Scarred (Never After Series)

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Likewise, the racist TV programming is discussed, and thankfully, the authors acknowledge it was wrong then as it is now, whilst acknowledging that rather uncomfortably they were also very popular. 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 at the same time, I got the feeling that she knew more and is just trying to cover herself by playing dumb.

The people who think she should financially compensate for her complicity in NXIVM definitely have a leg to stand on and I dunno, if I was one of the mates she pulled into 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do' cult I'd be seriously entertaining TPing her NXIVM paid-off house. This one deals with British television alone, with a foreword assuring that the next will deal with films, books, comics, games and nuclear war. Some of the stuff I used to find very funny I find hard to watch as an older man (I'm looking at you 'On The Buses').If nothing else, it confirmed my suspicion that kids from the US weren't the only ones who grew up terrified, traumatized, and confused thanks to a mistake made when changing the channel on the TV accidentally exposing us to something shocking. I'm sorry David Miscavige can't be here to personally meet you but he's having a little trouble with his wife. I’m so glad that Sarah had the courage to go public about her experience with NXIVM, since she is a huge part of the cult’s downfall and the arrests made on their leader and other “higher ups”.

If anyone really ever had rose-tinted memories of the decade as a lot of awkward, garishly-decorated but essentially innocent family fun, Jimmy Savile fixed that for us. It brings back the forgotten titles like the BBC’s 3-hour play Artemis 81; the Channel 4 sitcom They Came From Somewhere Else; the 1987 play The Gourmet by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's one of the strengths of the book that I never felt the book was taking the piss out of the past, but rather acknowledges it well. There are sections on Dystopian sci-fi and English Gothic drama, and yes a lot of it might feel over-familiar to the well-read pop-culture spod, but Brotherstone and Lawrence take pains to personalise and play up the impact of these images on their tender young psyches: their re-evaluation of bumptious kids’ comedy Worzel Gummidge as a kind of stealth horror entirely of its own genre is chucklesome and convincing.

Brotherstone and Lawrence also have a new weekly podcast which just started shortly before I finished reading this volume, and it's entertaining as hell if you've got time in your schedule for an hour of them (plus a guest or two) ruminating on the topic(s) of the day. This is no learned tome of cultural sociology, squeezing the life out of its subject matter with studied dryness and academic detachment. I absolutely need to get hold of some of the more folkloric shows of the era like 'The Owl Service' and 'The Stone Tape' - they sound amazing. Some that I had forgotten about, children's tv series like Escape into Night, Shadows etc and comics and books that over the years have sadly vanished.

I wanted to read this book because I have been fascinated with learning more about NXIVM since the story first broke.And because we are children when we encounter them, we often lack the perspective necessary for placing them in their proper context. Oh and also the trippier side of Marvel Comics who, under the editorship of Roy Thomas, produced some very strange stories indeed.

there were several other series and literary adaptations that made an impact on viewing audiences; these still hold up today, despite some more recent versions. At first she was skeptical, but she got hooked on the self-improvement promised and the ethical values espoused. Sarah was introduced to this group by her best friend Lauren Salzman, another woman at the level of Allison Mack. You get her version of events right up until she was branded to be in DOS, the secret women’s group being groomed to become sexual partners for Raniere, along with her escape from the organization and attempts to save all of those she had recruited.

Their remit is ingenious: tell the story of a decade from the point of view of a frightened, bewildered, square-eyed child, plonked on a brown-patterned carpet in front of a cathode ray TV. I was hoping that Scarred would give me some background on Mack and how she became involved and ended up the head sex slave master but it didn’t.