Battle of the NXIVM documentaries: "The Vow," "Seduced," and "Escaping NXIVM"
I wrote several weeks ago about how much I was enjoying The Vow, HBO’s nine-episode documentary about the NXIVM cult. Admittedly, I’d only seen three episodes at that point, and now that I’m done all nine episodes, I have to admit I was disappointed by the season as a whole. The first three episodes did a great job of showing how a person might get drawn into the cult, but the subsequent episodes seemed to be very shallow and repetitive. And now that NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere has been sentenced to 120 years in prison, I thought it was a good time to revisit the various documentaries about it all.
Because NXIVM member and filmmaker Mark Vicente was clearly so involved in the making of The Vow (much of the footage comes from his own work while he was in NXIVM), the show really seems to pull its punches when it comes to just how culpable he, his wife Bonnie, and several other of the people we meet are when it came to bringing other people into the cult. They’re very much presented as just kind-hearted idealists who were taken advantage of by one very bad man, and gosh, isn’t it great that they’re out now?
But as a result, The Vow totally glosses over NXIVM’s multi-level marketing system and how much bank these high-ranking members were making by recruiting new people — they’re victims, yes, but they also benefited a lot. Plus, it doesn’t focus at all on the woman who was held captive for two years by the cult, which seems like a HUGE omission. There’s apparently a second season in production, but the first season finale implies it’ll focus more on Keith, rather than the victims.
Put that against Seduced, the STARZ documentary, or Escaping NXIVM, the CBC podcast, which both highlight the nefarious business practices of the cult, not just the personal disappointment in finding out their so-called messiah was actually an evil predator. The Vow presents Sarah Edmondson mainly as a misguided victim who was literally branded by the cult, while Seduced and Escaping NXIVM make clear that while Edmondson is certainly a victim, she was also making bank by bringing new people in.
The Edmondson we see in The Vow is mostly grappling with the question of “how did I let this happen to me?” instead of “how could I have done this to other people?” The CBC podcast says at one point, she was making $20K a month!!! And she apparently still lives in the Vancouver condo that she bought with that money, soooo… It’s frustrating. The Vow really seems like an attempt to rehabilitate some of the higher-ranking members of the cult.
Seduced focuses mainly on the story of India Oxenberg, one of the other branded members of NXIVM (while India is mentioned often in The Vow, the show focuses solely on her mother’s attempts to get her out). Getting India’s voice, as well as the voices of other victims as well as cult experts, means we get much more understanding of the sexual assault that took place within the cult, how members like Vicente and Edmondson would pressure people into making NXIVM their entire life, and how much the higher-ups profited off their victims.
There are several better, more detailed analyses of these documentaries — this one from The AV Club and this one from BuzzFeed News are very good.
That’s all for me today, gorgeous. Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
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