Slate's Bizbox
culturebox: Arts, entertainment, and more.

Class 4! OT-7! Platinum Meritorious!More Tom Cruise Scientology footage emerges.

By Troy Patterson
Posted Friday, Jan. 18, 2008, at 4:20 PM ET

Our gratitude to the reader who passed along links to 38 minutes of footage shedding light on the Tom Cruise video described here. Context is important, as is wasting time late on Friday afternoons.

The clip at Gawker is a portion of a film extolling Tom Cruise's accomplishments in alerting the world to the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard and the dangers of its archenemy—any guesses? Anyone? Mr. Lauer?—yes, modern psychiatry. The longer film screened at a 2004 awards ceremony, much as a film heralding the recipient of an Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award would play at the Oscars. In context, the clip is bracketed by footage of David Miscavige—a Scientology bigwig wearing an enviably sharp evening suit—announcing the award and Cruise accepting it.

About four minutes into Part 1, when the narrator proclaims Cruise's place in the church's hierarchy, he assumes the tone of a ring announcer listing a boxer's title belts. There is, he says, "Someone advancing Scientology on a fully epic scale … and he is Class 4! OT-7! Platinum Meritorious! And IAS Freedom Medal of Valor winner … Tom Cruise!" The most jarring moment of the tribute that follows—a paean to publicity, mostly, and one variously inspired by Barbara Walters segments and Cold War propaganda—concerns the "Detoxification Project" Scientologists arranged for Ground Zero rescue workers. Here, 50 seconds into Part 2, as the techno soundtrack wriggles and booms, we see the actor striding through the ruins of the World Trade Center while talking on his cell phone. The choicest bit might be at the 2:45 mark in Part 3: the sight of the star giving a "backstage briefing" to a reporter—that is, firmly instructing a guy leaving a junket that psychiatry is "crimes against humanity." And there's something to be said for the way that Cruise, giving the most elegant acceptance speech of his life three and half minutes through Part 5, addresses L. Ron Hubbard directly, turning his head and talking to what looks like a 15-foot-tall oil portrait.

The main thrill here is voyeuristic, but I'm trying to dignify the viewing experience by imagining that it offers are a few small lessons of social science, clues to the combination of total humility and absolute arrogance that can characterize all types of true believers.

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Remarks from the Fray:

Scientologists sure are kooky. But so is everyone else operating in the same basic field - psychologists, psychiatrists, priests and preachers. There is no 'science of modern mental health' beyond a limited understanding of chemical interactions in the brain. The drugs your psychiatrist prescribes have a scientific basis. The conversation you have with him usually doesn't.

What is worrisome about scientology is not that alien corpses in volcanos is wackier than walking on water or believing women all want penises, but rather the organization's tactics.

However, the same criticisms levied at Scientology - at least in its modern post-Hubbard incarnation - can realistically be levied against the Mormons, the Catholic Church or even the APA. They're all litigious and they're all very concerned with the financial aspects of the organization. Large-scale organizations all function in roughly the same manner.

What should really worry people is not that some movie star has weird views, but that our society has accepted similar nonsense views at a deep level. Every time some judge offers a deal where someone attends AA or a jury listens to the sage intonations of a psychologist discussing the mental health of a defendant, we're buying into something no more 'factual' than making the claim that Top Gun was Tom Cruise's best movie.

--Xando

(To reply, click here.)

Tom Cruise is bonkers. Intensely bonkers. Run for the hills, Katie! I have only once met in real life someone with a level of self-regard and delusion approaching Cruise's, and the guy was just absolutely repellent. Cruise must be toxic in person, and I guess the end result of being around him as much as his wife is is her glassy-eyed smile and complete lack of personality (gee, Nicole Kidman looks warm and animated by comparison).

Scientology did not create this monster — I'm sure he was full of himself from early on — but it sure enabled the heck out of it.

I wonder if cognitive dissonance will ever set in and Cruise will come to see himself the way the world does, or if he'll go the way of Michael Jackson or Howard Hughes and just live an increasingly isolated, freaked-out life of stuff that disturbs everyone else.

--SpaceCadet

(To reply, click here.)

(1/20)