Part 1:
As a child, my parents heavily limited my exposure to television and the internet. Movie night was a treat, not a regular occurrence, and television was highly regulated. This regulation came from their desire to keep me from any bad influences or inappropriate content. My dad frequently pointed out a link between watching Disney shows like Wizards of Waverly Place or Hannah Montana to an increase in sass and bickering between my siblings and me.
Yet despite their best efforts, my siblings and I consistently got around their rules. We manipulated babysitters, used our school-issued devices for non-educational content, and capitalized on our friends with more permissive parents.
During a 4th-grade play date at my friend Lauren’s house, the middle child of six with a perpetually distracted stay-at-home mom, I stumbled on to a gateway drug for a subject that my parents likely did not even consider in their television threat assessment: cults. The dangers of Disney were childs play in comparison to the inappropriate content played on TLC, a channel I had never heard of before Lauren. Lauren quickly educated me on what I was missing out on, from a show called Toddlers and Tiaras focusing on toddlers in pageants to a show called 16 & Pregnant focusing on teen moms. But the show that really drew me in focused on a family with 19 kids. Beyond the novelty of the sheer size of the family, the odd power dynamics and extremely Christian undertones of 19 Kids and Counting captured my attention. I had never seen a family of this size or with such strange dynamics. I vividly remember going home and spending hours on YouTube, watching clips of the show.
Despite all my parents’ best efforts to protect me from the inappropriate content on television, one afternoon at a friend's house sparked a rather age-inappropriate fascination with cults. While I could not continue my TLC viewership at home, I continually watched clips of 19 Kids and Counting on YouTube. As my algorithm got more and more attuned to my interests, I started watching stranger and stranger content. Before I even entered middle school, videos on polygamist cults in Latin America, fundamentalist Christian communities in Arizona, and even VICE exposes on witch cults in Romania dominated my YouTube consumption. The strange clothes, strange relationships, and odd behavior fascinated me.
As I entered high school, my parents’ regulation of my media consumption slowly decreased, while my usage of screens and consumption of content increased. Furthermore, my reliance on YouTube decreased, and I expanded into more traditional mediums like film and television. At this point, I had moved on from TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting to more overt cult portrayals. I no longer accidentally stumbled onto shows with culty elements, I actively sought them out. I devoured both fictional and nonfictional cult portrayals, from movies like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood to docuseries like The Vow.
While there were certainly dark elements present in the shows I watched, my viewership was still purely superficial consumption of entertaining, if dark, content. As a 12-year-old, I could recognize that the behavior of the people in the cults was odd, but I did not dive much deeper. A comparison for my viewership is like that of a child seeing an almost extinct white rhino in a zoo. The child recognizes the uniqueness and power of the animal but does not fully comprehend the deeper tragedy of poaching and the destruction of the animal’s natural habitat.
Even as a high school student with a greater understanding of topics like sexual assault and addiction, I still consumed cult media as if it were fiction. If someone I know were to have recounted any of the stories to me as their own experience, I would have been horrified in a much deeper way. But on the screen, it didn’t feel fully real. In many ways, many of the cult stories felt too ridiculous to have happened.
That passive consumption changed when I watched HBO’s Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God. Love Has Won centered on the story of Amy Carlson and her cult, Love Has Won. The series tracks Carlson’s journey from her relatively normal upbringing in Dallas and her job as a manager of a McDonald’s to her role as leader of Love Has Won. Love Has Won, like many other cults, had serious cultural problems from excessive drug abuse and child abuse to general issues with sex and power dynamics.
But what made Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God such a startling experience for me was that the gender-based power dynamic did not fit the mold. Amy Carlson, aka Mother God, was not just portrayed as a pawn, a puppet, or a victim. She was the leader and focal point of the cult. There was no Charles Manson, no Jim Jones; there was no charismatic male leader who inexplicably attracted and controlled his followers. Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God challenged conventional cult narratives and directly confronted me with the complexities of power dynamics and trauma within cult environments, simply by portraying a cult unique in its female leadership.
It felt like a veil had been lifted or as if I had been given a pair of X-ray goggles. I began to look back on some of the content I had previously watched and saw it in a very different light. Looking back at 19 Kids and Counting, my first foray into the world of cult media, and saw a flat, problematic portrayal of a cult. It’s not just an entertaining weird family where the women are forced to wear skirts, but a dangerous environment rife with abuse. I re-watched The Vow and found myself feeling rattled by the horrible abuses, unable to move on with my day as quickly as I had the first time.
Candidly, it embarrasses me that it took this long to fully comprehend the gravity of the horrors of cults in popular media portrayals. But in others, it makes sense. Like with many forms of entertainment, there are almost formulaic elements to cult portrayals in film and television. There is often charismatic male-dominant leadership, frightening ideology, and rampant abuse of women and children. Like when watching a romantic comedy where they fall in love, face some obstacle, and end up together, it is easy to become numb to the real emotions and details within the story.
But those details cannot be ignored, especially as cult media grows in popularity and many groups profit off these stories. Unlike a romantic comedy, the stories behind cults are horrific and sad. Even in a cult where there is no sensational mass death, there are often “quieter abuses” like sexual abuse and harassment. There is a delicate balance in portraying these stories respectfully and ethically. Especially when considering that cults prey on the vulnerable, there is a slightly slimy element to the fact that the studios and others are profiting off of the victims’ stories.
As media consumers, we have little control over how these cult stories are told and produced. Yet we can control how we consume them. It’s not just what we choose to watch, it’s how we interpret and respond to those stories. My journey from passive consumption of cult media to a more critical consumption illustrates the importance of mindfulness in media consumption. By actively engaging and questioning the narratives presented to us, we become more conscientious media consumers and give these stories the respect they deserve.
Part 2:
When dissecting my choice of autobiographical reflection, it is key to first look at the path I took to get to this genre. In approaching writing a piece on cults, I considered several different genres. I initially explored the idea of doing an informative piece consisting of a deep dive into the history of a specific cult. Then, as my interest in the portrayal of cults in popular media increased, that idea shifted into a comparative piece on several different shows on the same cult. As I began to write that piece, I found myself drawn to themes connected to my journey watching cult media. These themes ranged from a focus on shortcomings in the portrayal of women in cults, the power dynamics within cults, the psychology behind why people join cults, and so on.
Through my initial exploratory process, I realized that to write the piece I wanted to write, I had to situate my personal experiences in the context of cult media. I wanted to share my experience and weave it into a thematic argument about cult portrayals in popular culture. After doing some research and some test writing on the genre that would best fit my goals, I landed on the genre of autobiographical reflection due to its combination of personal narrative and thematic argument.
Autobiographical reflection conventionally requires the author to consider events and experiences in their life and analyze them in the context of topics or themes relevant to a specific subject. According to the genre guide from Duke’s writing program, it is important to not just list as many facts as possible in chronological order but to select the most impactful anecdotes and describe them in a way that almost pushes the reader into those experiences. Furthermore, it is important to not just present the facts, but reflect on them. The connections between the anecdotes and the “why”, rather than just the “what,” are key to effectively communicating the themes of the piece. The Duke guide goes on to provide some practical tips, advising authors to draw on memory, tell a story, use details, and draw analogies as needed. Beyond mechanics, it is key to focus on authenticity and honesty throughout the work, using descriptive language to immerse the reader in the author’s worldview. Finally, autobiographical reflections can vary in length depending on their medium.
Throughout my writing process, I kept the stylistic and formatting conventions for autobiographical conventions top of mind. At the most basic level, I revised and edited my writing to ensure the clarity and coherence of my piece. I also chose to write this as if it were in a magazine, which led to adhering to a standard magazine contributor essay length of around 800-1200 words.
More specifically to the genre’s stylistic conventions, I carefully picked the anecdotes that best fit the narrative I wanted to build. For my piece, this did not just mean picking memories generally related to cults. It meant picking specific examples that illustrated my shift in perspective on film and television portrayals of cults, with my viewing of Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God playing the most significant role in my piece. That anecdote took up the most attention in my piece because of its importance in shaping my worldview. Each anecdote helped illustrate my journey as a cult media viewer and allowed my audience to see how I developed my perspective.
Beyond my selection of anecdotes, I focused on incorporating reflection rather than just recounting experiences. To emphasize the reflective nature of my piece, I used descriptive language to most effectively convey my perspective and focused on authenticity. I wanted my audience to fully understand my experiences, their connections to each other, and their connections to my theme. For each anecdote, I explained its significance and tied each one to my overarching position on the portrayal of women in cults. If I were to have just shared the anecdotes without explaining why they matter or connecting them to my argument, my piece would have lacked the reflection component necessary when composing an autobiographical reflection. And with no reflection, my piece would not impact the reader in the way I wanted.
Speaking of readers, it is also key to look at the range of audiences writers typically use autobiographical reflections to address. Depending on their subject matter, they can reach a wide variety of audiences, from casual readers to readers interested in a very niche topic. Oftentimes, they serve educational purposes, providing insight into social issues or historical events through the exploration of personal experiences. The beauty of sharing a personal experience is that it allows readers to empathize with the author and see a perspective they may not have seen before.
For my intended audience, I wanted to target people like me prior to my shift in perspective. Essentially, casual viewers of cult portrayals in popular films and television, or just people interested in cult media as entertainment. I envisioned the piece in a magazine like Variety or Vanity Fair, which attracts people interested in entertainment. Through an autobiographical reflection, I can connect with an audience who may have a similar relationship to cult media. Through sharing my journey and providing them with an opportunity to understand my perspective, I hope to change their views on how they consume cult media.