It’s Sparlock Mania! Two weeks ago, a Pixar-style Jehovah’s Witness cartoon featuring a “bad” toy named Sparlock the Wizard leaked onto the Internet.
The video features four main characters: Caleb, Caleb’s mom, a toy named Sparlock the Warrior Wizard, and Satan.
You can watch the full two-and-a-half-minute cartoon here, and it’s also been featured on PZ Meyer’s popular blog Pharyngula, but here’s a quick rundown (Spoiler Alert: Your toys are made of demons!):
A young boy named Caleb comes home from school with an awesome wizard toy named Sparlock. He happily flies Sparlock around the room (like you do) until his mother notices his inappropriate (i.e., 100% appropriate) childhood behavior. With a concerned brow and a tinfoil hat the size of Area 51, Caleb’s mom sits him at the kitchen table and pulls some hardcore Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man-style guilt-tripping. She explains that the toy is “bad” because it’s essentially possessed by the Devil. It seems that Caleb has inadvertently been making God sad and Satan happy.
Using interrogation tactics that could easily garner her a hearing in The Hague, Caleb’s mom then asks a bunch of manipulative leading questions and shows her seven-year-old a creepy photo of Adam and Eve…whom God HATES! Do you want God to hate you?
After being emotionally waterboarded for a few minutes, Caleb finally concedes that he needs to throw the toy out. Clearly! Shit, he’s practically killing God! As a grand finale, Mom-of-the-Year watches Caleb as he throws his own toy in the trash. Then she tells him that he’s made God happy. Even though God doesn’t exist and she just made the whole thing up. Yay! The God who doesn’t exist isn’t mad at you anymore about the demons that don’t exist in a toy that is made of plastic! Fuck reality! Let’s ride bikes!
Immediately, the Internet responded. Sparlock became a mascot of all things that are mindfucky and gross. There are Facebook groups, memes, video mashups, a Sparlock Twitter, and 1,600 comments on Reddit.
It seems that people have a problem with, you know, fucking with your children’s heads and taking away their toys in the name of religion. And they responded with art.
I’m curled up in a ball rocking after watching that video… Unbelievable.
and yet they are allowed to go to Disney’s Magic Kingdom, where my super Jay-Dub family spent a vacation this spring…
It turns my stomach to think that I was ever a part of this stupid group.
Follow the warrior wizard who shall never fail. Following him, we shall prevail.
Not all of them, Karen. I’ve known some of the more extreme, hardcore ones that even ban Disney movies or “The Wizard of Oz”.
I also was in the room when a Presiding Overseer’s wife angrily turned off “Singin’ in the Rain” – that’s right, a fucking 1950s Gene Kelly musical – because Cyd Charisse was dancing “demonically” (i.e., in a mildly provocative manner, showing some leg in that green dress). Nothing major, you know, just one of the all-time greatest classic dance sequences.
Art and creativity are SO squelched by JWs.
This is a Sparlock video mashup by Street Carnage blogger Nathan Lowery. I think it’s awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxIFP8IEzfA
We should really not be so worked up about this. Its practically just the way Jehovah’s witnesses treat their children. And they’re have been treating them for decades. I grew up in that environment. I learned that there is a thousand ways that you can make Satan happy and Jehovah unhappy. You were not allowed to have any friends outside the cult, neither were you allowed to join a sports team or have any other interests than the organization. All the things that normal kids do, like playing with toys and stuff like that are considered to be evil, and a piece of Satan’s plan to get you killed….
What makes me get sick from this is how obvious it is. They are really putting it out this time, and they will have a massive storm of media, and even governments asking them if this is a proper way to treat children, and if this is their official policy on how to learn small children the difference between right and wrong. In this movie they are in the matter of fact breaking some international laws. They are clearly breaking the UN Convention of children’s rights. And I know they will have to pay a huge price because of this video.
If any of you who read this would like to get to know me better I would love if you join me on Facebook; Bo Juel Jensen from Norway. Hope to see a lot of you on my friends list soon…Peace and Love Null Stress
The thing that I find most disturbing is the way that God is spoken of as a sympathetisc character, which, in the Adam and Eve myth He clearly was not. Caleb says their disobedience “Made (God) sad.” He wasn’t sad He was fuckin’ pissed. He cursed both of them with transient life and all its trappings. The message totally distorted.
I’m glad this is getting attention. Lot’s of people just think JWs are typical Christians who have an annoying habit of knocking on doors. The Society is actually pretty dang creepy by the standards of most normal, “worldly” people.
Realize that a staff at Watchtower HQ actually wrote this, edited it, animated it, showed it to a bunch of old guys in suits for approval, edited it some more, and no one said, “Whoa. This is too frigging weird. We can’t show this!” Nope. They actually thought it was OK. Kinda like they were putting their best foot forward.
What does that say about how it is when the world isn’t looking?
It really distills to this: When Caleb is happy, Jehovah is sad. When Caleb is sad, Jehovah is happy. That says all you need to know about what Jehovah thinks about Caleb. Run, Caleb, run!
I lost a few fb friends for posting this on my wall… buh bye, lulz
Link was taken down, here’s a mirror to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZTkLV7LFrQ
To any Jehovah’s Witnesses who may be reading this:
what is there to hide by removing the Sparlock video from Youtube???? What, are you embaressed that you created such a ridiculous, cultish thing??? The “world” you hate so much is just going to post and re-post this video from now until eternity. It’s not like you guys weren’t distributing the video yourselves, the same way you hand out bibles, brochures, and magazines.
I hope all this bad publicity signals the beginning of the end for your cult.
Jesus is the only appropriate warrior-wizard.