Welcome to the Weekend Binge. Every Friday, we’ll suggest a binge-able title designed to keep you from getting too stir crazy. Check back throughout the weekend for even more gloriously queer entertainment.
The WTF: Wild Wild Country
This Netflix series didn’t get the fanfare it deserved when it arrived back in 2018. Wild Wild Country tells the story of one of the 1980s biggest–and oddly forgotten–cause célèbres. In 1981, the Indian spiritual guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, aided by his outspoken secretary Ma Anand Sheela, founded a commune for Rajneesh’s followers (usually called Rajneeshees). The Rajneeshees managed to build a sparkling city in Wasco County, Oregon they’d hope would become a Utopia, serving as a worldwide example of peace, prosperity and queer-inclusive free love. In other words, a paradise.
It didn’t work out that way. The Rajneeshees and their exotic ways immediately ran afoul with the nearby farm town of Antelope, and later, with state and federal authorities as well. Members of the commune–including Sheela–would stage bioattacks on neighboring towns and elected officials, face charges of immigration fraud, tax evasion and wiretapping, culminating in Rajneesh himself attempting to flee the country.
But why recommend it to a queer audience? The Rajneeshees, for all their faults, welcomed LGBTQ people and sexual fluidity at a time when both subjects were still considered taboo. At the height of the AIDS crisis, Rajneesh preached acceptance of queer people…and that AIDS would likely result in the extinction of humanity. The Rajneeshees, therefore, became one of the first religious groups to preach the importance of STD testing and knowing partners; Sheela, in interviews, boasted that despite being a free love society where anything really could go down, the Rajneeshees had found ways to eliminate venereal disease altogether. Wild Wild Country makes the case that the Rajneeshee values of free love and STD prevention caused a moral panic in broader society, and ultimately helped destroy the experiment of the commune.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
The six-part series recalls the rise and fall of the Rajneeshee commune, and features extensive interviews with Ma Anand Sheela, residents of Antelope, former members of the commune, federal investigators and more. It’s a penetrating look at one of the most bizarre media sagas in recent memory. It’s a harrowing and, at times, mind-boggling tome of religion gone awry, cultural xenophobia and homophobic panic. Give it a watch, and prepare to be riveted.
Streams on Netflix.
Invader7
Yikes.. They poisoned townspeople via the salad bar(s) in several restaurants. It was cuckoo crazy..
tjack47
A cult. They always have a bad ending. The people must be de-programmed. Families destroyed. I’m an atheist. I’m no fan of organized religion. I believe anyone has the right to their own belief system. Exploitation and a leader who is worshipped are two signatures of a cult. I’m interested in seeing this one.
JED08
I watched, don’t remember there being much gay stuff in it, but I enjoyed the heck out of it, thought it was fascinating, not that I have any interest in being in a cult.
sistercylon
Did you actually watch the doc? They *tolerated* queer people but said that gay sex, especially between men, was “cowardly”.
TheMarc
They don’t watch or vet half of what they recommend.
TheMarc
Though, for the time, they should be commended for their “level” of LGBTQ acceptance, the Rajneeshees were still a bit problematic as sistercyclon pointed out.
That being said, I have always had a problem with the fact that in the land of “the free,” we’ve always had a huge problems with groups of people going off to live among like minded persons far and away from general society. I don’t always, of course, endorse the views of each of these communes, compounds, etc. But a fair amount of the ones raided/attacked are/were self-contained and harmless. Yet, we allow white supremacist militias to grow unabated and allow them to spread like wildfire.
Mattster
What raids on peaceful harmless communes are you referring to?
The Rajneeshees were not just harmless oddballs, they poisoned hundreds if not thousands of people. They also bussed in hundreds of homeless people from all over the country and drugged them in order to keep them docile. And plotted to assassinate the district attorney.
This is without even getting into the money-laundering, tax evasion, and immigration fraud that was central to their day to day activities. And Sheela’s mass wiretapping of hundreds of people in the community.
“A bit problematic”?