All language subtitles for VICE - S01E05 Mormon Lost Boys - Mumbai Slumscraper

This week on "Vice"...

Ryan meets polygamy's
teenage outcasts.

I don't know where to go,
how to start.

What do I do?

And then we send Thomas
to Mauritania where thin is ugly...

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and fat is beautiful.

And then I travel to India...

So clear-cut, because it's
poverty and then super rich.

to see how their 99% have been affected
by the global economic crisis.

_

The world is changing.

Now, no one knows
where it's going.

But we'll be there
uncovering the news...

It's World War III.

culture...

and politics that
expose the absurdity

of the modern condition.

That little child
has a huge gun.

This scene isn't really
kosher by American standards.

I was interviewing suicide
bombers and they were kids.

This is the world
through our eyes.

We win or we die!

This is the world of "Vice".

Sync & corrections by honeybunny
www.addic7ed.com

Hi. I'm Shane Smith, and we're
here in the "Vice" Offices

in Brooklyn, New York.

For our first story this week,
we go to Arizona and Utah.

When Warren Jeffs was arrested
and sent away for life,

most of us assumed that
the story would end there.

Now, 5 years
after his conviction

for having sex with
12- and 15-year-old brides,

reports have surfaced

that Jeffs is still ruling
his polygamist community.

He's just doing it from prison.

So we sent Ryan to the heart
of polygamy country to see

what happens when a lunatic runs
an entire town from his jail cell.

_

And in your teenage
years, you will be tested.

Are you listening to
the Gentile music?

Then you don't have
the spirit of God.

Are you watching
the Gentile movies?

How can you be
trusted with a family?

Warren Jeffs is the pedophile
polygamist leader of the FLDS,

the Fundamentalist
Latter-Day Saints,

a radical offshoot
of Mormonism.

Jeffs is currently serving
a 130-year jail sentence

for his 2011 conviction
of child sex and bigamy charges,

including the sexual assault of
his 12- and 15-year-old brides.

You know, whether it's
directly or indirectly,

they're still getting
all their marching orders

from Warren Jeffs
in Texas Prison.

Jeffs has
banned bicycles,

ordered all children's
toys to be destroyed,

and recently made yet
another strange declaration.

It is polygamy gone berserk.

Only 15 men will be
allowed to father children

with the thousands of
eligible FLDS women.

As the prophet,
he controls everything--

jobs, money, property,
and most importantly,

who his followers can marry, because
the number of wives a man has

is the most crucial element of
the Fundamentalist Mormon.

In fact, Jeffs himself is
thought to have up to 78 wives.

Having multiple wives
is so important

that only higher-ranking elders
are allowed to start families,

And that leaves the younger men
in the community with a problem:

grade school math.

In order to practice polygamy,
you have a guy with 50 wives,

49 guys have
gotta go somewhere.

Roman was only 18 when he
was exiled from the church.

They wanna get him out, so they kick
him out for absolutely any reason.

You know, you watch a movie,
you talk to a girl,

you listen to music,
they kick you out.

The nearest cities,
is where they go to.

St. George, Salt Lake.

Lately they've been going up to the
oil refineries in North Dakota

because the money's good up there and
they don't have to have an education,

because most of them don't have
even an 8th grade education.

So there's a whole
community of ex-FLDS kids

that live here
in Salt Lake now.

They hang out
together all the time.

Some of them are getting
together for some pizza and beer

and they invited us to join.

I seriously didn't masturbate
till 6 months after I left.

Want to know what's funny, dude?
How old were you?

17.

How did you stay
away from your dick?

I peed out of it.
That's all I knew.

I started when I was 11.

I felt so guilty.
That's the worst part.

When you grow up
in the vacuum of the FLDS,

things that most of us think of as
common knowledge, like paying bills,

using the internet, or even
wearing bathing suits

are completely alien to them.

These kids are shockingly
unprepared for the most

mundane of tasks
in everyday life.

My dad,
he kept on telling me,

"If you don't stop
texting, or don't stop--

"you keep buying
Internet for your phone,

you're going to have to be
kicked out of the house."

I called up Sam, my older
brother, and he came

and picked me up that night.

What was that first night like, when
you decided to call your brother?

I don't know where
to go, how to start.

What do I do?

How long does that last?

How long does it take
to feel like--

It took me, I'm
going to say, 2 1/2, 3 years.

To feel just comfortable here.

Wayne and Joe offered to
show us around their hometown

of Colorado City.

You really can't explain the way that
you feel the first day you leave.

There's no words to
describe the feeling.

You're scared, you're
terrified, but you're excited

all at the same time.

To them, they think
we're the worst people.

Like fuck you, you're
brainwashed, I'm better than you.

Wayne and Joe told us about
some kids who'd been thrown out,

just like them.

But instead of running away as
far as they could,

they stayed in Colorado City,

a few blocks from the families that
now refuse to acknowledge them.

You know what happens when
you grow up with like 30 brothers?

You play really
aggressive sports.

I'm up.

- Oh!
- Nice.

So these kids live
in what they call butthuts:

small trailers that house a
bunch of kids who are totally

unequipped to deal
with everyday life.

Leroy lives just down the
street from the family

that now won't even
speak to him.

It hurts a lot,
seeing families torn,

and there's nothing I can do about
it but carry on with my life.

Leroy was just 15 when he
was thrown out of the church

and his family.

This is the house that
I was raised in.

That's a 3-story house.

We had a mother on each floor.

So we had a family of
about 30 people.

I had been talking to girls and
wearing what I wanted and stuff,

and that's against
the religion, you know?

So I came home from work and
father came up to me and said,

"The bishop called and he wants you
to get your things and leave."

I said, "OK, tonight?

Like, it's already 6:00,
7:00 in the afternoon."

He was like, "Yeah."
So that's what I did.

I kind of felt like I died.

I wondered how could my
parents just let me go

into a world that they
don't even know.

So this kid, who's
barely been to school,

has never traveled more than
a few miles from his home,

and has been taught since birth
that outsiders are pure evil,

is basically given 20 minutes to
pack and told to get out forever.

On their birthdays,
I do my best to call

and sometimes I get rejected and
told to never call again,

but I'm gonna keep it up.

Even if they've done
their best to forget me,

I'm not forgetting them.

During our conversation
with Leroy, we couldn't help

but notice we were
being followed.

You guys know the story
on God's squad, don't you?

Once Gentiles are in town, people
start following them around for hours

and make sure that you're not
gonna do anything

that's gonna
hurt the community.

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Even after being out
of the church for years,

these kids are still
afraid of church security.

The longer we stayed there,
a bunch of things that seemed

kind of quiet and quaint
when we first arrived,

started feeling really creepy.

A whole bunch of people
turning their backs,

running inside, and circling
around in pickup trucks.

It's Little House on the Prairie
mixed with Children of the Corn

all being run by
a convicted pedophile

from a jail cell states away.

What the fuck?

My honest opinion is

I don't think Warren's
as bad as he's put out to be.

Honestly.

I'm grateful that I was
raised the way I am,

and he hasn't done anything to
my family or me to hurt me.

But he took your
family from you.

Yeah, but it was because
that's part of the religion.

I mean what's religion if
it doesn't have standards?

Everybody that's been raised
in this religion knows that

the outside world is a huge,
bad, mixed-up place.

We kept asking ourselves, how
could this possibly happen in America?

Is the FLDS a cult?

Yes. In my mind,
it's a cult.

He could seriously tell one
one of his loyal followers

to go kill somebody,
and they'd go do it

thinking it was the
right thing to do.

The problem is we're not
just talking about one person here.

We're talking about a town
full of brainwashed followers.

You know, someone such
as Warren Jeffs that has control

over the community, you have
to take very seriously,

and I find he's very dangerous
because you never know what

kind of edict he could come
up with out of prison.

And with Warren's jail cell
orders getting stranger and stranger,

it may just turn out
that these young men

with no families
and grim prospects,

are far better off in exile.

West Africa's Mauritania is
one of the poorest countries

in the world.

On top of that, only .5% of its
land can be used for farming.

And on top of that,
the country's been suffering

from a worsening food crisis
for the past few years.

So when we heard they're
currently experiencing

an obesity epidemic and that this
epidemic was actually self-inflicted,

we sent Thomas there
to see what is going on.

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Hi. It's Thomas.

It's midnight in the Sahara.

We're eating, um, camel milk and
millet to get fat and beautiful.

West Africa has never made
any bones about its preference

for thick chicks.

_

Unfortunately, Mauritania's recurrent
famine and general lack of resources

make it nearly impossible
to pack on the pounds.

Never mind the fact that it's smack
in the middle of the Sahara,

an environment so harsh you
basically shed weight

any time you're
not indoors lying down.

The only way for girls out here to
meet Mauritanian beauty standards

is for their moms to literally force
feed them full of milk and food.

It's similar to how
you make fois gras.

In fact, they use the same
term for both: gavage.

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Aminetou Mint Ely
is an expert on Mauritania's

forcefeeding fixation.

_

We're going to
head out now to the desert,

to a Mauritanian fat camp.

I'm going to take part and
basically going to be drinking

several liters
of camel milk a day,

eating as much millet as I can
keep down without barfing.

We're at a fish market right now,
and I'm trying to find a scale

so we can do a little
weigh-in to see...

kind of get a precise figure on how
beautiful they can make me in 2 days.

Starting weight: I'm at
55 kilos right now,

which I think is a nice weight.

I'm going to do
2 or 3 days of gavage

and see what that does to me.

Doesn't seem like the best place
on Earth to be chugging milk,

but I guess that's, you know,
that's the whole point of it.

You gotta suffer
for your looks.

This is my gavage mate Hanan,
a 19-year-old Mauritanian girl

who's starting to get serious
about landing a husband.

We started chitchat over
an appetizer of breadcrumbs

drenched in olive oil.

OK, just go?

So basically you take
this like a pill

and just ball it up and then...

_

It's all right.

How many times have
you done this?

_

Did you want to do it or did
your mother make you do it?

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Then we moved on to a
light lunch of goat meat, bread,

and another bowl of milk
to open up the stomach.

My first sip of camel milk
was a little underwhelming.

It seemed especially watered
down for what I was expecting,

almost like a super skim.

Not bad so far, it's like
a Mauritanian French dip.

It's really a light start.

The meat's kind of doing stuff
to my head, but other than

having like goat fat all over
my hands, I feel all right.

It just feels like a big meal.

So far I didn't get what
the big deal was with gavage.

It just felt like
basic overeating.

I mean, my whole
country overeats.

That night, however,
the real feeding began.

The camel skim I had
gotten used to was replaced

with camel cream,
warm camel cream.

I was starting to process
the true nature of gavage,

as well as way too much milk.

_

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Ah, this is insane.

_

I did already.

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It feels like the food has
filled my entire chest cavity

and is now deflating my lungs.

I don't know what I
was thinking with this.

Oh, I do not feel good at all.

It's very breathtaking,
visually, to wake up to this,

but I'm still full of milk despite
having pissed like 8 times.

I was gonna ask "What's
for breakfast?" but...

There's kind of like a frat
hazing element to this.

3, 2, 1.

Bravo.

Eating wasn't even a
chore at this point.

It was punishment.

I definitely passed the
point I would have stopped

about 8 bites ago.

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Hurt doesn't begin to cover
my personal hell of milk

and desert heat.

OK, I just puked
twice in my mouth.

Oh, shit.

Oh, God, I really don't
feel good...guys.

Oh!

Ugghh!

Now that we were barf buddies,

Hanan seemed a lot more
sympathetic to me,

even though what I'd gone
through was only a sliver

of the full gavage experience.

_

I think that if I did two
more days, I'd probably die.

The thing is, what we've just
been through with Hanan

is the voluntary rich girl
version of gavage.

In some parts of the desert,
parents still start

forcefeeding their
daughters as toddlers

and crush their toes with
pincers if they resist.

Gavage isn't just the desert
milk-chugging ritual.

Gavage is an entire
lifestyle of overeating.

You have 2 to 3 lunches daily.

You stay inside and
try not to move.

You don't have a job.

If you have daughters when
you're married, would you...

do you think you would
do gavage with them?

_

I think it's about time to go
back to the scale now

and see how much damage two days
of this can do to you.

So I was 55 before,
and I am now 59.

It's about 10 pounds, so...

I mean, if you multiply that

by doing it week after week after
week and making it your lifestyle,

this is nuts.

This is the most
insane crash dieting.

In a way, fashion and beauty
has always been about trying

to make yourself the opposite
of what you actually are.

In the West, rich people dress
in torn jeans and try to look

like they can't get enough
to eat, while our poor

leave the tags on their clothes
so you know how much they

overpaid for them.

So why should it be surprising
then, in a landscape

designed to make you skinny,
the best way to boost your image

is to slam milk
until you are obese.

It shouldn't be a surprise.

Just a little gross.

Wealth disparity in the U.S. has
become a very hot topic recently.

The 99% versus the 1% became a
rallying cry that was adopted

almost instantaneously.

The growing gap between rich
and poor is a global issue,

but in the slums of Mumbai,
where over 11 million residents

live in poverty,
the contrast is startling.

So I went to India to see
just how bad it really is.

_

India is home to the
highest number of poor people

in the world, with over
360 million of its citizens

living below the poverty line.

And India's largest city,
Mumbai, is home to

an estimated 22 million people,

half of which live in slums.

This means that 4 times
the population of Chicago

is living in absolute squalor.

Now contrast this with the
fact that Mumbai is also home

to the largest and most expensive
single-family dwelling on Earth.

India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani's
billion-dollar personal palace

is a 27-story,
400,000-square-foot skyscraper

that takes over 600 employees
just to maintain it day to day.

And if that's not freaky enough,
this futuristic mega-super-mansion

actually looks down on some of
the worst slums in the world.

_

- How are you?
- Hi.

- Good to see you!
- Same to you.

Where are we right now?

_

And how many people live in it?

A million people
live in this slum.

How many people in
Mumbai live in slums?

_

So, 11 million people
living in slums.

Can you show us around?

_

So, a million people live here.

What are their qualities
that they live under?

_

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_

- Right now, I'm smoking--
- You smoke?

No, but I'm smoking
with you right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We are smoking, yeah.

_

How much would it
cost to live here?

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Right.

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So they all work there,
and they all live there?

- Yes. Yeah.
- At the same time.

- Because they can't pay rent.
- Yes.

_

But how would you even
live in there, though?

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_

- Yeah, maybe the world.
- Yeah.

So there's open
sewers everywhere.

It smells quite pungent.

In fact, it's estimated that
there's only one working toilet

for every 1,400 people
living in the slum.

If TV were scratch-and-sniff,

then everyone would be
barfing right now.

It smells so bad,
it's shocking.

I don't know what just fell
on me, but it's not good.

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- They make new plastic out of it.
- Right.

_

Not great, no.

So they've got all the shit
plastic from all over Mumbai,

and they bring it here
to the slum,

and then they just sort of,
by hand, recycle it.

Insane.

There's no real roads,
there's just winding alleyway

after winding alleyway, which
wouldn't be so bad except

there's over a million people
that live in this slum.

And around every corner, it seemed that
there was something even more shocking.

There were young kids working in the
dark, running makeshift machines

that were
retooling waste metal.

And as we walked around, I realized
that the whole economy of Dharavi

is based on the garbage of
the real economy of Mumbai.

Everywhere you looked, people
were trying to make something,

anything, to sell or trade,
desperately trying to make

some money out of the
waste of the real world.

Because it's so wind-y,
there's no real roads,

we're gonna go up on the roof
and see if we can see the slum.

I don't know if this is
up to safety code.

How far does the
slum go? It's huge.

_

432-acre slum.

Right in the middle of Mumbai.

It reminds me of like "Mad Max"
or something, where they were

living off garbage
and fixing the garbage.

Or, do you remember in "Star
Wars", do you know when they

go down into the garbage?

If you jumped in there there'd
be like an eye come up

and then go after you.

So, you have all these people
living in the slum, they sleep

under their sewing machines.

What do they think about a guy

has a billion-
dollar house?

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Yeah.

_

Now, do you think people
who live in the building,

who are swimming in the swimming
pool feel bad when they look down

and they see people
sleeping in the streets?

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Yeah, yeah.

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It's too much gap.
There's too much gap.

After spending some time in
Dharavi, we wanted to see how

the proverbial 1% live in the
skyscrapers that reign these slums.

So we hooked up with a textile
magnate named Gautam Singhania

to show us around Mumbai
in his private helicopter.

So, how many million
people live in Mumbai?

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Gautam is your quintessential
1-percenter playboy,

complete with a fleet
of yachts, aptly named after

James Bond films, massive
houses, and, of course,

a stable filled with the
world's fastest cars.

Wow.

So this is a Ferrari,
I know that much.

Yeah, it's the 458 Italia.

This was the first 458
that came to India.

So you got the first one.

Yes. This is an 07 Gallardo,
which has been modified.

It's got twin turbos.

It's fast, trust me.

Do you actually
ever drive the cars?

We drive every weekend. There's
a supercar club that we have,

and it's a bunch
of guys who love cars.

When we go in the club with
the boys, it's always good

to know you have the
power under your foot.

Sure. Are we gonna go
take one on the road?

Sure, let's go.

And how did you fall in
love with cars first?

I guess it's in your DNA.

Here we go.

You get a lot of
stares when you drive

around the streets of Mumbai?

That's why we formed the
supercar club you know.

The point of the club is that
when we guys used to go out,

you know, just one of us,
two of us, three of us,

so many people used to
stand and, you know, look.

And we just figured that,
it's just much easier

when we have
everybody together.

Now, maybe it was because we
were driving around Mumbai

in a quarter of a million
dollar supercar, but Gautam

did not seem to want to talk
about the obvious disparity

of wealth in the city.

Now, what do people think
about Mukesh's house?

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And so you're building a house but
you don't want to talk about it.

- Yeah.
- OK, that's OK.

Because of the bad publicity
that Mukesh Ambani had enjoyed

because of his house,
Singhania didn't really want

to talk about the new
home he was building.

He did let slip, however, that
his personal private skyscraper

was actually going to be 10
stories higher than Ambani's

and have not one, but two
Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Mumbai perfectly exemplifies
the growing gap between rich

and poor, but the problem
is actually a global one.

Even the old Communist
societies of Russia and China,

have now morphed into arguably
the most capitalist countries

in the world.

It seems that in our modern
age, there are very few places

left on earth where the
rich aren't getting richer

and the poor poorer.

When you see it in
Mumbai, it's so clear-cut

because it's poverty and
people living off the garbage

of the other society
and the other economy.

And the other half are building
skyscrapers into the sky

and living on megayachts and
flying into them on helicopters.

And you say, "What's
happening to the world?"

Half of the world is living off
the garbage of the other half

in this
post-apocalyptic nightmare.

Sync & corrections by honeybunny
www.addic7ed.com