Sheela Take a Bow: Wild Wild Country on Netflix

just finished
all in all what an incredible saga
though even after six episodes I wish I knew more about how complicit Bagwhan was... he remains a cipher until the end

how are they getting all this money ?! only two episodes in but feel like it’s really glossed over that point. we must be talking SERIOUS sums here

They do talk about that later, but not enough, I don't think.

reeled in a few big fish iirc

I remember news coverage of Rajneesh from when I was in maybe 9th grade.

Watching the documentary, at least some of my response aligns with trishyb:

"oh, the irony!" at white Americans complaining about their way of life being overwhelmed by these invaders from outside, who disturb their peace, take over their land, don't adhere to their laws, and then poison them

Yeah "these people are just moving in and changing our way of life and there are so many of them that they can just vote themselves into power and there's nothing we can do about it!"

...is literally the story of America. I speak as a Virginian. That's basically our origin story.

My other takeaway is watching the undisguised glee on the faces of the media anchors, talk show hosts. Donahue etc. pretending to be shocked but clearly loving it; it's fucking ratings GOLD and they know it. Which made me a little sheepish about our current cultural moment. I see parallels to Trumpism and coverage thereof. "How can these awful people believe this awful thing? Let's ask our reporters on the ground to ask the awful people more about how awful they are, so we can continue to "study" this phenomenon. Objectively, of course.

The third takeaway is something that harks back to a discussion here:

Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

Basically I said that nothing about Mormonism or Scientology (or whatever) is inherently weirder than "guy with a beard asks us to eat him weekly." jon not jon answered, "it's not the beliefs that make a cult a cult obv, but the dynamic between its elect and its members."

Phil Donahue is weird in that he was a huge part of the culture that seems to be largely forgetten.

I kept thinking whenever they interviewed the Antelope folks that each and every one of those fuckers voted for Trump.

maybe not my fave, overalls guy. I hold out hope for him

yeah he was charming

Stephen King Lawyer was still such a true believer

I often wonder what I would do if I were in such a situation. Like, if my cousin or someone said, "hey, I hear things about this Bhagwan guy, let's go and see what that's all about, for the laugh, like." I wonder if I would get swept up in it all? Because, looking at him on television, I did not get it at all.

lol @ Stephen King Lawyer, very accurate description

Yeah "these people are just moving in and changing our way of life and there are so many of them that they can just vote themselves into power and there's nothing we can do about it!" ...is literally the story of America. I speak as a Virginian. That's basically our origin story.

If the ratio of Rajneeshees to Oregonians had been as lopsided as the ratio of white settlers to Native Americans, then the Rajneeshees would have easily prevailed. As it was, they badly misjudged their power and numbers relative to those who already lived here. They treated it like a war and then lost that war rather quickly.

xxp I think that was part of the documentary that seemed surreal — for a while I assumed there was no good footage of Bhagwan from that time, but he really was silent to the majority of the group for several years, the core of their north american tenure!

I guess the core group that was really spreading the enthusiasm had bought in back in the early days? and I am assuming the sexual liberation guru actually had some sex himself at some point, but apparently never with Sheela?!?

There is a novel by John Updike called S., which is intended as a retelling of the Scarlet Letter from Hester's perspective, but set in a commune clearly modeled on Rajneeshpuram (obviously the story was still fresh in 1987-88). I may be alone in this but I think the title character, Sarah, is at least partly modeled on Sheela.

as far as I can gather they get their money from selling books, selling meditation, and loans from the conscripts. doesn’t seem like that would add up the c$50m they start talking about in episode 3 in relation the cult’s assets

maybe rich people were gifting land/buildings to be used as centers? real estate could add up quick, esp like that house the Hollywood crew bought him

One of the investigators said that they had massive debts and implied that some shady financial dealings were going on, but maybe he genuinely just wasn't used to an organization where, as you say, rich converts gift massive amounts of money on a regular basis.

I guess I should read the Oregonian series linked above.

in one clip on tv, two of the main Hollywood crew say they've given a "few hundred thousand dollars" personally, which means they actually gave way more (like when I say I had a "couple" beers)

that one Hollywood party looked packed so who knows how much they were raking in?

bhagwan mustve been hanging dong

i love this so much. i hadn't heard of it at all, but i was either not born or a baby when it happened. bhagwan is so creepy. i hate the way he ssssss every word.

I kind of want to hear his ideas, tbh having a following but not actually having to talk to them or do anything for a few years seems pretty aspirational

I really liked this, but there’re a few bits of the story that weren’t addressed:

- Osho was extremely anti-social. If this happened in 2018, we’d probably describe him as autistic. A number of people have speculated that he was probably a virgin. He talks about sex like he’s in that scene from 40 Year Old Virgin.
- The sex he endorsed during the time of the documentary was bizarre. He was extremely afraid of AIDS. He mandated that everybody wear rubber gloves when having sex! Kissing was also forbidden.
- Most of their money came from Indian organized crime (drug trafficking, embezzlement, slavery, etc.). They addressed this in passing but I wish there was more.
- John Silvertooth is a chill bro (and certainly didn’t vote for Trump)! The dump reveal was huge for everyone interested in this story!

hahaha what

He also talked during his period of silence. He just didn’t talk to the press or at events.

yeah I got the impression he talked to small groups and definitely his secretary — secretaries? — hard to tell what his relationship with that one lady who spoke very adoringly of him was

Allen... how do you know this stuff?

I havent seen this yet but I have a clear memory of all this in the 80s, cause Sheela was interviewed on 60 Minutes here and her "tough titties!" reply to some question was a bit of a proto-meme back in the day!

lol yeah that killed me

I lived in Portland. I was obsessed with the story and read pretty much everything written about it that was in English.

wow yeah locally that must've be so huge

I've made it through 4 episodes and am finding it kind of boring, primarily in terms of giving too much time to Sheela, the lawyer, the dimwitted true believers and the residents of Antelope. I grew up in Western Australia and have a number of friends whose parents were Sannyasins and their stories were fascinating. In many cases their descriptions of life growing up in this environment were fairly sordid but often with a kind of conflicted view about whether their experiences could be categorized as good or bad. Ultimately I found this documentary a bit empty & the hazy filtered cinematography & soundtrack were just annoying.

Also this is probably obvious but I think people who were into the Rajneesh are today's antivaxxers

Also this is probably obvious but I think people who were into the Rajneesh are today's antivaxxers

I did not think of this, but it makes a lot of sense now you say it.

They addressed this in passing but I wish there was more.

I agree with this, and with badg. Overall I enjoyed the programme because I knew nothing at all about any of what happened, but six hours to tell only that particular strand of the story was too long. But maybe that was how they secured the cooperation of such key figures - by not dragging the whole belief system through the mud.

yeah really recommend the oregonian series which goes into the tax evasion in india, analysis of it as a cult including consideration of conditions for the rank and file etc

Also this is probably obvious but I think people who were into the Rajneesh are today's antivaxxers

I would think directly the opposite. Anti-vaccine people are more likely to be conservative and pro-life. Rajneesh was v pro-choice, also an advocate of euthanasia, in general believed in science as a benefit to humankind.

- John Silvertooth is a chill bro (and certainly didn’t vote for Trump)! The dump reveal was huge for everyone interested in this story!

my fave part of the story, he was wonderful.
and the way he summed up the whole thing as just being a way to con rich white folks looking for something ..
i really really began to hate the lawyer bloke who welled up every time he thought back.
became a little too showbiz for me every time he came on.

i hate the lawyer, too. i can see why people would think this is boring, especially if you know something about it already. it's refreshing to see a story about something big that seems so forgotten now, to me. i will read the oregonian thing.

Anti-vaccine people are more likely to be conservative and pro-life.

The parents of Marin County would argue differently.

Sheela is a two michelin star restaurant in Marin county known for its grilled bananas.

i did like the idea that should i ever decide to go on such a journey of self discovery and enlightenment,
i will still be able to swear like a fucking trooper.

favourite moment: osho gingerly retreating to backstage, closely followed by a couple of fully armed sannyasins in full-on jodorovsky style.

Anti-vaccine people are more likely to be conservative and pro-life.

this doesn’t square with my experience at all, most anti-vaxxers I know are very liberal, pro-choice etc

This includes a handful of Ramtha followers, so badg otm ime

this is a pretty interesting look at it

https://theconversation.com/anti-vaccination-beliefs-dont-follow-the-usual-political-polarization-81001

Now it is only the very conservative who are more likely to think that it should not be mandatory: they are twice as likely as moderates to think that it should be a parent’s choice. Liberals are now more likely to think vaccination should be required: Compared to moderates, liberals are 43.5 percent less likely to think it should be a parent’s choice and those who are very liberal are 14.2 percent less likely.

Whatever the case Rajneesh himself does not appear to have been anti-science or hold views consistent with anti-vaxxers

I think some of the sexual health paranoia mentioned upthread is a different strain of counter-scientific thought but not that different

they infected some live beavers, but couldn't squeeze them into the water tank. so they killed and blended the beavers and poured that in? the whole thing makes me question whether the beavers were even necessary.

According to Knapp’s FBI testimony, he alleged “Sheela told him during a trip to India which they took in 1985, that she had injected her first husband with an injection that caused his death.” He added, “Sheela said that Puja furnished her with the instrument which she used to inject Silverman, and after the injection he died,” and it occurred “June 11 and 12, 1980, at the Krishna House where Silverman and Sheela resided.” Knapp claimed that Sheela had “discussed this plan of the ‘mercy killing’ of her husband with Bhagwan and that Bhagwan had referred to Silverman in one of his discourses just prior to Silverman’s death.”

Lots of stuff here speaking to question of Bhagwan culpability + more poisoning and murder plots (!)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/wild-wild-country-the-most-shocking-reveals-from-the-sex-cults-fbi-informant?ref=home

Sunny's bio on this page has some omissions, for sure
https://www.hawaii.edu/offices/op/csw/2013speakers.html

omg she has a youtube channel

author of the bio does not seem to believe it, e.g. "Dr. Sunny Massad says that she has always been an unconventional thinker."

i dont love the lack/absence of investigative inquiry in this.

sheela, sunny, the stephen king lawyer; and the attorney general & antelopens; they all get so much camera time but there’s no-one outside these inner circles saying “ok cool but ... why? what do you mean etc”

i kinda hate this style of documentary. you get two very set points of view & there’s no air between them for any real daylight. it feels very misleading

and i agree with badg that it’s def kinda boring. i get that the only way sheela wd participate is if it’s The Sheela Show diaguised as a well-rounded documentary but jfc

haven't read the thread yet as only a couple of episodes in but I was amazed that I hadn't heard of this. I asked my parents whether they knew of it at the time in England (I was only young) - they didn't, because we were in our own commune and apparently weren't reading newspapers or watching tv...

The documentary is kind of annoying me at the moment cos there're loads of questions I would want to ask but they don't seem to be asking them.

I kind of want to read more about the political economy of the whole operation and the commune now, like the nuts and bolts of how it ran. This looks like it might be a good read although not sure if it covers exactly that in depth:

https://www.amazon.com/Zorba-Buddha-Spirituality-Capitalism-Movement/dp/0520286677

BTW, haven't read the entire thread, but did anyone else get the sensation that the "Stephen King lawyer" guy was a low key manipulative piece of shit beneath the mellow act?

He didnt even strike me as mellow! I thought he was being disingenuous and devious.

ok yeah ty, it took me an episode or two but then I started to see the ex-bigshot litigator underneath the soft wool

Most def.

oh yeah 100%

That was the first time..
I ever heard...
*makes eye contact with juror*
tapes of osho

https://a248.e.akamai.net/ib.huluim.com/video/60594012?size=476x268®ion=us
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a sanyasin"

I think about cave man lawyer a lot these days.

never didn't

I think about unfrozen caveman lawyer all the time and wish everyone knew about him so that if I made a reference to unfrozen caveman lawyer they would get the joke.

about two episodes in. these series is fascinating and really well done

it gets better as it goes along

complaints in this thread about how it doesn't go after the cultists hard enough seem a little misplaced. I mean sure I guess they could have come off *worse*, but they still come off pretty bad. Suspenders-dude is the best.

I found this show fascinating for so many reasons, and I'm glad I watched it, but I did myself at something very much like Veg's take above - there needs to be cross-examination of both the ranchers and the Rajneeshees, because everybody lingers only on the parts of the story they want to talk about. Stephen King Lawyer in particular gets to come off very magnanimous and reasonable, talking about the closed-mindedness of the locals and staying focused on the fishier things done by the authorities, but no one ever gets to say to him "um yes but what about the murder plots and poisoning and mass nonconsensual drugging?" I get that juxtaposing all these unreliable narrators is intentional, but I just came away feeling like everybody involved was being allowed to get away with something, and not just the cultists.

The narrative also drops threads constantly. Things get set up as a big deal and never get mentioned again. What was actually in the papers dude found in the trash? Did they feed into the investigation somehow? How? At one point one of the feds is like "for the first few years we couldn't do anything - that all changed at the start of 1983" so you're sitting there waiting to find out what development this is teasing, but it's never explained what he's referring to really. Was it the hotel bombing? If so, why? Wasn't the instigating issue that the land was zoned for ranching, not a new town plan? How did they continue to stay there in blatant violation of this? Did they successfully change this when they took over the government of one nearby town, and if so, why wouldn't it be mentioned? Were they really drugging all those homeless people the entire time? Why weren't they charged for that, instead of immigration fraud?

And - picking up with JiC's reaction: What were they *doing* out there all those years, after the first wave of construction activity? The day-to-day world of Rajneeshpuram never really comes into focus or feels like a real place, and it becomes something of a palace-intrigue story which gets us away from the clash-of-cultures thread even if stuff like the Australian woman jabbing an (apparently ineffective) syringe into the doctor is clearly irresistible drama.

Who the locals really are is also a bit uncleart. At least one is super rich with Nike money.... are the others? How much was this about residents of the town, and how much was it their neighbor ranchers owning thousands of acres or whatever?

For whatever reason tho what I'd most want to change is how every time they use old news footage, they start from the top of the reporter's segment - "The town of Antelope, Oregon used to be a quiet place..." YEAH WE GOT THAT ALREADY, THANKS! Learn to edit!!!

Something I hate about Netflix truecrime docos in general is their tedious over and over reshowing/slow panning/weird pop out effect of the same half a dozen grainy photos they have of the person/story.

So at least this one had much more footage to use!

Garbage documentary. Something about rural Oregon attracts morons.

xxp He is not super rich with Nike money, though

he's not? i recall it specifically coming up that his rich well connected nike-inventor dad was able to move the process forward, call up his old friend the senator, check in with his old friend the US attorney....

iirc, he had enough money to buy a ranch, but I think it was a real ranch, not a hobby ranch. Or maybe he was estranged from his Nike dad? Something like that.

"I'm the only one in the family who doesn't have any Nike stock," he said.

Bowerman says about $1,000 in Nike stock he bought shortly after the company went public in 1980 grew to $25,000 at a time when he needed the money to build his house on his land next to the John Day River.

"If I had not built the house it would have been worth a million or two," he said of the stock.

He says his father left equal amounts of Nike stock to the Oregon Community Foundation in the name of him and his two brothers, Jay and Tom. The three brothers, Bowerman said, consult with the Community Foundation about where their share of money should be donated each year. He said his father also left stock to him. But those shares – valued at nearly $500,000 – went to his second wife in the divorce settlement.

yeah okay but come on, that is a very different background/set of connections than the short-order cook at the shuttered diner.

i just didn't have a strong sense of the economy/lifestyle of the town before rajneesh - we got a vague and cliched cultural snapshot of simple small-town folk but how many of those interviewed lived in the town? worked there? what kinds of jobs? there was a suggestion that there were a lot of retirees just chilling out but then it's also clearly a dying small town that people were moving away from even before a cult (we're told - i believe only by sheela or niren - that a lot of the houses they bought had been sitting on the market for a while, but like everything else this is not contextualized or cross-examined). and some of the people in the file footage were way younger than retirement age. was there some middling local economic base that was slipping? a small tool and die shop that employed ten people but then closed? did they all commute out to the hills to work as ranch hands for the people later interviewed in the doc...? how many people were really left at the end, if so many moved away?

clearly on some level i would just have been better off with a book than with a documentary series, but i do think this one exposes some pitfalls of the "just put them on camera and let all sides tell their version of the truth" format. six hours later, i'm not sure i actually understand anything that happened, nor do i have the tools to sift through and weigh the competing claims in a way i'd trust.

I agree with all the points you made; I kept losing threads and feeling vaguely annoyed that lots of things were getting 'lost' but there was too much 'look at THIS' to remember what was being pushed aside.

I think they tried too much or couldn't resist some of the interview subjects they had. Like for example, if they didn't have Niren and the FBI/US attorney guys, they could get away with "but all along the government had been building a case and then it came down like a hammer." But with so much lawyering sprinkled in, we have the bits and pieces of a procedural, without the... procedure.

This was interesting.

The thing that struck me was the obvious hokiness and cultural crassness of the cult: things like calling the cafe 'Zorba the Buddha', having parts of the commune with ostentatious names like 'Jesus Grove', 'Lao Tzu Annexe' etc. Sheela and Osho's ridiculous presentational style, reaching for gravitas and failing. The fact that he's called Osho because of course he's also a Zen master as well as a Hindu sage; the fact that he's clearly loaded and the 'Bringing spirituality and materialism together' line as a weak cover for that.

The brief flash of the Christian abstinence camp that took over the site was grim also, also crass and hoky, and there again they're advertising their abstinence camp using clips of sexy girls in bikinis diving into swimming pools.

I now think if I was going to start a cult a winning strategy would be to bombard potential recruits with SEX but also SPIRITUALITY and kind of create a cognitive dissonance, I suppose it fries people's brains.

Holy Hell is another very good cult doc, covering a smaller group with more from the escapees.

Back to the whole Jesus plus Zen plus Hinduism plus plus throw it all in 'aesthetic' the Rajneesh lot had going on, I find that really interesting in that they're basically claiming Baghwan has read and digested all these complex, varied and contradictory traditions so you don't have to, now just follow Baghwan's orders and run around with no clothes on.

i could only watch a few episodes of this. just despised the smarmy, oblivious cult fucks too damn much. any people who can come into conflict with PNW conservative hicks and make the latter seem like the good guys are beyond caring about. wish someone would've poisoned them

wish someone would've poisoned them

because turnabout is fair play?

Something about rural Oregon attracts morons.

Late in his career, Les Zaitz, the Oregonian reporter interviewed in the series, did much of the reporting on the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, so, yeah.

Almost none of the occupiers at Malhuer were from Oregon. They may have been attracted, but they came from Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Idaho and similar places.