What does a cult member look like? Do they have wild eyes and a gaggle of similar crazy friends, all sporting shaved heads and matching Nikes? Do they hand out flowers with a zonked smile outside a train station? If that’s the case, then the members of NXIVM (pronounced “nex-ee-um”), the seemingly harmless inspiration organization that is the subject of HBO’s latest real abuse abuses, do not see themselves as stereotypical cult members. They dress in khakis and button-down shirts. They have careers. They have families. They are everyday people, using a system of self-help-inspired beliefs that has more in common with executive retreats than UFO learning.
NXIVM’s teaching is an abuse of business jargon, wellness culture and philosophy 101. The materials have the illumination and production values of a business education video, and are full of vague platitudes about “maximizing potential” and “the world” change. ” It’s pretty vanilla game, which directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer explore in sometimes excessive detail over the course of their nine-hour series, The vow. The filmmakers have an incredible treasure trove of recordings to pull off, but only a few defectors who are ready to be interviewed on camera. At one point, the whiplash between the banality of the source material and the extreme nature of the accusations is striking. At one point, an ex-member who was deeply traumatized by her experience pulls out a card sent to her by the group’s leader, Keith Raniere. ‘Dance when no one is watching’, it states.
The third and fourth episodes of The vow give viewers sensational details about the extortion, sexual slavery and bizarre “master / slave” dynamics of the women-only inner circle of the group, DOS. Most of these revelations were dealt with de New York Times article that brought the story under the FBI, but they are brought to life here by actual text messages and recordings of phone calls between women in the group. DOS is NXIVM at its most endearing, revolving pop rhetoric about female empowerment in a group where women were marked with a symbol representing both the initials of Raniere and those of his claimed no. 2 included, SmallvilleAllison Mack. (Like Scientology, NXIVM is popular with actors who like to focus on positive thinking.) But the series spends more time attracting and following these events than the scandal itself. The signs of rot are present, even in the artificially sensible first hour of the series, if you know what you are looking for.
Look closely at the ecstatic faces of the people watching Raniere speak, and you will see the same glass-eyed expression as a Peoples Temple member at a Jim Jones lecture. (They also laugh hysterically at even the slightest joke, says another.) Raniere, who calls himself “Vanguard” and looks like he’s there to repair your printer, is one of those infallible know-it-alls. the woman’s hair smells and thinks he’s conveying one thing about everyone – and that’s him in this case. Cameras record every statement for posterity because he is a humanitarian (who has no charity), a scientist (who has no references), and a philosopher with one of the highest IQs ever recorded (or so he says). He is supported by a small army of intensely dedicated women such as Clare Bronfman, the heir apparent who bankrolls the cult, and Nancy Salzman, the wife of the main pitch whose energy is like that of a bizarre Elizabeth Warren.
Much of what Raniere says is designed to undermine the self-control of the person listening, a process we see exploding in real time. (At one point, Mack comes to him and asks how she can channel the sublime feeling she gets from good art, and he tells her – an artist – that art is false and meaningless.) Raniere thinks to himself when Steve Jobs crosses paths with Albert Einstein, but he really is the man who will corner you at a party and explain why he knows more about your field than you. Raniere’s appeal is never self-evident at any point in the series, but we’ve seeing women indulge in “Vanguard” -imposed starvation diets and line-up to play volleyball with a side of Raniere ramblings at a Ymca of Albany at 11:30 p.m. In short, it’s apparently a cult – and besides, a pretty typical one, damaged, as they all are in the end, by clichéd male law.
The basic sales pitch and ultimate pyramid scheme behind NXIVM is similar to that of Scientology: drawing people in with a philosophy that promises to teach them practical life skills, and then collecting them in a complex hierarchy (here, a system of colored scarves) a contribution at each level. Once you are financially deep enough, you can begin to warp their sense of reality until the group is right and worried family members are wrong. Also similar to Scientology, the philosophy of NXIVM includes subconscious mental blocks for success in sessions that function like sped-up therapy. One thing The vow does it right is to break down the techniques of emotional abuse Raniere and his inner circle used to manipulate lower-ranking members so that we understand why they ran them – if not why they in particular man were.
We know more about the inner workings of NXIVM than we do about those of Scientology, however, thanks to the efforts of ex-members who gather mountains of evidence that was used to prosecute Raniere and Mack on charges for sexual trafficking. They also serve as our portal The vow, it begins with former senior members Sarah Edmondson and Mark Vicente going through their old training materials in a cathartic version of the ritual, in which NXIVM members explore “the meaning” of a triggering memory “in order to overcome it. Noujaim and Amer, however, tactics, and move on to documentary footage of Edmondson, Vicente, and their growing circle of fans as they organize a campaign to bring Raniere to justice.
This shift adds new characters The vow, as Catherine Oxenberg, the Dynasty actress who is on a desperate mission to rescue her daughter from the inner circle of Raniere. Together with testimony from women whose involvement with Raniere dates back to the early 1990s, they provide valuable insight into the extent of the problem, as well as a link to the #MeToo movement, which exploded during filming. But the emotional throughput of this journey from women to healing is less pronounced and influential here than the community of survivors in another HBO documentary, I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, as Noujaim and Amer get lost in the weeds of NXIVM’s structure and tactics. In fact, it turns out to be the emotional center of the play Vicente, a documentary filmmaker who is now waking up to guilt over his unintentional role in persecuting women, and his sense of betrayal of his former boss and teacher.
Before those who have escaped from NXIVM can truly be free from Keith Raniere, his mystique must be shattered. And if that happens in The vow, it does not appear in the seven hours of the series that are screened for criticism. The filmmakers’ procedural approach means that statements about Raniere as a diabolical genius with an almost divine power to change lives, for better and for worse, are listed for face value. With the viewer left to read between the lines, his reputation remains intact – as if untenable.
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