the passions of the Cruise, the ding dong of doubt
Music: Gene Loves Jezebel: Immigrant
As I was completing my Sunday ritual this morning (coffee, Meet the Press with Tim Russert and This Week with George Will, and the Sunday paper), I ran across a short story about Katie Holmes in my favorite section, Newsmakers: the 26 year old Catholic has said "she was taking lessons in the Church of Scientology." Apparently the faux-Faustian bargain struck here is that holstering a top-gun is contingent on agreeing to "the Introspection Rundown" (viz., "regression") in lieu of any form of psychiatric treatment. Scientologists hate psychiatry and most other forms of psychotherapy, preferring instead cathartic methods of treatment (e.g., "breakthroughs" and similar sorts of one-shot, ego-therapeutic behaviorisms).
The short of it is that Tom Cruise already has Katie Holmes, the love of his life, undergoing mind-control techniques. Perhaps this is proof enough that Nicole Kidman's post-Tom flop, the re-make of The Stepford Wives, was much more than coincidence.
It is a curious public romance, to say the least, and it's laughable how closely the media coverage of the events leading up to the marriage proposal so closely parallel the plots of Cruise's action films. Consider Mission Impossible II, which Cruise had a heavy hand in: a strong female character, a high-class thief played by Thandie Newton (hot!), is giving Tom lots of trouble and challenge at the opening of the film. As the plot unfolds Thandie becomes increasingly child-like, her dialogue dwindles. By the end of the film, Tom rescues Thandie and they live happily ever after. If I recall correctly, one of the most beautiful closing shots Woo captured was of Newton standing in a childlike pose in childlike clothes, as an innocent and lost "little girl." The image is beautiful, but it's also terribly infantilizing. The once strong and independent woman is rendered a child. Jump-cut to Holmes, basking in the media spot-light, all smiles but voiceless, taking classes in Scientology and undergoing Introspection Rundowns to make her top-cock even more resolutely phallic (proof that Kidman actually has a brain). Tom Cruise is an idiot playing the happy and guileless all-American alpha-male.
The trouble with Tom is that, well, he's so amusingly and transparently neurotic and scripted. Indeed, he seems so scripted that we may be tempted to describe him as "hysterical." Consider his strange behavior in an interview with Matt Lauer last week on The Today Show.
The typically publicity shy Tom Cruise has been taking the microphone lately in a barrage of Scientology-inspired media events, presumably to promote his new film, the Spielberg remake of The War of the Worlds. Very little, however, is said about the film. Instead, Cruise picks fights by asserting that he knows the truth, that the rest of us are fools:
MATT LAUER: I'm only asking, isn't there a possibility that-- do-- do you examine the possibility that these things [psychoactive drugs] do work for some people? That yes, there are abuses. And yes, maybe they've gone too far in certain areas. Maybe there are too many kids on Ritalin. Maybe electric shock--TOM CRUISE: Too many kids on Ritalin? Matt.
MATT LAUER: I'm just saying. But-- but aren't there--
TOM CRUISE: Matt.
MATT LAUER: --examples where it works?
TOM CRUISE: Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even-- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is.// //if you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay. That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's-- where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?
MATT LAUER: You're-- you're-- it's very impressive to listen to you. Because clearly, you've done the homework. And-- and you know the subject.
This is the point of the interview when I decided to stop disliking Matt Lauer and to see him as the genius that he is. "Gee, Tom, you seem so smart, so well read on this subject; I'm learning so much! Tell me more!" My God this was a brilliant move: if you stroke the penis with just a hint of teeth, the obsessive will try to fuck you.
TOM CRUISE: And you should.
MATT LAUER: And-- and--
TOM CRUISE: And you should do that also.
MATT LAUER: And--
TOM CRUISE: Because just knowing people who are on Ritalin isn't enough. //you should be a little bit more responsible in knowing really--
MATT LAUER: I'm not prescribing Ritalin, Tom. And I'm not asking--
TOM CRUISE: Well--
MATT LAUER: --anyone else to do it. I'm simply saying--
(OVERTALK)
TOM CRUISE: Well, you are. You're saying--
MATT LAUER: I know some people who seem to have been helped by it.
TOM CRUISE: I-- but you're saying-- but you-- like-- this is a very important issue.
MATT LAUER: I couldn't agree more.
TOM CRUISE: It's very-- and you know what? You're here on the Today Show.
MATT LAUER: Right.
TOM CRUISE: And to talk about it in a way of saying, "Well, isn't it okay," and being reasonable about it when you don't know and I do, I think that you should be a little bit more responsible in knowing what it is.
MATT LAUER: But--
TOM CRUISE: Because you-- you communicate to people.
MATT LAUER: But you're now telling me that your experiences with the people I know, which are zero, are more important than my experiences.
TOM CRUISE: What do you mean by that?
MATT LAUER: You're telling me what's worked for people I know or hasn't worked for people I know. // I'm telling you I've lived with these people and they're better.
TOM CRUISE: So, you're-- you're advocating it.
MATT LAUER: I am not. I'm telling you in their case-- (LAUGHTER)
(OVERTALK)
Apparently Tom Cruise, the dyslexic high school drop-out who made his name by wearing sun-glasses and dancing in his underwear as a call boy for an older woman in the risqué art cinema masterpiece, Risky Business, is in the position to educate the world about the proper route to sound mental health.
Tom Cruise is Michael Jackson in reverse. The man who is "in control" is the hysteric wearing an obsessive's mask; the man who is out of control, desperately yearning for the love he never received as a boy, is the more authentic fascist.
Although I’m very far from an expert on Scientology, my past research on this "new religion" leads me to conclude Cruise believes (or has been told to believe, though he will take credit for the telling, as if he told it to himself) he has reached a new level of spiritual awareness. This characteristic display of guileless good-natured-ness has exploded into a kind of confident arrogance that typical of the values embraced by Scientology. More than evangelical religious belief systems, Scientology is the quintessential "American" religious system, built almost exclusively on individualism: all mental problems, indeed, all problems in life, are not the consequence of structural or biological disadvantage, but spiritual misalignment. The road to healing is, predictably, all about soul-repair, basic ego-psychology with a lot of science-fiction and goofy terms thrown in for good measure. Except for the part when you are told the human race was seeded by aliens, Scientology is, as Althusser might say, the Religion of Interpellation On a Stick. Well, that's actually Christianity. So, maybe it's better said that Scientology is the Religion of the Self-Possessed Alpha-Male. Indeed, I think the story goes that Hubbard made up Scientology as a bet with a buddy on who could invent the better religion (probably on a boat with a six pack in the cooler).
Which reminds me: Ah, yes, Louisiana is Sportman's Paradise. A rifle, day-glo camoflage, and shooting shit until the sun comes down. Now THAT IS BLISS.
Can anyone make this shit up? Maybe it is all programmed by our Alien Slave Masters! It's simply fascinating (and, yes, saving me from packing!). Based on Hollywood fantasy-logic, here's my prediction for the Katie, currently undergoing the same kind of patriarchical psychical make-over that Jennifer Wilbanks is enduring: a year from now, at the significant age of 27, Holmes will realize that, however smart the career-move, she has just married one giant cock: it thinks it does what it wants on its own terms (it's actually on cultural autopilot); it's job is simply and merely to look pretty and fuck things (up) from time to time in the service of the "Same as it Ever Was." Like Wilbanks when she ran, and Kidman when she divorced, Holmes will have a flash of feeling and a hear the ding-dong of doubt; no one can live with hysteric that long. And then, in the words of the new pop giants, the Kaiser Chiefs, "I predict a riot."