L. Ron Hubbard + Leni Riefenstahl = ?
May 30, 2021 4:55 PM Subscribe
For that matter I didn't know Hubbard was pro-apartheid and also knocking around then-Rhodesia. Lovely.He also maintained that he was Cecil Rhodes reincarnated and would recover gold and diamonds he had buried in his past life.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 7:40 PM on May 30, 2021 [7 favorites]
> For that matter I didn't know Hubbard was pro-apartheid and also knocking around then-Rhodesia.
I didn't know that specifically, but it's not like one would have to scratch at Scientology dogma too hard to find master-race subtext, so this isn't surprising.
posted by at by at 7:50 PM on May 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
I didn't know that specifically, but it's not like one would have to scratch at Scientology dogma too hard to find master-race subtext, so this isn't surprising.
posted by at by at 7:50 PM on May 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
Possibly the most important part about this is that Paul Verhoeven's (awful, amazing) version of Starship Troopers has a very literal visual quote of Leni Riefenstahl right at the beginning (no side-by-side YouTubes are available, BECAUSE NAZIS). Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is an AMAZING, $100 million subversion and mocking of HubbardHeinlein's fascist intent, where he basically set studio money on fire because studios loved HubbardHeinlein's fascism and couldn't imagine a mainstream, $100 million sci-fi flick that was like "ha ha, all of your ideas are terrible and racist."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:21 PM on May 30, 2021 [25 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:21 PM on May 30, 2021 [25 favorites]
L. Ron Hubbard didn't write Starship Troopers.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 8:23 PM on May 30, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 8:23 PM on May 30, 2021 [13 favorites]
Ugh, my bad, but honestly, same.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:30 PM on May 30, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:30 PM on May 30, 2021 [6 favorites]
There ain't no such thing as a free stress test (TANSTAAFST)
posted by condour75 at 8:43 PM on May 30, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 8:43 PM on May 30, 2021 [13 favorites]
where he basically set studio money on fire
Sony Pictures was changing management at the time, so Verhoeven was able to get away with a lot as bosses changed seats.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:01 PM on May 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sony Pictures was changing management at the time, so Verhoeven was able to get away with a lot as bosses changed seats.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:01 PM on May 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's not a coincidence to associate Robert Heinlein here; he moved in the same circles. Connoisseurs of Weird L. Ron Hubbard Stories will remember Jack Parsons (one of the founders of the JPL and American rocketry), who involved both Hubbard and Heinlein in black magic ['magick'] practices, the OTO and Thelema, during and after the Second World War in California. The egotistical, self-centred philosophy of that Crowleyan tradition probably influenced both writers as much as anything else, and Stranger in a Strange Land is commonly understood to be anti-religious in a Crowleyan way.
L. Ron Hubbard stole a sum of money from Parsons, and ran away with his girlfriend Betty, who Jack imagined to be a reincarnation of the Whore of Babylon—in Carter's Sex and Rockets there's a compelling retelling of a magickal ceremony Parsons undertook either to bring Betty back, or to curse Hubbard, or both; and there was indeed a storm that damaged Hubbard's yacht. Everyone underestimates the influence of weird occult shit going on, it's almost a 20thC history rule of thumb.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:20 PM on May 30, 2021 [31 favorites]
L. Ron Hubbard stole a sum of money from Parsons, and ran away with his girlfriend Betty, who Jack imagined to be a reincarnation of the Whore of Babylon—in Carter's Sex and Rockets there's a compelling retelling of a magickal ceremony Parsons undertook either to bring Betty back, or to curse Hubbard, or both; and there was indeed a storm that damaged Hubbard's yacht. Everyone underestimates the influence of weird occult shit going on, it's almost a 20thC history rule of thumb.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:20 PM on May 30, 2021 [31 favorites]
Let's not forget that during WW2 Hubbard wash cashiered from his command after he attacked Mexico (by mistake)
posted by mbo at 9:58 PM on May 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by mbo at 9:58 PM on May 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
I didn't know that specifically, but it's not like one would have to scratch at Scientology dogma too hard to find master-race subtext, so this isn't surprising.
"Springtime for Xe?u and Teegeeack..." Looks like Mel can get one more squeeze out of the lemon that is "The Producers". And then there's this gem... (Go Team MeFi!)
posted by zaixfeep at 11:08 PM on May 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
"Springtime for Xe?u and Teegeeack..." Looks like Mel can get one more squeeze out of the lemon that is "The Producers". And then there's this gem... (Go Team MeFi!)
posted by zaixfeep at 11:08 PM on May 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
Ironically, Parsons wrote Science Fiction and blew himself up.
Frederick Seidel in 'My Tokyo' wrote a poem, 'Pol Pot' mainly about Riefenstahl.
"Leni schussed from motion pictures
To still photography after the war.
From the Aryan ideal,
climbed out.
In Africa to shoot the wild shy people of Kau...,"
posted by clavdivs at 12:06 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Frederick Seidel in 'My Tokyo' wrote a poem, 'Pol Pot' mainly about Riefenstahl.
"Leni schussed from motion pictures
To still photography after the war.
From the Aryan ideal,
climbed out.
In Africa to shoot the wild shy people of Kau...,"
posted by clavdivs at 12:06 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Fiasco da Gama: "Carter's Sex and Rockets there's a compelling retelling of a magickal ceremony Parsons undertook either to bring Betty back, or to curse Hubbard, or both; and there was indeed a storm that damaged Hubbard's yacht."
I just finished this (weird, clumsy, wonderful) book last night and what stood out for me about L Ron Hubbard is just what a criminal grifter he was from the get-go. I mean, even Aleister Crowley was on to him:
In addition, at the time of the explosion Parsons was not the “high priest,” since, as early as January 1946, Crowley wrote a letter naming a successor to Parsons. Indeed, by October of the year Crowley had become disillusioned with Parsons and wrote to Culling, “About J.W. P. [Parsons]—all that I can say is that I am sorry—I feel sure that he had fine ideas, but he was led astray firstly by Smith, then he was robbed of his last penny by a confidence man named Hubbard.”
posted by chavenet at 1:00 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
I just finished this (weird, clumsy, wonderful) book last night and what stood out for me about L Ron Hubbard is just what a criminal grifter he was from the get-go. I mean, even Aleister Crowley was on to him:
In addition, at the time of the explosion Parsons was not the “high priest,” since, as early as January 1946, Crowley wrote a letter naming a successor to Parsons. Indeed, by October of the year Crowley had become disillusioned with Parsons and wrote to Culling, “About J.W. P. [Parsons]—all that I can say is that I am sorry—I feel sure that he had fine ideas, but he was led astray firstly by Smith, then he was robbed of his last penny by a confidence man named Hubbard.”
posted by chavenet at 1:00 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
a-also, for those who lack a way to read the Daily Beast, I used an e-meter to liberate an archive version
posted by chavenet at 1:03 AM on May 31, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 1:03 AM on May 31, 2021 [11 favorites]
Being a Nazi is like being a pigfucker. It doesn't matter what you use the other 70 or so years of your life doing, that is what you will be remembered for.
posted by acb at 2:37 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by acb at 2:37 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
It’s worth thinking that the Scientology compound in Gilman Springs, CA is “Golden Era Productions” - an attempt by Hubbard to have the Sea Org go into movie-making. They mostly do promotional stuff to sell the money making scam religion, but this story makes sense given Hubbard’s pretensions to filmmaking and his affinity for Hollywood.
posted by graymouser at 5:06 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by graymouser at 5:06 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Also on the Heinlein/Hubbard nexus, it is noted in passing (in volume 1 of William Patterson's Heinlein biography) that Hubbard had an affair with Heinlein's wife (not Virginia Heinlein, who wasn't part of the scene at that time).
Anent the "Heinlein was a fascist" accusations that keep coming up, especially wrt. Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie): it's Complicated. In the 1930s, Heinlein was a soft socialist—considered sufficiently left wing that he wasn't recalled for active duty in the Navy during WW2. After marrying Virginia his views gradually shifted to the right, albeit with libertarian leanings rather than paleoconservative. But to muddy the waters, Heinlein was always happy to pick up a bonkers ideological shibboleth and run with it: he was sufficiently flexible to write from the first person PoV of unreliable/misguided narrators.
In Starship Troopers he was doing something indirect: writing a war novel loosely based on WW2, but which has a subtext all about the ideological awakening of his protagonist, everyman Johnny Rico (note: not many white American SF writers would have picked a hispanic hero for a novel in the 1950s). And it's about how Rico deals with the moral quandary of how to exist in a universe populated by existential threats with which peaceful coexistence is impossible. The political framework Heinlein dreamed up for his human population—voting rights as a quid pro quo for military service—isn't that far from the early Roman Republic, although it's presented as something new: rather, he's presenting it as a solution to how to run a polity in a state of total war without losing democratic accountability.
... And then the annoying right wing Heinlein Mil-SF stans come along and embrace Starship Troopers as an idealized fascist utopia with the permanent war of All against All, missing the point completely ...
... And then Verhoeven comes along and produces a movie that riffs off the wank fantasies of the Mil-SF stans and their barely-concealed fascist misinterpretation, and I can't even can't even
(Sorry 'bout the rant: we now return to your regular scheduled L. Ron Hubbard v. Leni Reifenstahl match, and I just want to leave you wondering: what would Starship Troopers have looked like if it had been directed by Fritz Lang, with Reifenstahl in charge of the cameras?)
posted by cstross at 5:35 AM on May 31, 2021 [54 favorites]
Anent the "Heinlein was a fascist" accusations that keep coming up, especially wrt. Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie): it's Complicated. In the 1930s, Heinlein was a soft socialist—considered sufficiently left wing that he wasn't recalled for active duty in the Navy during WW2. After marrying Virginia his views gradually shifted to the right, albeit with libertarian leanings rather than paleoconservative. But to muddy the waters, Heinlein was always happy to pick up a bonkers ideological shibboleth and run with it: he was sufficiently flexible to write from the first person PoV of unreliable/misguided narrators.
In Starship Troopers he was doing something indirect: writing a war novel loosely based on WW2, but which has a subtext all about the ideological awakening of his protagonist, everyman Johnny Rico (note: not many white American SF writers would have picked a hispanic hero for a novel in the 1950s). And it's about how Rico deals with the moral quandary of how to exist in a universe populated by existential threats with which peaceful coexistence is impossible. The political framework Heinlein dreamed up for his human population—voting rights as a quid pro quo for military service—isn't that far from the early Roman Republic, although it's presented as something new: rather, he's presenting it as a solution to how to run a polity in a state of total war without losing democratic accountability.
... And then the annoying right wing Heinlein Mil-SF stans come along and embrace Starship Troopers as an idealized fascist utopia with the permanent war of All against All, missing the point completely ...
... And then Verhoeven comes along and produces a movie that riffs off the wank fantasies of the Mil-SF stans and their barely-concealed fascist misinterpretation, and I can't even can't even
(Sorry 'bout the rant: we now return to your regular scheduled L. Ron Hubbard v. Leni Reifenstahl match, and I just want to leave you wondering: what would Starship Troopers have looked like if it had been directed by Fritz Lang, with Reifenstahl in charge of the cameras?)
posted by cstross at 5:35 AM on May 31, 2021 [54 favorites]
Sounds like a Kim Newman story, cstross.
posted by doctornemo at 6:05 AM on May 31, 2021
posted by doctornemo at 6:05 AM on May 31, 2021
Interesting to think how both Riefenstahl and Hubbard developed parallel habits of hurling lawyers at anyone they deemed to be hostile.
posted by doctornemo at 6:06 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 6:06 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
given Hubbard’s pretensions to filmmaking and his affinity for Hollywood
On a tangent, I recall reading that the soundtrack recording of the Tom Cruise film Far And Away used some kind of device patented by Hubbard.
posted by acb at 6:09 AM on May 31, 2021
On a tangent, I recall reading that the soundtrack recording of the Tom Cruise film Far And Away used some kind of device patented by Hubbard.
posted by acb at 6:09 AM on May 31, 2021
....not many white American SF writers would have picked a hispanic hero for a novel in the 1950s
Even less one who was filipino.
posted by y2karl at 7:12 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
Even less one who was filipino.
posted by y2karl at 7:12 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
Verhoeven making a 100-million-dollar blockbuster movie based on an alleged misinterpretation of a book with an unreliable narrator, and selling that movie with an intentional misrepresentation of what it's actually about is the most beautifully postmodern thing I've heard in a long time.
posted by sixohsix at 8:05 AM on May 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by sixohsix at 8:05 AM on May 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
This is my not at all surprised face.
I think I'll have to see if I can order my thoughts before I comment more, but it makes sense that two racist self-important seducers would find each other. Thanks for posting, it is an interesting read.
posted by mumimor at 9:04 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I think I'll have to see if I can order my thoughts before I comment more, but it makes sense that two racist self-important seducers would find each other. Thanks for posting, it is an interesting read.
posted by mumimor at 9:04 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is probably the wrong place to ask, but many years ago, I read a Fritz Leiber short story that was intended as a sendup of L Ron Hubbard and Scientology (would have been roughly contemporaneous with the creation of the cult), but can't remember what it was called. Does this ring any bells?
posted by adamrice at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by adamrice at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Sorry to seem so abrupt but I am lying in bed and tapping on my phone with one finger, so I tend towards brevity. I must say that my appreciation of Fritz Leiber has risen of late.
In his honor, may I add his most ailurophilic
Space-Time for Springers
posted by y2karl at 9:54 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
In his honor, may I add his most ailurophilic
Space-Time for Springers
posted by y2karl at 9:54 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
a-also, for those who lack a way to read the Daily Beast, I used an e-meter to liberate an archive versionMy wallet and I are interested in this e-meter you have. Can anyone help me get clear on how it works, preferably in a closed room with high pressure sales tactics?
posted by chavenet at 3:03 AM on May 31 [7 favorites +] [!]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 10:46 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Peep Show vs. Scientology
Featuring the great line: "Hardback book, based on tablets brought by an asteroid -- something you can rely on."
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:19 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Featuring the great line: "Hardback book, based on tablets brought by an asteroid -- something you can rely on."
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:19 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Hardcore Poser: "My wallet and I are interested in this e-meter you have. Can anyone help me get clear on how it works,"
It uses e-metics for the full purgative effect, in particular on your wallet. And then blames it on the alien invader you were in a previous life.
posted by chavenet at 1:50 PM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
It uses e-metics for the full purgative effect, in particular on your wallet. And then blames it on the alien invader you were in a previous life.
posted by chavenet at 1:50 PM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Turner Classic Movies has, very rarely, run both Triumph Of The Wills and Olympiad, and so I've seen them. And Riefenstahl really is a genius with the camera. I guess she did an underwater non-narrative documentary very late in her life, but I haven't seen that.
I had never heard of Das blaues Licht before. The plot sounds sort of... incomprehensible? Maybe it works better on the screen.
The entanglement with Hubbard is a thing I'd never heard of before, but on seeing this post I sort of thought "of course they did". I'm a bit sad they never actually did anything of note together because that could be a brilliant horribleness worth looking at.
Hubbard's Fear is worth reading, IMO. I've read Battlefield Earth, which is much better than the movie, but is sort of also pointless because the plot reaches a great end point, but then UNEXPECTEDPLOTTWIST happens and so you get another 150 pages at which point the plot reaches a great end point, but then...
And so on for like 900 pages. But it's a fun read. Much better than the movie. Like, seriously, it's not great, but it is SO MUCH NOT THE MOVIE.
Anyway, Hubbard seems to be a weird nexus of charisma and megalomania and invention and knowedge-of-the-public for exactly his place in time and space. What he did should not generally have been possible, but he kept on doing it. A lot of charlatanism and misplaced trust going on there. I guess, if you have those gifts, you use them. Not always for good.
I think the world got screwed out of Riefenstahl's visionary talent, but largely because she herself made bad choices. I would have loved to see what she might have created if she'd been given the chance. I don't argue with why she wasn't allowed. But in another timeline she had decades to explore and expand on her already pretty amazing vision of what could happen to make filming different.
Fritz Lang + Leni Riefenstahl + LRH is an interesting thing to contemplate...
posted by hippybear at 4:22 PM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
I had never heard of Das blaues Licht before. The plot sounds sort of... incomprehensible? Maybe it works better on the screen.
The entanglement with Hubbard is a thing I'd never heard of before, but on seeing this post I sort of thought "of course they did". I'm a bit sad they never actually did anything of note together because that could be a brilliant horribleness worth looking at.
Hubbard's Fear is worth reading, IMO. I've read Battlefield Earth, which is much better than the movie, but is sort of also pointless because the plot reaches a great end point, but then UNEXPECTEDPLOTTWIST happens and so you get another 150 pages at which point the plot reaches a great end point, but then...
And so on for like 900 pages. But it's a fun read. Much better than the movie. Like, seriously, it's not great, but it is SO MUCH NOT THE MOVIE.
Anyway, Hubbard seems to be a weird nexus of charisma and megalomania and invention and knowedge-of-the-public for exactly his place in time and space. What he did should not generally have been possible, but he kept on doing it. A lot of charlatanism and misplaced trust going on there. I guess, if you have those gifts, you use them. Not always for good.
I think the world got screwed out of Riefenstahl's visionary talent, but largely because she herself made bad choices. I would have loved to see what she might have created if she'd been given the chance. I don't argue with why she wasn't allowed. But in another timeline she had decades to explore and expand on her already pretty amazing vision of what could happen to make filming different.
Fritz Lang + Leni Riefenstahl + LRH is an interesting thing to contemplate...
posted by hippybear at 4:22 PM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
I would have loved to see what she might have created if she'd been given the chance.
You did. She had the full resources of the NSDAP and the German state behind her as her artistic patron. She accomplished her creative vision. And it was terrible.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:43 PM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
You did. She had the full resources of the NSDAP and the German state behind her as her artistic patron. She accomplished her creative vision. And it was terrible.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:43 PM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
I can't find the origin of the quote, but the best summary of the Verhoeven controversy to me is "Nobody puts Doogie Howser in an SS uniform by accident".
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:03 AM on June 1, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:03 AM on June 1, 2021 [5 favorites]
Connoisseurs of Weird L. Ron Hubbard Stories will remember Jack Parsons
Hubbard shows up in the final scene of season 2 of CBS' Strange Angel adaptation. Season 3 was sadly canceled, but it could have been great.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 2:13 PM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Hubbard shows up in the final scene of season 2 of CBS' Strange Angel adaptation. Season 3 was sadly canceled, but it could have been great.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 2:13 PM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
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Don't want to derail but the subheadline framing Hubbard and Riefenstahl as "two cultists" sticks in my craw a bit. Scientology is absolutely a cult, sure. But what cult was Riefenstahl involved in? I fear the editor meant Nazism but calling that a mere cult is dangerously reductive. But that's a small part of the piece and not even part of the article that Ortega wrote.
posted by Nelson at 7:00 PM on May 30, 2021 [3 favorites]