Change Your Image
akheugel
Reviews
Orientation: A Scientology Information Film (1996)
Hilarious Infomercial, but Rather Uninformative
I got from this movie exactly what I expected from viewing it online after seeing it mentioned on a site critical of $cientology. It was heavy handed and absurd. I laughed several times. It proves Poe's Law, though real it was such a joke.
They claim it gave a great deal of information on what $cientology is when most of the time it was just repeated praises of the religion and L Ron Hubbard. Most infomercials I have seen aren't this bad-they at least vaguely describe how their product works (even if deceptively) instead of just fawning over a product and its creator.
Some stuff that struck me as funny-not in order--
They go on for a bit showing court documents that $cientology is classified legally as a religion. If you have to do that there is a good chance there are reasons people question it-even my sociology of religion professor said he wasn't sure it was a religion and seemed more like a business and money making scheme.
"You could walk out that door....You could also jump off a bridge and blow your brains"-strange way of getting people to join the religion.
"We have a room dedicated to Ron" and they keep claiming Hubbard was an accomplished writer though his writing sucked and was cheesy sci-fi.
"$cientology saved my life"-this part was just over the top infomercial crap
I paraphrase but they equate naturalism with creating and use of the atomic bomb (many people involved in that were religious) "these men who don't believe in god are not godly men" though Hubbard was clearly an atheist and implied religions were all made up by poor confused thetans trying to make sense of their suffering.