Deceivers yet true

December 28, 2011 2:18 PM

“Cathy Don’t Go (To the Supermarket Today)”
Catchy, competent New Wave pop from an alternate universe much like a Jack Chick tract's, only far more unsettling for the children who were actually raised in it. (MLYT)

More:
“Watch Out for the Green Door” (nothing to do with porn, much to do with an off-brand Palpatine in heavy makeup)
“The Antichrist Shall Come” (He’s just the best man of the hour)
“S.O.S!” (Spanish; no language required)

These and other music videos were produced by The Family International (TFI). Although the organization had been twice rebuilt before the production of these videos, it has a remarkably sinister history, even for a millennialist evangelical cult. (Previously 1 - 2).

posted by Countess Elena (33 comments total)

This sounds like somebody heard one Buggles song and though that was enough of a reference to make a new wave song.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 2:29 PM on December 28, 2011

I could read about cults all day. There's a part of me that envies the naive certitude required to sign up for those eschatological Tilt-A-Whirls.

Can't say I'm big on the pounding synths, though. I guess Scientology has dibs on all the really talented musicians.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 2:31 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

This has delighted me. Thank you.
posted by cilantro at 2:31 PM on December 28, 2011

I guess it makes sense that they don't show what happens after Cathy and her friends run off into the woods—what with the being totally unprepared for living off the land, the blizzard, and the inevitable cannibalism. The story is a bit sad, but it's true that the survivors will live to God's Paradise on Earth.

Well, except for those who resorted to cannibalism.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:33 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

I would have given anything to watch this video when it came out on the Devo tour bus.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 2:35 PM on December 28, 2011

Aw, man, this takes me back to watching Kent Hovind VHS tapes wherein, in addition to his creationist bullshit, I was told to beware of MON-DEX.
posted by jcreigh at 2:37 PM on December 28, 2011

I call fake -- pretty sure there was dancing, DANCING in that video. (I say "pretty sure" because, well...)
posted by LordSludge at 2:53 PM on December 28, 2011

Aw, man. I predict the "Cathy" chorus will be on repeat in my brain every morning for the next week. And while not proud of this, at least it won't be "Tequila" which I've been dealing with for the last few days. As has my lady, who caught me silently acting out the Pee Wee Herman biker bar scene this morning following breakfast.
posted by Hesychia at 2:55 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Eschatological Tilt-A-Whirls

The Metafilter house band, naturally.
posted by scody at 2:57 PM on December 28, 2011 [10 favorites]

Best music to result from this cult is Girls. Chris Owen's parents were in TFI.

Here is the best song (for now) from their last album: Alex
posted by wemayfreeze at 2:57 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

Anyone know when this came out? Because it's a damn rip-off of this song by Survivor, from 1983. Wait for the chorus. Someone stole someone else's hook, and I'm guessing the boys of Survivor weren't sitting around watching crazy-ass Christian video tapes looking for inspiration.
posted by ronofthedead at 3:18 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

The green door is amazing. Ah, the thin line between crazy cults and religion. Love it.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:19 PM on December 28, 2011

it's true that the survivors will live to God's Paradise on Earth.

Well, except for those who resorted to cannibalism.

I'm pretty sure the cannibals will live. It's the eaten that won't be around.

On the plus side the last frame of the video makes clear that everyone in the woods will be doing strenuous calisthenics, which should make for some lean meat.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:23 PM on December 28, 2011

Well, I'll be dog. No wonder it sounded like the work of a real songwriter -- it was. Good catch, ronofthedead.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:25 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you want to delve into the dark history of this movement, read up on its founder, David Berg. He was virulently antisemitic, reportedly a pedophile, and responsible for a series of bizarre and inaccurate end-time predictions, including his own death. Although, in fairness, he did predict the Euro.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:28 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Er, I meant to write crazy cults and science fiction. That may have been a freudian slip, though I don't actually feel that way at all.

slinks off.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:29 PM on December 28, 2011

Man, the stuff they're digging up that Ron Paul used to be involved in just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:34 PM on December 28, 2011

This link to the lyrics of "Cathy Don't Go" has a copyright mark of 1998, although I'd be surprised if that was the year it was written. Those "star" type scanners had gone out by then, I think.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:36 PM on December 28, 2011

Disponible en español
posted by birdherder at 3:41 PM on December 28, 2011

...in addition to his creationist bullshit, I was told to beware of MON-DEX.

Aw, man. BIG opportunity missed by TFI there:

"Tell me why

I don't like MON-DEX

Tell me why..."
posted by O Blitiri at 3:46 PM on December 28, 2011 [5 favorites]

I was a huge Survivor fan in my impressionable youth, Countess Elena. That tune was one of my favorites, and when I hit your link, I was struck instantly by powerful deja vu.
posted by ronofthedead at 3:56 PM on December 28, 2011

I'm very sad that I watched that first video without being stoned.
posted by dortmunder at 4:13 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ack!
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:25 PM on December 28, 2011 [3 favorites]

I guess it makes sense that they don't show what happens after Cathy and her friends run off into the woods

I'd like to think that they found some porn.
posted by Sailormom at 4:27 PM on December 28, 2011 [2 favorites]

Not made their own?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:29 PM on December 28, 2011

Which just goes to show you that if you repeat something often enough, no matter how ridiculous, some people will eventually believe you. Setting it to music is optional.

This actually explains more about modern politics than I want to admit to myself.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:50 PM on December 28, 2011

Which just goes to show further that religions strive to recreate the secular world under their imprimatur, badly.
posted by rhizome at 5:10 PM on December 28, 2011

If you want to delve into the dark history of this movement, read up on its founder, David Berg. He was virulently antisemitic, reportedly a pedophile, and responsible for a series of bizarre and inaccurate end-time predictions, including his own death.

Not just a pedophile himself, he built a church organized around incest as a central doctrine. These videos feel more than a little exploitative to me; I'd be surprised if there weren't at least several incest survivors among them. Yeah the videos are wacky & the productions are goofy, but the darkness lurking behind them saps any enjoyment for me. Not the best of my web.
posted by scalefree at 5:46 PM on December 28, 2011

Whenever we walk into Costco, I hold my membership card up to my forehead with the bar code showing and say, "Mark of the Beast! Mark of the Beast!" Freaks people out more than you'd expect.
posted by squalor at 9:12 PM on December 28, 2011 [1 favorite]

I suppose I'm answering my own question by remembering the unholy alliance of evangelicals with certain paranoid segments of the conservative section--but is there actually solid theology on how a cashless scheme using an indelible mark might "cost you your soul?" It seems to me Rev 13:16-17 isn't about bank debit schemes but about enforcing a mark of servitude on people by hitting them where it hurts: commerce. All the caterwauling I hear about the mark of the beast usually fail to mention the beast. Perhaps I'm being dogwhistled past and the intention really is to point out how the existing government and/or corporate status quo is the beast. In which case, bravo for showing and not telling. But still the focus seems to always be on buying and selling with the mark, as if that were the most horrid thing about Rev 13. Or is it losing one's soul to participate in regulated commerce, rather than the free market, as in Acts 2:44?

I'm just thinking too hard.
posted by adoarns at 4:54 AM on December 29, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's much more likely that the Number of the Beast was a reference to Nero Caesar & the Mark of the Beast was a reference to the stamp of the Roman Emperor's face on coins, which could be seen as a form of idolatry. It was really all about the all-encompassing reach of the Roman Empire coupled with the Roman policy of deifying the Emperor that made it into a world-straddling blasphemy to be opposed.

Either that or it was a prophetic warning across two thousand years that would mean nothing to anyone reading it up to the very End of Days in which we are now living, preserved like a drop of dinosaur's blood in a piece of amber to be delivered at the right moment like Doc Brown's letter to Marty McFly. Speaking in metaphor is fun!
posted by scalefree at 6:18 AM on December 29, 2011

The theology as it was taught to me as a kid was this:

As the video explains, during the rule of the Antichrist, money will have no meaning. The only way to buy or sell anything in places like supermarkets is to have received the mark of the beast on your hand or forehead. The -act- of receiving the mark does two things:

1) It allows you to buy and sell.
2) It prohibits you from entering Heaven if at some point post-rapture you had a change of heart and decided to accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior. Any chance you did have of going to Heaven upon death or waiting out the Tribulation would then be null and void and you would go to Hell upon dying or the return of Christ. This is what they mean when they say it costs your soul. Your soul and its eternal dwelling place are usually interchangeable in these circles.
posted by hgswell at 6:26 AM on December 29, 2011

People are weird.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:28 AM on December 29, 2011