The FLDS Took My Baby Away (original) (raw)

I understand Netflix is going to give up their DVD distribution later this year. I think we’re just about the only people who still use it, so I’m not surprised, but I don’t know the best way to watch movies that aren’t on the streaming services we subscribe to. I guess Netflix was best when it had a near-monopoly, but that isn’t practical for other reasons. I’m wondering if we should drop it entirely, but since we just watched a Netflix original, I’m not so sure about it. Anyway, here are two movies and a television series that we watched fairly recently:

Blood Moon – This was a DVD that Beth got from my sister as a gift, and it really didn’t hold our interest that well. The premise was decent enough, a horror movie set in the old west. When a skin-walker, a sort of witch from Navajo lore, starts attacking people in a Colorado town, an unlikely group of people are forced together, including a newspaper writer, a bartender, two criminals, a sheriff, and a gunslinger. It doesn’t really go much of anywhere, though, beyond the obvious of the people not trusting each other and the skinwalker attacking.

End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones – I’ve never been that knowledgeable about the Ramones, but their music is pretty fun, although it sounds like being in the band wasn’t. We watched the Behind the Music on the Go-Go’s recently, and there’s a similarity there in that they were both composed largely of people who wanted to be in a band without having a whole lot of musical knowledge first. That was kind of a thing with punk music, not always a lot of technical prowess involved, but it’s not like anyone could have done it. It was a pretty tragic story, really. They discussed Joey’s really bad OCD, Johnny being a conservative control freak, and Dee Dee’s drug addiction. While the title comes from a Ramones album, it makes me think of the Blur song. And yes, I know that’s “End of a Century.”

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey – This disturbing Netflix documentary series of four episodes examines the rise and fall of Warren Jeffs, former head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, who split from mainstream Mormonism due to their insistence on practicing polygamy. Jeffs succeeded his father Rulon, and married some of the same women he did. And when I say “women,” this actually includes a significant number of children. It’s a good example of how, in an isolated community, a truly sick individual can get away with pretty much anything. After all, he’s a prophet of God, right? You apparently don’t need any credentials for that position. But yeah, he was sexually abusing children, and dressing them in a way that emphasized they were kids, like they were going to a church picnic every day.

He also set up his followers with their own child brides. But even if he weren’t a pedophile, the whole idea that you would want to have total control over another person freaks me out. But there are religions considered much less fringe that still have the idea that women should be obedient. Jeffs was eventually arrested and convicted, thanks partially to former members of the church who were willing to testify against him, incurring the hatred of friends and family in the process. They didn’t mention that he apparently was constantly masturbating in prison. There was a point made by one of the lawyers that they made sure to keep the case against him to the law without bringing religion into it too much, since otherwise he’d just claim it was persecution.

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