HBO Max has gone Full Cult with its latest docuseries Heaven’s Gate, which follows the titular notorious non secular cult (the “cult of cults”) by way of its portentous 24-year historical past. Based in California in 1974 by Marshall Applewhite (“Do,” additionally “Bo”) and Bonnie Nettles (“Ti,” additionally “Beep”), the motion attracted lots of of followers at its top, till its “commencement” in March 1997, when Applewhite and 38 different members consumed applesauce laced with sedatives, put baggage over their heads, and died in one of many largest mass suicides in American historical past. The members believed they had been touring to an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
For the docuseries, HBO performed a number of interviews with former Heaven’s Gate members in addition to sociologists and psychologists. The collection raises the identical query begged by most cult histories: why the heck did individuals really be a part of?
The Heaven’s Gate query, nevertheless, appears to be particularly head scratching; maybe what makes Heaven’s Gate the “cult of cults” was how so many may overlook its seemingly-obvious absurdity. What we’re left with, as a substitute, is the baffling persuasiveness of a transcendental UFO-based faith which by some means attracted a few of America’s brightest minds and satisfied them to destroy themselves en masse.
Whereas it’s tempting to chalk the entire fiasco as much as a ’70s drug haze (or ’90s web rabbit holes), the cult lasted virtually three largely lucid a long time; it was not merely a remnant of hippie hysteria nor a response to on-line conspiracies.
For a lot of of its members, the explanations for becoming a member of and remaining within the cult had been merely one: Do/Bo/Marshall Applewhite.
However what was so convincing about this founder? And why did so many comply with him to the grave?
