They can continue to congratulate themselves for another 12 episodes https://twitter.com/thr/status/1317151768048971778

I obviously think it’s important to speak to survivors but I think there is a smarminess to the production and a lot of things were glossed over/omitted to make some players seem less culpable and that’s a problem

Tone is important if it’s not just one person telling their story and I think that tonally it’s off and people are ratting to that and the danger becomes other survivors have a harder time getting help

For instance: Mark Vicente was once involved heavily with Ramtha (Jz Knight) and that is never mentioned.

Jz Knight (who was in The Secret) has a cult built around her being a channel for an ancient being. Also, she’s virulently racist

Why is this important? mark goes out of his way to talk about how he hated the racism he was around in South Africa but makes no comment on the racism of his precious guru

Also by recorded accounts, Mark was sold on nxivm partially because Keith called Ramtha a cult and told him he could de-program Mark.

It seems wild this wasn’t included, right?

There are also things that Keith asked the women to participate in that didn’t make it into the documentary. And I think it’s because some of the people in the documentary have tangential connection to it and don’t want to be seen as culpable

That makes me uneasy. Everyone has to tell their story in their time but for people who know way too many details about this story, there seem to be notable redactions to the story

there is another problem with The Vow and that is that the principals on the production team are also ex NXIVM IIRC, which makes the objectivity nonexistent

So, the biggest misconception about documentaries is that they must remain neutral. fundamentally wrong.

HOWEVER, to tell the story the best way, there should be tension between crew and subject

this is why a lot of people are picking up on the slickness of it.

If you’ve got an Errol Morris or an Alex Gibney, they’re less concerned with the optics more concerned about documenting the story in the most complete way

I have a whole lot of other opinions on The Vow, but they will remain off the TL unfortunately.

If you are a survivor and you find The Vow helpful, I am very happy for you and grateful you have found a way to process what happened to you.