Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
The most telling moment in the documentary, “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief,” was when one of the interviewees said something like, “Ask a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim to explain the core tenants of their religion, and they can do it in under a minute. It takes 7-8 years, and thousands of dollars, to find out the core tenants of Scientology.” I already knew a lot of what was in the film, but some of the things I just now learned was downright unnerving. It’s a riveting documentary. And seeing LRH (L. Ron Hubbard) for the first time in this movie, I completely see how he was the inspiration for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.” I’ll be very curious to see if/how Tom Cruise, the most famous Scientologist, responds to this film, because it’s ridiculously damning for him.
It’s a very fine line between what qualifies as an honest-to-God religion, and what is a cult. I’m not a religious person, although I would consider myself a spiritual person, with a philosophy of life that is inspired by the time I spent in the Presbyterian Church earlier in my life. I’m skeptical of organized religion, however, because since it is a man-made construct, it is thus more than capable of being corrupted by personal goals that have nothing to do with the spiritual– when it crosses that line, it becomes more of a cult than a religious organization. My personal experience in church was perfectly fine, but I didn’t really have a spiritual experience in those years, but that was because I wasn’t ready for a spiritual experience at that point in my life, and it would occur to me later, that my spiritual side would be tapped, and come into focus, through creative endeavors. “Going Clear” is about pulling the rug out from underneath the Church of Scientology, and exposing it as a cult founded around L. Ron Hubbard’s ideas, and the financial burdens it places on it’s members.
The film’s director is Alex Gibney, one of the most insanely prolific documentarian filmmakers in recent years. His best-known films have been “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Taxi to the Dark Side,” “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson” and “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” and all of them are compelling, riveting works. After “Going Clear,” though, the rest of Gibney’s films will likely be seen as footnotes. When it premiered at Sundance, and then showed on HBO in March, it hit like a sledgehammer to the face against the Church, and it’s remarkable that they’ve managed not to be sued by the notoriously-litigious Church, although the high profile of the film has probably helped with that. They’ve still tried to fight back against the allegations of the film, but the truth is, Gibney, HBO and the former members interviewed won this battle over public opinion, and people like them have been winning for years. The internet has been a game-changer when it comes to how information is made available, and how communities of people can form and relay information of their experiences within the Church. The Church will continue to fight back as it has in the past, whether it’s through campaigns of trying to discredit the people speaking out, or larger publicity campaigns, but the damage is being done, and “Going Clear” has been particularly damaging.
A lot of other people have written about the content of “Going Clear,” which takes it’s title from a book on the Church written by reporter Lawrence Wright, so it would feel weird to just recount all of that. There are a few things I would like to discuss at greater length, though, starting the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Most people have likely heard Hubbard’s name before, if not from his creation of Scientology, but also because he is the sci-fi author whose book, Battlefield Earth, was adapted by John Travolta (a devoted member of the Church) in one of the biggest cinematic misfires of his career, if not the biggest. If you’ve heard anything about the tenants of Scientology, and the origin myth it tells it’s members when they reach OT III (which stands for Operating Thetan III), then you know that it claims that an intergalactic overlord named Xenu brought souls called Thetans to Earth (which is considered a prison planet) 75 million years ago, scattered them around in volcanoes, which were then blown up with H-bombs, and the Thetans then inhabited the bodies of humans, who could get rid of them only through a process known as “auditing,” which sounds like a combination of therapy session and taking a lie detector test. That origin myth would be intriguing as science fiction, but is about as far out of the realm of sanity as a religious notion of how the world came to be as anything anyone has ever tried to pass off in the name of religion. I can completely see how Paul Haggis, an Oscar-winning writer who famously left the Church in 2009 after 30 years, first read this, from Hubbard’s original writings, when he reached OT III, and went, “This is an insanity test, right? If you believe it, you’re out. Right?” No wonder you have to be in Scientology for years to find this out– as one former member in the film says, “Do you really think anyone would stick around if they told you this on the first day?” It’s hard to imagine ANYONE believing it, let alone Hubbard himself, who said that, “If you want to make real money, start a religion,” and supposedly kidnapped his daughter when his former wife wanted out of the marriage, and told his ex-wife that he had chopped their daughter up. Hubbard was a con man, plain and simple, and I think he used his experience as a military veteran, as well as his standing as an acclaimed, or at least prolific, sci-fi writer to both perpetuate the con that is Scientology, but also keep people under his thumb, and keep the Church growing to the level it has. The thing is, the self-help notions we glimpse at in the beginning to “Going Clear” that Hubbard outlined in his best-seller, Dianetics, are actually interesting and in line with how good psychoanalysis works when it comes to working through emotional and mental issues, which makes the Church’s notorious distrust of the fields of psychology and psychiatry ridiculously ironic, although I think it has more to do with their reliance on prescription medications more than psychoanalysis. But “Going Clear” implies, quite strongly, that the analysis process the Church calls “auditing” is less about helping people get through their own issues, and more about finding out dirt on people that could be used if they ever leave the Church. When a former associate of Travolta’s, Sylvia Taylor, talks about the stress and pain the Church caused in her life, she makes it clear that Travolta was distressed for his friend, but also that he did nothing to stop it, or bring the issues to light, probably because the Church would then discredit him with secrets they learned in his auditing sessions. Religion, in my view, should be about nurturing the spirit, helping individuals find a peaceful place within themselves, both for this life, and the next, and forming communities that can enliven society as a whole, and embraces the diversity of society. Scientology seems to force belief on it’s members, and has no problem demanding disconnection with non-believers from family members and friends. I think I’ll pass.
“Going Clear” is a rigorous, two-hour primer on how Scientology has seemed to dupe not only it’s members (which the film estimate only number 50,000), but also the government, which afforded it tax-exempt status in 1993 after legal pressure from the Church. It also spends a lot of time discussing the Church’s current leader, David Miscavage (who holds the title, “Chairman of the Board,” which should tell you everything you need to know about the “Church’s” real motives), and looking at allegations of violence and work practices against members, and Tom Cruise, whose movie star luster has taken a big hit since he rededicated himself to the Church in the early to mid-’00s after his divorce to Nicole Kidman, which one interviewee in the film says he helped facilitate. (Cruise’s star is probably going to fall further after this film, which also alleges how the actor has taken advantage of the Church’s almost slave labor, and how the Church tried to mold an up-and-coming actress into being Cruise’s girlfriend, “Vertigo” style.) If there’s one flaw in the film, it’s that it focuses more on the high-profile names who have left the Church rather than regular people who got out, and probably have even more damaging stories to tell. I get it, though, about why Gibney went for the bigger names– that’s how awareness towards the Church’s practices start. Hopefully, either he or someone else will do a follow-up, and really get to the heart of darkness at the center of the Church LRH built.
