It isn’t fair for you to do this to me. Why did it have to be you?” He lets out a humorless laugh. “You think I wished for you?” His grip tightens against my jaw. “I would scourge the earth if I thought it would erase you from my brain.” The rest of the book covers other aspects of pop culture that fed the minds of the nation and put the fear of god (or whatever monster) up them. From Public Information films (“Sensible children! I have no power over them!”); Toys and games; Movies, where we get essays about such things as English Folk Horror, those big American horror films that they were too young to watch (The Exorcist and it’s ilk); dystopian science fiction and dark, downbeat pop movies like Stardust and Slade in Flame.

La voz y fuerza que tuvo Sarah para cuestionar y poder salir de ese agujero fue admirable y su testimonio es resistencia y resiliencia para comprender, cuestionar y aprender. eh I mean if you read that big New York Times article about NXIVM you probably got all the good details. This I think could have used another pass from the co-writer to make it more accessible to people who weren't in this cult for 12 years, it gets bogged down a lot in the NXIVM language which is like Scientology but different.From the very start Edmondson seems emotionally needy and mentally unstable. Leaders of the Nexium group play on these issues and slowly pull her into the organization's crazy Scientology-like system of self-esteem mixed with abuse. The author calls the group a "cult" but it's not by normal definition--they didn't force her to stay in it and she freely hopped planes regularly to fly across country to attend ridiculous seminars. The leaders would guilt-trip her and she would buy into it. Once or twice might make you feel some sympathy--but all the time over a period of twelve years? She has to shoulder a lot of the blame. From BookTok sensation Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairy tale reimagining of The Lion King. Ah the 1970s. What a strange decade it was. The beige hangover to the psychedelic 1960s. Or was it? In its own way the 1970s was just as “far out” as it’s predecessor and in Scarred for Life authors Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence recall what it was like growing up in that decade surrounded by pop culture that seemingly wanted to scare the pants off you at every turn. Well. What a crazy world this is. I had read some news articles a few years ago about someone supposedly known from TV, an actrice helped this man and they were in a cult. As with everything in culture that hangs around long enough (The Beatles, the Star Wars saga, the concept of the superhero) 1970s nostalgia has darkened and complicated itself as its shelf-life has extended beyond its own meagre ambitions. Because it wasn’t just Bagpuss and Dad’s Army was it? It was the IRA and Pol Pot and the Ayatollah. It was panic about rabies and despair about the Cold War, summers that were too hot and winters that were too cold, and strikes and power-cuts. Margaret Thatcher smashing the glass ceiling and lacerating everyone below her. Open racism, open sexism and people of forty who looked nearer seventy because no one dared tell them how many fags they could smoke or gins they could sink at lunchtime.

Don’t Call It A Cult by Sarah Berman (journalist’s reports of various women who have escaped NXIVM and their experiences in the cult) Not only has there never before been a society so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its immediate past, but there has never before been a society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copiously.” It certainly wasn’t enough to dampen my enjoyment. For much of the last few weeks my face has been plastered with the same silly grin it wore in the late 80s/early 90s when ‘Sapphire & Steel’ was released on VHS and I was able to revisit one of the best TV shows ever made. And ‘Scarred for Life’ has assured me that I am not alone in that opinion: not for nothing are theirs the first eyes gazing enigmatically from the cover.Sarah Edmondson was in the NXIVM cult for 12 years before she paid attention to all the red flags. For much of the book, she's explaining the teachings of the cult...many that actually make sense and sound like self-help learnings. I wonder if writing the book this way is her way to show HOW she fell for the BS. It wasn't until she was branded in a secret, nude, blind-folded, women-only darkened ceremony that she "woke up" and started working to get out. Scarred is Sarah Edmondson's compelling memoir of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, the 12 years she spent within the organization (during which she enrolled over 2,000 members and entered DOS—NXIVM's "secret sisterhood"), her breaking point, and her harrowing fight to get out, to expose Keith Raniere and the leadership, to help others, and to heal. Complete with personal photographs, Scarred is also an eye-opening story about abuses of power, female trust and friendship, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else. But other society fears – closer to home – also found their way onto the TV. The fear of unemployment and the increase of poverty are examined, with TV documentaries covering it and dramas and comedies dealing with the people experiencing it. The way that race and disability were covered began to change as well, and the book contains sections on the new wave of drama dealing with these topics; the American concept of the ‘Very Special Episode’ is also explained, where sitcoms dealt with non-funny subject matter.

Wow wow wow. What I notice most is one the curtain fell foor this Keith Raniere guy his followers. all of a sudden think nothing at all was good.It is interesting that for a lot of people when something bad happens they only see the bad. I understand that they want to say they are victims and I think they are in a way but my my my how they profited of it all as well. I do think that about Sarah Edmondson. She was so good in getting so many others to sign up for this thing which cost them a ton of money and I am sure she believed it was all so good but take some responsibility about that. Same with the filmmaker guy. You thirst for power?” he rasps, his palm ghosting across my collarbone before wrapping around my throat. “I can fill you with it until you scream.”

You could burn down the entire kingdom until it’s nothing but charred rubble, and I would crawl over the embers with glee, so long as I could worship at your feet.” TV takes up nearly half the book, such is the rich vein of brilliance to be mined. Because it wasn’t only kid’s TV that put the willies up the nation, adults were treated to such downbeat fare as Callan, Play For Today, Gangsters and all those peculiarly British dystopias such as Doomwatch, Survivors and Quatermass. No wonder it was a troubled decade. We were basically being told the future was rubbish! But in amongst all this there was some gloriously low budget, but highly imaginative, prime time Sci-Fi to be had as well. UFO, Space 1999 and Blake’s 7 to name but a few. Plus there’s a whole section devoted to Doctor Who (of course!)