Junkee:
Everyone Is Making Fun Of Scientology Again After HBO’s Controversial ‘Going Clear’ Doco
http://junkee.com/everyone-is-makin...ter-hbos-controversial-going-clear-doco/54538
The article has a nice compilation of Scientology and Going Clear videos to date.
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Scientology has been lurking on the fringes of pop culture for some time now — from the first scriptures put forth from a sci-fi turned self-help writer in the early 1950s, to that time Tom Cruise tried to kill Oprah with lasers from his mind.
And, as those are pretty much the main distinguishing features of this Very Serious Religion About An Alien Called Xenu, it’s understandably been an easy target for mockery. Seinfeld had a cheeky dig at it in the ’90s. South Park based a whole episode around it. Cracked and Funny or Die have entire sections of their sites devoted to it.
After a while, this all petered out; it was probably a combination of the jokes being too easy and the stakes being too high. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker were
reportedly investigated by Scientologists for years after their controversial 2005 episode. And really: reaffirming the fact that Tom Cruise and John Travolta are a bit creepy, just ain’t worth that kind of fuss.
But now, following the recent release of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, it’s all cranking back into gear. Filmmaker Alex Gibney and HBO
hired 160 lawyers to back up their claims, and the methodical takedown of the church has been
critically-acclaimed as a
“jaw dropping expose”. Despite
their appeals otherwise, it seems like Scientology is fair game again, and the US has come out all galactic laser guns blazing.
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