“This video not available in your country” !?
Damn you pseudo-psycho information-controllers! Say hello to my little friend called http://hola.org/ .
Ah - I thought you’d see it my way! My thetans cannot be contained!!
Stupid Humans.
SNL should have just said Scientology. They have the pockets to fight a lawsuit, and the bad press from Scientology suing would be awesome.
I have a feeling their lawyers might disagree.
Based on what? That they might have to get off their ass and litigate? CoS can’t win a judgment. They just find ways to renew the lawsuit under a different claim. They do it enough times the courts will start to sanction them.
Remember that “a lawsuit” from Scientology may be enough to get even the IRS to cry Uncle … http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-why-scientology-keeps-winning/
Besides, using a bland-name for the target is traditionally part of satire. If your company can be instantly recognised just for its cliche shittyness without even being named directly - that shows that the reputation for shittyness is even bigger than the brand name.
And leads to further humour in the courtroom when we imagine that the prosecutor has to say “This was obviously depicting my client, because they were acting shitty in the same way my client is well-known for doing”…
I so want to comment on this but . . .
This. Going to court means admitting you’re a lot like the thing being made fun of.
And yet…
Cracked wrote an article critical of CoS by name.
BoingBoing has published such articles.
There is a documentary coming out.
SNL still actually made fun of Scientology.
Beating the IRS, contrary to popular belief, is not actually impossible. People beat the US government all the time. That happens. What did they seek? Tax-exempt status. Look at the IRS rules and tell me that they couldn’t have won.
Finally, I’m against this “tradition” that is really something that arose from fear of litigation. A fear that is consistently reinforced by this “tradition.” People watch something like this and get the idea that Fair-Use isn’t a thing. That reason alone is enough to condemn it. If you’re going to be subtle about your comedy, fine. This is not subtle, there is literally no good reason to not actually come out with it.
My favorite take on Celebrity Scientology:
Just in case somebody wasn’t aware of it; this is an almost frame-by-frame remake of an actual Scientology video actually made in the actual 1990’s, around when David Miscavige first made his move for the throne… http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/videos/a34002/scientology-music-video/
In terms of satire using a fictionalized version of the thing you’re mocking lets you do a couple of things. Primarily it allows you to amp things up a bit. You can present the persons, beliefs or behaviors as more extreme, more absurd or bring in parody of aspects of other things and groups. It basically just broadens the base in terms of what sorts of jokes you can make without breaking suspension of disbelief or engendering easy attacks in terms of being inaccurate or slanderous. In terms of the later it better engages with parody protections sure, but that’s not its primary purpose. Likewise it can keep things from seeming narrow and mean spirited. It can keep things from seeming dated or overly topical. Its a pretty basic tactic in comedy. I agree it doesn’t necessarily matter here, but if they plan to revisit Neurotology later (which wouldn’t be surprising for SNL) they get a lot more utility, and a lot more opportunity for jokes, out of it as a fictionalized group than simply pointing at Scientology and saying “look how weird this shit is”. Limiting yourself to smugly mocking only the real aspects of actual Scientology is kind of lazy, limiting, and it would wear out its welcome rather quickly. This new thing called Neurotology can still mock and point out the shortfalls of Scientology, but you can effectively do whatever you want with it. You have to work harder to make jokes that are valid in their own right, but those jokes are more likely to be genuinely and persistently funny even without the current context surrounding Scientology.
Good point. You got me there.
“… all wear green,” said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, “and Operating Thetans wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Operating Thetan children. And Clears are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m an Cleared Theta Clear.”
Yeah, I got this border-ism too. Ultimately found a way around it which felt weird as I had just had it on my PVR.
On a related note, trying to find it on YouTube turned up a lot of copycat title videos. The content was always completely unrelated or used enough single still frames from the original to make it appear legit. I know there’s a lot of this on YouTube for various reasons but I couldn’t help but think that this was a counter-campaign to discourage people trying to track it down.
Lourne is currently doing a project with Jaden Smith (I think for HBO), so I doubt he’s going to want to ruin his chances of keeping him on the project by being THAT open about what that video is
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