Scientology

Outline

Prescribed question:
How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?

Title of text for analysis: The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power, written by Richard Behar in ‘The Time’ magazine in 1991.

The represented social group: Scientologists (They are considered as a social group in this task, because Scientologists all have a very strong sense of unity with each other, share the same norms and values and have the same goals).

Task is related to course section: Part 2, Language and mass communication

My critical response will:

-        Introduce the social group, and the view that one has of them due to the media, with the analyzed article as an example.

-        Show how Richard Behar creates a biased view on the Scientologists due to his use of exaggeration.

-        Point out that Richard Behar uses biased language in order to reinforce the idea that the Scientologists and their belief are bad.

-        Show that Richard Behar tells shocking stories, including his own experience with Scientology, in order to persuade the reader that the Scientologists are wrong.

Over the past few years, the Scientologists, a social group that supports the relatively new religion created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, have grown into a cult among the American citizens. Nowadays, when one hears the word ‘Scientology’, it is automatically referred to as a crazy and absurd religion. How did this come so far? Perhaps the media is the answer to that. This new and fascination religion did not only catch the citizen’s eyes, but also the American media. However, the media is not so fond about the Scientologists. ‘The thriving cult of greed and power’, written by U.S. investigative journalist Richard Behar in 1991, is a long, critical article about the Scientologist and their belief. It was first published by Time magazine on the sixth of May in 1991. In this article Behar portrays the Scientologists as a threatening group that masquerades as a religion by his use of exaggeration, biased language and shocking stories in order to warn his readers for Scientology.

First of all, Behar starts off his article with the line ‘Ruined lives. Lost fortunes. Federal crimes. Scientology poses as a religion but really is a ruthless global scam - and aiming for the mainstream’.  It is directly clear that Behar uses exaggeration in order to grab the reader’s attention and to show his disapproval of the Church of Scientology. Behar uses this form of exaggeration throughout the article, but the focus mainly lies at the beginning, when Behar talks about the suicide of Noah Lottick: ‘When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in cash, virtually the only money he hadn't turned over to the Church of Scientology, the self-help "philosophy" group he had discovered just seven months earlier.’ Here, Behar adds drama by saying that Noah lost almost all his money due to Scientology, almost claiming he committed suicide because of it. Also the fact that Behar tells this story at the very beginning of his article, even before explaining what Scientologist actually believe in, gives the reader immediately a bad image of the group.