Le Parcours des gourous

Peter Dinklage returns to perform sarcastic narration in another Netflix documentary.

Peter Dinklage is awesome. If you don't think he's awesome, you need to go watch The Station Agent. However, his name is not really the first that would come to my mind if Netflix said to me, "We're making a sarcastic documentary. Who's your dream narrator?" But after his turn at talking to us about the rules of how to become a tyrant, I'm glad he's back.

The topic of cult leaders is just as lurid and interesting as tyrants. It's also a pretty fluid transition talking about tyrants who prey on their citizens to cult leaders who prey on their followers. The problem is that it sometimes feels like we're covering very similar ground. Perhaps they're trying to say cult leaders and tyrants are not so different. If so, that's not exactly a deep thought.

Again, the choices will likely cause a lot of consternation. Would anyone have really complained if they had skimmed over the history of Heaven's Gate? Their history was more interesting than one might expect, but I doubt people are dying to know what Heaven's Gate was up to in the 1970s. It did lead to an intriguing concept, though: how do you deal with failed prophecies?

A failed prophecy seems like it would completely derail your cult. The truth is that sometimes cults bounce back stronger than ever. The reasons are really interesting, and they could go a long way to explaining why people stick with cults despite their ridiculousness. I mean, how do you stick around when someone says, "I'm the messiah, and I need you to have sex with me and mortgage your house"?

There are so many notorious cults that are missing. In many cases, there's no mention at all or just a trivial throwaway buried in the middle of an episode. And what can you say about Jim Jones or Charles Manson in 30 minutes that we haven't already seen several times before? Especially with them, it might have been better to talk more generically. Yes, we all know Manson was a failed rock star.

This is likely the sort of thing that would have sent me looking deeper if I had seen it when I was a teenager, and I think that's a good thing. So, despite its flaws, I have to say that I'm glad it's out there, and I'm glad that Peter Dinklage is back. I was leaning toward a 7, but I'll give it an 8 so encourage more sarcastic docuseries with him.

The series is not original but still entertaining. It starts strong and the best episodes to me were the first trio. The narrative is great because the characters are quite interesting if you're into psicology or love series like Mindhunter. But it is far to be a masterpiece.

First, it can become monotone after watching the fourth episode. To add, the last cult leaders are not interesting or intriguing.

Second, last episode is terrible. And the ending is as important as the start. A big flawn. The series sinks by itself because it follows the same pattern all the time. Kind of boring.

Anyway, it is overall watchable but not great. If you want to maximize the time, skip the last episode.

Title: Make your cult a religion

All of these episodes and just about every (if not all..) chapters fully apply to the big religions we know today.

A few examples i wrote down during the show.

• Build on your own piece of land (uhm like maybe the vatican?, maybe even Israel?)

-Uniformity, no one stands out (except the leader offcourse), so wear the same clothes (nuns, priests, imams, bisshops, monks, etc, etc)

• Wipe all doubts with standard frases (like "God works in mysterious ways" ?)
• The end of time (apocalypse, every religion has them)
• Although (a bit) saver now, overall agression is or has been used by all big religions, either to non believers or as punishments
• Go and multiply, 8 billion people on this world, killing the world by breeding more and more, believers like this one i guess
• Biblecamp
• Successionplan (Like the pope?)

It shows a very partial picture of things. Includes some supposed cults (because easy targets, visually, e.g. Osho) while leaves out some real and active cults (e.g. Scientology) out of fear and general opportunism. Just easy or obvious targets without goung deep into why cults exist and how come people nees them in this consuneristic world. Shallow overall and kind of an exact copy of what Explained had already done (still shallow). To give it intelletual depth they should have shown more points of view and not only people piling up with such an absolute predetermined and similar outlook on things. The creators act with the same absolutism of cults themselves!

Over sensationalized, inaccurate, and containing dangerous generalizations. Cults are a fascinating topic but there are countless better documentaries and podcasts out there. The problems start before the opening credits are finished. An "expert" stated that most cults end in bloodshed and death which is a both blatantly false and harmful. The presenters, not the cult survivors, tell there tales with glee. They almost seem to admire what cult leaders have accomplished and have a total lack of sensitivity to the people affected. I can only hope they weren't in the same space as the survivors that were interviewed.