TV Review: South Park - "Trapped in the Closet" Photo Gallery Notes
Published March 23, 2006
But watching it closely, Stan does NOT "hate" Tom Cruise's acting, as it's sometimes been said in stories about the episode. It's the best attack on his ridiculous celebrity insecurities that the lukewarm response "You're not, like, as good as Leonardo D'Caprio, but you're okay" was all it took to crush his little ego so completely. It would be someone with that much ridiculous insecurity that would be drawn into foolishness like Scientology.
Rolling backwards and forwards through this episode, it dawned on me to actually hunt down the R. Kelly song "Trapped in the Closet." I haven't yet figured out just how many parts of this damned thing there are, but holy jumpin' Jebus, this thing is cheesy. I got the 20+ minute video of the first part of the story.
What's really funniest now about the R. Kelly stuff is how little they embellished this for the South Park show. In fact, the high drama of the actual R. Kelly video — and just the first part of it is about the length of this entire episode — is FAR more ridiculous than what Parker and Stone are doing. He's hiding in some woman's closet because her husband has shown up unexpectedly. Then the husband responds by bringing in his boyfriend. After that, it starts to get cheesy.
In fact, this South Park image is actually less ridiculous than the R Kelly video. About the time the gay boyfriend is getting all up in the mix, the real R. Kelly is whipping out his gun, saying, "Man, it's getting scary, I'm gonna shoot somebody." Note that in his video, he's the only one wielding a weapon, so he's presenting as if he's scared enough of the husband and his gay boyfriend to be thinking about shooting someone. The South Park version of R. Kelly seems distinctly less absurd than his real video (let alone his actual life) — a realization that makes both South Park and R. Kelly seem funnier.
So I've gotten a lot of mileage while I'm working on this stuff listening to the R. Kelly video and the trimmed down ten minute audio installment of "Trapped in the Closet" again and again. For contrast, try mixing it back and forth with the similarly themed Elvis Costello recording of the Dave Bartholomew song "That's How You Got Killed Before."
- TV Review: South Park - "Trapped in the Closet" Photo Gallery Notes
- Published: March 23, 2006
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Television, Video: Comedy, Video: Animation, Review, Culture: Humor and Satire, Culture: Education
- Writer: Al Barger
- Al Barger's BC Writer page
- Al Barger's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
The Wikipedia version of the Xenu story is the correct one, though South Park was very close. Critics of the cult have for a long while been handing out copies of the 'Xenu leaflet' at pickets:
The 'THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE' message is actually untrue. Most cult members don't know, or nowadays believe they have to pretend they don't know, the Xenu story. It's a *secret* that if they were told without thousands of dollars of preparation would ruin their chance of immortality, forever.
The cult has spent millions of dollars trying to keep the story secret. Here's their http://www.daisy.freeserve.co.uk/stolgy_14.htmstandard lawyer's letter:
You wrote:"
Now, I've noticed one little discrepancy. The South Park version of the story has Xenu dropping frozen souls INTO the hot Hawaiian volcano, whereas another version of the story on Wikipedia would have it that he dropped the souls AROUND the volcanoes, and then used nuclear weapons on them."
In 1995 I was the guy that posted the xenu story to the net and then Scientology spent $1,740,000 suing me. See the FAQ page at my homepage.
Though I am under an injuction to not make copies of what Scientology describes as their "ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY" allow me to fix this one small error in South Park's rendition.
A proper rendtion of the section about the implant stations goes something like this:
After stacking up the frozen corpses of the captured spirits around volcanoes, Hydrogen bombs were dropped on the volcanoes, and in the resulting maelstrom, an electronic ribbon came up from the implant station, capturing all the spirits and drawing them down into the implant station, where they were then forced to watch lousy movies.. ( pictures of how earth society looks today - Hubbard makes his rubes think this is why architecture etc is the way it is ) and packaged up into clusters and these clusters are stuck all over you, and for $360,000 Scientology can get rid of them fo you.
Any Questions?
Sincerely
Arnie Lerma
Lermanet.comExposing the CON
"The dispute in this case surrounds Lerma's acquisition and publication on the Internet of texts that the Church of Scientology considers sacred and protects heavily from unauthorized disclosure. Founded by L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientology religion attempts to explain the origin of negative spiritual forces in the world and advances techniques for improving one's own spiritual well-being. Scientologists believe that most human problems can be traced to lingering spirits of an extraterrestrial people massacred by their ruler, Xenu, over 75 million years ago. These spirits attach themselves by "clusters" to individuals in the contemporary world, causing spiritual harm and negatively influencing the lives of their hosts "
A recent radio show from March 29th about this and South Park is HERE mp3 29 meg
Arnie- "$360,000 Scientology can get rid of them fo you." Can L Ron's boys do anything about Manbearpig?
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/45387)
Did you notice that no one used thier real name in the credits?