Sheela Take a Bow: Wild Wild Country on Netflix

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.

or what vg said!

Agree ^^^ I am finding it very boring as well. 2 episodes in and I am thinking of dropping it.

there are interesting moments, it’s not a total waste. but they’re so inlove with their souce material it comes off more as an art piece than anything informative

and i fkn hate the overuse of music in this, it makes it too glib

for a shorter, funnier overview The Dollop podcast did a pretty good recap
http://thedollop.libsyn.com/acharya-rajneesh

Something about interviews...maybe it's the slow editing.

I loved the music in this, but I also love Bill Callahan's music.

this is an unexpected first hit from searching for this guy:
http://www.oregonlive.com/playbooks-profits/index.ssf/2014/08/jon_bowerman_son_of_nike_legen.html

I will admit to being one who assumed he had some Nike money

yeah wow

VG saying a lot of what I felt. This was probably one of the most dissatisfying docs I’ve ever seen. I didn’t come away from it feeling like I really learned anything. I didn’t trust any of the subjects except Silvertooth, so then I didn’t believe anybody. Osho came across like a total nobody and it was never really explored why he was a famed guru - it was just a lot of “he’s so beautiful and amazing “ with nothing to back it up.

Sheela came across as a sociopath.

I feel like they came up with the angle (Sheela’s heavy-handed tactics versus the locals) early in development or filming and rolled with it. Fair, but it’s a frustrating thing to follow when every tangent seems more tantalizing and we’re left wondering whether that was really the truth of what was going on and we can’t grasp the real dynamic inside the group

agree this was really unsatisfying

its insane to me that the investigative reporter for the Oregonian is introduced in ep 5 & is maybe used three or four times total. He should be the thread pulling this nonsense together & helping provide context throughout!!!

I think the storytelling was satisfying. Seeing this stuff for the first time, I enjoyed the large amount spent with the weird characters. Had a good time guessing who was full of shit and by how much.

agree this was really unsatisfying

it was rather unrewarding to live through, too.

Is there any sort of theme to each episode or is it all just meandering until the end?

Rajneeshpuram and what happened, chronologically

I might give one more episode a try. The subject matter is so interesting, but I just can't get into it.

Despite all the hair raising details, they did seem like they could throw a goid disco party/orgy.

*good

I like how so far they just put in 2-4 second clips/mentions of the orgies and that's it.

I'm starting to get into this a bit more. Shella is ice cold. I kind of like that. This also makes me want to watch The Last of Sheila again.

Episode 4. I am sure it takes a bad turn but as of now, Sheela should be on t-shirts. If she had stopped here...amazing.

Maybe it's because I already knew her story before I saw the doc but I don't get the love of Sheela. She just seems like such an awful self-aggrandizing manipulative human being.

I mean, to me Sheela and Bhagwhan are just the two heads of the same snake eating its own tail.

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.