Wild Wild Country

[bileduct]

There was a little bit of discussion about this in the TV thread, but I thought this Netflix documentary series warranted its own thread.

This is a six part series about the Rajneesh movement in the 1980's, and more specifically the Rajneeshpuram commune and it's attempts to take over an Oregon county. People might remember them as the "Orange People Movement", as well as Ma Anand Sheela's interview with Ian Leslie on 60 Minutes Australia where the phrase "tough titties" became part of the Australian vernacular.

Interestingly the series makes no attempt to portray any of the sides involved as the good or bad guys. The community of Antelope do come across as being a bunch of inbred bigots, but at the same time what was happening to them was undoubtedly a form of gentrification. Esquire has a good write-up about the complexity of the issues involved.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a19623938/netflixs-wild-wild-country-sex-cult-documentary/

One minor gripe I had with the series is that they didn't (at least from what I remember) spend too much time on the bombing of Hotel Rajneesh which was in the separate city of Portland. I was left with the impression that the white hillbillies were responsible, but it was actually carried out by a dude of Pakistani ethnicity who was a member of an Islamic separatist group, Jamaat ul-Fuqra. This particular incident was presented as a major escalation point in tensions between the Rajneeshees and the wider community.

Highly entertaining series.

 

[Generalzod]

Tough Titties, fantastic show just goes to show how people can be easily manipulated, they admitted it at the end the whole thing was a scam, even my son sat and watched it with me and there where other mentions of other cult groups like Jones, and he said to me is that where the term drinking koolaid come from.

 

[InFlames]

Such an amazing documentary.
If anyone is interested there is a fascinating AMA (ask me anything) from one of the commune members on Reddit. He mentions a lot of things the doco didn't cover.

 

[bileduct]

Such an amazing documentary.
If anyone is interested there is a fascinating AMA (ask me anything) from one of the commune members on Reddit. He mentions a lot of things the doco didn't cover.

Have you got a link to it?

 

[Rife]

Have you got a link to it?

 

[bileduct]

Thanks man.

It looks like the original post has been deleted for some reason, but there are plenty of responses from the author in the comments.

 

[kdalymc]

I thought it was about WACO, ha

 

[Lemon Squash]

Just finished watching this, I was absolutely enthralled by it.

Most of all this happened before I was born so although I had heard of the movement I really didn’t know much about it, except ‘The Leader’ episode of the Simpsons was based loosely on the Rajneesh. As well as obviously knowing about Sheelas ‘tough titties’ interview which has become an iconic piece of Aussie television.

So many ways you can look at the story... the main thing that really struck me was how one man moved so many people, sure you could say they were all part of a big scam, but you could tell they generally loved the guy and more importantly the community they were a part of and really they weren’t harming anyone except a few rednecks in the middle of nowhere.

Sheela was obviously mad as a bag of cats, but I found listening to her as she is now an elderly woman quite captivating. She seems so measured and calm it’s hard to imagine it was the same person.

I will be buying the Lawyer/Mayors Book when it comes out with his side of the story from a legality perspective. He seemed a really intelligent man who was quite shattered by how it all ended.

The final scenes where they show the ranch has now been taken over by rich yankee happy clappers really got me thinking why is it that some religions/religious groups are just universally accepted, yet others like the Rajneesh get labelled as Cults/scams, very interesting.