Monday, November 21, 2005

South Park takes on Scientology

Besides having the support of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, Scientology is famous for suing websites that distribute their holy scriptures (which you must have paid handsomely to obtain), and show people what they actually believe. If you don't know what Scientology is about, here is an example from Wikipedia:

"Hubbard describes a variety of traumas commonly experienced in past lives. He explains how to reverse the effects of such traumas by "running" various Scientology processes. Among these advanced teachings, one episode that is revealed to those who reach OT level III has been widely remarked upon in the press: the story of a galactic tyrant who first kidnapped certain individuals who were deemed "excess population" and loaded these individuals into space planes for transport to the site of extermination, the planet of Teegeeack (Earth). These space planes were supposedly exact copies of Douglas DC-8s except with rocket engines. He then stacked hundreds of billions of these frozen victims around Earth's volcanoes 75 million years ago before blowing them up with hydrogen bombs and brainwashing them with a "three-D, super colossal motion picture" for 36 days. The traumatized thetans subsequently clustered around human bodies, in effect acting as invisible spiritual parasites known as "body thetans" that can only be removed using advanced Scientology techniques. Xenu is allegedly imprisoned in a mountain by a force field powered by an eternal battery."
I bet that War of the Worlds now makes more sense, right? Anyway, now South Park has taken on Scientology by launching an episode called Trapped in the Closet. In this episode Stan gets a personality test and finds out that he's depressed. The Scientologists decide that he is the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard, and therefore the show presents the Xenu incident. Stan starts writing more doctrines, including that Xenu broke out of intergalactic prison and that they should stop charging people for tests, books and new levels. The Scientology president comes to talk to him and tells him that he must stop, and admits that it is all a sham. Stan gives a speech to the members and tells them the truth, to what they start shouting "You are so sued!" Everybody started joining in and talking about how he was going to get sued. So Stan starts shouting back "I'm not afraid of you, go ahead and sue me!" The episode ends with the credits, where everybody's name has been replaced with John or Jane Smith.

They are so sued.

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