Scarred (Never After Series)

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La forma tan intima y respetuosa que tiene Sarah de contar su historia hace que este libro no se vuelva tan pesado, si bien el tema es delicado, Sarah lo sabe llevar muy bien sin caer en el morbo, lo único que deseas es justicia. 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!) This tell-all follows Sarah from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, to the invitation she accepts from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, into DOS, to her journey toward become a key witness in the federal case against its founders Then there were comics. Oh yes, there were comics. From Action! To 2000AD and all points inbetween, the authors lovingly recall their favourites and how much they were scared by them. There’s also a very good section on girl’s comics, which if anything were far more strange and disturbing than boys stuff (Misty anyone?). They then move on to books and the cornucopia of goodness that fed the imagination of those kids who were into horror (The Pan Book of Horror Stories); lurid pulp fiction; Dracula (you think vampires are big news now - Dracula was huge in the 70s); even down to the somewhat deranged art in kids comics by the likes of Ken Reid. Oh and also the trippier side of Marvel Comics who, under the editorship of Roy Thomas, produced some very strange stories indeed.

The section Scarred By Public Information Films is a wonderland of innocence and injury: individual ads and films are discussed, and it’s to the authors’ credit that they can demonstrate how the hysterical and laughable nature of many of these mini-horror movies sits happily cheek-by-jowl with a very real, completely unforgettable sense of sweaty unease and existential panic: the title of one sub-chapter, Everything Kills is perfect: in the world of the PIF, a rug on a polished wooden floor could be scarier than any chainsaw. The book is studded throughout with a running roll-call of unsung heroes of British cultural life, and in this section the career of the late, great John Krish (of notorious Nationwide-bothering railway-safety film The Finishing Line, and bleak, brutal fire-prevention short Searching) gets a thorough evaluation. The chapter’s real coup is an interview with Jeff Grant, director of the authentically haunting Lonely Water, the Citizen Kane of Public Information Films. The connections he makes between the grim, fatalistic tone of his 90-second classic and the monochrome dread of Ingmar Bergman is catnip to the ageing PIF-lover.There’s a child whose life has changed in the last year…..Somewhere, there are other children whose lives are going to be changed.

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.” 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.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)

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. T here’s a terrible habit, when looking at the culture of a decade, to not go into any depth; it’s an easy task to just laugh at the fashions, or assume that referring to a handful of common references will cover it. The 1980s in the UK were a time of unemployment, poverty, social unrest, and political divisions – not just everybody wearing red braces, having fax machines and watching John Hughes movies… Finally there’s a discussion of the 1970s fascination with the paranormal. Everything from Ancient Aliens and UFOs (take a bow Erich Von Daniken) to Uri Geller, Nessie, The Bermuda Triangle, hauntings and how this was all taken far too seriously by the media. I told you it was a strange decade. The launch of Channel 4 in 1982 provided another sense that boundaries were starting to stretch. The newly launched channel made an effort – not just in the original programming it offered and commissioned, but also in showing foreign language films and unconventional animation. For example, it screened Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (which is possibly the best adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland) cut up into six parts over the 1989-1990 New Year. If you look for further information on this, you’ll understand why it may have made an impact on impressionable viewers.Yes, the obvious titles are discussed, but the more under-the-radar things are just as interesting. The ‘Zammo on drugs’ storyline on Grange Hill is mentioned – but also the one about racist bullying. This section also reveals that sometimes the things a child can find the most frightening, or disturbing, are those that seem to come unexpectedly into the narrative, such the appearance of the Groke in The Moomins. You can tell this book was quite the labor of love for the two men. A lot of work went into researching, writing, and in some cases even interviewing people for the finished product. Brotherstone and Lawrence focus as much on historical information and contextualizing as they do on the scary/creepy/weird, and most every section ends with suggestions of where to go to find the particular film, board game, comic, television show, book, or whatnot should you want to experience it for yourself. As an aside I recently introduced my daughter to 1970's Worzel Gummidge and she LOVED it, but it was strange viewing the show through a modern lens. Worzel's awakening is more akin to a Fulci zombie film, Aunt Sally, the Crowman and other scarecrows are remarkably cruel and barbaric, the children are abandoned by an alcoholic largely absent father, Babs Windsor as Saucy Nancy is remarkably cheeky 70's smut, Worzel's head removing is terrifying and of course Worzel's kindly threatening of Aunt Sally plays domestic abuse for laughs - all this in a hilarious daytime TV show for kids) Imagínate que un día tu vida es tan miserable que sientes que no hay nada que llene tu vacío, que sientes que eres un fracaso entonces te encuentras con un grupo de gente que te dice que el problema está en ti y sólo en ti, que debes dejar ciertos patrones que llevas cargando desde pequeño para poder vivir la vida que quieres y entonces ¡boom! crees haber encontrado la respuesta al existo, pero de repente esa misma gente te dice que hay ciertas limitaciones y que debes obedecer a cierto líder, comienza a controlar tu vida y a usar todos tus secretos en tu contra, imagínate que tienes taaan normalizado ese control que terminas marcada por las iniciales de un narcisista psicópata y tú ni siquiera te puedes dar cuenta... Pues eso fue lo que pasó Sarah en nxivm y muchas otras chicas que fueron engañadas y adoctrinadas por una secta que les prometió existo pero lo único que logró fue arruinarles las vida.