Disturbing Behavior and Sinister Forces -- Katie Holmes' Wake-up Call

Katie Holmes:  Gavin thinks some sinister force has taken over the Cradle Bay meatheads.

James Marsden:  A sinister force?

Katie Holmes: You know, evil. Nowhere to turn, no one to trust, altogether ooky.

--  from Disturbing Behavior (1998)

The TNT Network aired this otherwise forgettable film on Saturday morning.  Bleary-eyed,  I had just finished drinking what passed for coffee to jump start my frayed nervous system after a series of late nights spent researching another book, approving some text for the Spanish language edition of Unholy Alliance (coming out this summer), and compiling data on bureaucratic iniquity (a full time job, that).  Mindlessly, I turned on the mind-control device – I mean, the television –  to see if I could, once again, defeat its nefarious designs on my neuro-circuitry and what do I see?  A weird credits reel at the beginning of a film I had never heard of (I was out of the country when it opened in a handful of theaters to lukewarm reception), and the barely-legible title, Disturbing Behavior.   The credits were easily the best part of the film.  Except, you know, for that bit about the “sinister force” … and the Addams Family reference …

In this teensploitation offering, James Marsden plays Steve, a newcomer to the Washington State village of Cradle Bay.   His family has relocated there from Chicago after the suicide of Steve’s brother by self-inflicted gunshot wound.  The town of Cradle Bay seems bucolic enough until Steve’s first day at high school during which he meets Katie Holmes, looking like a dazed Gothess of seventeen-going-on-forty.  He also meets a gang of short-haired, neatly-groomed, blue-jacketed teens who form a kind of elitist clique at the school.  Stepford Sons and Daughters, basically.  Robotized teens who have been programmed by a guidance counselor via surgical implants and Clockwork Orange-style visual aids, beamed into their eyes with mad-doctor-like glee.

James and Katie must find a way to save themselves and the town – especially the other teens – from this horrible menace.  The town is all in favor of the “Blue Ribbons” as the Stepford Students call themselves, because it has meant a gross reduction in drunk driving, graffiti, angst, suicidal depression, heavy metal, pot-smoking, Star Trek allusions, and other forms of vandalism and creative disorder. 

Katie Holmes won an MTV Award for Best Breakout Performance in 1999 for this film.  (I keep wondering what she broke out of.)  Here she portrays an alienated teenaged girl, referred to as a trailer-park “slut” by other teens, who is eventually abducted by the Blue Ribbons so they can transform her into one of them, only to be rescued at the last moment by the Marsden character.  The only ones doing drugs in this film are the misfits, the ones targeted by the Blue Ribbons for either harrasment or treatment, and who wind up the heroes of the piece.  The Blue Ribbons themselves are, like Scientologists, drug-free.  They are fully-functioning, productive members of society who spend their free time in a yogurt shop.  They are marrying up, going to ivy league colleges, and moving out into the world to carry their Blue Ribbon message of “Go Forward” and “Be the Ball”.  The only one raising any alarm over this is the film’s token conspiracy theorist, “Gavin” (played by Nick Stahl, easily the best performance in this film), a teen who has witnessed murder at the hands of the Blue Ribbons:  murder that was covered up by the police.  He is eventually captured by the Ribbons and transformed into a viable member of society. 

Better living through surgery.

So, what did Katie Holmes learn from this story?

Nothing, apparently.  Since then she has gone over to the Dark Side and become one of the Blue Ribbons herself.  (Strangely, one of the identification symbols worn by the Blue Ribbons is a small, woven wool blue bracelet reminiscent of the Kabbalah Center’s red thread.)  One of the problems with the mind-control system developed by the school’s guidance counselor is a defect in managing conflicting hormone levels.  At times of arousal, the Blue Ribbon students could become violent and harm themselves or others.  Imagine two Blue Ribbon students having children.  In fact, imagine them attempting to conceive … the first scene of the film involves one of these “transformed” youth murdering a girl who was performing fellatio on him.  He had to kill her before he lost his precious bodily fluids (an accidental homage to Dr Strangelove?). 

I’m sure that Katie now interprets the film as an attack on the psychiatry establishment, except that the transformations experienced by the subjects were not caused by drugs – the anathema of Tom Cruise and his fellow robots – but by a surgical implant and the playing of a custom-made film that intersperses slogans (like “Go Forward”) with scenes of family values, school spirit, and the like.   Think A Clockwork Orange meets Conspiracy Theory, and you get the idea.  Scientology is not against the idea of mind-control; it is, after all, what their system is based upon.  Instead, they are competitors with psychiatry, aiming for the same goals but using different methods. They began with Hubbard’s understanding of ritual magic as a system and technology for achieving psychological unity – what Jung called individuation – and they went from there to devise a never-ending system of degrees that has as its eventual “revelation” tales of alien visitations.  I mean, what good is a degree system that eventually … stops?  You have to keep adding more and more degrees to bilk the programmed members of more and more money, and this Scientology has done.

How much of this does Katie Holmes actually know?  Does she know about the rituals in the desert with Jack Parsons?  About Hubbard’s bigamy?  His mental disorders (as revealed in his declassified military records)?  His constant whining (as revealed in declassified letters written by Hubbard to various individuals and agencies)?  The well-documented history of Scientology’s attack protocol on those who defect from them, disagree with them, or debunk their system – a la the concerted efforts of the Blue Ribbons to attack anyone who disagrees with them or who does not conform to their standards and values?  Ms Holmes has the background to understand the danger she is in, from having acted in a film that so clearly depicts the problem.

 So I guess the question is:  Where is James Marsden, now that we need him?