Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Scientology 4: Cruise and the Germans
Readers will be familiar with my ongoing consideration of the merits of Scientology and the approach made to me by one Linda Sarkovich. In furtherance of my earnest inquiries, I have been studying this story about Tom Cruise and the filming of Valkyrie in Germany. Cruise and his crew(s) have been banned from filming at a memorial at the site of the execution of Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who narrowly failed to kill Hitler. The reason is, according to a German journalist, that Stauffenberg 'is like Jefferson and Lincoln, motherhood, and apple pie all rolled into one... Germany is a country of established churches, and so Scientology is viewed as a cult and, worse, totalitarian and exploitative. A professing Scientologist in the role of Stauffenberg is like casting Judas as Jesus. It is secular blasphemy.' (Sorry about the excess of commas, this is the New York Times.) Ursula Caberta, head of an anti-Scientology government task force, adds, 'Tom Cruise is not just an actor who is a Scientologist. He is an ambassador for Scientology. All totalitarian systems have their celebrities to open doors for them.' I don't pretend fully to understand Germany's loathing of this particular cult - weird and oppressive though it seems to be - but I am intrigued by this idea of secular blasphemy. Can there really be such a thing? And, if actors are going to have their opportunities limited by the oddity of their world views, then I can't think of any actor I have met who would ever again find work.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Stauffenberg was a very tall colonel, with one eye and one (damaged) hand, so maybe Tiny Tom should be disqualified on those grounds alone. Is that 'heightism'? While it is understandable why Germans have problems with cults (!), Stauffenberg himself was a product of the highly mystical cultic circle around the (semi-fascist) poet Stefan Georg, doubtless a detail that the myth makers of the CDU/CSU like to forget each 20th July. The two chaps who sued Dan Browne wrote a rarther good earlier book on that subject, although Peter Hoffmann is better5 on Stauffenberg himself.
ReplyDeleteOddity of their world views? Well there was nothing odd about DeForest Kelly.
ReplyDeletebad enough actors, what can we do about Ruth kelly?
ReplyDeletePoor old von Stauffenberg, what he must think of being played by Tom Cruise. You might as well cast Bruce Willis as Queen Victoria. I wonder what the German for "It's hammer time!" is. Scientology sounds a very minor detail of this story.
ReplyDeleteI'm worried about your views on commas.
ReplyDeleteThere you go again, Bryan! Mentioning Scientology or Tiny Tom in less than glowing terms can be dangerous to your health, your pocketbook, and your freedom.
ReplyDeleteIt's surely flattering to have TC play VS. And I am sure there is a way round the height problem. At last a film about a 'Good German' - who sadly failed, and was treated even after the war as a traitor. The Germans have a completely irrational obsession with Scientology: why is this any more of a cult with lunatic ideas than Protestant Christianity? Is Sci Fi religion any less believable than the virgin birth and what not?
ReplyDeleteJohnny Depp, would have provided a bit more credence. Might be, that the Germans are showing a level of artistic criticism. It would be equally hard to see TC as Wellington.
ReplyDeletemaybe Tom C could play Napoleon?
ReplyDeleteI'd suggest the Germans have a very good idea about the reality of Scientology, Chris.
ReplyDeleteBut not the 'reality' of religion: see the current Spiegel which has a glowing peaen of praise to a German Mormon: and that is not a slip of the pen. Read and believe. If Tom had only chosen another barking mad faith!
ReplyDeleteThe Mormons have a very strange background also. Their founder up there with L Ron Hubbard as people you don't really want to be following
ReplyDeleteonly if you concede, first there was man, then followed god. blasphemy against a thing which man reveres, so yes, I would say there is secular blasphemy. not that I worry about it myself - a bit like Himself, I suppose.
ReplyDeletehey, wasn't judas cast in that role by the director, god? you think the devil put up the big money and Judas got the part because they were related?!
"Scientology is viewed as a cult and, worse, totalitarian and exploitative"
ReplyDeleteUnlike those other religions like Catholicism and Islam.
As far as Claus von Stauffenberg, the Germans should find a better role model. It wasn't the militarism or even the execution of Jews that offended him but rather the military incompetence of Hitler. If German troops had marched through the gates of Moscow with Stalin's head on a pike, we can be sure that von Stauffenberg would have been carrying Hitler on his shoulders.
But someone could argue that Islam & Christinaity, whatever about Catholicism, are not explitative in their true form. Historically they provided very deep and necessary responses to very difficult circumstances, Chrsitainity perhaps in an especially philosophical sense, & Islam from an extremely self-destructive violent social situation. Scientology, however, would seem to be expoitative in its natural form.
ReplyDeleteTrue form? I love that. Someone could argue that any religion that makes you happy and doesn't harm others is completely rational. I'm not sure exactly how Tom Cruise is being exploited by Scientology but I wish I could have a piece of his being exploited. Traveling around the world, staying in the best hotels, living in a mansion sounds like a very nice way to be exploited.
ReplyDeleteI'm delighted you love it, Tom. Just look up things like the disconnection policy of Scientology where a member of this society( formed by a paranoid con-man) is ordered never to meet anotehr person again, the other person typically being a family member. I'm afraid Scientology most certainly harms others very quickly in its practical form.
ReplyDeleteYesterday the National Coalition of Human Rights Activists held a press conference in Santa Barbara, California, to award the Scientology Corporation the first annual NCHRA Human Rights Counter-Achievement Award ("The Herka"). The Herka was voted on by NCHRA membership on August 30th and the winner was announced on September 10th.
"NCHRA membership examined ten private United States businesses and organizations that have the worse reputation for human rights abuses, and voted on fifteen criteria regarding the worse offender for each criterion," said the NCHRA media liaison for California, Dr. Jessica Wells. "The result was a surprise for some members but not for others" Dr. Wells added.
The ten businesses and organizations included the Mafia, four White Supremacist groups, one Black Supremacist group, three churches, and the Scientology corporation. United States Governmental agencies were not examined, though the NCHRA recognizes the systemic human rights abuses within the USA government.
http://scientology-facts.blogspot.com/2005/11/scientology-wins-human-rights-abuse.html
I want this film to be made because Bill Nighy has been cast in it! (He got his start playing a Nazi many years ago and looks very hot in an S.S. uniform.) Tom Wilkinson, another fave, was also cast. Ditto Kenneth Branagh (who could probably play Hitler with a good make-up artist working him over.)
ReplyDeleteI'll bet the German film council is going crazy at the thought of the billions of bucks their economy is going to lose if Cruise and his movie are ousted.
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ReplyDeleteRegarding secular blasphemy, burning the nation's flag would perhaps be seen by some as something matching that description. Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony seems to have been received as something like secular blasphemy, failing to be the heroic paean to glorious victory in war that was expected by the party, and I htink it became a banned work.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem secular blasphemy is certainly more than possible. Any member of the Communist Party in one of the great totalitarian regimes suddenly announcing that Marx & Lenin were up their proverbial arses would be committing an act of secular blasphemy. HG Wells was appalled by Huxley's Brave New World, believing it to be a dreadful betrayal of the wonderful, scientifically engendered future...Huxley has of course been proven right in this era of gross inanity. There, that for many is a statement of secular blasphemy. Or another one, we still live in an era of msters & slaves, & when people crawl to work in blocked up traffic, work in dreadful factories, watch & read the idiot versions of reality served up to them- then we have slave populations under the thumbs of ruling masters.
So an interesting thought to have while watching the news,reality tv programme etc, would be "I, a slave in a master-slave relationship, am being told what to think by my masters."
That statement of truth would probably be counted as something like secular blasphemy.
Andrew, you always do this to me! I want to make an amusing little remark, but before anyone can play off it, you come in with the nuclear ideology attacks! Aargh!
ReplyDeleteAh but my nuclear ideology remarks, Susan, are actually the absence of an ideology or intellectual formula, but instead simply an interest in reality as an absolute in itself. These various ideological espousers would probably, up to and above their eyes in delusions as they are, claim something similar but this merely because they've lost all sense of reality, due to said being up to and above their eyes in delusions. "The truth will set you free," after all & the truth is no ideology.
ReplyDelete"Just look up things like the disconnection policy of Scientology where a member of this society( formed by a paranoid con-man) is ordered never to meet anotehr person again, the other person typically being a family member."
ReplyDeleteNow you have made me want to join! Are you allowed to reject multiple family members if you wish because I can think of more than one family member who would improve my life by no longer being part of it.
Imagine that.
ReplyDelete(I did, actually, somewhere upthread.)
Keep that master-slave relationship with reality going there, Joel. It's heartwarming when the slaves are under the impression their masers are feeding them the truth.
ReplyDeletemasters
ReplyDeleteThe crazy thing is that our government will grant subsidies worth $6.5 million to this Tom Cruise movie.
ReplyDeleteAfrica is rich in resources, why is it poor?
ReplyDeleteBecause it lacks infrastructure.
London businessman Saifee Durbar wants to change that.
He plans to link Africa’s coasts by building a railway from Cameroon to Sudan, via the Central African Republic.
Updates on the project can be found at:
http://saifdurbar.wordpress.com
http://saifeedurbar.wordpress.com