So my Hubby Bethelyellowdollarbag and I went to the premier of “Truth Be Told” in Brooklyn tonight. We met the producer and several of the ex-jws who appeared in the film during a Q & A after the film. The producer did announce that Steven Hassan has recently endorsed the film. Rick Fearon of Six Screens of the Watchtower was there as well. He was handing out refrigerator magnets—I got one with our hero Sparlock on it!
The film is an honest attempt to portray the life of a JW who has grown up in the religion. The point was made that possibly it is harder for a child whose parents convert and suddenly the child’s life changes abruptly-- things that child has known are suddenly taken away, as opposed to a born-in’s not having known anything different. There was a lot of emphasis on taking the taking away of holidays in the beginning of the film.
Then it moved along to the early school years, the isolation, being different, no extra-curricular activities, no worldly friends and no higher education. One comment struck me, “When you take away a child’s free choice, you kill his spirit.” Double lives were mentioned, as well as initial acceptance followed by apathy and then aversion and the low retention rate of young people in the religion. There was some fun discussion of smurfs, cabbage patch dolls and lame ‘80’s Pac Man video games being forbidden. There was a funny line when one of the j-dubs (as they are called in the film) said, basically that she could see in the bible that homosexuality and adultery were ruled out, but there is no scripture that says, “Thou shall not attend NYU.”
Of course, the mind-numbing and exhausting schedule of school, meetings, service and ministry school assignments were highlighted, although two of the J-dubs mentioned they felt they benefited from the ministry school later in life.
There was one j-dub woman who was pretty explicit about JWs, sex and dating: “There is no dating.” She also talked of young marriage just to be able to have sex and young divorces. She had personally experienced an invasive JC meetings regarding fornication. Of course, dragging kids around in the door-to-door work, selling magazine and proselyting when they didn’t understand anything more than fear of displeasing a parent and fear of Jehovah meaning death was covered. When they discussed fear-mongering together with the graphics, it hit me hard in the gut. I do have PTSD, and the fear mongering of the late ‘60’s early ‘70’s is part of that.
The producer said that ten years ago he could not have done the film in the way that he did today, because it would have been more of an indictment of the organization. There was only one subtitle which mentions covering up sex abuse and threatening disfellowshipping of those who speak up and no mention of the “Two Witness” rule. There is a strong implication that the religion destroys families, but it is not stated clearly enough in my opinion. There was no mention of the blood doctrine and only a subtitle referencing dates of failed prophesies.
All in all, I think it was well done, but I would have preferred an edgier piece, one that was, in fact, more of an indictment of the organization. Current ex-jws will relate, but I don’t think this film is going to help extricate many from The Lie.