Last night I watched the above documentary written and directed by Alex Gibney and largely based on the book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (2013) by Lawrence Wright that I favorably reviewed here. That review provides a lot of the information that is in the film so I will not repeat it here.
[Read more…]
Reader Norm kindly sent me a copy of the above book and said that he had enjoyed it and I must say that it was a real page-turner. I had intended to write a full review but I came across a good one by Diane Johnson in the New York Review of Books, along with a review of a memoir by Jenna Miscavige Hill (the niece of the current Scientology leader David Miscavige) who defected from the church, that captured much of what I wanted to say so I will just refer you to that review and add some thoughts of my own. [Read more…]
I am both fascinated and disturbed by cults. Fascinated because of my interest in the psychology of the kind of people who are drawn to cults and then get indoctrinated, and disturbed because of the often tragic consequences that ensue to them and their loved ones. One of the most pernicious cults is the highly secretive Church of Scientology, notorious for the reports of how they exploit and abuse cult members and viciously attack anyone who manages to escape from their clutches, not to mention anyone that seeks to shine a light on them. As a result, even some of the people who have escaped are too frightened to talk publicly about what they went through.
This article in Vice gives the account of someone who managed to escape the church and describes the methods they use to suck people into it and what life was like once you had been recruited. The person is disguised and has their voice altered because of fear of being recognized by the church and hounded.
More comprehensive treatments can be found in the 2013 book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright and the 2015 Alex Gibney documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief based on that book. I wrote about this cult before and reviewed both the book and the film.
In an interview at the Sundance Film Festival where the film was screened, Gibney and Wright discuss how they were fascinated by the question of how it could be that people who were smart and idealistic and caring, by no means simpletons, could get sucked into an organization that was so exploitative and abusive. These people, once they left, were themselves shocked at how they did not see what was so obvious to them now.
Noted documentary maker Alex Gibney has a new film coming out on the Scientology movement. It is based on the book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (2013) by Lawrence Wright that I reviewed favorably here. The film is being produced by HBO and will be released early next year.
[Read more…]
In reading Lawrence Wright’s book on Scientology titled Going Clear (that I reviewed earlier) one thing that struck me was the organization’s determination to acquire real estate in major cities. [Read more…]
The Church of Scientology has been in the news recently (see here and here) with the publication of Lawrence’s Wright’s book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief that exposes the seamy underbelly of the organization and its cruel and despotic leader David Miscavige. [Read more…]
I wrote recently that Lawrence Wright had released what looks like an interesting and pretty thorough book on the Church of Scientology that is titled Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. In an interview, he describes some of the weird things that he discovered. What they do to dissidents and young people is awful. [Read more…]
Scientology has been in the news recently and not in ways that it likes. There is a new book on the organization by Lawrence Wright called Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief that is reviewed here. [Read more…]