ICSA Annual Conference: Mainstream Media – What is their role and responsibility in educating the public about cults?

ICSA Annual Conference: Mainstream Media – What is their role and responsibility in educating the public about cults?

Jackie Johnson, DSW, LCSW-R; Saturday, June 25, 2022; 1:00 PM-1:50 PM – online

This talk explores the role of mainstream media in providing public education about the dangers and dynamics of cults. Very often we notice mainstream media focusing on exposing specific corruptions or injustices from cultic groups, or highlighting sensationalized anecdotal situations or personal stories from former cult members. However, can mainstream media do more in terms of providing education about the hallmarks or characteristics of cultic or coercive groups beyond sensationalized stories?

How can the media expand its role in participating in meaningful cult education as a matter of public safety?

Jackie Johnson, DSW, LCSW-R, is a licensed clinical social worker with a certification in forensic social work. She obtained her master’s degree from Columbia University and her doctoral degree from the University of Tennessee. Dr. Johnson is a SGA survivor, having spent 43 years with Jehovah’s Witnesses. In her private practice, Dr. Johnson focuses on assisting indoctrinated individuals find freedom from cultic and other high-demand groups and process the trauma they experienced while being involved in systems of control or coercive groups and relationships. Her research interests include the epistemology of women and how cultic, coercive, and misogynistic experiences influence the cognitive development of women. Dr. Johnson can be reached at drjackie@drjacquelinejohnson.com. You can learn more about Dr. Johnson at her website, www.drjacquelinejohnson.com.

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Cults on TV!

How stereotypes influence our ideas about what is and isn’t legitimate religion.

Allison Miller
JSTOR
January 14, 2021

Thinking of submitting to a leader, cutting off all your hair, and moving to a commune in the desert, or is that just the type of thing Netflix seems to be recommending? TV stereotypes of “cults,” or new religious movements (NRMs), may have primed that algorithm over the past fifty years. As religion scholar Lynn S. Neal argues, TV has influenced what generations of viewers expect cults to be. Which is to say, really, really bad.

Analyzing episodes of The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, Law and Order: SVU, and other shows, Neal finds that they all show people dressing unusually, living communally as a substitute for family life, having “delusional and infantile” beliefs, and being visibly abnormal. This can be humorous, as with the “Movementarians” on The Simpsons, or grimly dramatic, as with a girl driven to shoot her leader on SVU in order to break free of the cult once and for all.

NRMs “often appear as a joke or as some type of threat—ideas that can wield tremendous power in American culture.”

These elements, Neal argues, add up to a negative stereotype that reinforces ideas about true and false religions. Neal points out that in these TV portrayals, there’s usually no discussion of any theology. “[B]y defining and showing what is strange or deviant, these programs help delineate what religious behaviors and norms are deemed acceptable and legitimate,” she writes. Those, naturally, are “vaguely Christian.” NRMs “often appear as a joke or as some type of threat—ideas that can wield tremendous power in American culture.”

The stereotype has roots that probably go deeper than TV itself, to portrayals of non-Western religions as exotic. Representation of “cults” on TV at first focused mainly on practices like these. But in the 1970s a “cult scare and intense media scrutiny of NRMs” launched the stereotype full blown on the small screen. In 1975 a show called S.W.A.T. featured an episode called “A Coven of Killers,” and dangerous NRMs appeared on teen-oriented sitcoms like What’s Happening and Welcome Back, Kotter. Even as news media coverage of NRMs went down in the ’80s—and gawking coverage of televangelism increased—the cult stereotype reliably plumped ratings on dramas and comedies.

That boom peaked around the year 2000, Neal posits, because the U.S. was grappling with fallout from a spate of violence surrounding real NRMs like the Branch Davidians and Heaven’s Gate. They made bankable nonfiction headlines for fictional TV to rip from. But as reality TV took over the industry, and as Y2K came and went, living communally and holding infantile beliefs didn’t come as often from fictional TV…but they were all over The Real World and its copious copycats.

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

"They're Freaks!": The Cult Stereotype in Fictional Television Shows, 1958–2008
By: Lynn S. Neal
Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 14, No. 3 (February 2011), pp. 81-107
University of California Press

https://daily.jstor.org/cults-on-tv/

TV Program - Scientologists at War

September 12, 2015
CBC NEWS NETWORK, THE PASSIONATE EYE

Scientologists at War investigates the pressure tactics used to discredit and silence members who leave the church. Courtesy of its highest level defector, the documentary provides a rare insider’s view of one of the world’s most mysterious organizations. As the former Inspector General of Ethics, Marty Rathbun worked closely with leader David Miscavige and celebrity follower Tom Cruise. He claims that for many years he was Number 2 to Miscavige and acted as an enforcer, punishing anyone who questioned the church’s leadership.

“I didn’t think twice about quelling opposition, or silencing critics or punishing someone,” Rathbun admits. Now that he’s defected, he says the same tactics he helped devise are being used against him.

For months, Rathbun’s home is besieged by a group of people waving video cameras and shouting at him whenever he steps outside. The church denies any involvement but Rathbun says these are high-level Scientology members “sent down to get in my face and to make my life a living hell.”

“They’ve sent sex toys to my job, they’ve sent PIs (private investigators) to my dad’s house, to my ex-husband, to all my ex co-workers, my ex-boss,” Rathbun’s wife adds. “You name it, they’ve done it.”

Scientologists at War documents how Rathbun’s life has become a daily battle of taunts, insults and surveillance – a battle he now considers as payback for the wrongdoing he carried out in the Church. "In a way it's my karma. I've done it to others and so… you reap what you sow".

The church may contest Rathbun’s status now, but in 1993 Miscavige describes taking on the head of the IRS. Working side by side with Rathbun, they prevailed in Scientology’s greatest victory to date: becoming tax exempt in the US and dodging a billion-dollar tax bill.

In the film, Rathbun also claims that he was the man charged with finding a celebrity poster boy for Scientology and attracting Tom Cruise when his marriage to Nicole Kidman was failing. “Cruise started making some noises about getting some help. Miscavige had me drop everything and that became the number one priority. I helped them on his divorce with Nicole and then I was auditing him and helping him get Penelope audited.”

Rathbun says his close relationship with Cruise became his downfall. “Miscavige had to start undermining me in front of Cruise". Out of favour, Rathbun found himself at the other end of his own methods. He says he was sent to a Scientology behavioural modification facility, then escaped and went into hiding before starting up an independent Scientology movement.

Scientologists at War is directed by Joseph Martin and produced by Danielle Clark and Michael Simkin for Channel Four.

http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/scientologists-at-war?cid=September+9