--charlotte

Here's the text:

MEDIA

L. Ron Hubbard Ate My Brain
Has Scientology's comic legacy fizzled?
BY SARA KELLY

It is every striving American's dream to start a new religion, declare himself God's earthly representative, then sit back and watch the big money roll in. I mean, Jesus, it makes for much better party talk than winning the lottery.

And then there's that Messiah Thing.

Too bad, then, that the enduring spirit of L. Ron Hubbard--the last striving American to successfully anoint himself the swaggering grand pooh-bah of civilized society--so disappointed us with the recent screen adaptation of his sci-fi magnum opus Battlefield Earth, a film whose reviews have been so universally scathing, it's enough to make you wonder if the Church of Scientology has somehow lost its comic muse. Which is to say Hubbard himself, Scientology's disputably dead founder and the celebrated author of Dianetics--perhaps the greatest epic comedy of our time.

More than 16 million copies of Dianetics have been sold, says its cover. And it's no wonder why.

Based on the always entertaining (if a bit old-school) concept that what ails us humans stems from a run-in with the evil-doing ghosts of aliens ostracized from their home galaxy and vaporized by their leader Xemu some 75 million years ago, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is a treasury of self-help humor, replete with screwball explanations for such things as constipation (which, by the way, "can be caused or cured by positive suggestion with remarkable speed and facility"), gays and lesbians ("The sexual pervert ... is actually quite ill physically") and even the common douche bag (not a recommended tool for abortion).

Of course the funniest part of Scientology is the "auditing" machine, which looks rather like a lie detector, is available in a fine mahogany case and provides endless hours of electrode-pasting entertainment at otherwise dull suburban shindigs. The so-called E-meter (short for "electrometer") offers "spiritual rehabilitation" by purging the soul of the karmic weight of 75 million years of onerous alien influence--while apparently restoring digestive regularity.

When one completes the prescribed cycle of E-meter audits, he is considered "clear," and supposedly free to make (deservedly) career-killing films like Battlefield Earth--as star Scientologist John Travolta recently did, much to the chagrin of Vinny Barbarino purists everywhere.

To be fair, Hubbard infused the 1982 tome on which Battlefield is based with the selfsame humorous conceits as the comedic masterwork that is Scientology itself. But sadly, since his supposed death in 1986, Hubbard's increasingly mainstream comic heirs have simply run out of new material.

Don't get me wrong. Battlefield Earth does have its funny moments. That is, if Dianetics still does it for you, humor-wise.

Strangely, though nearly all the planet's movie reviewers have been quick to deny so much as an inkling of artistic merit in Battlefield Earth, an overwhelming majority of them have just as swiftly dashed the flick's oft-assumed role as a (possibly subliminal) tool for attracting fresh comic blood to Scientology's depleted humor reserves.

God only knows why. You'd really have to be a moron to miss the heady Dianetics parallels.

So even if you didn't spend your adolescence holed up in darkened rooms staging elaborate fantasy games with fellow future sociopaths, Battlefield Earth should strike some primal chord. The plot is simple: It's the year 3000 (which is, apparently, a lot like the year 1000, and probably not all that different from 75 million years ago, when those pesky aliens hijacked our souls), and man is facing extinction.

As if the flailing earthlings don't have enough problems, along comes a dreadlocked posse of Psychlos--led by a rancid-looking Travolta--to finish the job. But first, Travolta, like a hirsute L. Ron, commands the earthlings to scare up the last of Earth's gold for his personal reserves. (It's good to know gold holds its value beyond the galaxy.)

How does he get the scrappy "man animals" to go along with his fiendish plan? Simple--by strapping them into the "knowledge machine," a simple reeducation device that, like a futuristic E-meter, infuses its unwilling recipients with the ability to understand the aliens' language, along with some rudimentary geometry (which, you'll be glad to learn, will finally come in handy in the year 3000).

Battlefield's most inspired moments take the form of Dilbert-type yuks--no doubt intended to tickle the funny bones of a new cubicle-dwelling generation of potential Scientologists.

In a stealthy bit of Dianetics-style mirth, Travolta, the ultimate Psychlo company man, threatens his subordinates with retribution from the "corporation"'s dreaded "home office." It's a high point for an otherwise uninspired hunk of subliminal celluloid.

So why is it that despite the squeaky-clean, collectively reeducated brainpower of Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the madcap traveling comedy revue Hubbard kicked off in 1950 with Dianetics' first print run has since become as tired as a Jerry Lewis telethon?