 | MOVIE #1,412 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.01.24 Life makes no sense. If you stop to think about it for literally one second, to really consider the improbable madness that has led to humanity and human consciousness, you'll either find a big, terrible blankness or you'll do what 99.999+% of the Earth's population: you will shrug and put the thought aside. There is a massive variance on the degree to which we all shrug. This is where religions come into play. The excellent HBO docuseries Love Has Won by Hannah Olson tells the sordid tale of one of the smallest religions that ever was, a little cult led by Amy Carlson, known to her followers as "Mother God." It's also about how abusing alcohol will kill you. Slowly and painfully. It features a mix of Errol Morris style straight-ahead interviews in the present day and a gold mine of archival footage courtesy of the many online videos made by the cult starting in 2012. |
The theology of Love Has Won has been described as fluid, combining New Age spirituality, conspiracy theories, and elements from mainstream Abrahamic religions. The group proclaimed that Carlson was a divine, 19 billion year-old being who had birthed all creation. Carlson claimed she had been reincarnated 534 times, including as Jesus, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, and Marilyn Monroe and would lead 144,000 people into a mystical "5th dimension". Carlson had several romantic partners throughout the group's history, beginning with Amerith WhiteEagle, who were all referred to as "Father God", and who played a counterpart role to Carlson in the theology of the group.This collage features prominently in the doc and is simply hilarious…
The group claimed that Carlson was the queen of the lost continent of Lemuria, and the group incorporated the belief that Lemurians live within Mount Shasta in California. Carlson had stated that Donald Trump was her father in a past life, and that she had spoken to the spirit of deceased actor Robin Williams, who she claimed was archangel Zadkiel. The group's theology also included references to the concepts of Atlantis, the Anunnaki and "reptilians". They believed that the world was run by a "cabal" determined to keep the planet in a "low vibration" state.
God love ‘em, but if “the spirit of deceased actor Robin Williams” plays a central part in your new religion, I don’t even know, man… I got nothing.
They're basically the most stereotypical drug-obsessed hippies (who then got heavy into conspiracy theories) you've ever seen. The one common thread seems to be that most (but not all) of the followers came from well-to-do backgrounds and could bankroll this “tune in/check out” lifestyle under the guise of a new age religion, or some facsimile of that. They eventually transitioned into an almost 24-7 livestream, which reminded me of the documentary We Live in Public. But, while that was its own type of grift and cultish in a way, the big difference between the outfits seem to be the latter's devotion to the convergence of media, technology and humanity instead of spirituality.
And like Jim Bakker's Buckets, their warped modern version of spirituality quickly turns into a capitalist nightmare: hawking hoodies and other logo-clad merch and literal snake oil in the form of Alex Jones-level supplements (more on this in a minute).
More details emerge, some embarrassing (they dabble in Trumpism and Qanon bullshit) and some sad (in Mother God's previous life she had three kids by three different deadbeat boyfriends whom she dumped onto grandma and never saw again). And it’s crazy how small-time their reach became towards the end, getting single-digit views on their livestreams (even though they were still able to pull in a legit amount of dough). Some of this revenue came from selling a colloidal silver solution, which LITERALLY turned Carlson’s skin blue from drinking (she was convinced ingesting this poison would offset the effects of her alcohol addiction).
In many ways, this is the perfect cult for this period of history: twisting and compartmentalizing the concept of God until it's distilled into the very simple, very narcissistic notion of “hey, maybe I could be God?” (and also maybe Robin Williams and Gene Wilder and Donald Trump are God too). If not for the striking footage of her blue corpse and the insane, aimless reaction of her followers after her death, I'm not sure this story gets told. This is interesting to think about in terms of relevance and meaning (a tree falling in the forest and what not). But as a nearly three-hour document, it works wonderfully as a film.
At the beginning of the third installment we see a TikTok video by one of Carlson's teenage children. In it, she gives the cult and its ideas the time of day it deserves by gleefully laughing at it (albeit through the pain of estrangement). Many of the themes of Love Has Won revolve around the idea of how the internet can pollute and warp your mind under the rouse of doing the exact opposite, but it was at least refreshing to see someone of the next generation not buying the bullshit. The kids are (hopefully) alright.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
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⫷ MOVIE #1,411 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,413 ⫸
Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God is a 2023 television HBO documentary series directed and produced by Hannah Olson. It explores the life and death of Amy Carlson, the leader of Love Has Won. It was released on November 13, 2023.
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