TotD does not do reviews; you know this, Enthusiasts. People get paid for reviews, and I’m just farting around trying to amuse myself. This is not a review. It is a recommendation: Wild Wild Country on the Netflix. It’s a documentary–a six-parter–about the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, his followers, and their adventures in rural Oregon. Why am I recommending this fare? Let us go to the Bullet Points:
- Megalomaniacal women.
- A-Frames.
- Bio-terrorism.
- Gullible white people.
- Racist white people (who were kind of right, but mostly shitty).
- Terrible brown people.
- Untrained yahoos toting Uzis.
- So many Rolls-Royces that Elton John would have called it vulgar.
- Increasingly intrusive musical choices.
- The founder of Nike, out of fucking nowhere.
- Two (2) moments that made me sit bolt-upright and say–out loud in my empty home–“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
- (I won’t spoil them, but I will say that both events involved secretly putting substances in liquids.)
- A lawyer with the severest Daddy Issues I’ve ever fucking seen.
- Vague, semi-bullshit philosophies.
- Vague, semi-placeable accents.
- Fighting the Law.
- The Law winning.
- VHS, VHS, VHS.
- So many odd dramatic decisions you’ll question the filmmakers’ intentions.
- And this song, which sounds like it’s from 1923 Mississippi, but was written by a Canadian in 2014:
I moved to Oregon when the Bhagwan was still in effect. I remember scoring some weed at Zorba the Buddha in downtown Portland. A bunch of my college roommates went out Antelope and tried to hang out at Rajaneeshpuram a little bit before they tried to poison residents in The Dalles via salad bars at Sizzler and other cruddy local restaurants. Ma Anand Sheela was persona non grata around Oregon due to her strategic attempt to tilt the vote. Oregon had lax residency laws about voting and you had to be living in Oregon a month before an election to be eligible to vote, so they started busing all sorts of people into Central Oregon. As a disaffected punker. they seemed way more intriguing than anything to do with the Reagan paradigm.
The one part about this period of history that can not be underestimated is the weirdness & fear of cults caused by the Jonestown affair. Surely the residents of Wasco County thought the Rajaneeshis were a similar phenomena to Jonestown which only happened a few years before they bought the land and moved all of the Rolls Royces into high desert. Now a couple of generations later, many of the residents of this area are probably big time Trump supporters who believe in “religious freedom” as long as it conforms to their idea of religion. The Rajaneeshis were certainly more entertaining than the MAGA idiots currently running the lunatic asylum, but the 80’s were more entertaining overall. Most of the people who lived at Rajaneeshpuram were of the Caucasian persuasion(many Germans). Indians didn’t exactly approve of the free love component of the Osho contingent, but it was big in Germany & Switzerland
I will definitely watch this documentary sometime in the next month as I prefer to binge watch. They have bunches of footage to pick through as Rancho Rajaneesh was big news in Oregon. I remember watching this goofy local news show when it aired:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k83_twyDTaU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EKL-p-cMdU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFd6zVG9Cw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuydTTRZjdo
The idea of flooding a sparsely-populated area with like-minded voters is intriguing direct action, but the way the Rajneeshis went about it was reprehensible.
Agreed, helluva interesting doc. Seems to me the proto trump-voting white folks escalated first, and in effect caused the whole thing. And one of the “putting things in liquids” episodes was only alleged, although it makes me queasy either way.
While the ranchers and cowboys and white people were dicks from the beginning, there’s no escalating another party into chemical warfare.
And now we have Nexium from Saratoga doing the same shit. I could say I’m surprised, but when it comes to gullibility certain people are born with the gene. A variation on the god gene no doubt. What really makes me envious though, is how good looking the women are in all of the cults. Kind of makes me want to take a charisma course, get my own sanyasins.
Oh and one more thing, I don’t believe anyone that reads this blog has a leg to stand on. The irreverence here notwithstanding, if Jerry decided to hold lectures or talk up lavender robes how many of us would look like Rajneeshis?
We are all Rajneeshis on this bus
it is true!
What a great doc, it was in my suggested list but I wouldn’t have found it without you totd. It’s mind blowing & I’m only part way through. Happy Easter.
Came across this today , a reprint of a big in depth 1985 Oregonian article on the rajneeshi affair from 1985, on longform
https://longform.org/sections/crime