{"id":53526,"date":"2020-08-25T19:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-25T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-vow-reframes-the-narrative-about-cults\/"},"modified":"2020-08-25T19:16:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T16:16:00","slug":"the-vow-reframes-the-narrative-about-cults","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-vow-reframes-the-narrative-about-cults\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u2018The Vow\u2019 Reframes the Narrative About Cults"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#\u2018The Vow\u2019 Reframes the Narrative About Cults<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

Welcome to\u00a0Up Next<\/strong>, a column that gives you the rundown on the latest TV. This week,\u00a0Valerie Ettenhofer takes a look at HBO\u2019s new NXIVM docuseries<\/a>, The Vow.<\/em><\/p>\n

HBO\u2019s The Vow<\/strong> tells the story of the rise and fall of NXIVM, a modern-day American cult. With its affluent trapp<\/a>ings, including an Upstate New York location and a membership that prominently features heiresses and actors, NXIVM has mostly been an object of lurid media<\/a> fascination rather than a thorough examination. It would be easy to retell the tabloid version of this bizarre story and still rack up rubbernecking viewers. Instead, The Vow<\/em> opts to dig deeper, and the result is mesmerizing and strangely powerful.<\/p>\n

The nine-part documentary series, which is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Jehane Noujaim<\/strong> and Karim Amer<\/strong> (The Square<\/em>), humanizes its ex-cult-member subjects through detailed and witness-anchored inside accounts. The controversial NXIVM is a self-described \u201cmulti-level marketing company\u201d whose secret offshoot, DOS (\u201cDominus Obsequious Sororium\u201d) was exposed as a \u201csex cult\u201d in 2017. Noujaim and Amer have a penchant for reframing subjects who aren\u2019t traditional heroes (see last year\u2019s The Great Hack<\/em>), and here they present an engrossing, character-driven docuseries with a gold mine of new and never before seen archival footage.<\/p>\n

The Vow<\/em> succeeds by setting up a narrative structure that mirrors the journey that several ex-NXIVM members have taken. At the start, the filmmakers drop us into the near-utopian vision of ethical camaraderie and thoughtful idealism that new members discovered upon joining the group in the mid-2000s. We learn the language they learned. We feel the feelings they felt. Large parts of the series\u2019 early episodes are devoted to showing us the shining, strangely pristine tip of an iceberg. Then The Vow<\/em> reveals the structure in its entirety: massive, dangerous, and shrouded in mind-numbing darkness.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also present-day momentum inherent in The Vow<\/em> that goes beyond a simple regurgitation of facts. A camera crew follows anxiety-riddled yet tenacious ex-members of NXVIM, beginning even before the 2017 New York Times<\/em> article broke the news<\/a> about DOS\u2019 alleged crimes. For decades, common knowledge has held that the type of people who join cults are weak-minded wanderers, but these survivors \u2014 among them documentarian Mark Vicente and actors Bonnie Piesse, Sarah Edmondson, and Anthony Ames \u2014 are clearly smart, deeply principled, and above all, resilient.<\/p>\n

Some of these ex-members compare NXIVM to an abusive relationship \u2014 it was, after all, exposed in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Most of them speak candidly about the situation\u2019s complex mix of personal responsibility and victimhood. NXIVM\u2019s takedown unfolds like a thrilling game<\/a> of chess, with clever, close-knit people using effective strategies, some of which they learned within the cult they\u2019ve just escaped, to knock its pieces off the board one at a time.<\/p>\n