Not only has there never before been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its immediate past, but there has never before been a society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copiously.” Wow wow wow. What I notice most is one the curtain fell foor this Keith Raniere guy his followers. all of a sudden think nothing at all was good.It is interesting that for a lot of people when something bad happens they only see the bad. I understand that they want to say they are victims and I think they are in a way but my my my how they profited of it all as well. I do think that about Sarah Edmondson. She was so good in getting so many others to sign up for this thing which cost them a ton of money and I am sure she believed it was all so good but take some responsibility about that. Same with the filmmaker guy. Although I’m reading a lot of stuff about NXIVM, this will probably be the only review I post so I’m including further reading that I am doing in case you want to embark on this little obsession with me. From BookTok sensation Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairy tale reimagining of The Lion King. Edmondson was in NXIVM for years, slowly working her way up the ranks when one day her best friend, who was one of the highest-ranking people in the organization, asked her to be in a secret club where Sarah would be the slave and she would be the master. She sold it to her as a group of women helping other women grow and develop. However, it soon became clear that wasn’t the case. The “slaves” were actually being groomed to be sex slaves for NXIVM’s leader.

As we get older, the things that scared us originally begin to lose some of their power. Often they get replaced by other, more logical fears as we learn more about how the world works and understand how unlikely it is that Dracula will crawl out from under our bed and exsanguinate us while we're asleep. But the point is, there were dozens, potentially hundreds, of things that scared us, creeped us out, and gave us nightmares. And no matter how mature we think we are, no matter how grown up we get and how many years we put between us and those nightmares, they still linger down there in the depths of our subconscious, waiting to be recalled. From the very start Edmondson seems emotionally needy and mentally unstable. Leaders of the Nexium group play on these issues and slowly pull her into the organization's crazy Scientology-like system of self-esteem mixed with abuse. The author calls the group a "cult" but it's not by normal definition--they didn't force her to stay in it and she freely hopped planes regularly to fly across country to attend ridiculous seminars. The leaders would guilt-trip her and she would buy into it. Once or twice might make you feel some sympathy--but all the time over a period of twelve years? She has to shoulder a lot of the blame.I didn't know much about NXIVM until I read this book. I was surprised to learn how many men were a part of this cult, because the news coverage described it as a sex cult with famous actresses involved. More information is available now, including the documentary, "The Vow" (at this point I've only seen the first episode). Nostalgia seems to define and dictate our present culture, perhaps as it never has before, in ways undreamt-of as recently as a decade ago. Ever since our ability to record, edit and re-share the visual and sonic textures of our common (and sometimes uncommon) cultural experience became a viable option to those outside the entertainment industry, people (largely, it has to be said, bespectacled introverts with testicles and optional BO) have been doing so. First by exchanging physical objects with one another in the playground: physical objects like last night’s John Peel Show or that (“Honest to God it IS!”) snuff movie we got a loan of off our dodgy cousin in the next school along. Recorded onto magnetic tape and somehow both comically bulky to the eyes of today’s Netflix-and-Spotify-reared generation and simultaneously fragile, flimsy, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing. As digital files and the internet gradually came to replace pretty much every aspect of our day-to-day entertainment and social requirements the exchange now happens invisibly, across thousands of miles of fibre-optic cabling and through the phantom miracle of wi-fi. TV takes up nearly half the book, such is the rich vein of brilliance to be mined. Because it wasn’t only kid’s TV that put the willies up the nation, adults were treated to such downbeat fare as Callan, Play For Today, Gangsters and all those peculiarly British dystopias such as Doomwatch, Survivors and Quatermass. No wonder it was a troubled decade. We were basically being told the future was rubbish! But in amongst all this there was some gloriously low budget, but highly imaginative, prime time Sci-Fi to be had as well. UFO, Space 1999 and Blake’s 7 to name but a few. Plus there’s a whole section devoted to Doctor Who (of course!) To be a child is to live in a state of fear most of the time. The fear of being lost, of being bullied, of making your parents angry, of being told off, of getting into trouble at school. This sense of dread can be amplified by the media/popular culture around them. There are the things that you know are meant to be scary, the things that are more scary than you thought they would be and the things that are scary that you didn’t think would be. A book about growing up in the dark side of the 70s with the darkest, most inappropriate pop culture ever.

One of the things about the 70's was that it was absolutely a decade of boundary pushing. I've reflected on this in terms of cinema before - some of the most challenging, uncomfortable, and downright nasty films in history were made in the era. It's an era of relaxed censorship in media, of changing social attitudes to marginalised people, of social issues pushed to the forefront of popular culture. It's a decade of freedom for creative people, and yet they are experiencing a hangover of the peace and love era. In Britain at least the spectre of World War II is still remembered, and it is a decade of political and economical turmoil. What I think this led to was continual boundary pushing, and the impact of that was, that a lot of wonderful creative media was produced and aired - however, much of that would never get past a savvy media executive today. We live in an era of focus groups, of targeted advertising, of sensitivity. Parents today are hyper-sensitive to the media their children consume compared to in the past (not saying that is a good or bad thing). But other society fears – closer to home – also found their way onto the TV. The fear of unemployment and the increase of poverty are examined, with TV documentaries covering it and dramas and comedies dealing with the people experiencing it. The way that race and disability were covered began to change as well, and the book contains sections on the new wave of drama dealing with these topics; the American concept of the ‘Very Special Episode’ is also explained, where sitcoms dealt with non-funny subject matter. In the tradition of Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman, Escape by Carolyn Jessop, and Troublemaker by Leah Remini I admit it, this stuff fascinates me. I have always wondered how people can become so brainwashed as to join and live in cults for years. I mean, it has obviously all got to do with the original grooming and promises, the promised enlightenment, and the reading of one's weaknesses and the preying upon them. Let's be honest, if you were told upfront what it is all about, you would run a mile. Can you imagine a first-up, honest introduction to Scientology? This is a volume focussed mainly on British pop culture, with only a few incursions from across the pond, but it does reveal what a very odd place Britain was during the era of power cuts, three day weeks, Glam, Punk and paranoia.The toys and games section is an interesting curio since many survived in one form or another into the 80's and the sweets section is quite interesting too. I distinctively remember the candy cigarettes with the red tip to mirror a real cigarette. And yes, us kids did pretend to smoke them, preparing for adult hood. Most of the book is deadly dull as she details every step of her naive journey. The final chapters, as she tries to leave the group after she is branded, are the most interesting. But the fact that it took her agreeing to be branded to finally see the light means that there was something seriously wrong with her beyond the Nexium group. And she had many chances to walk away from it--instead she succumbed to more peer pressure and placed herself on the table. I also learnt that 'Joe Hawkins' from 'The Oppressed' song 'King of the Skins' was based on a book character and have gone out and bought those from the series in print. Suspect I will either love or hate them...Every day is a school day)