ABSTRACT

The 1970s entertainment vogue for occultism, fantasy, ufology and horror clearly exploits a popular disfavour with orthodox science and an urge to escape its disciplines and authority. Films, books and television series like The Exorcist, Lord of the Rings, Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Star Trek offer a welcome holiday from rationalism; less dangerous certainly than the lifetime’s commitment (and sometimes savings) demanded by Moon, Hubbard or Maharaji, but a small taste of the same kind of escape that these cults offer the thoughtsick. It is, for obvious reasons, a vogue which has alarmed some social commentators friendly to the US, while giving gloomy satisfaction to the Kremlin, who see in the epidemic irrationalism and pornography of western culture evidence of the final spasms of ‘unscientific’ and immoral capitalism.