{"id":124426,"date":"2023-10-04T15:43:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T22:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=124426"},"modified":"2026-03-03T17:15:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T01:15:58","slug":"arts-and-popular-culture-notes-2023","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=124426","title":{"rendered":"Arts and popular culture notes (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Jonestown story continues to find resonance for a number of writers, poets, painters, playwrights, and musicians, who offer artistic interpretations of the events through their own individual visions. The following are news items about these efforts not covered in the rest of this section of the jonestown report<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Jonestown on Television<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mother Undercover<\/a>, a four-part British television docuseries about women who survived life-threatening experiences, included the story of Leslie Wagner-Wilson, the Jonestown survivor who fled with her three-year-old son Jakari on November 18, 1978, the day of the murder-suicides. The episodes launched on Hulu beginning on July 27, 2023. Other discussions of Wagner-Wilson\u2019s story appear in The Cinemaholic<\/a> and Den of Geek<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cHow to Become a Cult Leader<\/a>,\u201d a series presented on Netflix beginning July 28, included a half-hour segment on Jim Jones among its six subjects. It featured an interview with former Peoples Temple member Yulanda Williams<\/a>. Described by various reviewers as \u201cdocumentary-comedy,\u201d \u201csnarky,\u201d and \u201csometimes clever, sometimes glib, always superficial,\u201d the program was most lamented as \u201ca missed opportunity\u201d for education and analysis of the groups and of their followers. The San Francisco Chronicle<\/a> described it as \u201ca playbook of an unintended sort: how not to make a docuseries.\u201d Reviews also appear in The Messenger<\/a>, The Decider<\/a>, Film Fugitives<\/a>, and The Daily Beast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jonestown in Theater<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

White Nights, Black Paradise<\/em>, a play by Sikivu Hutchinson<\/a> described as “amplifying the lived experiences, politics, moral dilemmas, and social histories of Black women in Peoples Temple and Jonestown,” had its 2023 run\u00a0at the Blue Door Theater in Culver City, California, with three sold-out performances on November 17 \u2013 19. The productions were promoted in a November 8 article on StageRaw.com<\/a> and on November 16 in Wave Publications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jonestown in Film<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Sally El Hosaini, whose film \u201cThe Swimmers\u201d highlighting the plight of Syrian refugees was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film, has returned to an earlier project entitled \u201cJones<\/a>.\u201d Rather than focusing on Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple, though, it tells the story of Jim and Marceline\u2019s son Stephan, who survived the deaths in Jonestown by being in Georgetown. The story of Peoples Temple is \u201cultimately a Shakespearean family drama,\u201d El Hosaini said<\/a> in November 2022. (A related story appears here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Jonestown in Music<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Shade Empire, a band described as Finnish symphonic black metallers, released a new album in September entitled \u201cSunholy,\u201d the lyrics of which \u201care thematically inspired by the Jonestown tragedy,\u201d according to a review in Breaking Latest<\/a>. The album was also reviewed in Markus\u2019 Heavy Music Blog<\/a> and Distorted Sound Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jonestown in Books<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

The book And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown<\/em> by Judy Bebelaar and Ron Cabral is now available on Audible<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jonestown story continues to find resonance for a number of writers, poets, painters, playwrights, and musicians, who offer artistic interpretations of the events through their own individual visions. The following are news items about these efforts not covered in the rest of this section of the jonestown report. Jonestown on Television Mother Undercover, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":123916,"menu_order":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-124426","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=124426"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135405,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/124426\/revisions\/135405"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/123916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}