Up: Martin Poulter > Scientology Criticism > UK Media Archive
Take me to your lucre
The Guardian, November 20 1997
From hpttrsn@vossnet.co.uk Fri Nov 21 11:43:54 GMT 1997 TV Critics are a fair guide as to how much information gets through to Mr Couch Potato. Unfortunately the Best TV Critic In The Universe, the fragrant Miss Nancy Banks-Smith, was off-duty for The Guardian on November 19th, so we had to make do with rock critic Adam Sweeting. Whilst this poster holds diametrically opposed views to Mr Sweeting over music (he trashs a band, I rush out and buy the CD), he doesn't do badly here. Please note that what follows is not 100% accurate about the programme's content, just an impression. ------------------------------------The Guardian, November 20 1997, Last night's TV Adam Sweeting
The received wisdom about L Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, is that he was a charlatan and a conman. Secret Lives (Channel 4) confirmed that these perceptions are wholly justified, in a profile of a man who wanted to be bigger than God but ended up as a fridge-magnet version of Howard Hughes.
Hubbard's bizarre character ensured that his story could hardly be less than sensational, even though Secret Lives made heavy weather of it. A compulsive fantasist, young Ron found that writing science fiction was easier than telling the truth. He soon became the living exemplar of the Big Lie theory - the more preposterous the proposition, the more people were likely to believe it. Instead of selling sci-fi, he started selling his own half-baked religion. Soon he had them queueing up to pay 500 bucks to join his Dianetics Auditing Courses.
It was all going so well that Ron thought it might be nice to take over a country. He tried Rhodesia, but Ian Smith gave him the bum's rush. When various other governments banned him, he went to sea, surrounded himself with a coterie of 14-year-old girls, and treated his followers with megalomaniac harshness. His ship's captain, Hana, convinced him that she flew spacecraft in a previous life.
Where Secret Lives failed was in conveying exactly how Hubbard managed to get so many people to believe so much transparent bilge, or by what methods Scientologists were able to infiltrate and take over the Florida town of Clearwater.
Perhaps the film-makers' style was cramped by the Scientologists who harassed them relentlessly throughout filming, or by the letter from John Travolta and his Scientological friends to Channel 4's Michael Jackson, urging him not to broadcast the prigramme. Hubbard's continuing influence is alarming and inexplicable, but the programme didn't discuss it.
-- Hartley Patterson Home Page: http://village.vossnet.co.uk/h/hpttrsn/ featuring News from Bree, medieval economics and an elderly universe
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