The podcast “Cults” is a series following a multitude of different cults throughout history. The first episode starts off with 2 speakers telling the story of the infamous Manson family cult led by Charles Manson. The main speaker tells the history of the cult along with specific stories within the life of the cult. The other speaker, a psych expert, discusses the psychology portion. The episode begins by explaining what the Manson family is known for and a brief history of their horrific acts of violence. This podcast not only focuses on the internal cult dynamics, but also the steps leading to the formation of the original group.
The first speaker begins by diving deep into the experiences of Charles Manson starting as a child until adulthood. Charles was neglected by his mother mentally and physically and had an absent father figure both contributing to the development of an emotionless child with no response to punishment or any sort of instruction. He then attended a series of schools for troubled youth in which many aggressive assaults occured against him including a brutal rape. He then became a bully himself; continuing to inflict the same pain others inflicted on him. Manson began to assault and rape others marking the true beginning of his extreme criminal history. This backstory is not meant to convince the listener to sympathize with Manson, but to give a rounded perspective of his life and events that possibly contributed to his unacceptable actions.
After beginning to commit heinous crimes, Charles was imprisoned. During his prison time, Charles, with his manipulative mastermind, started the downhill trend of creating purposeful, controlling relationships with both men and women. These future “followers” would eventually listen and were willing to act on every favor he asked of them, even murder. The actions of his followers marked the start of one of the most well known cults in history. This podcast continues to dig into the manipulative techniques Manson used to convince otherwise ordinary people to follow him and commit terrible acts of violence for him. Manson is not considered a serial killer. He did not do the killing himself, although, he did portray psychopathic tendencies. Manson thrived off the power over his followers. He preached the coming of an apocalyptic race war that would leave his “family” in a position of dominant power. The concept of manipulative power demonstrates the overarching objective of Charles Manson in his cult.
The speakers use several narrative features to demonstrate Manson’s power trip and manipulative tendencies throughout the podcast. The speakers use themed background music that fits the mood of this dreary topic. They also include voice overs from Manson himself. By listening to the actual voice of Manson, the listener can emotionally experience a little bit of Manson and his wrongdoings. The speakers set the mood of the podcast by using audio altercations to make their voices sound intensified leading to a serious yet emotional tone. Their voices are dynamic and suspense is built throughout the story as a strategy to keep the listener engaged. This podcast is a combination of informational, mystery, and suspense all working together to create an interesting narrative.
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Hi Marlena,
You did a great job in summarizing what your chosen podcast is about! I also enjoyed reading your take on the natural progression of the podcast and analyzing the many parts. I too chose a podcast that was rather grim and noticed very similar narrative choices between both of our podcasts. From reading your blog post and a few others, I noticed that these sort of cold case, crime, and plainly evil stories very much depend on a select few narrative choices and for obvious reasons. To make these stories more compelling other than the subject matter itself, music is used and the tone that is usually associated with death and villainy, sort of off-beat music is the way I would describe it plays when some horrific event or “piece of the puzzle” is ousted out as information to the listener. I think that the inclusion of interview recordings also supplements the whole idea of intrigue and suspense, it simply plays on the audience’s mind to hear the voices of those involved in the story, as opposed to just having a journalist or two speak on the matter or simply reading text. I would even say that, depending on the genre of the text, certain literary forms captivate our attention in different ways. In the case of this podcast, I imagine that my interests in reading an article on Manson would only captivate me for a slight second, whereas listening to or seeing would stimulate my curiosity to some further degree. Lastly, I think that giving a human voice to these often sad and horrific stories displays how differently people can react to various forms of media, and again I think it all connects back to the above example where we tend to associate our feelings towards things we can actually hear and see which goes beyond reading text. (Word Count 309)
Thanks for sharing!