Is the nude scene appropriate in the Harry Potter 7 movie?

(I wrote this nine years ago, and Cal did the marvelous cartoon, when there was a decidedly minor furor over a "nude" scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.)

OK, it’s not really a nude scene. It’s a little like Jane Fonda’s “Barbarella” dancing in that infuriating almost-nude scene from the cult classic. In the new film, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1,” Ron Weasley (If you don’t know the story, sorry) is getting ready to destroy a Horcrux. The Horcrux gets inside Ron’s mind by exploiting his fears that Hermione Granger, whom he loves, really prefers his best friend, Harry Potter. In the scene, which is sort of faithful to the novel, after taunting Ron, the faux Harry and Hermione appear to embrace nude, although no “interesting” body parts are shown.

There has been a campaign against the “Harry Potter 7” scene locally; I saw a couple of letters in the LDS newspaper, The Deseret News, along the lines of “I’m making the choice not to support nudity by boycotting Harry Potter 7.” The story gained some steam when the Salt Lake Tribune’s Sean Means debunked the idea that the scene was of the R-rated type.

However, Chris Hicks of the Deseret News, followed with a column that addressed this question: Why exactly was a semi-nude scene inserted into the Harry Potter movie franchise, particularly since a majority of the movies’ fans are children, and was it artistically necessary. Hicks wondered if the scene is appropriate for children who were used to images of the trio — Harry, Ron and Hermione — as children and classmates.

It’s an honest question to ask. I have to admit that I glanced uncomfortably at my three children, two girls ages 13 and 9, and one boy, 5, during the scene. It is a sensual scene that ends with Ron overcoming his dark fantasies by destroying the Horcrux.

So, yes, I was a bit uneasy by the scene’s insertion when it occurred.
I have read all of the Harry Potter novels (several times) and I think I understand why the scene was included; and why it had author J.K. Rowling’s approval, since she exercises that right. The Harry Potter trio are no longer children; they are adults (in the wizarding world adulthood is reached at 17). They are fighting  for their lives and leaving girlfriends and boyfriends behind — perhaps forever — as they face real danger and their own fears. Indeed, Hermione is beaten and tortured savagely in the film, although it is not as brutal as the final Potter novel depicts her torment.

And that brings me to a final reason as to why the “nude” scene was inserted. In the novels, which have far more detail, characters, locations, and character maturity than the movies permit, the Harry Potter series ceases to be childrens’ literature after the third novel. Beginning with “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the books assume a more somber, adult feel; this correlates with the growing strength of Lord Voldemort and the slow collapse of the Ministry of Magic.

The fifth novel, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” handles Harry’s rough transition into maturity masterfully and all three of the main characters fall in love and experience a crushing, demoralizing loss in the sixth novel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

But these child-to-adult transitions are not as effective in the films, which have to cram several hundred pages into 150-minute, or shorter, films. The fifth film, “… Order of the Phoenix,” for example, is almost like a Cliffs Notes version of the 810-page novel.

That’s my take on why the “sexy” scene was included in “Harry Potter 7 part 1.” Overall, it was a marvelous adaptation. Producing two films for the final Harry Potter novel is more than just a ploy to make more money — it provides a richer, deeper adaptation of the finale of a timeless series for children and adults.

Mormon prophet Woodruff crossed the Rubicon often

“Things in Heaven and Earth,” Thomas Alexander’s exhaustive biography of Mormonism’s fourth prophet, Wilford Woodruff, provides justice to the early LDS leader, who tends to take a back seat to more colorful contemporaries, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Woodruff, however, was a transitional figure in Mormon history, one who created bridges that allowed the Utah church to defy chasms that separated it from the rest of the world. In fact, Woodruff made decisions that Smith and Young would have opposed, but were necessary for the young church to grow and prosper.

The massive business and ecclesiastical empire that is Mormonism today owes its 110-plus years of prominence to Woodruff, who made the tough calls needed to eventually turn Mormonism into a religion that garnered, even demanded, respect from what Woodruff and his peers once called “gentiles,” or non-Mormons.

Woodruff, an 1830s convert to the LDS Church, was as fierce a convert as Parley P. Pratt, Brigham Young, and others who survived the chaotic days prior to the Utah migration. He served missions, presided over missions, suffered poverty, persecution, dislocation, and allowed priesthood authority to dictate his acceptance of doctrines such as polygamy. Once in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young preferred to keep Woodruff in Utah, and he took and active role in local church leadership for decades. He also served in the territorial legislature. Nominally a conservative Mormon, he often took an interest in education, the economy, the arts and literature.

Woodruff, fewer than two years younger than Smith, became church leader in his early 80s in 1889 after John Taylor died. Taylor had taken a small, liberal step forward by allowing some church business practices with non-Mormons. Woodruff was to move the pendulum further than anyone would imagine during his nine years as LDS leader. As Alexander writes, “He (Woodruff) marked the path which led the Latter-day Saints to come to terms with the separation of the temporal and spiritual and to acceptance and respectability; and he reclaimed and deepened the reservoir of spiritual water that nourished the Saints through trying times.”

Separating the temporal and spiritual was most evident in the Spanish-American War during Woodruff’s tenure. At its outset, apostle Brigham Young Jr. issued the established church line of urging young Utah men to avoid war and instead go on missions to preach peace. Woodruff overruled that sentiment, endorsing the idea of LDS men serving in the U.S. military. As Alexander writes, “… crossing an immense intellectual Rubicon, Woodruff subordinated the ideal of the kingdom of God to the ideal of loyalty to the United States….” That once-radical idea is now accepted norm in today’s church.

Earning respectability seemed a tough goal at the beginning of Woodruff’s tenure, with the church assets seized by the government and members, prominent or otherwise, constantly being hunted for polygamy charges. At the time, it was not an extreme position to argue that Mormons were not patriots of the U.S. government. And, privately at least, most Mormons would have agreed.

The Manifesto against polygamy is what Woodruff is most famous for. The revelation, vetted before it was announced, effectively ended the threat of the federal government taking the church’s assets. Woodruff had hoped the Manifesto would ease pressure on Mormon men with multiple marriages, but the threat of jail remained. In fact, Woodruff was basically pressured into assuring secular leaders that polygamy would completely cease. It did not, of course, but future marriages were no longer public.

Woodruff also paved the way for Utah to receive statehood in 1896. He did through encouraging business relationships outside of the church. In fact, during Woodruff’s tenure, one constant agenda on weekly LDS leadership meetings at the temple were the status of LDS church business alliances, such as the Bullion Beck Mining enterprise. These endeavors, as well as Woodruff’s embrace of the two main political parties in the U.S., Republicans and Democrats, would cause a lot of friction within the quorum — one apostle, Moses Thatcher, was booted out of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles due to political fights — but it again provided an entry for the LDS Church into the corridors of economic and political power in the secular world.

The advantages of these decisions helped the LDS church leadership, and many of its businesses, during a severe national economic panic in the early 1890s. Despite capital essentially being closed to borrowers, the church was able to obtain a much-needed loan from a New York firm. These temporal moves were crucial to the church’s growth.

Alexander believes Woodruff learned how to compromise from witnessing the persecution the church suffered in Missouri and Illinois, and through his tenure of managing the British LDS mission. On doctrine he remained a conservative, although he ended the practice of saints being eternally adopted to church leaders in the temple.

Woodruff had little tolerance for those who questioned priesthood authority. He hounded out the Godbeites, a Utah dissident sect that snared an apostle, and later bullied the ill fellow apostle, Thatcher, out of his apostlehood after Thatcher objected, with good reason, to political meddling by the LDS leadership. In fact, Woodruff almost excommunicated Thatcher before the Cache County man, his spirit broken, apologized. Woodruff followed the early Saints mantra of handling misfortune — the death of numerous children, four divorces — with stoicism believing it all to be part of God’s plan. He was a remarkable, determined man, who built the path that Mormons trod today. Listen to an audio of an 1897 testimony, preserved on audio via YouTube.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

Sandwich Islands mission diaries of LDS Prophet Joseph F. Smith charts maturity of teen

In 1855, future LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith, son of the martyr Hyrum Smith, was shipped off from Utah to the Sandwich Islands — now called Hawaii — to serve a three-year church mission. What makes it unique is that Smith was only 15. The mission call may have been an attempt to straighten out Joseph F., who had by many accounts a rough adolescence, particularly after his mother, Mary Smith, died when he was 13.

His missionary service served to mature the teen at an early age and he left his mission three years later a man both in size and spirit, with a dedication to the LDS Church that would never waver and lead him to becoming a prophet. The Smith-Petit Foundation, with editor Nathaniel R. Ricks, has compiled the surviving two years — 1856 and 1857 — of diary entries of his mission compiled by Smith. The first year’s entries were destroyed via a fire. They underscore the seriousness in which the teen took his mission, and the heavy responsibilities he was dealt while on the islands.

In fact, Smith was both a mission leader and ecclesiastical leader. In fact, he excommunicated members in the Sandwich Islands. Here’s an entry from April 18, 1856: “I attended meeting this morning and spoke some time to the Saints. Conference again convened at 10 o’clock, much business was transacted pertaining to the mission, among other things Charles S. Atkins was excommunicated from the church for stealing &c. a good spirit prevailed during the day.”

Just a few weeks earlier, Smith recounted a fight over scissors with another missionary that became violent. While working on garments, which in that era required certain parts to be sewed on, a Brother Gordon Linn accused Smith of stealing his scissors. After Linn called Smith a “Damn Shit ass,” Smith approached Linn, saying he wouldn’t take that, and was struck in the temple by Linn. Later in the diaries, there is correspondence between both missionaries that indicate the dispute was healed amicably.

Readers will also enjoy learning of the differences between missionaries of that era and today’s era. Although there were companions, it’s clear from the diaries that Smith was alone often. Also, he was encouraged at times to spend days away from proselyting. Many of the entries are of days spent reading novels, newspapers, letters or writing letters. He also hunted, sailed from Island to Island, milked cows, slaughtered turkeys and steers, worked as a carpenter, and went from house to house searching for food and provisions when supplies were low.

Smith was not immune from the frustrations that many missionaries — in a different culture — experience with the native people. He spent much of his mission trying to find enough food to eat, and was very harsh with the Sandwich Island people, who he thought hoarded food for themselves. The young missionary, although he expressed deep gratitude for helpful native members, was not immune from the bigotry of that era. No doubt meaning it well, Smith nevertheless promised native members in a March 30, 1856 sermon, saying “I spoke a short time by the spirit and prophysied that they would live (some of them) to see their children a white and delitesome people, if they would only obey the laws of God. ...”

Smith was scornful of missionaries from other faiths, as they no doubt were to him. Seeking salvation for the Sandwich Island dwellers was a competitive job among churches of that era. The teen although seethed in anger at apostate members, as well as apostate missionaries, who made his job much harder.

Despite the frankness of the diaries, it would be a help for today’s LDS missionaries to read Smith’s accounts. Many of his accounts include feelings and thoughts to missionaries of any era. The young Smith craved mail from home, and was disconsolate when it didn’t arrive as scheduled. He dealt with household pests (Nov. 6, 1856 entry reads in part: “… the objects of our Distress ware an innumirable quantity of domestic insects … called by some Fleas ...”), Illness, frequent homesickness, was frustrated with unmotivated church investigators and unhelpful local members. And, like many a missionary today, he romanced a girl from home with long letters that he eagerly awaited responses from.

Prior to Smith’s mission, earlier missionaries had enjoyed success in the area. However, time had eroded members’ enthusiasm and much of Smith’s work was devoted to reactivating branches and memberships. Many of the early members no longer considered themselves LDS and were excommunicated. Baptism totals during Smith’s tenure were low as the elders worked to repair the church’s foundation in that area. It’s clear that Smith was a highly valued missionary, willing to work hard and do tasks assigned to him. Readers of the diaries will enjoy even the most mundane entries, as they capture the stolid but diverse life of an early LDS Utah-based missionary.

Legend has it that Smith, upon returning to Utah after sailing to California from the Sandwich Islands, was accosted by a rough character asking if he was a Mormon. Smith, 18, is alleged to have replied, “Yes sir, dyed-in-the-wool, true-blue, through-and through!” After that response, the ruffian complimented Smith on his convictions. Whether the tale is true or not, there is no doubt that Smith’s teenage mission was instrumental in preparing him for a lifetime commitment to his religion.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

In anti-Mormon literature’s ‘golden age,’ even phrenology, or the Mormon skull, was examined

Terryl L. Givens’ “The Viper of the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy” (Oxford University Press) is perhaps the best work detailing how the evolution of an inexpensive press — and a consistent popular yen for scandal — led to a “golden age” in “anti-” books in religion, notably literature that attacked the Catholics and the Mormons. As Givens explains, the public taste was not geared to theological debates, so these literary attacks on Catholicism, and to an extent Mormonism, were political in nature. The faiths were cast as acting contrary to U.S. patriotism or various ideals. Both faiths were also guilty of crimes of the salacious sort, usually against women. “Danites,” the Mormon defense group that assisted Joseph Smith, were also features in many of the books, usually as a paramilitary group that assisted Brigham Young and other Mormons in murder, kidnapping, or activities against the U.S. government.

There is no end to the fascinating library of anti-Mormon literature — from long Victorian-type novels, to action serials, to detective works, to western novellas. Frankly, the output was ubiquitous. Givens provides a list of titles, “The Courage of Captain Plum,” “The Mormoness; or, the Trials of Mary Maverick,” “Elder Northfield’s Home, “The Mormon Prophet and His Harem” … and many, many more. It’s a fascinating genre, and the majority of these books can be accessed and read on the Internet. The term “Harem” is significant. In his book, Givens argues that “Orientalism,” the effort by Western persons to define Middle East or Asian culture — was a prominent feature in anti-Mormonism of the 19th century. For example, the word “harem” to describe Young or other polygamists, and the use of “Danites” to prop up the leader of the “harem.” In one novel, the antagonist is referred to as the “Attila of the Mormon Kingdom.” (While a polygamous lifestyle can be applied to Middle Eastern culture, as Givens notes, the analogy falls apart as life in Utah and within Mormon polygamy is studied. One example — divorce for a Mormon women in Utah was easy to achieve.)

Like the “sinister china-man” of nativist literature, Mormon men were alleged in many of the literature of having the mystic talents to mesmerize or hypnotize their victims, usually female, with an intense glare. Givens relates one piece of literature that allows the dastardly Mormon men to even hypnotize the fathers of the girls cast into polygamy.

The section in Givens’ book on the how the pseudoscience of phrenology factored into anti-Mormonism was fascinating primarily because it required a deliberate disassociation of the U.S. and British roots of most members of the young, 19th century Mormon faith. It’s an extension of “Orientalism,” applying a sinister tinge to the unpopular Utah-based religion.

A paper was presented at the New Orleans Academy of Sciences in 1861 titled, “Effects and Tendencies of Mormon Polygamy in the Territory of Utah.” In Givens’ book, we read the findings of U.S. Army assistant surgeon Roberts Bartholow, who argues that a “new race” is being created in Utah.

Bartholow writes: “… there is, nevertheless, and expression of countenance and style of feature, which may be styled the Mormon expression and style; an expression compounded of sensuality, cunning, suspicion, and a smirking self-conceit. The yellow, sunken, cadaverous visage; the greenish-colored eyes; the thick protuberant lips; the low forehead; the light, yellowish hair, and the lank, angular person, constitute an appearance so characteristic of the new race, the production of the polygamy, as to distinguish them at a glance. …”

Such pseudoscience dissipated somewhat after the railroad linked Utah with the rest of the nation, and visitors to Salt Lake City failed to see the “differences” that Bartholow noted. Depictions of Mormon countenances were left to satires, such as Mark Twain’s riffs on Mormon women in “Roughing It,” or to Oscar Wilde, who as Givens notes, said of Mormons, “They are … very, very ugly.”

Yet, the condescension and bigotry that allowed phrenology a place at the table in anti-Mormonism is not completely gone. Later in “Vipers …,” Givens notes with contempt this claim by acclaimed Harold Bloom, who Givens writes, had “learned to tell the difference between certain Mormons and most Gentiles at first sight.” Bloom, Givens adds, noted “something organized about the expressions on many Mormon faces as they go by in the street.”

Givens’ book is well worth reading for those interested in the cultural perceptions of Mormonism as well as the growth of the press, as well as books and novels, in the 19th century. Even as technological changes moved much of the propaganda and exploitation press to other venues — film, the Internet, cable TV “reality” series and documentaries — what makes these “exposes” of Catholicism, Mormonism, or any other currently unpopular “-isms” is the public’s fascination with that which is considered criminal, anti-social or at odds with American values. The arguments, be they religious or some other topic, are less important than the “sizzle” which sells the steak, which allows the consumer to be properly outraged, titilated or most important, allowed to feel superior to a subject and persons they know virtually nothing about.

In “Viper …,”  Givens quotes Catholic sociologist Thomas F. O’Dea’s wry observation that “‘The Book of Mormon’ has not been universally considered by its critics as one of those books that must be read in order to have an opinion of it.”

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs.

Utah’s first presidential vote was a landslide for the Democrat

Originally published in 2010 but not much has changed.

Utah voters have been reliably Republican in presidential elections for more than 40 years now. In fact, only once since 1948 — Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 — has the Democratic candidate carried the Beehive State.

It seems highly unlikely that President Obama will carry Utah in 2012, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, in 1896, the first time Utah voted for president, Democrat William Jennings Bryan (above) carried almost 83 percent of the vote against Republican William McKinley, who won the general election. The fundamentalist Bryan’s appeal was not his faith, but his support of unlimited coinage of silver. Utah and other “silver states,” such as Nevada, went big for the Democrats. However, four years later incumbent McKinley nosed out Bryan in Utah with 50.5 percent of the vote. A better economy helped the Republicans.

In 1916, Utah supported incumbent President Woodrow Wilson over Republican Charles Evans Hughes by an easy 20-point margin. However, beginning in 1920 Utah voted Republican for three state presidential elections.

Democrats longest dominance in Utah presidential politics began in 1932 with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (below) over incumbent Herbert Hoover. The still young Great Depression made Republicans as toxic in Utah as the party was in many other parts of the nation. In fact, 1932 also saw the re-election loss in Utah of famed Republican U.S. Sen.  Reed Smoot. The longtime incumbent Smoot, who was an apostle in the Mormon Church, lost badly to Democratic challenger Elbert Thomas.

Roosevelt would carry Utah in all four of his presidential elections. As an incumbent, Roosevelt’s support never sunk below 60 percent of Utah voters. To provide an idea of Utah Democratic Party dominace during the Roosevelt era, the online Utah History Encyclopedia reports that in the Utah Legislature, there were 45 Democrats and 15 Republicans in the House, and 18 Democrats and 5 Republicans in the Senate.

That was likely the peak of Democrats’ success in Utah but the party continued its presidential success in 1948 with a narrow win by Harry S. Truman over Thomas Dewey. However, the next three presidential elections saw GOP wins in Utah by victor Dwight D. Eisenhower and 1960 loser Richard Nixon.

As mentioned, 1964 was the last presidential win by a Democrat in Utah. President Johnson’s landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater — who at the time was considered an extremist — was echoed in Utah, where Johnson carried almost 55 percent of the vote, or 6 points fewer than his national tally.

The next election started the long slide for Utah Democrats. Nixon swamped Democrat nominee Hubert H. Humphrey and Democrats in the state Legislature lost their majority status. Things have only gotten worse in the last four decades. Even in years where Democrats have won, including 2008, the Democratic Party candidate has stayed mired in the low to mid 30s support.

The issues of the mid 1960s to the early to mid 1970s — the peace movement, gay rights, abortion, the Vietnam War, the Equal Rights Amendment, other women’s rights issues, affirmative action, welfare — probably played a huge role in moving Mormons to the Republican Party. Whereas Utah Mormons had coalesced behind Democratic Party principles of ending the Depression, fighting a World War and providing security for working families, the post-1964 social, secular and extreme liberal shift in focus moved them away permanently.

Abortion, for example, is an issue wedded to the Democratic Party in Utah. No matter how that may frustrate Utah Democrats, it is nevertheless a reality.

Many Democrats compare the recently passed health care reform law to previous Democratic initiatives such as Social Security and Medicare.

It will be interesting to see if these accomplishments by President Obama move some Utah voters back to the party of FDR. Right now, I’d bet against that happening.

The Web sites Utah.media.edu (Allen Kent Powell’s article “Elections in the State of Utah) and uselectionatlas.org were among sources for this article.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published long ago in StandardBlogs

Mormon cinema has evolved into bigger-budgeted, better-produced Sunday School films

I just saw “Ephraim’s Journey,” which is essentially another take on — with a different perspective — of “17 Miracles,” which details the sufferings of one ill-fated handcart company that traveled to Utah; “Ephraim’s Rescue” deals mainly with the other handcart company’s suffering. The movies are very religious, with oft-repeated legends of miraculous healing, a visit by one of the Three Nephites, and the raising of the dead being treated as fact by director T.C. Christensen.

Christensen, who is the new main director of Mormon cinema, is talented. The cinematography, pacing and action moves the film forward. There are moments of mild humor, which humanizes the characters. Although you don’t realize this while watching, virtually all the characters in “Ephraim’s Rescue” look like members of your own LDS ward, or the crowds milling through a BYU football game. (It reminds me of a recent pundit, relating a visit to a Mormon ward, who remarked that the LDS pictures of Jesus Christ remind him of how Jesus was depicted in the 1950s.)

Although I tend toward skepticism on miracles, as an active Mormon, I’ll give “Ephraim’s Rescue” a thumbs up. It does what it seeks to do — raises the testimonies of many of the faithful. It’s moving to see an historical overview of the sufferings of the handcart companies and a review of the desperate efforts to rescue the stranded handcart pioneers. However, let’s be honest, the film is a slick, better-produced reproduction of the filmstrip LDS history movies we’ve seen in Mormon primary and Sunday schools.

In fact, T.C. Christensen’s handcart tragedy films remind me of “The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt,” the martyred Mormon apostle. I love that book and have read it at least a dozen times. It’s full of early Mormon history miracles. In one section, LDS Church member Philo Dibble, left for dead by a bullet wound, is healed instantly. In another anecdote, Parley P. Pratt heals a child of Mr. Wandle Mace, who was in the last stages of brain fever. These are just two of many anecdotes. In “Ephraim’s Rescue,” the title character raises the dead twice and heals many of the sick. In one scene, Ephraim heals the frostbitten-destroyed feet of a major character so effectively that the healed man dances a Jig, lifting the spirits of the handcart company survivors. (This may sound silly in my blog, but you have to see the film.)

This is where Mormon cinema has evolved over the past 13 years. We’ve gone from the gritty missionary drama of Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army” (scenes include a black man mocking a black missionary and an apostate elder leaving a believing elder speechless) to the “correlation-approved” sanitized biographical films of Emma Smith and Joseph Smith, as well as Christensen’s Sunday School historical dramas.

The baker’s dozen years of Mormon cinema’s evolution was dictated chiefly by economics. The vast majority of films released to theaters did not make money. Dutcher’s two follow-ups, “Brigham City,” and “States of Grace,” (desperately pitched as “God’s Army 2″ in Utah) did not make money, although both were excellent films — even better than “God’s Army” — which challenged LDS beliefs and assumptions by deconstructing the doctrine through various situations. In “States of Grace,” there is a powerful analogy to the “burying of weapons” story from the Book of Mormon.

After the gritty era of Mormon cinema, the genre moved mostly toward comedies that riffed off Mormon culture. There was “Singles Ward,” “Church Ball,” “Mobsters and Mormons,” “The RM,” The Home Teachers” and so on. There was also an attempt to make LDS romance films, such as “Charlie” and “Baptists At Our Barbecue,” (both based on books and BTW, “Baptists …” directed by Christian Vuissa, is a great film) and a slew of romantic LDS-themed comedies, including riffs on “Beauty and the Beast” and even “Pride and Prejudice.” There were more serious LDS mission-related films, including “The Best Two Years” and “The Errand of Angels.”

It bears mentioning that there were efforts to produce bigger-budgeted LDS-themed films. “Book of Mormon Movie,” “Passage to Zarahemla,” and three movies from the popular LDS fiction series, “The Work and the Glory” were produced. They just didn’t make money. In fact, the “Work and the Glory” films, financed by the late Larry H. Miller, have likely lost more than $10 million, and that may be a conservative estimate. (In the post-Dutcher era, the most critically acclaimed films may have been the “Saints and Soldiers” World War II-era films, released in 2003 and 2012.)

By 2010 most independent films produced for Mormon audiences were being released directly to DVD with a maybe a token theatrical release in Utah. In 2011, my family saw “Joseph Smith: Plates of Gold,” in a theater but it was shown in a DVD format! (A good site to keep up on Mormon-themed films is http://www.ldsfilm.com/)

Mormon cinema that makes it to theater screens has evolved to meet the needs of its chief audience, active Mormons. That need is faith repetition, or perhaps more optimistically called faith-promoting. As mentioned, I enjoy the films, but I miss the challenges to our assumptions in the earlier films, in which characters who deeply believed in Mormonism sometimes succumbed to the temptations of passion, loneliness, and rage. Even the silly films, “Singles Ward, ” “Home Teachers” or “Church Ball,” have more honesty. They riff on the Mormon culture, which is a safe but tempting target. The only “riffs” in “Ephraim’s Rescue” are a couple of mild jokes on polygamy.

The main events of Mormon-themed cinema have moved into the bowels of the church. It will be interesting to see if there is a serious effort to move part of the genre back into independence.

-- Doug Gibson

-- First published in 2013 at StandardBlogs

Dead on the Corridor blends Mormonism with life along I-15

Review by Doug Gibson

In Dead on the Corridor (Anderson Publishing, 2017), a collection of short stories from Utah writer James Elliott, a deeply troubled woman, barely alive, enters a welfare office in St. George, Utah. In desperate need of help, she is instead ushered out by a worker whose compassion matches cartoon bureaucrats Selma and Patty Bouvier of "The Simpsons."

In blistering heat, the woman returns to a tent outside the city to die. It's an agonizing, lonely death. But she finds peace in her final moments, clutching a small version of the Christus Consolator statue, a saved, treasured relic from her earlier life as an student in Mormon seminary.

That story, with Elliott's dispassionate prose, creates passion for the reader. This particular story has stuck with me, and will for a long time. With other stories in the collection, located in the backdrop of the harsh but beautiful of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Utah, tales of the least among us, the people who are forced to be survivors, are related.

Besides "The Worth of Souls," which is the name of the above-mentioned story, other tales involve a young boy, fated to die a painful death accidental death in the desert, reunited with a young, lost murder victim. While his parents live the slow agony of losing a child, the boy makes a friend. Another story, told partially in flashback, recounts an elderly, beloved woman, a sort of "mother" to a ward, relate to her bishop how she killed her fanatical, sadistic husband decades ago.

Another story with a particular punch to this reviewer involves two individuals trying their hardest to survive. One is a former missionary with a big testimony of his faith and severe mental problems. The other is a young woman with a child trying to atone for a past and create a happier life for her small family. Their lives will cross tragically and the survivor will make a hard, callous decision that nevertheless is reasonable given the individual's circumstances.

Elliott has a lot of talent, and Dead on the Corridor provides a lot for readers to think about as they move through the short stories. Is everyone our brother and sister? Does having a job, financial comforts, control over our mental faculties, and a comfortable place to sleep every night allow us the right to feel superior over those who are struggling to attain those securities?

Dead on the Corridor merits a lot of readers. Elliott, besides the questions his stories offer us, passes the most important test. He spins a good tale. After you read these stories, do the author a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

Is it DeMille, Spielberg or Jackson who wants to direct a movie on Alma?

A lifetime of activity in the LDS Church provides more than just an average knowledge with “The Pearl of Great Price.” You become very well versed in the urban legends of Mormonism. One of the favorite urban legends I heard growing up in Southern California LDS wards was that the late, great director Cecil B. DeMille (“The 10 Commandments”) wanted to make a movie about the Book of Alma in “The Book of Mormon.”

If you’ve never heard of Cecil B. DeMille, that’s OK. In the last decade or so, I’ve heard a variation on the DeMille/Alma story. It’s actually the great, living director Steven Spielberg who wants to make a movie based on the book of Alma. If you haven’t heard of Spielberg, maybe it will be director Peter Jackson who wants to Alma on the big screen?

The only big-screen film version of “The Book of Mormon” I’ve seen is the low-budget, mediocre “Book of Mormon Movie Part I,” which should have been subtitled “Beach Blanket Lehi” for all its depth. True confession: I own that film, and have watched it a few times. The dialogue is so bad that I have a hard time believing that my church would have wanted the production company to make the film. I guess that means that “The Book of Mormon” is in the public domain, like other classics such as Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” or George A. Romero’s film “Night of the Living Dead.” That must be the reason so many cheap cartoonish versions of Alma are available through Living Scriptures, Liken the Scriptures or the LDS Church Distribution Center.

Back to Mormon urban legends: There’s a fun website, holyfetch.com, that tries to decipher all the Mormon legends out there. It doesn’t get them all, since there is no listing for DeMille, Spielberg, Alma, etc., but the site claims an answer to the big “is Alice Cooper a Mormon” debate. I’ve been hearing this one since I was old enough to know who Alice Cooper was. The answer, according to holyfetch, is … a sort of yes. You see Cooper, whose real name is Vincent Furnier, has a dad named Ether Moroni. With a name like that, right … RIGHT. The Furniers belong to an obscure Mormon castoff sect called The Bickertonite Church, also known as The Church of Christ. The church claims The Book of Mormon as its own scripture.

There’s very few members of this “Mormon” church, and I doubt Cooper attends, but dad Ether Moroni was an elder in the Bickertonites and, get this, holyfetch says Cooper’s grandad was an apostle in The Bickertonite Church. Now that’s a religious pedigree to be proud of!

There are more questions answered on the site. You can “find out” if Elvis read “The Book of Mormon” or if the late LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball was the model for “Star Wars’” Yoda.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published in 2010 on StandardBlogs.

90 years ago, book by Davis author served as gift to missionaries from LDS prophet

More evidence that the bookshelves and basements of Latter-day Saints’ homes provide historical value: I’m holding in my hands a book titled, “Flashes From the Eternal Semaphore,” written by Leo J. Muir, published by The Deseret News Press, third edition, 1928. What’s most interesting is the right hand page next to the inside cover, a June 1, 1929 signed note from then-LDS Church President Heber J. Grant to missionary, Raymond D. Kingsford, soon to be sent to the LDS Western States Mission, according to his daughter, Lou Ann Hirsch, who has preserved her late-dad’s gift from a prophet.

The note, on President Grant’s letterhead, reads, Elder Raymond D. Kingsford, (stamped)

Dear Brother:

This excellent book

is presented to you with the

compliments of the author,

Leo J. Muir, and myself. I feel sure you will thoroughly

enjoy its contents and that

it will be an inspiration to

you while on your mission.

Sincerely your brother,

(Heber J. Grant’s signature)

A semaphore is, according to most definitions, “a system of sending messages by holding the arms or two flags or poles in certain positions according to an alphabetic code.” (Online Free Dictionary). Muir’s “book” is more or less a collection of inspirational quotes, legends, and stories designed to promote honesty, integrity, and spirituality. Sort of a 1920s’ version of “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” It was apparently sent to hundreds of young elders who served missions for the LDS Church long ago.

I think its main historical value is its place as a preferred non-Scripture reference for LDS missionaries of that era. Whether officially endorsed by a prophet or not, every generation of missionaries likely have favorite church-related books that are packed in their bags next to suits, ties, garments, Scriptures, etc. When I was a missionary 29 years ago, I recall buying a small book that included a debate on Mormonism that involved two missionaries and representatives from other faiths. The “judge” was a rabbi, I recall. The book was popular among missionaries, although I can’t recall the title. The LDS debaters won, of course, and even the rabbi judge was converted.

Out of curiosity, I look for this book from time to time at LDS bookstores and can’t find it, although I’m sure I could track it down if I made a serious Deseret Industries/online sales effort. It seems to have run its course — long ago — as a missionary-preferred tool. Some books that never grow out of favor for missionaries are, of course, the LDS Standard Works scriptures, plus books such as “The Articles of Faith” and “Jesus The Christ,” by the early 20th Century apostle James A. Talmadge, who probably knew Leo J. Muir, personally. (“Articles of Faith,” by the way, was a thick, sturdy volume that also served as a sure weapon against flying cockroaches in Peru.)

As for Muir’s “Flashes From the Eternal Semaphore,” here are a few of the nuggets found within the 112 pages:

• “Let us scan at random the lives of great men

and observe how firmly they have mastered

their lives towards the ends they hold dear.

The canny Scotchman, Carnegie, expressed the

philosophy of the captains of industry in this

wise sentence:

‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.’

That is the strait and narrow path in business.” (31)

Or,

• “… Moderation and simplicity in

foods, in fashion and in faith lead always to

health, happiness and religious peace of mind.” (32)

Or,

• “The lewdster who amuses himself and others

in this base pastime is seldom aware of the dire

mischief hidden in his speech. Obscenity is

the hostile enemy of all noble virtues.”

One more,

“And well might every youth give solemn

heed to this prophetic counsel:

‘Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth

instruction; but he that regardeth reproof shall be

honored.”

The book is arranged in seven sections, with an Introduction, Five Semaphore Flashes (The first is “The Pursuit of Easy Things Makes Men Weak,” the last, “He That Soweth to the Flesh Shall of the Flesh Reap Corruption,” and has a Conclusion, titled, “The Majesty of Law.”

The author, Leo J. Muir, (1880-1967) was an educator in Davis County for much of his life. He was the first principal of Davis High School and eventually Utah superintendent of schools. When this book was published in the 1920s, Muir lived in California and was an LDS stake president and later the Northern States LDS mission president. A prominent Democrat, Muir was mayor of Bountiful. In 1960, he provided the benediction — following John F. Kennedy’s presidential nomination acceptance speech — at the Democratic National Convention. In Bountiful, there is an elementary school named for him.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

Rags, rags, rags, we need rags! the Deseret News pleaded to early Saints

Few accounts of the Mormon Church in 1850s Utah tell us about “rag missions” but they were an important calling, and no less than Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball took to the pulpit to exhort LDS households, the women especially, to save and donate their rags to the church printing mill. The reason was critical in those times: it was to gather enough newsprint to publish the new Deseret News, which often moved from weekly to bimonthly due to a serious lack of newsprint.

I read “Spokesman for the Kingdom: Early Mormon Journalism and the Deseret News, 1830-1898,” a 1970s era BYU Press book by Monte Burr McLaws. It’s a tad dry but filled with interesting nuggets of info. Here’s what the Deseret News editorialized on Oct. 19, 1850. “RAGS! RAGS!! RAGS!!! Save your rags, everyone in Deseret save your rags; old wagon covers, tents, quilts, shirts, etc. etc. etc., are wanted for paper …” Rag requests were made to ward congregations by bishops and early Mormon George Goddard was sent on a “rag mission” by President Young that stretched from Franklin, Idaho, to Sanpete, Utah. For more than three years, Goddard, a merchant, went from town to town and door to door soliciting rags from residents, whether they were subscribers to the Des News or not. (By the way, Utah was once described as a journalistic cemetery and 90 percent of 19th century newspapers in the state failed)

According to McLaws, the very first talk in the Salt Lake Tabernacle was a “rag” discourse by Goddard, urging donations, and that was followed by more rag exhortation from Young and Heber C. Kimball. Rags were extremely valuable in the isolated Great Basin where the early Saints lived. Communication was at least a month away in the early years, and mailed news to the valley was often poached by settlers east.

Young’s paper mill needed supplies that rags could only partially fill but the need was desperate. Many of the rags could not be properly bleached and produced, via handpress, a coarse, dark gray paper that was difficult to read outside of sunlight, but that type of newsprint was common in the West.

In fact, rags, the need for, and lack of newsprint provided for one of Young’s most angry yet least-reported denunciations of Latter-day Saint women in the 1860s, according to McLaws.  In an Oct.9, 1862 discourse, Young raged against Mormon women who wasted rags. He “questioned whether there was a mother in the community that thought she was so well off that she did not need the extra money from saving rags. Answering himself, he charged that many of them would rather steal beef and other things they need than stoop to pick up rags to make paper on which to print the Deseret News,” recalls McLaws.

The Standard, Trib, DesNews and other papers are frequently called rags as a derisive term. However, there was once a time when a newspaper gratefully and desperately associated itself with rags of all types.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

LDS retrenchment and why Ezra Taft Benson wanted to be George Wallace’s VP pick

In Matthew Bowman’s book “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith,” the Mormon business/educational strategy of correlation is explained. The business advantages of correlation are offset by an educational culture that stays, by design, into narrow theological positions that are not open to debate. In Bowman’s book, he also spends some time on the LDS retrenchment movement among its hierarchy, a conservative movement to interpret doctrine strictly according to Scriptures and revelation received through modern LDS prophets and apostles.

In what serves as a definition of retrenchment, Bowman recounts a message conservative LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie sent to an LDS academic (Eugene England). “God has given us apostles and prophets. … It is my province to teach to the church what the doctrine is. It is your province to repeat what I say or remain silent.”

Retrenchment, with its emphasis on simplistic answers to questions that could be debated thoroughly, fit well with correlation, a concept that by its nature was hampered by multiple alternatives. Retrenchment, which flourished through the last half of the 20th century, was a wish to return to the theological days of Brigham Young, a strong leader who brooked little dissent.

According to Bowman, the father of retrenchment was the late LDS apostle and president Joseph Fielding Smith. Fielding Smith was an opponent of colleagues in the LDS ecclesiatical hierarchy, such as B.H. Roberts, who in an attempt to explain evolution, “posited that generations of human, or human-like, beings had lived and died long before God sent Adam and Eve to earth,” writes Bowman, who adds that “… Fielding Smith, convinced that Roberts was promulgating false doctrine and suspicious that he was secretely promoting evolution, accused Roberts in a public lecture of desiring ‘to square the teachings in the Bible with the teachings of modern science and philosophy …” An offended Roberts, as well as apostle James Talmadge, complained to LDS Church President Heber J. Grant.

Grant wanted no part of the debate and advised the principals to drop the dispute. As Bowman notes, though, Grant’s reluctance to take a side essentially turned the LDS Church into an institution where, “No longer would church authorities debate matters of doctrine in public.” Because the world was slowly moving toward an era of post World War II Cold War conservatism, it’s not surprising that the conservatism that Fielding Smith favored became the ideology most popular among the LDS leadership.

Under Fielding Smith, his son-in-law, apostle Bruce R. McConkie, apostle and future prophet Ezra Taft Benson, current apostle Boyd K. Packer, and other leaders such as BYU President Ernest Wilkinson, Mormon theology was “characterized by an exclusive focus on the canon of Mormon scripture. They sought to grant it as much authority as possible and to take its claims as literally as possible,” writes Bowman. The new retrenchment conservatism of 1960s Mormonism echoed Fielding Smith’s disdain for Roberts’ pre-Adamic ideas. In his iconic book, “Mormon Doctrine,” McConkie describes the theory as “satanic.”

One aspect of retrenchment was a belief in dispensationalism. As Bowman writes, “Dispensationalists believe that because of human wickedness, the world was doomed to decay and degeneration before Christ’s return to save it; for them, the Bible taught of war, famine, conspiracy and disease.”

As early as 1946, Fielding Smith had written “Signs of the Times,” a dispensationalist tome that provided a pessimistic blueprint of the future. The Cold War, anti-communism, the counterculture movement, all served to fuel retrenchment efforts in the LDS hierarchy. W. Cleon Skousen, police chief, BYU professor, dispensationalist and anti-communist, became a best-selling LDS author. (Recently his books, long consigned to basements and Deseret Industry shelves, have regained popularity with the rise of Glenn Beck, a modern-day LDS dispensationalist).

As Bowman points out, the popular LDS musical play, “Saturday’s Warrior,” is a creation of retrenchment and dispensationalism. In the play, former pre-mortal spirits sent to earth are pressured by wicked earthly peers to be “cool.” In one now-dated scene, a Mormon is taunted because his parents’ are expecting an eighth child. Bowman points out that one of the play’s songs, “Zero Population,” is sung by “his villainous teenage friends (who) impropably praise birth control.”

Ezra Taft Benson was a major player in the retrenchment movement for a couple of generations. An impressive leader who was tapped by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be secretary of agriculture, Benson later exemplified the LDS Church’s opposition to communism, atheism and liberal initiatives to expand government. As Bowman writes, “To some Mormons, communism appeared to violate the principle of free agency, human beings’ right to choose their own destinies that derived from their divine heritage.”

David O. McKay, for example, LDS leader during retrenchment, was a strong opponent of communism. McKay was willing to incorporate that activism into major areas of the church he led, such as the McCarthy-ite investigation of professors at BYU, who were suspected of weak loyalties to the Gospel and patriotism

However, Benson took the LDS hierarchy’s opposition to communism to extreme levels. Had it not been for the wisdom of President McKay, Benson might have caused the LDS Church embarrassment that it would still be dealing with today. For example, Benson became a disciple of the conspiratorial anti-communist group the John Birch Society, an organization which had already been politically excommunicated from the Republican Party. As Bowman relates, Benson was so impressed with John Birch Society founder Robert Welch — a man who accused his former boss Eisenhower of being a communist — that he lobbied McKay to allow Welch to speak at the church’s semi-annual general conference and lobbied to have the LDS leadership endorse the Birchers. Fortunately, McKay resisted those efforts.

As Bowman relates, McKay also nixed Benson’s desire to be the vice presidential nominee of segregationalist third-party candidate George Wallace in 1968. It’s likely that the LDS Church would still be dealing with such an ignoble action today had not the wise McKay told Benson no.

Nevertheless, retrenchment did lead the LDS hierarchy into politically based decisions that extend from the 1970s (opposition to the ERA), the 1980s (opposition to the MX missile system construction in Utah), the 1990s (the excommunication of several LDS dissident academics) and even a few years ago, with its stance against gay marriage in California.

Retrenchment, however, is an ailing, perhaps dying ideology among Mormons. While there are still factions, usually older Mormons, who adhere to the rigidness of a Fielding Smith, Benson, Skousen and McConkie, most Mormons today have moved toward the liberal ideas of Roberts once denounced. In 2010, Deseret Book announced it would no longer print “Mormon Doctrine.” Harsh statements on homosexuality in General Conference by Packer were toned down for revised official publication.

History often repeats itself; it appears Mormonism’s leaders have tired of retrenchment. However, the impact of retrenchment should not be downplayed. It’s worth noting that at the end of the LDS era of theological debate, 1935, only 36 percent of BYU students believed that “creation did not involve evolution.” As Bowman notes, by 1973, “81 percent (of students) felt that way.”

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs