Matt Stone Is Proud That ‘South Park’ Is So Many Kids’ First Experience with Scientology
Xenu knows how many children have been saved from trauma and indoctrination because South Park got to them before they could be preyed upon by the Super Adventure Club.
Throughout South Park’s long history of religious controversies, no satire of a specific faith has had a larger impact on the world of the show than the 2005 episode “Trapped in the Closet,” when Trey Parker and Matt Stone first set their sights on the Church of Scientology. In the episode, Stan gets taken in by a branch of the Church that promises to rid him of his depression (for a small fee, of course), but, upon measuring his Thetan levels, the Scientologists determine that Stan must be the reincarnation of Church founder L. Ron Hubbard.
Naturally, Stan sniffs out that Scientology is a scam and exposes the Church as a bunch of manipulative con artists, thus infuriating the real-life Church of Scientology and compelling them to seize ailing voice actor Isaac Hayes and remove him from the show (according to Hayes’ son, Isaac Hayes III). Because, when you really look at what Scientologists actually believe, even a kid can figure out that the whole religion is a ruse.
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During a 2011 interview with 60 Minutes, Stone said that he’s glad that, for an entire generation of impressionable young people, their first experience with the Church of Scientology wasn’t from a recruiter pulling them in off the street with promises of healing and community, but from learning what Scientologists actually believe:
“We’d made fun of a lot of religions, and then we finally decided to just make fun of Scientology,” Stone said of the inception of “Trapped in the Closet.” “We felt like, ‘Come on, man, we’ve made fun of everybody!'”
The South Park team famously had to take an abundance of legal precaution in anticipation of a reaction from the famously litigious Church of Scientology — Parker and Stone even struck everyone’s name from the credits, listing each cast and crew member as either John or Jane Smith — but, after treating every other religion to their iconoclastic ridicule, they knew it would be an injustice to comedy to back off of the dangerously fragile Church. While Scientology did, indeed, have a spaceship-sized meltdown about their South Park parody, as Stone gloated to the dismay of Scientology recruiters everywhere, the fallout to “Trapped in the Closet” only increased the general public’s curiosity in the comedic takedown, and it would go on to become one of the most popular and beloved South Park episodes of all time.
“What’s cool about this episode, and what kind of makes us feel good about it is that, a lot of times, the first time a 17-year-old or 18-year-old who is kind of lost walking down Hollywood Boulevard hears about Scientology is when someone walks up with a copy of Dianetics or an e-meter thing,” Stone explained of the dangers Scientology poses to the young and easily influenced. “And now there’s this whole generation who, this was the first time they heard of Scientology, this episode making fun of it. And that’s kind of cool.”
The Church of Scientology can try as they may to sue South Park’s ass and balls, but Scientology will never be able to dislodge them from its cosmic mouth.
