I'M GONNA TAKE YOU BACK TO BIBLICAL TIMES -- 1823: At least one audience member at The Book of Mormon has been inspired to convert to the Church of Jesus Christ (of Latter-Day Saints).
Related, and much more fun: a bunch of Wisconsin high school kids perform "Hello" while driving in a van.
There's a moderate concentration of LDS around here -- maybe 3-5% -- my professional liability broker among them. He's take on Book of Mormon was, in effect, "I wish they didn't make fun of us, but if they do, maybe the message get through to someone." I'm delighted that it did.
ReplyDeleteAs a Mainer WASP (like Ms. Morong) who grew up with a lot of Mormons, this is fascinating to me. I think The Book of Mormon walks a line, and incorporates such a rare understanding of Mormonism, that isn't generally fully appreciated. It's utterly profane and irreverent, but at the heart not in opposition to Mormonism at all. The truly in-your-face offenses—retelling the origin story with certain anatomy terms featuring heavily, Books of Mormon being put in places they should not be, etc—are purely symbolic and not really about Mormonism specifically. Take those away—and the swearing—and what's left is really a fairly gentle ribbing of Mormon culture and the implausibility of its origin story.
ReplyDeleteThe song "I Believe" is a good example, because it seems to be way tougher on Mormonism than other songs/scenes. On the surface it seems to both mock some of the actual beliefs of Mormons AND criticize them for valuing blind faith. But giving them a hard time about the planet thing and so on isn't anything any Mormon hasn't heard before, and people of all faiths have to grapple with inconsistencies and implausibilities in their scriptures and dogma. These only sound weirder because they're slightly less mainstream. The in-between bits about how he "just believes"...that's the interesting part. Because there's nothing in there that I haven't heard practically verbatim out of a Mormon's mouth, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did pick it up verbatim from somewhere official. It's only critical of "just believing" if you already think there's something wrong with "just believing." And those parts are actually much more specific to Mormonism than they sound. I really think that the joke of the song is actually that if you think the joke's on Mormons, then the joke's on you.