Whether or not you’re a devoted watcher like I am, South Park has certainly become one of the adult animation giants of today’s media. From predicting Barack Obama’s election win in 2008 to inspiring the creation of the Nintendo Switch classic Hello Kitty Island Adventure (thank you, Butters), South Park has always been embroiled in current events. However, that means the program is no stranger to controversy.
Take banned episodes like “Scott Tenorman Must Die” or “Band in China,” for example. These stories are often censored because certain groups have moral objections to what’s being shown onscreen.
Prime examples include the infamous episodes “200” and “201,” whose alleged depiction of the prophet Muhammad, a figure whose portrayal in any kind of media is deeply offensive to the Islamic faith, sparked national outrage and even led to riots in Iran.
The episodes’ concepts even led to the show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, receiving death threats from Islamic extremist groups. Stone and Parker portray their off-kilter sense of humor as an exercise in free speech. In the words of Kyle Broflovski, South Park’s veritable moral mouthpiece, “Either it’s all okay, or none of it is.”
One of the most famous instances of Stone and Parker taking this sentiment to the extreme is probably my favorite episode of all time: “Trapped in the Closet.”
In a time when the cult of Scientology had a litigiously iron grip on most of Hollywood, even with members of the South Park cast actually being members of the Church of Scientology (see: the tragedy of Isaac Hayes), South Park had to be exceptionally careful about the nuances with which it approached the religion.
So, what did they do? They took everything literally. The episode’s name, “Trapped in the Closet,” is evocative of this mindset.
For context: a significant portion of L. Ron Hubbard’s — the founder of Scientology and former science-fiction writer — teachings found in Dianetics (their main text) revolve around homophobia, denouncing same-sex relationships as a kind of “sexual perversion,” as evidenced by writer Paul Haggis’ abrupt exit from the group.
Tom Cruise is an incredibly high-up member of the Church of Scientology. At the time of the episode’s release in 2005, Cruise had already sued an adult film actor who went by the name of Chad Slater (AKA Kyle Bradford) for alleging that the two had engaged in a sexual relationship of which video evidence reportedly existed. If Cruise thought he hit rock bottom, “Trapped in the Closet” was waiting with a pickaxe.
By taking the scenarios of the episode literally, Stone and Parker believed they could avoid the flimsy reasoning by which Scientology persecuted its detractors. After all, they didn’t directly say that Cruise could be gay. Rather, the actor spends the 20-minute episode hiding in principal character Stan Marsh’s closet.
With this strategy, Stone and Parker were able to have their characters say that “Tom Cruise won’t come out of the closet” in such a way that Cruise wouldn’t have any defamatory legs to stand on in terms of lawsuits while still poking fun at the actor’s inflated ego.
Hilariously, the reason that Cruise is in the episode in the first place is that Stan is mistaken for the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard upon sneaking into Stan’s room to get the new leader of Scientology’s approval of his acting skills, and because this is South Park. When Stan tells Cruise that he’s “not as good as Leonardo DiCaprio,” he then despairingly locks himself in the boy’s closet.
The hardest-hitting part of South Park’s portrayal of Scientology is undoubtedly when Stan and the audience learn the secrets of the Scientologists together.
In a clip with the caption “this is what Scientologists actually believe,” flashing on the bottom of the screen, Stone and Parker showcase the religion’s core tenets for the alien-infested fever dream it is. Scientology is eventually revealed to be a scam, but not before fellow Scientologists R. Kelly and John Travolta both join Cruise in the closet.
If you watch the credits of the episode, you’ll see that all the creators and actors are listed as “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” so that none of South Park’s employees would be caught up in a legal battle for simply doing their jobs.
The craziest part about this episode, though, is Scientology’s response to its airing. The organization even went so far as to hire private investigators in an attempt to dig up dirt on Stone and Parker. Of course, because all the crazy things they do are already public knowledge, the investigation went nowhere.
As expected, Scientology could do little in the way of retaliation, and its membership experienced a sharp decline that continues to this day. In fact, many former members of Scientology cite “Trapped in the Closet” as one of the straws that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
There are a plethora of videos on YouTube that analyze this episode in much more depth than I was able to with a word constraint; this rabbit hole would put Lewis Carroll to shame. For anyone interested in South Park who doesn’t know where to start in terms of watching, this episode is a great jumping-off point.
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