Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey - AKA do whatever I say.

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is a Netflix documentary about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), and it is disconcerting.

For any person, other than the ones inside the church, everything about the cult and lifestyle is insane. How could you believe that man is a Prophet? Almost an incarnation of God itself. This is even more shocking when you realize that he is not even such a good liar!

How is something like this possible?

As shocking as this might be for you, it is, in fact, relatively easy. You have a group of people isolated from the world. They are born and raised without any contact with the exterior world or other people. Consequently, they never heard of a different perspective.

After completely socially isolating someone, it is simple to manipulate them. Too simple.

Jeffs, the said Prophet, had complete control over these people, and he led them to do things they knew to be wrong.

Women and children are treated like livestock. Families are separated, and children are sexually assaulted. All in the name of God. This is disturbing on so many levels.

Long Format Documentary

This idea of creating a documentary in episodes is interesting, but it doesn’t always work. Unfortunately, this was one of these cases - four episodes were way too many.

The last episode is the best because it gives answers and uncovers the most obnoxious crimes. I understood the slow pace of the first episode. It had a specific goal: to put us into the FLDS life. Yet, the other two episodes were unnecessarily long and tiring.

There is more to this.

The documentary is interesting and almost unbelievable.

I read that there were things left off the documentary, a fact that seems to annoy some people. Well, any documentary tends to focus on a perspective or point of view. They focus on the story of those 2 women, and frankly, it was sickening enough.

In the end, what’s more shocking? The crimes and abuses happening behind closed doors? Or the fact that the FLDS still exists even after all of this?

Comments

Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes

This is not the sort of show which I usually talk about on this blog. However, as a psychologist, I’m usually quite curious in regards to criminals and their minds; and one of these days I started watching this documentary on Netflix . Taking into consideration the kind of thing this is, I can’t say I ‘liked’ it. I mean what you see in there is nothing to like, but I was rather terrified, which is probably the usual response. Nonetheless, it was definitely a good documentary. The eyes of a killer Everything displayed in this story was terrible. The descriptions, Bundy’s posture, everything seemed like some sort of horror show, putting into perspective what we may consider to be lucky or unlucky in this life. Before I even start watching it, I read somewhere that this was the kind of thing you shouldn’t watch alone. Sounds accurate right now. At the time, and considering my, mostly academic, experience, I didn’t think that this could actually be so upsetting.

The Mist (2017) - quick review

A thick mist falls up a town, and something about it isn’t right - good premise. We would expect nothing less than good from a Stephen King’s book. Yet, as we all know, book adaptations can be quite disappointing. It goes from good to terrible. I loved the plot and, in the beginning, I was very curious and interested - it was almost impossible to stop watching it. Yet, at some point, it started to get on my nerves, and not in the way that a good horror show should. As we got closer to the end of the season, many things stopped making sense. Some characters are simply… not believable. The explanations for whatever was happening were ridiculous and easily refutable. It all took away the feeling of “this could be real”. It killed my interest. Many changes were made to the original novel. Some of them were interesting and made the story better, yet others were… well, nonsense. Cast and production As I said before, the first episodes were good and made us want to keep watching, but I was

Show Review: Emily in Paris

It took me a long time to give Emily in Paris a shot because I thought it would be a silly, shallow comedy about some sort of influencer. Well, it is a silly, shallow comedy about some sort of influencer, but to be honest, I liked it. Emily is a young talent in a marketing career and has the opportunity of her life: working in Paris for a year! And since her boyfriend is an idiot, she can try the full experience of being a single woman in the city of love. Unfortunately, she is not as good at managing her personal life as she is at work. In fact, she is frankly terrible at making decisions outside work. Cultural Differences Everyone who has been in a foreign country knows that sometimes we get ourselves into awkward situations due to cultural differences. So watching someone else go through the same is quite funny. I must admit that seeing an American trying to speak French is hilarious. Of course, I’m not French (and French people who hear me trying to speak French could have a s

All Forms of Art

Search This Blog