Our Father

It’s been described as Netflix’s “Most gruesome documentary [series] yet.” This was a case that made headlines around the world. A fertility doctor in Oregon, US, Donald Cline, now infamous, had around 50 children by using his own sperm.

He was known as one of the best in the field, a fertility specialist who got results. Throughout his career, Cline fathered more than 50 children, all without the mothers and their husbands or partners knowing that he was the biological father.

The series is told through the investigation of Jacoba Ballard, the first person who figured out that Donald Cline could be her father. Since she was an only child, Jacoba had always wanted siblings. She knew that her mother had used a sperm donor to have her, and wondered if she had any siblings ‘out there’.

She purchased the popular “23 and Me” DNA home-testing kit, hoping to find some. When her results came, she was shocked — she had over seven, and the number only kept increasing. We follow her and as she conducts her investigation, finds more siblings and confronts their “father”.

Since the case first came out, and with the introduction of the home-testing DNA kits, more and more fertility doctors have been found guilty of terrible violations, and using their own sperm on their clients without their knowledge and consent. Through her personal experience, Jacoba and some of her siblings are hoping to introduce legislation that ensures that there are consequences to this — as they have suffered and continue to — and that this crime does not go unpunished.

Three stranger-than-fiction Netflix documentaries provide discomfiting glimpses into the dark underpinnings of American society

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

This is much along the lines of Wild Wild Country that followed the outrageous story of Osho and his followers, the ‘Rajneeshees’, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey follows the inner workings of a secretive cult with a megalomaniac leader allowed to lead unchecked. Except this cult’s secret is far more heinous: they targeted underage girls, marrying them off to men much, much older.

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is an American documentary miniseries that focuses on the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a radical offshoot of mainstream Mormonism, and its current leader Warren S. Jeffs. When the lid was lifted off the activities that were happening inside the cult, it was a case that made headlines around the world, and continues to do so as additional information is uncovered and more survivors speak up.

In the series we speak to the survivors, the motivations their parents had for joining the cult and how Warren Jeffs — and his father before him — had an entire group of people completely fooled into believing they are immortal prophets, and how they commanded obedience and controlled them. With Warren subjecting those that questioned him to shockingly devastating, life-altering, harsh-beyond-words punishments.

The series has exploitation, hypocrisy and survival and triumph. It’s a devastating albeit fascinating insight into groupthink and narcissistic control.

The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes

It’s been 60 years since Marilyn Monroe’s tragic death at the ripe young age of 36. Many films have been made on the starlet, so what could possibly be revealed now that hasn’t been said before? Yet, 60 years on, Marilyn still manages to captivate us.

This Netflix documentary feeds into our enduring fascination with the starlet. What makes this different from all of the other films previously released about Marilyn’s life is that it relies heavily on detailed interviews of her friends, family, comrades and colleagues — those that knew her well.

It’s based on journalist Anthony Summers’ 1985 biographical book, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, for which he interviewed over 650 people. And the tapes he made of those interviews.

Although many people that were interviewed have passed away, we hear people who knew Marilyn well, such as Billy Wilder, John Huston, and the family of Marilyn’s psychiatrist Ralph Greenson. We even hear from the housekeeper who discovered her body, Eunice Murray. The accounts describe Marilyn with an intimacy never seen before. The filmmakers have recreated those conversations using actors wherever possible to give it an air of authenticity, to show the audience what it would’ve been like had they been there. And for the first time, you feel like you really know her. The film, as did Anthony Summers, makes a case for Marilyn’s murder, not suicide, because “she knew too much.”

Netflix is slated to release its own original Marilyn Monroe biopic later this year. Titled Blonde, it has a rare adult rating and judging by the trailer online, promises to be intriguingly dark and dramatic. Much like the starlet’s own life.

Published in Dawn, ICON, July 3rd, 2022