From:
slider@anashram.com
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x60977x
Louis Theroux’s My Scientology Movie pulls off the neat trick of finding a revelatory approach to a topic that’s been well covered of late: the
Church of Scientology. For longtime Scientology obsessives, the last few
years have puked up a glut of Scientology exposés. Paul Thomas Anderson downplayed similarities between The Master and the early years of L Ron Hubbard’s group, but the film still gives a good idea of how it may have developed. More worrying for Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige,
was Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear – rich in accounts from church
apostates, lawyered-up and fact-checked to the nth degree – and the no-less-excoriating Alex Gibney documentary based on it. Both book and
film were devastating for Scientology’s reputation.
If Going Clear had a failing, it was in its reluctance to fully call to
account some of its witnesses, including a figure who reappears in
Theroux’s movie, former church disciplinarian Marty Rathburn. Theroux
takes an indirect approach. Basing himself in LA, he puts out a casting
call for people to play Scientology followers, as well as Miscavige and
Tom Cruise.
The intent is to replicate on film, with the help of Rathburn, alleged practices never witnessed by outsiders: an E-meter session (newbies are
probed for emotional weaknesses); a “bull-bait” drill (designed to instil fortitude through extreme belittlement); and a disciplinary session in
“The Hole” (allegedly a trailer in the California desert), with Miscavige – played by actor Andrew Perez – abusing his disgraced senior management. (Of the three, the church only recognises E-meter sessions as official practice.)
These exercises, essentially actors’ workshops guided by Rathburn, are evocative and powerful, particularly the scenes in The Hole, which Theroux calls “the extreme but logical extension of the core principles of Scientology”. They are the movie’s most extraordinary moments.
But this is the super-paranoid Church of Scientology, and soon they are on Theroux’s tail, trailing his car, implicitly threatening Rathburn, openly filming them, and harassing them with legal threats (they aggressively blanket-deny everything). This prompts the movie’s other masterstroke: Theroux undermining Marty Rathburn’s authority by reminding him that these abusive strategies were originally invented by… Marty Rathburn. Marty doesn’t like that one bit, and can’t hide it. I think Rathburn is – on balance – an anti-Scientology hero, but we deserve the more ambiguous, troubling portrait sketched here.
For these reasons, My Scientology Movie belongs in the company of the most serious work done on the church. The more sunlight that falls on this dark organisation, the better for all of us.
### - don't normally watch this type of shit on the bbc, but this was
actually kinda fun hehehe :)
and rather revealing too somewhat as to their fucked up 'techniques'?
but what a load of old bollocks really eh? one faithful fool apparently coughing-up $50,000! just to be part of it all??? duh!
very funny stuff hehehe... and some VERY funny peeps too lol :)
ya see, the problem with redeemers is: who's gonna 'save' 'em from their redeemers?!
--paraphrased Nietzsche :)
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