Pendergast T., Pendergast S. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Volume 1: A-D
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
CROSBY, STILLS, AND NASHENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
639
During his four decades as an entertainer, Crosby gathered a
fortune from radio, records, films, and TV and invested wisely in a
broad array of business ventures. Second in wealth only to Bob Hope
among showbiz people, Crosby’s fortune was at one time estimated at
anywhere between 200 and 400 million dollars, including holdings in
real estate, banking, oil and gas wells, broadcasting, and holdings in
the Coca-Cola Company. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Crosby owned
15 percent of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, but playing golf
was what he liked the most. He died playing at a course outside
Madrid—after completing a tour of England that had included a sold-
out engagement at the London Palladium.
After his death, Crosby’s Hollywood persona—established largely
by his role as the warm-hearted, easygoing priest in Going My Way—
underwent much reassessment. Donald Shepherd and W. H. Allen
composed an unflattering portrait of Crosby as an egotistic and
heartless manipulator in their biography, Bing Crosby—The Hollow
Man (1981). In Going My Own Way (1983), Garry Crosby, his eldest
son, told of his experiences as a physically and mentally abused child.
When Bing’s youngest son by Dixie Lee, Lindsay Crosby, committed
suicide in 1989 after finding himself unable to provide for his family,
it was revealed that Crosby had stipulated in his will that none of his
sons could access a trust fund he had left them before reaching age
sixty-five.
—Bianca Freire-Medeiros
F
URTHER READING:
Crosby, Bing. Call Me Lucky. New York, Da Capo Press, 1993.
MacFarlane, Malcolm. Bing Crosby: A Diary of a Lifetime. Leeds,
International Crosby Circle, 1997.
Mielke, Randall G. Road to Box Office: The Seven Film Comedies of
Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, 1940-1962. Jeffer-
son, N.C., McFarland & Co., 1997.
Osterholm, J. Roger. Bing Crosby: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport,
Conn., Greenwood Press, 1994.
Shepherd, Donald, and Robert Slatzer. Road to Hollywood (The Bing
Crosby Film Book). England, 1986.
Shepherd, Donald, and W. H. Allen. Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man.
London, 1981.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash
David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash came together
in the late 1960s as idiosyncratic individual talents in flight from
famous groups. Their 1969 debut album arguably initiated the domi-
nance of singer-songwriters in popular music until the mid-1970s.
After appearing at the Woodstock festival, augmented by Neil Young,
they achieved a wider public role as the artistic apotheosis of the
hippie ideals of ‘‘music, peace, and love.’’ As the 1970s progressed,
however, CSN(&Y) became infamous for an inability to show
enough peace and love to one another to continue playing and
recording music together.
David Crosby had been an integral member of folk-rock pio-
neers The Byrds until he left the group amidst acrimony in 1967.
Crosby had first encountered Stephen Stills when the latter’s band,
Buffalo Springfield, supported The Byrds in concert in early 1966. In
May 1968, just after the demise of Buffalo Springfield, Crosby and
Stills met disillusioned Hollies frontman Graham Nash. As suggested
by the unassuming name, Crosby, Stills, and Nash was conceived as a
loose collective in order to foster creative freedom and forestall the
internal strife which each individual had experienced in his previous
band. Yet, with the release of Crosby, Stills and Nash, CSN was
hailed as a ‘‘supergroup,’’ and not just because of their prestigious
genealogy. Lyrics which concurred with the ideals of the ‘‘counter-
culture’’ were immersed in acoustic guitars and immaculate vocal
harmonies. Crosby and Stills’ ‘‘Wooden Ships’’ envisioned a new
Eden in the aftermath of nuclear apocalypse, while Nash’s ‘‘Marrakesh
Express’’ less grandly located utopia on the Moroccan hippie trail.
Stills’ Buffalo Springfield colleague and rival Neil Young was
recruited in June 1969 in order to bolster their imminent live shows.
Ominously, there were squabbles over whether Young should get
equal billing. With only one recently released record to their name,
and in only their second ever concert performance, CSN&Y wowed
the Woodstock festival in July 1969. There was a certain amount of
manipulation involved in the rapid mythologization of CSN&Y as the
epitome of the ‘‘Woodstock nation.’’ Their manager, David Geffen,
who also represented many of the other acts which appeared, threat-
ened to withdraw his cooperation from the film of the festival unless
CSN&Y’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock was used over the
opening credits. Their record label, Atlantic, disproportionately fea-
tured CSN&Y on two very successful soundtrack album sets. In
contrast, CSN&Y’s appearance at The Rolling Stones’ disastrous free
festival at Altamont in December 1969 was, as Johnny Rogan has
observed, ‘‘effectively written out of rock history’’ by journalists
sympathetic to the CSN&Y-Woodstock cause.
There were unprecedented pre-release orders worth over $2
million for Deja Vu, released in March 1970. Though it was some-
what more abrasive than the debut album, due to the arrival of Young
and his electric guitar, Deja Vu was suffused with hippie vibes. These
were amusingly conveyed on Crosby’s ‘‘Almost Cut My Hair,’’ but
Nash’s ‘‘Teach Your Children’’ sounded self-righteous. In May
1970, CSN&Y rush-released the single ‘‘Ohio,’’ Young’s stinging
indictment of President Nixon’s culpability for the killing of four
student protesters by the National Guard at Kent State University.
After completing a highly successful tour in 1970 (documented on the
double-album Four-Way Street), CSN&Y were lauded by the media
as the latest American answer to the Beatles, a dubious honor first
bestowed on The Byrds in 1965, but which CSN&Y seemed capable
of justifying.
Instead, the foursome diverged into various solo ventures. While
this was informed by their insistence that, in Crosby’s words, ‘‘We’re
not a group, just one aggregate of friends,’’ individual rivalries and
the tantalizing example of Young’s flourishing solo career were also
determining factors. The flurry of excellent solo albums in the early
1970s, invariably featuring the ‘‘friends’’ as guests, only increased
interest in the enigma of the ‘‘aggregate.’’ When CSN&Y finally
regrouped in 1974, popular demand was met by a mammoth world-
wide tour of sport stadia which redefined the presentation, scale, and
economics of the rock’n’roll spectacle. But CSN&Y failed to com-
plete an album after this tour, and they never again attained such
artistic or cultural importance. After further attempts at a recorded
reunion failed, Crosby, Stills, and Nash eventually reconvened with-
out Young for CSN (1977). The album was another huge seller and
spawned CSN’s first top 10 single, Nash’s ‘‘Just a Song Before I
CROSBY, STILLS, AND NASH ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
640
(From left) David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young, 1988.
Go.’’ Nevertheless, each member was past his peak in songwriting
terms, and their musical style and political views were being vocifer-
ously challenged by punk rock and its maxim, ‘‘Never trust a hippie.’’
Crosby was becoming ever more mired in cocaine and heroin
addiction. A farcical series of drug-related arrests culminated in his
incarceration in 1986. In that year’s ‘‘Hippie Dream,’’ Neil Young
transformed Crosby’s personal fate into a fable of the descent of
countercultural idealism into rock ’n’ roll hedonism (‘‘the wooden
ships / were just a hippie dream / capsized in excess’’). Crosby’s
physical recovery resulted in a much-publicized first CSN&Y album
in 18 years, American Dream (1988). The artistic irrelevance of
Crosby, Stills, and Nash, however, was highlighted not only by
comparisons between the new CSN&Y record and Deja Vu, but also
by Freedom (1989), the opening salvo of Neil Young’s renaissance as
a solo artist. In the early 1990s, while Young was being lauded as the
‘‘Godfather of Grunge,’’ Crosby, Stills, and Nash operated, as Johnny
Rogan observed, ‘‘largely on the level of nostalgia. This was typified
by their appearance at ‘‘Woodstock II’’ in August 1994. Young
refused to appear with CSN, and instead designed a range of hats
depicting a vulture perched on a guitar, a parody of the famous
Woodstock logo featuring a dove of peace. It was Young’s pithy
comment on the commodification of a (counter) cultural memory
with which his erstwhile colleagues were, even 25 years later,
inextricably associated.
—Martyn Bone
F
URTHER READING:
Crosby, David. Long Time Gone. London, Heinemann, 1989.
Rogan, Johnny. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: The Visual Docu-
mentary. London, Omnibus Press, 1996.
———. Neil Young: The Definitive Story of His Musical Career.
London, Proteus, 1982.
Cross-Dressing
See Drag
CRUMBENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
641
Crossword Puzzles
Once a peripheral form of entertainment, crossword puzzles
have become a popular national institution. They appear in al-
most every newspaper, have become the focus of people’s daily
and weekend rituals, are published in their own books and maga-
zines, appear in foreign languages—including Chinese—and have
inspired other gridded word games like acrostic, cryptic, and
diagramless puzzles.
Arthur Wynne constructed the first crossword, which appeared
in 1913 in the New York World. His word puzzle consisted of an
empty grid dotted with black squares. Solvers entered letters of
intersecting words into this diagram; when correctly filled in, the
answers to the ‘‘across’’ and ‘‘down’’ numbered definitions would
complete, and hence solve, the puzzle. The layout and concept of the
crossword has not changed since its inception.
Although crossword puzzles appeared in newspapers after
Wynne’s debut, the New York Times legitimized and popularized the
pastime. The Times’s first Sunday puzzle appeared in the New York
Times Magazine in 1942, and daily puzzles began in 1950.
—Wendy Woloson
F
URTHER READING:
Shepard, Richard F. ‘‘Bambi Is a Stag and Tubas Don’t Go Pah-Pah.’’
New York Times Magazine. February 18, 1992, 31-9.
Cruise, Tom (1962—)
Tom Cruise is perhaps the most charismatic actor of the 1980s
and 1990s. Although initially dismissed as little more than a pretty
face with a million dollar smile when he made his screen debut as a
member of Hollywood’s ‘‘Brat Pack’’ generation of youthful leading
men in the early 1980s, he has demonstrated considerable staying
power and fan appeal. At one point between 1987 and 1989, four of
his films combined to post more than one billion dollars in box office
receipts. Yet, at the same time, he has proven to be a very serious actor
earning Academy Award nominations for ‘‘Best Actor’’ in 1989 in
Born on the Fourth of July, in which he portrayed disabled Vietnam
Vet Ron Kovic, and again in 1996 for a high energy performance in
Jerry Maguire. The latter film, in fact, served as an extremely
insightful commentary on many of the cocky, swaggering characters
he had portrayed in such exuberant films as Top Gun (1986), The
Color of Money (1986), Cocktail (1988), and Days of Thunder (1990).
Cruise made the jump to producer in 1996 with the blockbuster
Mission Impossible, a big screen remake of the popular 1960s
television series. In 1999, he took on his most challenging leading role
in Stanley Kubrick’s sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut, teaming with his
wife, Nicole Kidman.
—Sandra Garcia-Myers
F
URTHER READING:
Broeske, Pat H. ‘‘Cruising in the Media Stratosphere.’’ Los Angeles
Times Calendar. May 25, 1986, 19-20.
Corliss, Richard. ‘‘Tom Terrific.’’ Time. December 25, 1989, 74-9.
Greene, Ray. ‘‘Man with a Mission.’’ Boxoffice. April, 1996, 12-16.
Tom Cruise in a scene from the film Mission: Impossible.
Crumb, Robert (1943—)
Robert Crumb is the most famous and well respected of all
underground comic artists, and the first underground artist to be
accepted into the mainstream of popular American culture. His
comics are notable for explicit, detailed, and unflattering self-confes-
sions, in which strange sexual fantasies abound. When not writing
about himself, he has targeted the American consumer-culture estab-
lishment, but also anti-establishment hippies and dropouts as subjects
for his satire. Crumb’s art veers from gritty, grubby realism to
extremes of Expressionism and psychedelia. As both an artist and a
writer, Crumb is a true original. Relentlessly unrestrained and impul-
sive, his work reflects few influences other than the funny animal
comics of Carl Barks and Walt Kelley, and the twisted, deformed
monster-people of Mad artist Basil Wolverton.
The Philadelphia-born Crumb lived his childhood in many
different places, including Iowa and California. Seeking refuge from
an alienated childhood and adolescence, he began drawing comics
with his brothers Charles and Max. As a young adult he lived in
Cleveland, Chicago, and New York before moving to San Francisco
in 1967, the year he began his rise to prominence. He had worked for a
greeting card company until he was able to produce comic books full
time, and his first strips appeared in underground newspapers such as
CRUMB ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
642
Robert Crumb
New York’s East Village Other before the first issues of his Zap
comic book were published in 1967. Zap introduced many of Crumb’s
most popular characters, as well as the unforgettable ‘‘Keep On
Truckin’’’ logo, and made a tremendous impact on the underground
comics scene. In 1970, particularly dazzling examples of his bizarre
and imaginative art appeared—with little in the way of story—in the
excellent XYZ Comics (1970).
Among Crumb’s most notable characters are Mr. Natural, a sort
of sham guru who lives like a hedonist and prefers to tease, and
occasionally exploit, his devotees rather than enlighten them, and his
occasional disciple, Flakey Foont, emblematic of the suburban neb-
bish fraught with doubts and hang-ups. Others include Angelfood
McSpade, a simple African girl exploited by greedy and lecherous
white Americans, diminutive sex-fiend Mister Snoid, and Whiteman
(a big-city businessman, proudly patriotic and moralistic yet inwardly
repressed and obsessed with sex). But Crumb’s most famous charac-
ter is Fritz the Cat, who first appeared in R. Crumb’s Comics and
Stories (1969). Fritz, a disillusioned college student looking for
freedom, knowledge, and counterculture kicks, became popular enough
to star in the 1972 animated movie Fritz The Cat, directed by Ralph
Bakshi, which became the first cartoon ever to require an X-rating.
While the movie proved a huge success with the youth audience,
Crumb hated the film and retaliated in his next comic book by killing
Fritz with an ice pick through the forehead.
By the late 1990s, Crumb’s comic-book work had been seen in a
host of publications over the course of three decades. In the early days
he was featured in, among other publications, Yellow Dog, Home
Grown Funnies, Mr. Natural, Uneeda Comix, and Big Ass. In the
1980s, he was published in Weirdo and Hup. In addition to his comic-
book work, he became well known for his bright, intense cover for the
Cheap Thrills album issued by Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the
Holding Company in 1968. Though much of Robert Crumb’s best-
loved work was produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he
reached a peak of widespread fame in the mid-1990s with the
successful release of filmmaker Terry Zwigoff’s mesmerizing docu-
mentary, Crumb (1995), which interspersed shots of Crumb’s works
between frank interviews with the artist and his family, and comments
from media and culture critics. Crumb won the Grand Jury prize at the
Sundance Film Festival and was widely praised by critics. The film’s
impact is twofold: viewers are stunned by Crumb’s genius, while
being both moved and disturbed by the images of an unfortunate and
dysfunctional family. The film is honest in acknowledging controver-
sial aspects of the artist’s work, with critics on-camera pointing out
the racist caricatures, perverse lust, and, above all, the overt misogyny
that runs through much of Crumb’s oeuvre. Some of those images
have depicted scantily clad buxom women with bird heads, animal
heads, or no heads at all.
Despite the controversy, however, the 1980s and 1990s brought
a multitude of high quality Crumb compilations and reprints, includ-
ing coffee-table books, sketchbooks, and complete comics and stories
from the 1960s to the present. Meanwhile, his continuing output has
included the illustration of short stories by Kafka and a book on early
blues music. Profiles of Crumb have appeared in Newsweek and
People magazines, and on BBC-TV, while his art has been featured at
New York’s Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art, as well
as in numerous gallery shows in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
His comic characters have appeared on mugs, T-shirts, patches,
stickers, and home paraphernalia.
A fan of 1920s blues and string band music, Crumb started the
Cheap Suit Serenaders band in the 1970s, with himself playing banjo,
and recorded three albums. Remarkable in his personality as well as
his work, the shy Crumb prefers to dress, not like a bearded longhair
in the style of most male underground artists, but like a man-on-the-
street from the 1950s, complete with suit, necktie, and short-brimmed
hat. In 1993, he left California to settle in southern France with his
wife and daughter.
—Dave Goldweber
F
URTHER READING:
Beauchamp, Monte. The Life and Times of R. Crumb: Comments from
Contemporaries. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.
Crumb, Robert. Carload O’ Comics. New York, Belier, 1976.
———, compiled by Carl Richter. Crumb-ology: The Works of
R. Crumb, 1981-1994. Sudbury, Massachusetts, Water Row
Press, 1995.
———. The Complete Crumb. Westlake, Fantagraphics, 1987-98.
Estren, Mark James. A History of Underground Comics. Berkeley,
Ronin, 1974; reissued, 1993.
Fiene, Donald M. R. Crumb Checklist of Work and Criticism: With a
Biographical Supplement and a Full Set of Indexes. Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Boatner Norton Press, 1981.
CULT FILMSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
643
Crystal, Billy (1947—)
Billy Crystal went from stand-up comedy to playing Jodie
Dallas, American TV’s first major gay character, on the sitcom Soap
(1977-81). As a cast member on Saturday Night Live (1984-85),
Crystal was known for the catch-phrases ‘‘you look mahvelous’’ and
‘‘I hate it when that happens.’’ After he moved from the small screen
to films, Crystal’s endearing sensitivity and gentle wit brought him
success in movies such as Throw Momma from the Train (1987),
When Harry Met Sally (1989), and City Slickers (1991). He made his
directorial debut with Mr. Saturday Night (1992), the life story of
Buddy Young, Jr., a fictional Catskills comedian Crystal created on
Saturday Night Live.
—Christian L. Pyle
F
URTHER READING:
Crystal, Billy, with Dick Schaap. Absolutely Mahvelous. New York,
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1986.
Cukor, George (1899-1983)
An American film director whose career spanned over fifty
years, Cukor was particularly adept at female-centered melodrama
(Little Women, 1933; The Women, 1939), romantic comedy (The
Philadelphia Story, 1940; Adam’s Rib, 1949), and musicals (A Star Is
Born, 1954; My Fair Lady, 1964, for which he received a Best
Director Oscar). Often derided as a workman-like technician, revela-
tions about Cukor’s homosexuality led to reappraisals of his work by,
in particular, queer academics, who focused on his predilection for
more ‘feminine’ genres and gender-bending narratives, as seen in
Sylvia Scarlett (1935), for example. Cukor has thus, like fellow
director Dorothy Arzner, come to be perceived as an auteur, whose
sexual identity influenced the final form taken by the Hollywood
material he handled.
—Glyn Davis
F
URTHER READING:
McGilligan, Patrick. George Cukor: A Double Life. London, Faber
and Faber, 1991.
Cullen, Countee (1903-1946)
Among the most conservative of the Harlem Renaissance poets,
Harvard educated Countee Cullen exploded onto the New York
literary scene with the publication of Color (1925) and solidified his
reputation with Copper Sun (1927) and The Black Christ and Other
Poems (1929). His verse defied the expectations of white audiences.
Where earlier black poets like Paul Laurence Dunbar had written in
dialect, Cullen’s tributes to black life echoed the classical forms of
Keats and Shelley. The young poet was the leading light of the
African-American literary community during the 1920s. Although
his reputation waned after 1930 as he was increasingly attacked for
ignoring the rhythms and idioms of Black culture, Cullen’s ability to
present black themes in traditional European forms made him one of
the seminal figures in modern African-American poetry.
—Jacob M. Appel
F
URTHER READING:
Baker, Houston A. Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and
the Black Aesthetic. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
Ferguson, Blanche E. Countee Cullen and the Negro Renaissance.
New York, Dodd Mead, 1966.
Harris, Trudier, editor. Afro-American Writers from the Harlem
Renaissance to 1940. Detroit, Gale Research Co., 1987.
Turner, Darwin T. In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers
and Their Search for Identity. Carbondale, Southern Illinois
University Press, 1971.
Cult Films
Cult films are motion pictures that are favored by individual
groups of self-appointed connoisseurs who establish special mean-
ings for the films of a particular director or star or those which deal
with a particular theme. In practical terms, however, cult status can be
conferred on almost any film. In fact, such an occurrence is particular-
ly sought after by filmmakers to maintain interest in the film once its
initial theatrical run has been completed. Thus cult films might be
more accurately defined as those special films which, for one reason
or another, ‘‘connect’’ with a hard-core group of fans who never tire
of viewing them or discussing them.
Cult films, by their very nature, deal with extremes, eschewing,
for the most part, middle of the road storylines and character stereo-
types commonly seen in Hollywood studio products. These normally
small movies present unusual if not totally outrageous protagonists
involved in bizarre storylines that resolve themselves in totally
unpredictable ways. According to Daniel Lopez’s Films by Genre,
cult films may be divided into three basic categories: popular cult,
clique movies, and subculture films.
A prime example of the first type is George Lucas’s 1977 Star
Wars, which began as an evocation of the Saturday matinee serials of
the 1940s and 1950s. Using a basic cowboys vs. Indians theme
borrowed from the westerns of his childhood, Lucas updated the
frontier theme by adding technology and relocating the drama to outer
space. His effort, while failing to do much for the Western, created a
resurgence of interest in the science fiction and ‘‘cliffhanger’’ serial
genres. In the years that followed, Hollywood was inundated with sci-
fi thrillers, of which the most popular were the Star Trek sagas. At the
same time, another Lucas creation, the Indiana Jones films, showed
that there was still some interest in action adventure serials, a fact that
was further illustrated by Warner Bros. resurrection of the Batman
character, who had first come to the screen in the multi-episode
adventure short subjects of the 1940s. Star Wars elevation to cult
status was re-affirmed when it was re-released in theaters in 1997 and
broke all existing box-office records as its fans rushed to view it over
and over.
Yet widespread popularity and big box office receipts are
usually the antithesis of what most cult films are about, a fact
CULT FILMS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
644
illustrated by the so called ‘‘clique’’ films that appeal to a select few.
These are films that tend to be favored by special interest groups such
as film societies, cinefiles, and certain academics. Generally speaking
the films that appeal to cliques are either foreign, experimental, or
representative of a neglected genre. In the latter case, in particular,
proponents of a specific film usually believe that it has either been
overlooked or misinterpreted by filmgoers at large. They rediscover
the works of ‘‘B’’ movie directors such as Douglas Sirk or Sam Fuller
and, through retrospective screenings and articles in film journals,
attempt to make the case for their status as auteurs whose body of
works yield a special message heard only by them. In many cases, the
cult status awarded these directors has led to a re-evaluation of their
contributions to film by historians and scholars and to the distribution
of new prints of their works.
This process also works with individual films made by estab-
lished directors that somehow made only a slight impact during their
initial theatrical runs. The major example is Frank Capra’s It’s a
Wonderful Life (1946). Originally dismissed as a sentimental bit of
fluff, the film was seen primarily at Christmas Eve midnight screen-
ings for its faithful band of adherents until the 1980s, when it was
rediscovered by television and designated a classic. Similar transfor-
mations have occurred for John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and,
surprisingly, Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz, which was first
released in 1939 to a lackluster reception and did not make money
until its second and third re-releases in the late 1940s.
The third type of cult film and, perhaps, the first one that comes
to mind for the average person is the ‘‘subculture cult film.’’ These
are small films created in a cauldron of controversy, experimentation,
and contention in every aspect of their production ranging from story
themes to casting. They are often cheaply made and usually don’t last
long at the box-office. Yet, to their fans, these films contain special
messages sent by the filmmakers and by the stars. Through word-of-
mouth contacts and, increasingly, by a variety of new media including
video and the Internet, cultists recruit new fans for the film, thus
serving to keep it alive well beyond its maker’s original intentions.
What is particularly fascinating, however, is the fact that all over the
world, a certain segment of filmgoers will react to these exact films in
the same way without word-of-mouth or advance indoctrination as to
its special status. This is the true measure of a film’s cult potential.
The fanatical appeal of these subculture favorites has also altered
the traditional patterns of movie going and the unique role of the
audience. In traditional viewing, the audiences are essentially pas-
sive, reacting to onscreen cues about when to laugh or cry and whom
to root for. The subculture film audience, however, takes on an
auteurial role on a performance-by-performance basis. This is due to
the fact that the viewers have seen the film so many times that they
know all of the lines and the characters by heart. Thus, they attend the
screening in the attire of their favorite characters and, once that
character appears on the screen, begin to shout out new dialogue that
they have constructed in their minds. The new script, more often than
not, alludes to the actor’s physical characteristics or foreshadows
future dialogue or warnings about plot twists. In many cases, audience
members will yell out stage directions to the actor, telling him that he
should come back and turn out a light or close a door.
Perhaps the most notable example of this auteuristic phenome-
non is the undisputed queen of cult films, the British production The
Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), which treats the plight of two
newlyweds, Brad (Barry Bostwick) and his virgin bride Janet (Susan
Sarandon), who become trapped in a spooky house on a rainy night in
Ohio. They are met by a group of fun loving aliens from the planet
Transylvania who are being entertained by Dr. Frankenfurter (Tim
Curry), who struts around in sexy female underwear and fishnet
stockings belting out gender bending tunes such as ‘‘I’m a Sweet
Transvestite From Transsexual Transylvania.’’ He is in the process of
creating a Frankenstein type monster, Rocky Horror (Peter Hinwood), to
be employed strictly for sexual purposes. During the course of the
evening, however, he manages to seduce both of the newlyweds and
also causes a suddenly liberated Janet to pursue a fling with Rocky
Horror, as well.
The film proved to be a box-office disaster when it was released
in 1975 but it did develop an underground ‘‘word-of-mouth’’ reputa-
tion, causing its American producer, Lou Adler, to convince Twenti-
eth-Century Fox to search for alternative ways to publicize it in order
to prevent a total disaster. The film was re-released at the Waverly
Theater in Greenwich Village and soon after at theaters throughout
the country for midnight performances. Its first audiences consisted
primarily of those groups represented in the film—transvestites, gays,
science fiction fans, punk rockers, and college psychology majors
(who presumably attended to study the rest of the audience).
For its avid viewers, attendance at a midnight screening began to
take on the form of a ritual. In addition to wearing costumes, members
of the audience would talk to the screen, create new dialogue, dance in
the aisles, and shower their fellow viewers with rice during the
wedding scene and water during the rainy ones. Experienced fans, of
course, attended with umbrellas but virgins (those new to the film)
generally went home bathed in rice and water. In the years since its
first screenings, the film has become a staple at midnight screenings
around the country and has achieved its status as the most significant
cult film of all time.
Performers in subculture films have acquired cult followings as
well. Many hard-core fans, in fact, view their favorite performers as
only revealing their real personalities in their ‘‘special’’ film. In
attempting to interpret the actor’s performance in this context, the
fans will also bring into play all of the performer’s previous charac-
terizations in the belief that they have some bearing on this particular
role. To such fans, the actor’s whole career has built toward this
performance. Although this perception has had little effect on the
careers of major stars, at least during their lifetimes, it has enhanced
the careers of such ‘‘B’’ movie icons as Divine and horror film actor
Bruce Campbell, making them the darlings of the midnight theatrical
circuit and major draws at fan conventions. Even deceased perform-
ers have been claimed by cult film devotees. The screen biography of
Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest (1981), elevated—or lowered—her
from stardom to cult status, and Bela Lugosi attracted posthumous
fame with fans who revisited his old horror films with an eye to the
campy elements of his performances.
While not everyone agrees on which films are destined to
achieve special status with subcultures, a great many of them fall into
the horror and science fiction genres. The horror films that appeal to
this audience share most of the characteristics of cult films in general.
They are only rarely major studio productions but they frequently
‘‘rip off’’ such larger budgeted mainstream productions as The
Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976), or the various manifestations of
Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Cult horror films inhabit the margins of the
cinema in pursuit of off-beat themes, controversial subject matter, and
shocking scenes of mayhem. They are either so startlingly original as
to be too ‘‘far out’’ for most viewers or they are such blatant
derivations of existing films that they are passed over by general
audiences and critics alike.
CULT FILMSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
645
Horror films take on a special status with cultists for a number of
reasons. First and foremost is the authorial role certain films allow the
audience to play. Most horror film directors do not intend to send out a
specific message with their work. They simply want to make some
money. For this reason, most plots involve a demonic disruption in the
normal order of things which must be righted by each film’s protago-
nist before the status quo can be restored. This fundamentally safe
view of the world allows the audience to write its own text with any
number of subjective meanings regardless of what happens in the
story as a whole. The conservative stance of the filmmakers leaves
plenty of room for re-readings of the text to allow issues incorporating
a questioning of authority, a rejection of government and the military-
industrial complex, sexism, and a host of environmental concerns that
inevitably arise when horror films deal with the impact of man upon
nature. Perhaps the first cult horror film to raise such issues was Tod
Browning’s Freaks (1932), which was banned for 30 years following
its initial release. The film basically dealt with the simple message
that beauty is more than skin deep. When the protagonist, a circus
trapeze star, attempts to toy with the affections of a side show midget,
she is set upon by the side show ‘‘freaks,’’ who transform her physical
beauty into a misshapen form to reflect the ugliness within her. While
Browning was clearly attempting an entertaining horror film which
stretched the boundaries of the genre, there is no evidence that he
intended the many metaphysical meanings regarding the relationship
of good and evil and body and soul that audiences have brought to the
film in the 60 years since its initial release.
Another film, 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, has been
celebrated by scholars as a tract against the McCarthyism of the
1950s, though it is probably more rightly read as a more general
statement against conformity and repression of individual thought
that transcends its period. Similarly, George Romero’s legendary
Night of the Living Dead (1968) was not only the goriest movie of its
time but it also worked on our basic fears. Like its inspiration, Alfred
Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), it deals with a group of people
confined to a certain geographic area while nature runs amok because
man has transgressed against the natural law. The film is particularly
effective because it deals with gradations of insanity, beginning with
stark fear and escalating to show that man is totally powerless to deal
with the things that he fears most. Audiences sat riveted to their seats,
convinced that there was no way out except death. The film began as
the second feature on drive-in movie double bills and, through strong
word-of-mouth and gradual acceptance from critics, took on a second
life in college retrospectives and museum screenings (where it
was declared a masterpiece) before winding up on the midnight
movie circuit.
Another reason for the cult appeal of low budget horror films is
the fact that they often push the limits of what is traditionally thought
to be acceptable. For example, the legendary Blood Feast (1976)
became the first film to go beyond mere blood to the actual showing of
human entrails, a technique that was later picked up by Hollywood for
much larger special effects laden films. Another low budget film, Evil
Dead II (1987), directed by Sam Raimi, surpassed its bloody prede-
cessor presenting extreme violence at such a fast pace that the human
eye could barely register the images flashing by.
A final appeal of low budget horror films is the fact that a
number of major actors and directors—including Jack Nicholson,
Tom Hanks, Francis Ford Coppola, and Roger Corman—got their
start in them. Corman once referred to these pictures as a film school
where he learned everything he would ever need to become successful
in motion pictures. But it worked the other way as well. Many stars on
the downslope of their careers appeared in grade ‘‘B’’ horror films to
keep their fading careers alive, hoping that they might accidentally
appear in a breakthrough film. Former box-office stars—including
Boris Karloff (The Terror), Bela Lugosi (Plan Nine From Outer
Space), Yvonne DeCarlo (Satan’s Cheerleaders), and Richard Basehart
(Mansion of the Doomed)—who had been forgotten by Hollywood
received a new type of stardom in these grade ‘‘B’’ films, and often
spent the last years of their careers appearing at comic book and
horror film conventions for adoring fans.
Science fiction films are very similar to horror movies in that
they push the cinematic envelope by their very identification with
their genre. They are futuristic, technologically-driven films that
employ astonishing special effects to create a world that does not yet
exist but might in the future. Sci-fi movies can also be horror films as
well. It took technology to create the Frankenstein monster and it took
technology to encounter and destroy the creature in Alien (1979). But,
like horror films, they also question the impact of man and his
technology on the world that he lives in. They make political
statements through their futuristic storylines, saying, in effect, that 20
or more years in the future, this will be mankind’s fate if we do not
stop doing certain things.
Science fiction films that achieve cult status do so because, even
within this already fantastic genre, they are so innovative and experi-
mental that they take on a life of their own. With the exceptions of the
Star Wars, Star Trek, and Planet of the Apes series and a number of
individual efforts such as 2001 (1968), the films that attract the long
term adulation of fans are generally not large studio products. They
are normally small films such as the Japanese Godzilla pictures;
minor films from the 1950s with their dual themes of McCarthyism
and nuclear monsters; and low budget favorites from the 1970s
and 1980s.
Again, as in horror, the pictures seem to fall into three categories
of fan fascination. These include films such as Brain Eaters (1958),
Lifeforce (1985), and The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971)
that feature major stars such as Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, and
Bruce Dern on the way up. Conversely, a number of major stars
ranging from Richard Burton and Henry Fonda appeared in some
otherwise forgettable science fiction films during the twilight of their
careers which have made their performances memorable to aficionados
of embarrassing moments on film. Still other stars, however, are able
to turn almost any film that they are in into a sci-fi cult film. The list is
headed by Zsa Zsa Gabor, Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, and John Agar.
In the final analysis, cult films say more about the people who
love them than about themselves. To maintain a passion for a film that
would compel one to drive to the very worst parts of town dressed in
outlandish costumes to take part in a communal viewing experience
sets the viewer apart as a special person. He or she is one of a select
few that has the ability to interpret a powerful message from a work of
art that has somehow escaped the population at large. In pursuing the
films that they love, cultists are making a statement that they are not
afraid to set themselves apart and to take on the role of tastemakers for
the moviegoers of the future. In many cases, the films that they
celebrate influence filmmakers to employ new subjects, performers,
or technology in more mainstream films. In other instances, their
special films will never be discovered by the mainstream world. But
that is part of the appeal: to be different, to be ‘‘out there,’’ is to be like
the cult films themselves.
—Steve Hanson
CULTS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
646
FURTHER READING:
Everman, Welch. Cult Horror Films: From ‘‘Attack of the 50-Foot
Woman’’ to ‘‘Zombies of Mora Tau.’’ Secaucus, New Jersey,
Carol Publishing Group, 1993.
———. Cult Science Fiction Films. New York, Carol Publishing
Group, 1995.
Henttzi, Gary. ‘‘Little Cinema of Horrors.’’ Film Quarterly. Spring
1993, 22-27.
Lopez, Daniel. Films by Genre. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland
& Co., 1993.
Margules, Edward, and Stephen Rebello. Bad Movies We Love. New
York, Plume, 1993.
Peary, Danny. Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird,
and the Wonderful. New York, Gramercy Books, 1998.
———. Cult Movie Stars. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Cults
The 1978 Jonestown Massacre, where 913 of the Reverend Jim
Jones’ followers were forced to commit suicide, marked the high
point in America’s condemnation of cults. Spread across newspaper
front pages and national magazines from coast to coast, the slaughter
gave focus to an alarm that had grown throughout the decade. Were
cults spreading like wildfire? Were Rasputin-like religious leaders
luring the nation’s youth into oblivion like modern-day Pied Pipers?
The Jonestown coverage reinforced the common perception that, in
cults, America harbored some alien menace. The perception could not
be further from the truth. In a sense, America was founded by cults,
and throughout the nation’s history, cults and splinter groups from
established religions have found in America a fertile cultural terrain.
That modern-day Americans find cults alarming is yet another
example of America’s paradoxical culture.
Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines a cult as ‘‘a religion
regarded as unorthodox and spurious; also: its body of adherents.’’
Cults as they are understood in the popular imagination have some
additional characteristics, and can include: any religious organization
that spends an inordinate amount of time raising money; any religion
that relies on a virulent us-vs.-them dogmatism, thereby alienating its
members further from mainstream society; and any religion where the
temporal leader holds such sway as to be regarded as a deity, a deity
capable of treating cult members as financial, sexual, or missionary
chattel to be exploited to the limits of their endurance. In this
expanded definition, a Pentecostal such as Aimee Semple McPherson,
the Los Angeles preacher, and not technically a cult leader, fits
adequately into the definition, as does Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or
Sun Myung Moon.
Originally, America was a land of pilgrims, and the Plymouth
colonists were not the last to view the New World as a holy land. And
as in all times and all religions, religious charlatans were a constant.
By the close of the nineteenth century, Americans had founded some
peculiar interpretations of Christianity. The Mormons, Seventh Day
Adventists, Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses all had
their origins in the nineteenth century, and by dint of accretion, they
had developed from dubious, persecuted faiths into respectable
institutions. In the history of Mormonism one can discover much that
is pertinent to understanding modern-day cults; elements of this tale
are reminiscent of the histories of Scientology, The Unification
Church, and People’s Temple, among others. A charismatic leader,
claiming divine inspiration and not above resorting to trickery,
amasses a following, who are viewed with derision by the general
populace. The faith aggressively recruits new members and later
attempts to gloss over its dubious origins, building enormous and
impressive edifices and going out of its way to convey an image
of solidity.
From time to time, waves of religious fervor have swept across
America—the Shakers and Pentecostals early in the nineteenth centu-
ry, for instance, or the Spiritualist and Theosophy movements at
century’s end. In western New York state, where the Church of Latter
Day Saints originated, so many evangelical movements caught fire in
the 1820s that it was nick-named the ‘‘Burned-over District.’’ The
church’s founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have received revelation
directly from an angel who left Smith with several golden tablets on
which were inscribed the story of Hebraic settlers to the New World.
Smith and his band of youthful comrades ‘‘was regarded as wilder,
crazier, more obscene, more of a threat’’ writes Tom Wolfe, ‘‘than the
entire lot of hippie communes put together.’’ Smith’s contemporaries
called him ‘‘a notorious liar,’’ and, ‘‘utterly destitute of conscience’’
and cited his 1826 arrest for fortune-telling as evidence of his
dishonesty. But by the time Smith fled New York in 1839, he was
accompanied by 10,000 loyal converts who followed him to Nauvoo,
Illinois, with an additional 5,000 converts from England swelling
their numbers. After Smith began a systematic power-grab, using the
Mormon voting block in gaining several elected positions, he was
lynched by the locals, and (shades of Jim Jones’ flight to Guyana) the
Mormons continued westward to Utah, where the only threat was the
Native Americans.
An earnest desire to bring people into the fold has often devolved
into hucksterism in the hands of some religious leaders. Throughout
the twentieth century, Elmer Gantry-esque religious leaders, from the
lowly revivalist preacher to the television ministries of a Jimmy
Swaggart or Oral Roberts, have shown as much concern with fleecing
their followers as with saving their souls. When the founder of the
Church of Christ, Scientist, Mary Baker Eddy, died in 1910, she left a
fortune of three million dollars. George Orwell once mused that the
best way to make a lot of money is to start one’s own religion, and L.
Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, took Orwell’s maxim to heart.
A pulp fiction writer by trade, Hubbard originally published his
‘‘new science of Dianetics,’’ a treatise on the workings of the mind, in
the April, 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Dianetics was a
technique for self-actualization and understanding, and Hubbard
couched his theories in scientific rhetoric and obscure phraseology to
appeal to a well-educated, affluent constituency. Published in book
form, Dianetics became an overnight success, and Hubbard quickly
set up a ‘‘research institute’’ and began attracting adherents. Dianetics,
as practiced by Hubbard, straddled the gap between the self-actualiza-
tion movements typical of later religious cults, and religion (though
Scientology’s mythos was not set down until shortly before Hubbard’s
death). In Dianetics, an auditor ran a potential follower through a list
of questions and their emotional response was measured with an e-
meter, a simple galvanic register held in both hands. This meter
revealed the negative experiences imprinted in one’s unconscious in
an almost pictorial form called an engram, and Dianetics promised to
sever the unconscious connection to negative experiences and allow
the follower to attain a state of ‘‘clear,’’ an exalted state similar to
enlightenment. Hubbard’s idea appeared scientific, and like psycho-
therapy, it was an inherently expensive, time-consuming process.
CULTSENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
647
From the beginning, Hubbard ran into all manner of legal
troubles. He squabbled with the I.R.S. over the church’s tax-exempt
status, and the F.D.A. over the use of the e-meter. Scientology met
stiff government opposition in every country in which it operated. An
Australian Board of Inquiry, convened in 1965, called Scientology
‘‘evil, its techniques evil, its practice a serious threat to the communi-
ty, medically, morally, and socially.... Scientology is a delusional
belief system, based on fictions and fallacies and propagated by
falsehoods and deception’’; it was banned from Australia until 1983.
The British government banned foreign Scientologists in 1968, and
Hubbard was convicted on fraud charges, in absentia, by a Paris court
in 1978. The Church lost its tax-exempt status in France and Denmark
in the mid-1980s, and has had to seriously curtail its operations in
Germany. More than most cults, Scientology’s travails appeared to be
symptomatic of its founder’s mental instability. As an institution,
Scientology was marked by an extreme fractiousness and a pro-
nounced penchant for litigation. Ruling in a 1984 lawsuit brought by
the church, a Los Angeles judge stated, ‘‘The organization clearly is
schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be
a reflection if its founder.’’
In many ways Scientology anticipated the tactics of the wave of
cult groups that would sweep America in the 1960s and 1970s. There
numbers are almost innumerable, therefore, a look at two of the most
infamous—the Unification Church and the Hare Krishnas—must
suffice to explain this religious revival, what Tom Wolfe termed ‘‘the
Third Wave.’’ Better known by the pejorative term, Moonies, in
1959, the Unification Church, a radical offshoot of Presbyterianism,
founded its first American church in Berkeley. Its founder, the
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, converted from his native Confucian-
ism as a child, receiving a messianic revelation while in his teens.
Moon was expelled from his church for this claim, as well as his
unorthodox interpretation of Christianity, but by the late-1950s he
had established a large congregation and the finances necessary to
begin missionary work abroad. Like many cults, the church’s teach-
ings were culturally conservative and spiritually radical. Initially, it
appealed to those confused by the rapid changes in social mores then
prevalent, offering a simple theology and rigid moral teachings.
The Unification Church was aggressive in its proselytizing.
Critics decried its recruitment methods as being callous, manipula-
tive, and deceitful; the charge of brainwashing was frequently leveled
against the church. Adherents preyed on college students, targeting
the most vulnerable among them—the lonely, the disenfranchised,
and the confused. The unsuspecting recruit was typically invited over
to a group house for dinner. Upon arrival, he or she was showered
with attention (called ‘‘love-bombing’’ in church parlance), and told
only in the most general terms the nature of the church. The potential
member was then invited to visit a church-owned ranch or farm for the
weekend, where they were continually supervised from early morn-
ing until late at night.
Once absorbed, the new member was destined to take his/her
place in the church’s vast fund-raising machine, selling trinkets,
candy, flowers, or other cheap goods, and ‘‘witnessing’’ on behalf of
the church. Often groups of adherents traveled cross country, sleeping
in their vehicles, renting a motel room once a week to maintain
personal hygiene, in short, living lives of privation while funneling
profits to the church. Moonie proselytizers were known for their
stridency and their evasions, typically failing to identify their church
affiliation should they be asked. On an institutional level, the church
resorted to this same type of subterfuge, setting up dozens of front
groups, and buying newspapers and magazines—usually with a right-
wing bias (Moon was an avowed anti-Communist, a result of his
spending time in a North Korean POW camp). The Unification
Church also developed an elaborate lobbying engine; it was among
the few groups that actually supported Richard Nixon, organizing
pro-Nixon demonstrations up until the last days of his administration.
Allusive, shadowy connections to Korean intelligence agencies were
also alleged. The church, with its curious theology coupled with a
rabid right-wing agenda, was and is a curious institution. Like
Hubbard, many Christian evangelists, and other cult leaders, Moon
taught his followers to be selfless while he himself enjoyed a life of
luxury. But the depth and scope of his political influence is profound,
and among cults, his has achieved an unprecedented level of
political power.
Like the Unification Church, the International Society for Krish-
na Consciousness (ISKCON), better known as the Hare Krishna
movement, has drawn widespread criticism. Unlike the Unification
Church, the Hare Krishnas evince little concern for political exigen-
cies, but their appearance—clean-shaven heads and pink sari—make
the Hare Krishnas a very visible target for anti-cult sentiments, and
for many years, the stridency of their beliefs exacerbated matters. A
devout Hindu devotee of Krishna, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada, was charged by his guru with bringing Hinduism to the
west. Arriving in America in 1965, Prabhupada’s teachings became
popular with members of the emerging hippie populace, who adopted
the movement’s distinctive uniform, forswearing sex and drugs for
non-chemical bliss. Hare Krishnas lived in communes, practicing a
life of extreme asceticism and forsaking ties with family and friends.
Complete immersion in the group was de rigueur. The movement
spread rapidly, becoming infamous for its incessant street proselytiz-
ing, in which lines of devotees would play percussion instruments
while chanting for hours. The sect’s frequenting of airports and train
stations, importuning travelers with flowers or Prabhupada’s transla-
tion of the classic Indian text, the Bhagavad-Gita, also drew public
scorn. Like the Moonies, the Hare Krishna’s fundraising efforts
helped turn public opinion against the cult.
In the 1970s, as more and more American joined such groups as
the Unification Church, the Hare Krishnas, or the ‘‘Jesus People’’ (an
eclectic group of hippies who turned to primitive charismatic Christi-
anity while retaining their dissolute fashions and lifestyle), parental
concern intensified. An unsubstantiated but widely disseminated
statistic held that a quarter of all cult recruits were Jewish, pro-
voking alarm among Jewish congregations. To combat the threat,
self-proclaimed cult experts offered to abduct and ‘‘deprogram’’
cult members for a fee, and in the best of American traditions,
deprogramming itself became a lucrative trade full of self-aggrandiz-
ing pseudo-psychologists. The deprogrammers did have some valid
points. Many cults used sleep deprivation, low-protein diets, and
constant supervision to mold members into firmly committed zealots.
By stressing an us-vs.-them view of society, cults worked on their
young charges’ feelings of alienation from society, creating virtual
slaves who would happily sign over their worldly possessions, or, as
was the case with a group called the Children of God, literally give
their bodies to Christ as prostitutes.
For those who had lost a child to a cult, the necessity of
deprogramming was readily apparent. But in time, the logic of the
many cult-watch dog groups grew a bit slim. If anything, the
proliferation of anti-cult groups spoke to the unsettling aftershocks of
the 1960s counterculture as much as any threat presented by new
religions. Were all religious groups outside the provenance of an
CUNNINGHAM ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE
648
established church to be equally condemned? Were all religious
beliefs that weren’t intrinsically exoteric to be rejected out of hand?
By stressing conformity, many watch-dog groups diluted their
moral authority.
Ironically, while cult watchdog groups focused public outrage
on the large, readily identifiable cults—Scientology, ISKCON, the
Unification Church—it was usually the smaller, homegrown varieties
that proved the most unstable. Religions are concerned with self-
perpetuation. When a charismatic leader dies, stable religious groups
often grow more stable and moderate and perpetuate themselves (as
has the now respectable Church of Latter Day Saints). But smaller
cults, if they do not dissolve and scatter, have often exploded in self-
destruction. The People’s Temple, the Branch Davidians (actually a
sect of Presbyterianism), and the Manson Family were such groups.
In 1997, Heaven’s Gate, a cult with pronounced science fiction beliefs
based in California, committed mass suicide in accordance with the
passing of the Hale-Bopp comet.
The Jonestown massacre in the Guyanese jungle in 1978 marks
the period when cult awareness was at its height, although incidents
like the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide have kept cults in the headlines.
Such is the degree of public suspicion of cults that, when necessary,
government agencies could tap into this distrust and steer blame away
from their own wrongdoing, as was the case when the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the F.B.I. burned the Branch
Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, to the ground in 1993 after
followers of cult leader David Koresh refused to surrender themselves
to authorities. At the time of the massacre, media reportage was
uniform in its condemnation of Koresh, and vociferous in its approval
of the F.B.I.; it was only with the release of Waco: The Rules of
Engagement, a 1997 documentary on the FBI’s mishandling of the
situation, that a dissenting note was finally heard.
America is not unique in its war between the ‘‘positive,’’
socializing aspects of religion, and the esoteric, ecstatic spiritualism
running in counterpoint beside it. ‘‘As Max Weber and Joachim
Wach have illustrated in detail,’’ writes Tom Wolfe, ‘‘every major
modern religion, as well as countless long-gone minor ones, has
originated not with a theology or set of values or a social goal or even
a vague hope of a life hereafter. They have all originated, instead, with
a small circle of people who have shared some overwhelming ecstasy
or seizure, a ‘vision,’ a ‘trance,’ an hallucination; in short, an actual
neurological event.’’ This often-overlooked fact explains the suspi-
cion with which mainstream religions view the plethora of cults that
rolled over America since its founding, as well as the aversion cult
members show to society at large once they have bonded with their
fellows in spiritual ecstasy. It is precisely these feelings of unique-
ness, of privileged insight, that fraudulent cult leaders work on in their
efforts to mold cult members into spiritual slaves. The problem is this:
not all cults are the creation of charlatans, but the opprobrium of
society towards cults is by now so ingrained that on the matter of
cults, there is no longer any question of reconciling the historical
precedent with the contemporary manifestation.
But one salient fact can still be gleaned from the history of cults
in modern America: to quote H.L. Mencken, ‘‘nobody ever went
broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.’’
Americans are and will continue to be endlessly susceptible to simple,
all-encompassing explanations, and what most cults share is a rigid
dogmatism that brooks no argument, a hermetically sealed belief-
system, eternally vulnerable to exposure from the world-at-large. The
rage of a Jim Jones or Charles Manson springs from not only their
personal manias, but in their impotence in controlling the world to suit
their teachings. When cults turn ugly and self-destructive, it is often in
reaction to this paradox. Like a light wind blowing on a house of
cards, cults are fragile structures—it does not take much to set them
tumbling down. Still, given mankind’s pressing spiritual needs, and
despite society’s abhorrence, it seems likely that cult groups will
continue to emerge in disturbing and occasionally frightening ways.
—Michael Baers
F
URTHER READING:
Barrett, David V. Sects, ‘‘Cults,’’ and Alternative Religions: A World
Survey and Sourcebook. London, Blandford, 1996.
Christie-Murray, David. A History of Heresy. London, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1976.
Collins, John J. The Cult Experience: An Overview of Cults, their
Traditions, and Why People Join Them. Springfield, Illinois, C. C.
Thomas, 1991.
Jenkins, Philip. Stoning the Prophets: Cults and Cult Scares in
Modern America. Oxford and New York, Oxford University
Press, 2000.
Lane, Brian. Killer Cults: Murderous Messiahs and their Fanatical
Followers. London, Headline, 1996.
Robbins, Thomas. Cults, Converts & Charisma. London, Sage Publi-
cations, 1988.
Stoner, Carroll, and Jo Anne Parke. All God’s Children. Radnor,
Pennsylvania, Chilton, 1977.
Wolfe, Tom. Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine: The Me
Decade and the Third Great Awakening. Toronto, Collins Pub-
lishers, 1976.
Yanoff, Morris. Where Is Joey?: Lost Among the Hare Krishnas.
Athens, Ohio University Press, 1981.
Zellner, William W., and Marc Petrowsky, editors. Sects, Cults, and
Spiritual Communities: A Sociological Analysis. Westport, Con-
necticut, Praeger, 1998.
Cunningham, Merce (1919—)
The dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham influenced
20th century art with his postmodern dance and his collaborations
with other important figures of the American art scene such as John
Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. With his own dance
company, founded in 1953, Cunningham challenged traditional ideas
of dance and the expectations of audiences. Cunningham declared all
elements of a performance—music, dancing bodies, set, and cos-
tumes—to be of equal importance, and dispensed with conventional
plots. His pioneering video work further questioned the use of the
stage. Cunningham and his collaborators incorporated chance into the
elaborate systems of their performances, creating abstract and
haunting dances.
—Petra Kuppers
F
URTHER READING:
Harris, Melissa, editor. Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. New York,
Aperture, 1997.