“Love Has Won,” Directed by Hannah Olsen
The documentary series format tends to employ a consistent editorial affect. By this, I mean that filmmakers usually choose to pair collage theory with a narrative arc. The ultimate consequences of the story are often presented in a snapshot at the beginning to hook the viewer, and then the events are explained in sequence over one to eight episodes. Although this is done mostly chronologically, interviews and clips may be used slightly out of order to make a point.
In Love Has Won, directed by Hannah Olson and streaming on HBO’s Max, we meet Amy Carlson, a charismatic young woman who leaves her family and job managing a McDonald’s in Dallas behind to pursue spiritual enlightenment. She enlists followers until she has amassed a group large enough that their collective belief in her holiness begins to sustain itself. Carlson announces that she is the “Mother God,” the physical embodiment of all humanity, and a supreme deity on Earth. After she pairs with a man (one of the many “Father God” figures in this story — they come, go, stick around, and have various titles), he suggests rebranding her movement to the brief, catchy, “Love Has Won.” A cult is formed.
I wrote about The Anarchists, another HBO docuseries, which takes place in Acapulco, Mexico, and features a multinational cast that is attempting to establish an extra-governmental state (or, at least, a couple clubhouses with like-minded ideologues). I felt strongly moved by the film’s ability to illustrate conflicting ideological stances within its characters. The series features people intentionally living on the fringes of society, presenting their personal motivations for their socio-economic experiment. The Anarchists revealed why people identify the way they do, and what they do when the consequences of their actions come rolling in. American television has pioneered the industry of platforming people who want to be platformed. This works for everyone, because streaming companies get inflated views and we, as an audience, get to watch people with outrageous and interesting lifestyles.
In Love Has Won, Carlson has built a religious following (a small one, in the grand scheme of things) rather than a nation-state, and the interviewees are still loyal believers in her power. The devotion her followers express is the shocking part; they exhibit an alarming lack of self-reflection, even after they witness the toll of their collective dysfunction. While watching the series, their anti-scientific logic and their proselytizing tactics seemed to be as rewarding to the group as they were impossible to believe. Colloidal silver, a solution of silver particles suspended in a liquid, was touted by Carlson and her followers as a cure-all, the main evidence being that anything banned by legitimate medical institutions must be a potent elixir.
Some insight on Love Has Won can be gleaned by examining the aesthetics employed by the religion. So called “New Religions,” or alternative spirituality movements, are notorious for their internet 1.0 websites, rife with expressive capitalization and devoid of any editorial oversight. They are meant to seem like agencies of authority, but they eschew conventions of modern information design in favor of Y2K visuals. Belgian artist Gary Farrelly, along with Chris Dreier, edited European Conference of Institutional Ideators, a small booklet documenting art projects working in this kind of self-made authority. The most pertinent example from that book in relation to the subject of this docu series is Cosmic People, the project of Vanja Smiljanić. Visiting cosmic-people.com (there appears to be at least a dozen other alias web domains redirecting to the same site, such as angels-heaven.org) reveals a technicolor background, airbrushed illustrations of blonde angels, warnings of technological surveillance, and more. These paranoid, iconoclastic ideas are not unique to Love Has Won, though they are entrancing to read and listen to.
Fanaticism is, at least somewhat, culturally relative: what is an extreme belief to one group will be normal to another. Culture itself is relative in general. Although much of what these believers say in the series is bizarre, I find many things to relate to when watching a cast of a dozen or so characters recount their experience with Love Has Won. There are people who find life pointless or uninspiring, often because of some kind of profound loss, who seek leadership and to train their despair against something they can justify. An unfalsifiable higher truth (Carlson’s divinity, and many of her dictums) offers this to these followers. Once one has permanently severed their relationships to their family (and, presumably, everyone else — classic cult behavior), the buy-in to their new family forces loyalty. Carlson interprets all world events for them, reinforcing her wisdom and infallibility. Even when she’s enraged, spewing mostly nonsense (one guiding force of the group is that the belief system is at her whim, which is to say there is none), her sovereignty is irrefutable to those that serve her. It may seem obvious to the viewer that much of her behavior is unambiguous abuse and psychological manipulation. However, articulating exactly what the line is between religious fanaticism and upright moral discipline becomes a trickier task.
As someone who conducts interviews for a living, I respect the snippets we are shown from what must have been grueling hours of chats with current members, as well as with the families of the members, many of whom have been separated because of the group. The show is an elegantly woven document revealing difficult truths surrounding altruistic belief. Over the course of the series, I was able to determine, loosely, when each shot must have been filmed, based on Carlson’s progressing argyria (a condition of skin discoloration caused by ingesting colloidal silver). There are other factors of chronology, like the different locales where the group sets up their housing; similarly, the male counterparts to Carlson’s holiness come and go with the seasons. What doesn’t seem to change is the unwavering devotion of her subjects, rendering time immaterial.
Love Has Won, directed by Hannah Olson, is currently streaming on HBO’s MAX
William Sarradet is the Assistant Editor of Glasstire.
