The Culture Trap.

My eye was caught today by a DVD featuring two documentaries on the subject of cults made by Sir David Frost. It occurred to me that there’s a problem here:

The mainstream media operate very much within the cultural tram lines, whereas cults, by their very nature, operate well outside them. And documentaries, like news features, have to take a ‘position’ in order to simplify a set of circumstances or principles which are usually complex as well as controversial. That position will almost certainly conform to received cultural mores, and so the chances of getting a comprehensive and open-minded view are remote. And that’s why I didn’t buy the DVD.