This weekend we observed the 40th anniversary of the mass murder/suicide tragedy at Jonestown in Guyana. The utopian cult lead by the the charismatic Jim Jones had its heyday as the People’s Temple, a Christian church in San Francisco known for its outreach to homeless neighbors. In the end it became a madhouse deep in the South American jungle as Jones became increasingly unhinged, and the would-be paradise disintegrated into a living hell. 909 men, women and children died at Jonestown and this weekend I found a great article that focuses on how pop culture shapes what we talk about when we talk about cults…

Originally, the word “cult” simply meant “to worship”. Deriving from the same root as “culture” and “cultivation”, it described rituals and offerings intended to cultivate the favour of gods, saints and other holy figures. The term later took on negative connotations, and by the mid-20th century was mostly associated with charlatans and violent or otherwise bizarre fringe groups.

Today, a cult might loosely be defined as any group exhibiting a combination of qualities including (but not limited to): a charismatic leader, mind-altering practices, sexual and economic control and exploitation of members, us-versus-them attitudes towards outsiders, and an ends-justify-the-means philosophy.

By this definition, it’s difficult to argue that Peoples Temple wasn’t a cult. After all, they had a leader who was notoriously charismatic and who exerted a disproportionate level of control over his congregation. Members were often overworked and overtired, their finances and sex lives regulated by leadership. Relationships with outsiders were generally discouraged, and Jones was known to sexually abuse both male and female followers. Meanwhile, an ends-justify-the-means line of thinking was employed to justify everything from faked healings to the ultimate massacre of more than 900 individuals.

Read more at the link above. Here’s a Real Stories documentary about the tragedy, Jonestown: Paradise Lost…

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While I’ve posted numerous times about the 50th anniversary of The Velvet Underground and Nico this year, but I’ve been missing the chance to celebrate other faves. Now that I’m done with all those October horror posts I’m getting back on track with my notable music anniversaries.

American Stars and Bars isn’t considered to be one of Neil Young’s best records, but I’ve always loved the album which turned 40 this year. Critics complain that it’s uneven, but that’s one of the things I like best about it. One side of the record is straight country but the other side is rock. I guess it’s normal for folks to get confused by such an offering, but I like country Neil and rock Neil so of course I dig this double scoop. Plus, how can anybody not love an album that includes a classic like “Like a Hurricane?”

Here’s a cool Neil doc examining his career starting from the mid-1970s through the turn of the millennium. ‘Stars and Bars is the first record spotlighted here…

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2017 marks 40 years since the release of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life. Including the classic title song and the evergreen “Passenger,” the album also features the dark romance of “Tonight” and the jailbait jam, “Sixteen.” I’ve always loved this album as it’s probably the best example of the massive influence that Jim Morrison had on Iggy. The Doors are America’s greatest rock band, and it’s no coincidence that their impact helped to forge one of the iconic heroes of the age after Aquarius. Celebrating the album’s anniversary, here’s a Dutch documentary from 1986 called Lust for Life…

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There’s no telling which big tent movie might own the summer, but David Lynch has definitely owned the spring — the new Twin Peaks series is confounding viewers and sparking debate online, and Nashville fans of the man were recently treated to an expansive Lynch retrospective at the Belcourt Theatre. In the middle of all this it’s easy to forget that Lynch’s debut feature, Eraserhead, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

Here are a few words about the Eraserhead screening that I wrote for my coverage of the Belcourt’s Lynch retrospective in my weekly film column for The Contributor…

David Lynch’s debut feature influenced everyone from Stanley Kubrick to the Coen Brothers while throwing back to the naturalistic horrors of the Grand Guinol theater of 19th century Paris. Eraserhead is the most purely surrealistic film in Lynch’s oeuvre. The black-and-white movie has a timeless look, and while themes about abortion and the fear of intimacy occasionally surface, Eraserhead is an underwater dream of a film that announced Lynch as a director who was equally obsessed with the absolutely ordinary and the shockingly extraordinary.

Here’s the making of documentary, Eraserhead Stories. This version is slightly sped up and color shifted to avoid being taken down from YouTube, but the overall effect just makes it even weirder…

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Original image by Orikunie at http://orikunie.deviantart.com/

This year we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. The imposing tome is a massive collection of mythopoeic works that tell the creation myth of Middle Earth, and recount the ages that preceded the saga The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion is only for the hardest core hobbitphiles. It lacks the narrative drive of Tolkien’s classic stories while also being populated by a teeming host of unpronounceable creatures, characters and locales. It’s not without its charms, but readers definitely get a pass for not venturing very long into this very long book. With that in mind I think I’ve found an easier way: check out this video that uses some simple, charming animation to boil down the big bad book into a three-minute primer. This won’t substitute for reading the real thing, but it’s still a lot of fun for fantasy fans. Enjoy!

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Had a pretty busy weekend including hitting Red Arrow on Saturday night for Daniel Holland’s new exhibition. It’s a great show of paintings including collage elements and even shaped canvases that give the display more of a sculptural sensibility than Holland’s previous work. If you’re in Nashville you don’t want to miss it. That said, I had a pretty chill Sunday that mostly found me catching up on the new Sherlock series and reading a bunch of articles including a great piece about Phillip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. Scanner was the first PKD book I read and it’s still one of my favorites. The novel is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Here’s a bit from the article at The Quietus…

Its main character, undercover narcotics agent, Bob Arctor, lives in a California that feels straight out of the early ‘70s, although we’re told the novel is set in 1994. When Arctor tries to infiltrate the supply chain of a drug called Substance D, he becomes addicted to it – his own supplier, Donna, is the woman he loves. His friends and housemates are all addicts, too. The plot ramps up when his police colleagues, from whom his identity is protected, ask him to run surveillance on himself, which is no-one’s idea of a good time: whenever he’s not on Substance D, he’s watching videos of himself on it.

Substance D is basically speed. For a long time, this was Dick’s drug of choice (I’ve written before about how you can conjure up an image of him at his desk, furiously typing, blinds drawn to block out the South California sun. He said he could turn out 68 pages of prose a day when he was on speed). Substance D is especially nasty, though. It destroys the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain, so that they first function independently and then compete, destroying any coherent idea of the self. In the case of Bob Arctor, it means that the addict self and the narc self eventually become unrecognisable to one another.

Here’s a long French interview with Dick shortly after the book’s release…

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This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. Among other ideas this study of sex in the West posited that the notion that every person possessed their own unique sexuality was a relatively new one. Of course it’s a notion that couldn’t be more timely four decades later, and this anniversary is the perfect opportunity for revisiting Foucault’s ideas. Here’s a short documentary that offers a fun, sexy take on Foucault’s philosophizing on fornication…

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