By Tyler Goucher
Reporter
April 22, 2015
Filed under Opinions, Reviews
Bakersfield College Newspaper: The Renegade Rip
In the HBO documentary “Going Clear: Scientology and the
Prison of Belief”, Director Alex Gibney manages to give us an inside look at
the controversial religion, which proved to be both interesting and deeply
disturbing.
Throughout the course of the 2-hour long documentary,
several ex-members are interviewed about their time spent as dedicated
followers of the cult-like religion.
Paul Haggis, an award winning Writer/Director, talks about
his time as a member of Scientology and how it took him over 20 years to
realize just how corrupt and scandalous the leaders of the church were.
Jason Beghe, a seasoned actor, talks about how he went into
the religion with a messed up head and came out even more messed up due to the
mind games Scientology plays with its esteemed member’s heads.
Even some non-celebrity figures were interviewed in the
documentary who were relatively high up in the organization who didn’t see the
big picture of Scientology until they wasted years of their life and ridiculous
amounts of money to find out they were pretty much studying the mind of a
lunatic.
For a lot of ex-members, the story is very similar, in that
they were so brainwashed for so long, that it took something very traumatic to
snap them out of the spell they were put under by the extremely intelligent and
manipulative L Ron Hubbard.
Hubbard was the founder of Scientology, but more important,
he was an avid science fiction writer who wrote hundreds of short stories about
fantastic ideas regarding mankind’s exploration to the stars and the idea that
aliens inhabited the Earth long before we ever did. It’s interesting to think
that a lot of what he wrote in his science fiction novels was transferred over
to his book of Dianetics, which at the time was pretty much the “bible” of his
soon-to-be religion, Scientology.
From the 1950’s to present day, the religion has grown in
numbers and has gained a massive amount of celebrity members. The film depicts
these members as the main reason why the religion has become such a
controversial topic, and also why Scientology is worth billions of dollars. At
one point, one of Hubbard’s ex-spouses says that he mentioned several times
that “the only way to make real money in this world without the government
taking it away from you, is to start a religion.”
And that’s exactly what he does, through many years of
fighting the IRS to prove that they are a religious organization that should be
tax exempt, the government finally caves and gives them what they want.
Although the majority of the money goes toward building more churches and
spreading the word of a science fiction writer, the leaders of the church still
fight to make sure their public opinion is in a positive light. In fact, the
film explains that Scientology, beyond any other religion, will go to
considerable lengths to maintain a good public image.
Now I thought I knew a lot about Scientology and the shady
nature of it’s so-called religious philosophy, but this film really does dive a
lot deeper than I expected. I won’t spoil the details because I believe this is
an important film for everyone to watch, but I will say that I have a newfound
disgust toward Scientology, it’s founder and some of their oh-so famous
members. I give “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” 4 out 5
stars.
- See more at:
http://www.therip.com/reviews/2015/04/22/going-clear-scientology-and-the-prison-of-belief-sheds-new-light-on-the-religion/#sthash.6Q2isxF6.dpuf
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