From Cecil's Mailbag by the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
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What's the deal with the Church of the Subgenius?
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Dear Straight Dope:
I consider myself pretty hip. I'm fairly in tune with my generation of
fellow twenty-somethings. I know the difference between Beck and
Montovani.
So why is it that, when everytime I run into one of these "Church of the
SubGenius" sites on the web, I have absolutely no clue as to what the
hell its getting at? What's the deal with these kooks? I can fathom the
put-up of sci-fi doomsday cults, but the overall tenor of weirdness just
boggles me. You've managed to debunk Dungeons and Dragons for us. Now how
about putting these specimens under the microscope? --bergevb@bsk.com
SDSTAFF Euty replies:
If you're just running into this kind of stuff on the web, you haven't been
paying attention. Ever watch "Pee-Wee's Playhouse?" Take a look at his
bulletin board usually right before he hops on his bicycle at the end of the
show. You'll see a black and white picture of a grinning, pipe smoking man,
That's Bob. Watch "Rugrats?" Catch the repeated references such as "as Bob
is my witless" or "children are a gift from a Bob." It's much more prevalent
than you may think.
If the church doesn't have a real leader, it at least has a logo, and that
logo is the face of "Bob." His full name is J. R. "Bob" Dobbs; the "J.R."
was dropped later because, as the church said, they didn't want to get in
any trouble with Larry Hagman. And it has a mission; the pursuit of "slack."
Slack is difficult to define. In a way it's like what Louie Armstrong said
about jazz, if you have to ask what it is, you'll never know. It can be
interpreted in the same way as the term "slacker," but to the Subgenius it's
more of a way of getting through life without being brought down by the
"normals."
The Church is full of doomsday prophecies, endless rants, and shameless
appeals for your money. And it's all pretty much a joke.
The Subgenius foundation was actually begun back in 1979 by a Dallas
filmmaker named Douglas St. Clair Smith, who now goes under the name Ivan
Stang. He, along with Philo Drummond (possibly also a pseudonym) put
together the first pamphlet announcing the Church and then published the
"bible" of SubGeniuses "The Book of the Subgenius." Stang had always been
interested in fringe and weirdo groups, a lot of which he lists in his book
"High Weirdness
by Mail." Although it's unclear as to whether this is what he had in mind at
the time, eventually, the Church began to become a clearinghouse for a lot
of these groups. Thus, the rather unspecific theology of Subgeiuses; that
one must merely be "abnormal" to be a member.
Philosophically, the church owes it's origin to the Discordian movement of
the late 60's and 70's. The first pamphlet of the Church ("The World ends
tomorrow and You may Die!") reads a lot like the "bible" of Discordianism,
"The Principia Discordia." In fact, as Stang wrote in an e-mail to this
author, "The only difference I've been able to see between Discordians and
SubGeniuses, is that SubGeniuses get laid."
Sadly, though, there are some who believe that Stang has gone around the
bend and has started really believing his own joke. To be fair, he does
state that he really didn't ever believe that the Church would ever have
gotten as big as it has. He figured on a shelf life of a couple of years and
it would have all been over. But these things do have a way of taking on a
life of their own.
--SDSTAFF Euty
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
[Comment on this answer.]
Cecil's Mailbag is researched and written by members of the Straight Dope
Science Advisory Board, Cecil's online auxiliary. Although the SDSAB does
its best, these articles are edited by Ed Zotti, not Cecil, so accuracywise
you'd better keep your fingers crossed.
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