Last week, we premiered the provocative and fantastic new video for the song "Go Outside" by Cults. Directed by Isaiah Seret, the video is made from archival footage of Jim Jones's Peoples Temple before the mass suicide of more than 900 people in Guyana. Over at Turnstyle, Noah Nelson interviews Seret about the project:
"When the idea [for the video] came about," Seret tells me, "it came about in a spontaneous moment. And I really feel that afterwards I had to check it: Wait is this being exploitive? What is this going to be? That process of checking back in actually helped me shape the story.
"It became this sentiment that I want to put the band in this historic story, to take the audience back into that historical experience. So when I was building the band into it, at first I had this thought: 'Oh I should do a narrative, like a sub-narrative of the band's story. They should be in conflict whether to leave Jonestown because you read accounts and this was going on with a lot of people.'
"But then when I got all those videos from Jonestown and I was studying the footage I realized there would never be a moment of sort of… basically everyone was so brainwashed when the camera was on. To put on the positive face and present Jonestown in a positive light to the world that the camera would never have captured a moment of uncertainty, conflict, any of those things. It's just not in the records. Until the very end when everything is falling apart in the NBC clips."
"Go Outside" Director Isaiah Seret on the Specter of Jonestown
