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★阿修羅♪
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現在地 HOME > カルト1 > 827.html
★阿修羅♪
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映画「宇宙戦争」の宣伝活動が華々しく繰り広げられているアメリカ。それに伴いトム・クルーズのメディアへの露出度が高まっていますが、臆面もなく露骨にサイエントロジーへの傾斜振りをテレビのトークショーやインタビューで語り、サンフランシスコ・ベイエリアの住民の間でひんしゅくをかっております。
今日（7月６日）付けの「サンフランシスコ･クロニクル」紙に、下記のような記事が掲載されましたので、お知らせします。
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（要訳）
「最近のトム・クルーズのメディアでの狂奔ぶりを見ると、単なる愛嬌では済まされない気持ちになってくる。我々が「馬鹿者！」と怒鳴りたくなる前に、露出をやめて欲しいものだ。
テレビのインタビューやトークショーで身を乗り出して熱弁を振るう時の狂気じみたしぐさ、莫大な財産、子供のような婚約者、精神分析や精神衛生についての痛烈な非難・・これらのことはいずれも彼がこの国で最も身の毛のよだつ集金カルト団体・サイエントロジーの最高幹部の人間であることと関係している。
以前のトム・クルーズは、決して物事を深く考えるタイプではなかった。まあ、誰もが彼に対して大した注意はしていなかったので、知らなかったといえばそれまでだが、最近の彼は本当に不気味だ。彼がテレビで、愛、人生そしてサイエントロジーについて語る時、まず身づくろいをしてから、次に演説口調のアドリブで延々と喋り続ける。
噂だが、彼の婚約者ケイト・ホームスは彼と婚約する直前、16日間行方不明になり、その後すぐに彼と婚約発表をした。トムは、彼女を育ててくれたマネジャーやエージェントとの契約を解消させ、家族や古い友達とも絶交させた。その代わり彼女の周りにはサイエントロジストの新しい"友人”が取り巻き、インタビューへの応答や行動の仕方を教えている。またサイエントロジーについて質問が及ぶと、この”友人”達が応える。
カルトといえば、ガラス球のような目をしたHoly Family uber-Catholic sect（福音主義？）の牧師、メル・ギブソンも、彼の行くところ常にこのセクトの陰をちらつかせている。何かといえばすぐにラテン語を口にする。また、先だっては雑誌記者など大勢の人がいる撮影スタジオでミーティングを行った際、「イエスはこの映画の興行収入の20％とDVDの世界における販売権を欲している」などと大声でわめき、皆を驚かせたことがある。
メルは古くなったが、それに代わりトムが我々の前に姿を現した。彼はOT6 (Operating Thetan 6)というサイエントロジストの中では極めて高い地位にいる人物であり、このクラスになると宇宙人やESPについてのトップ・シークレットを知らされているそうだ。
（中略）
トムよ、たいそう御立派な映画をありがとうよ。でも、もういいから静かにしてくれないか？それとも何かい？ 我々全員がロン・ハバードの下らない「ダイアネティクス」の本を買って、つぃでに一冊をブルック・シールズに送ったら、静かにしてくれるのかい？ そうは思わないが」
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http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/
The Great Tom Cruise Backlash
Will this annoying phase pass, or will Tom become the next super-rich, Mel Gibson-like nutball?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 6, 2005
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Let it begin now. Let it start with a wry askance glance and evolve into full-fledged annoyance and then move into raging hell-bent OK that's quite enough now please stop before we slap you silly.
Note to Tom Cruise: You are maxing out. Wearing out the welcome. Becoming less the tolerable and moderately talented and mildly likable megastar and more like an itchy boil on the deranged ferret of popular culture, requiring lancing.
The signs are all in place. The crazy ranting, the jumping on couches, the crazed grins, the enormous piles of money, the incessant photos of you sucking the face off your new and bewildered and child-like fiancee, the weird diatribes about psychiatry and mental health, the relatively common knowledge that you are super-seriously involved at the highest levels with one of the creepier money-hungry pseudo-religions in the nation.
Also: the assigning of a "handler" from said cult to tag along with your new bewildered young fiancee everywhere she goes to "keep her on the path" and make sure she doesn't, I don't know what. Talk about the nightmares? Break down in a heap and confess that it's all a staged setup? Reveal your true lizard identity?
Yes, Tom Cruise is getting weirder, more annoying than ever. Or maybe he was already deeply weird and we just didn't know it because he was famously tight-lipped in interviews and was never much of a deep thinker and wasn't all that articulate and no one really paid much attention because, well, who really cares?
But now, oh, Tom is opening up. Tom is speaking extemporaneously on talk shows and in interviews about life and love and Scientology, free of the careful grooming and aggressive protection of his former publicist, and while he's still not all that interesting, he is indeed letting his true colors beam right through and those colors are sort of a strange reddish brown with lots of unbecoming blue polka dots and weird slashes of hot pink all overarched by a vague hint of a rainbow flag waving just overhead.
There are rumors, and they are all juicy and fun. Rumors that Cruise "interviewed" numerous young actresses to play the part of his fiancee so as to crank the Scientology awareness quotient and downplay the gay rumors. Rumors of Katie Holmes being essentially trained by the "church" to forgo her former self. Rumors that Holmes essentially vanished for 16 days just before emerging with Cruise on her arm and a hundred million more dollars in her future and a new, decidedly odd Scientology gleam/haze over her eyes.
Aren't rumors fun? Totally silly? But somehow, in the age of Bush and bogus wars and massive, commonplace deceptions, weirdly believable?
Also: Rumors persist that Tom's Scientology-rich pseudo-love somehow convinced Katie that she must immediately dump her longtime, beloved manager and agent switch to his. And she is rumored to be disassociating with old friends and not communicating with her close family (cult behaviors, all) -- and did we mention the part about how the Scientologists have allegedly assigned her a handler/new best friend to tag along wherever she goes and answer questions for her and coach her on how to behave and speak when asked about their "religion"?
Hell, not even Mel Gibson has a beady-eyed priest from the Holy Family uber-Catholic sect following him around everywhere he goes, answering, in hissing Latin, questions from Vanity Fair reporters and spraying everyone with fake stage blood and sitting next to Mel in all the big studio meetings and screaming "Jesus wants 20 percent off the back end, plus international DVD rights!" while twitching madly.
But then again, Mel's an old hand at being a slightly creepy religious nuthead. And now, apparently, so is Tom. After all, he's been deep into Scientology for upward of 20 years, and is rumored to have progressed to the level of an OT6 (Operating Thetan 6), which is a super-secret high level of the church with super-secret knowledge of the alien story (called "The incident") and ESP, and they all get super-secret decoder rings with access to all the best alien-bred hallucinogens in the L. Ron Hubbard Bone Room, where high ranking devotees gather to drink bunny blood and watch old Travolta movies and discuss what the hell to do about Kirstie Alley.
But Katie Holmes, she's not like them. She's just a kid. She needs lots of creepy brainwashi... er, gentle religious coaching into the super-secret ways of the "church" of Scientology, with their incredibly vicious army of lawyers who attack anyone who says anything at all negative about their cult... er, religion.
(Note to Scientology: first signs that you are not a true religion: You cannot take a joke. You have an army of attack lawyers. You are so unstable as a religion you are unable to handle satire. You think the Kabballah is suing everyone who trashes Madonna? They'd be broke in a week. Just a thought.)
One thing the weird TomKat relationship is not, we can be reasonably sure, is a publicity stunt designed to lure more fans to "War of the Worlds" and "Batman Begins." Reason: Tom Cruise does not need the money. As Edward Jay Epstein points out in his excellent Slate piece, Tommy raked in well over $120 million on the first two "Mission: Impossible" movies alone, and stands to make easily that much from "War of the Worlds" and the forthcoming "M:I-3" and he is quickly accumulating more power and money than God or than the giddy accountants over at the bizarre Scientology compound outside Hemet, Calif., ever wet-dreamed.
Should we be worried? Should anyone care? Should it at all matter beyond buying yourself a Free Katie T-shirt and shaking your head and laughing it all off as just more pop culture chyme and then going to rent the surprisingly decent "Minority Report"? Of course it doesn't. Getting deeply involved in the lives of annoying, semi-articulate celebs is like getting all wrapped up in what Paris Hilton feeds her Chihuahua. It just has no bearing.
But then again, we have a warning. Remember, won't you, the savage impact Mel Gibson had, coming out of the blue and slapping the culture with his ultraviolent, blood-drenched vision of a very miserable Jesus being pulverized into raw veal and calling it spiritual enlightenment. Kooky-rich celebs with pseudo-religious agendas can be dangerous indeed, if for no other reason than they annoy the living hell out of you when you're trying to meditate.
It just feels like Tom is gearing up for something, doesn't it? Like it's no more Tom Cruise the cute kid from "Risky Business" or the hot gay stud from "Top Gun" or the chick-flick dreamboat from "Jerry McGuire," but now it will be Tom Cruise, the bizarre Hollywood power player, the unstoppable, outspoken cult-head with a gleaming, glazed-eyed "wife," proselytizing like a ferret and working hard to convert the masses.
It feels like this is all some sort of bizarre precursor to, say, 2015, when Cruise's powerful production company suddenly whips out "The Passion of the Hubbard," depicting the cheesy sci-fi hack writer and Scientology founder as the new Jesus, dancing with 75-million-year-old aliens and battling the evil overlord Xenu while busting "engrams" like water balloons and calling on the people of Earth to join him in the bunker so we may all join hands and look to the skies for the next big comet to pass by so we may leap from this Earthly plane and join the UFOs on their journey and . . . oh wait, sorry, wrong sect.
So anyway. Thanks, Tom, for all the decent movies, aggro performances, that mega-intense, frat-boy-on-'roids stare. But please, before you get any weirder, would you maybe consider exiting calmly? Is it too late to ask? If we all buy a copy of Hubbard's silly little "Dianetics" and send it to Brooke Shields, will you go away and leave us alone? Damn. I didn't think so.
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題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。