Scientology, Dawson’s Creek, older women … what really happened in the TomKat marriage?
Any marriage, that is, except one that involves Tom Cruise. And that is because Cruise, as everyone knows, is an alien. An evil alien. Come on, we all know it. Seriously, just try to imagine Cruise naked. See? It is literally impossible to imagine him any other way but with a smooth plastic groin, as genital-free as a Ken doll. That is because, despite being blessed with a face that came straight from the Handsome Factory, this is purely a mask (literally, from the Handsome Factory) and, despite its skilfully elasticated nature, this mask may stop Cruise ever ageing but it cannot disguise his inherently creepy, his inherently alien nature. And you know what? Tom really won’t mind me saying that. In fact, he’d probably say something similar himself, seeing as he is – as you may have heard – a devout Scientologist and, as well as believing things such as that the only reason people follow any religions other than Scientology is because 75 billion years ago their souls were brainwashed after being forced to watch a “three-D, super colossal motion picture” for 36 days (and to be fair to Scientology, that does sound like my idea of hell), Scientologists claim that a person is not a person but, in fact, an extraterrestrial, or thetan. So it’s not like I’m insulting him here or anything. Although he might object to the evil bit. And the whole genital-free thing. Sorry about that, Tom. Loved you in Magnolia!
The only thing the tabloids adore more than a rumoured celebrity pregnancy is a good ol’ celebrity divorce and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s “shocking split”, as People magazine adorably described it, was always going to be a doozy. While the People magazine offices are presumably still in a state of “shock”, as silent as a Scientologist mother giving birth who is biting back her screams of pain so as “not to traumatise the baby”, the reaction of others is more akin to the tone conveyed by one headline on the gossip website Gawker: “Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes Divorcing Because They Couldn’t Fake Being in Love Forever and Plus She’s Not a Dude.”
Scientology may, ultimately, be no wackier in its beliefs than any mainstream religion but the image around it, fanned by articles such as the one that appeared in the New Yorker last year detailing screenwriter’s Paul Haggis eventual abandonment of the beliefs, certainly make it seem weirder. (Heck, even Rupert Murdoch finds Scientologists “creepy, maybe even evil”, which feels a little like the death of irony.)
Combine that with the “Save Katie” campaign that began before their improbable marriage (honestly, where’s Pacey when you need him, eh?), her seemingly constant pained (IMPRISONED???? BRAINWASHED?????) expression and the inherent weirdness of Cruise and you’ve got more conspiracy theories than a lifetime of drunken ramblings from Oliver Stone.
Within mere hours of the divorce announcement, such theories were springing up on the internet, an environment that encourages conspiracists like damp encourages moss. But how to keep them all straight? And how to discern the completely ridiculous from the completely ridiculous but probably true? Allow me to guide you with my expertise knowledge, which is just as reliable and in-the-know as anyone else spouting off about this in the papers:
1. Katie couldn’t take being controlled by psycho Tom any more and ran away in the dead of night to rip her high heels-wearing daughter from the evil claws of Scientology
Well, it certainly sounds and looks plausible. But it also sounds a little like the plot of that 1991 piece of cinematic ridiculousness, Not Without My Daughter, a film not coy with its racism, starring Sally Field in a permanently anguished expression. So there’s that, too.
2. Tom doesn’t like women over the age of 33
All of Tom’s three marriages have all ended when his wife was 33. Which was also the age Jesus died. So maybe each of Tom’s wives was Jesus? No, that’s ridiculous – Jesus would never have co-starred in Far and Away, never mind Jack and Jill. Anyway, more relevantly (maybe), the number 33 is significant in Scientology because it is known as the “Master Teacher” (and why not, right?), which “represents altruism and raising mankind’s positive energy in numerology”. What that has to do with divorce, which is not known for being full of “positive energy”, is anyone’s guess.
Not only that, but each wife was born 11 years after the previous one: Holmes was born in 1978, Nicole Kidman in ’67 and Mimi Rogers in ’56. So Hollywood starlets born in ’89, your time has come, you lucky, lucky ladies! Taylor Swift, I’m winking at you
3. James van der Beek put his foot down
Seriously, Joey Potter, enough of this already! You were supposed to be with Dawson, then you went off with Pacey, then you went really off piste and ran off with that movie star guy from outta town. And as everyone who watches TV knows, you should never go with the out-of-towner. Seriously, was I the only one who paid attention to that Ross and Emily plot in Friends? So now, at last, we can finally have that Dawson’s Creek reunion some of us have been waiting far too long for (you know Tom would never have allowed his wife to go back to the Creek). Joey and Dawson can finally get married and have meaningful talks on the porch until the end of time and, with Tom loved up with Taylor Swift, it would be happy endings all round!
