in my mind, I searched Netflix for similar fare, and the title Let The Fire Burn caught my eye.

Director: Jason Osder 2013

As it turns out, eight years earlier, another group considered to be a cult, was burned alive in their compound. This time, it took place in West Philadelphia. It's 1985, Mother's Day, and the Pennsylvania State Police are once again after the black liberation / back to nature cult, the Move Organization. Move was thought to have stockpiled fire arms, in addition to creating dozens of complaints from neighbors concerning building codes and aggressive behavior. They, like the Davidians, experienced a siege. Theirs only lasted 24 hours, but managed to destroy 60 homes in a dense neighborhood. Only two people in the Move house survived.

Much like Waco, the facilitators of the siege were taken to court over the validity of the force and fire used to vacate the people of Move from their house; a force that appeared to be an outright murder rather than an evacuation.

It is disheartening to know that something like this would happen over again, and I wonder what other instances of this escalation have happened or could be currently happening.

This is a venn diagram of how the Waco siege and the Move siege held many similarities.

The opening quote spoken by William H. Brown III is from court room footage in Let The Fire Burn. The "process" he describes is the thorough interviews and testimonies given by the police, the remaining and former members of the cult organization in question, and the innocent civilians who were affected. All sides believed themselves the victims in some aspect, and it was important to hear all sides to find justice.

The similarities of this incident to Waco struck me, but I believe the Move siege appeared to have affected many more people who had nothing to do with Move or the Philadelphia police. On the one hand the neighbors did want to see Move, well, move. On the other hand the police wanted to smoke out 11 people from one building so badly 60 homes were destroyed in the process. While the citizens had negative testimonies concerning Move's relationship to the community, they were rightfully up in arms over how the Philadelphia police handled the situation.

Between the two documentaries Let The Fire Burn was my favorite. Waco: The Rules of Engagement
was informative, but very long, clocking in at over 2 hours. As mentioned earlier, I really enjoy a documentary that can convey it's message without talking heads or narration in the traditional sense, and Let The Fire Burn was successfully made in that style. Footage from local news stations of that fateful day are interwoven with segments of a student documentary from the 1970s about Move, and video of the court proceedings with some captions, but no narration whatsoever. It gives you a sense of the time period and the emotions flowing behind every viewpoint. It speaks to all sides of the story and attempts at purveying the truth.