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OK, so I recently came across a notice for Android Karenina, apparently the latest pastiche in the wave that began with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and includes titles like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and my favorite title, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim.

So, of course I began to wonder if Mormon titles could be used to create the same kind of work. Will Mormon eventually join this trend?

I haven’t read any of these books yet, so I’m not sure how well these derivatives work. They are often called “mash-ups,” but I don’t think they technically meet the definition, since mash-ups generally include pieces from multiple works and very little that isn’t derived from elsewhere; what used to be called a collage. These works, in contrast, are a single original work combined with new writing from a single author; more like a simplified, open version of the French surrealist game, Exquisite corpse (well, maybe not). But, I must admit, I’m not sure that a true mash-up could even work in literature. Could an author/editor really pull individual paragraphs from any different works and make them work together?

What is unusual with the ‘zombie’ derivatives is not, of course, the fact that they are derivative. Even among the finest literature, producing derivative works has been very successful (Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead comes to mind very readily). And the language of criticism has developed a host of terms to refer to different kinds of derivative works—sequels, prequels, fan fiction, etc. Popular and noteworthy works are regularly condensed, augmented, segmented, use the same setting, mimic the plot, employ the same characters, and expanded ad nauseum. There is even a significant portion of copyright law that is devoted to when these kind of works require the author’s permission.

I think what makes these works so popular is simply the shocking contrast between the original work and the genre it is being transformed into. Could any two genre’s be more different than 19th century drawing-room romances (and other classic genres) and zombie fiction? That may well be why these seem to work, and have attracted so much attention — the novelty of this combination drives the attention these works are getting.

Of course, genre might be best thought of as an indication of a work’s target audience, rather than any indication of how seriously a work can be considered. Which may mean that this combination could attract new readers to each genre. That might make writing this kind of work very interesting — even to Mormon authors.

What gives me pause about using this form of writing in a Mormon context is how the LDS audience might respond. If someone writes Nephites and Zombies, a “mash-up” of the Book of Mormon, would LDS audiences want to read it? Or would it attract fans of Zombie fiction to reading the Book of Mormon?

Derivative works from the Book of Mormon do exist, of course. The first performed Mormon play, Corianton, is based on the Book of Mormon, as are many other works written during the past roughly 110 years since then. In fact, the principle sources for creating derivative works in Mormon literature are the Book of Mormon and stories from LDS Church history (remember that whole Work and the Glory series?), chiefly because they are so familiar with the Mormon audience. Even the once wildly successful Added Upon and its Saturday’s Warrior derivative aren’t nearly as familiar with LDS audiences.

But the status of the Book of Mormon, and the mythology we connect with  LDS history might make using them as the source for a “mash-up” problematic. On the other hand, even the New Testament has been used for derivative work (Ben Hur is, of course, derivative), its only when the derivative seems disrespectful of the source that objections arise, such as with Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Even putting derivatives of Mormon works in wildly different genres has worked when the sources have been respected, such as Orson Scott Card managed with his Homecoming Saga and Red Prophet series. But then again, these series weren’t as well known among the LDS audience (they’ve never really been sold in LDS bookstores as far as I’ve ever seen) and on the surface didn’t seem as radical a reworking as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

So, it would be interesting to see someone pull off a radical pastiche like this current literary fad using a Mormon source. I’m still on the fence about whether or not it would be successful.

Perhaps more interesting would be a “mash-up” that creates a Mormon work out of a classic — something that would draw non-Mormon audiences into the Mormon worldview. A Mormon author might feel much more comfortable in that attempt.

So, I’m looking forward to reading Sense and Sensibility and Sister Missionaries.

_I Am Jane_ at the Covey Center for the Arts, July 22-23.

The Grand Theatre in Salt Lake recently finished their run of Margaret Blair Young’s I Am Jane, but I am very glad that the show is also going to the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo, UT, on July 22-23.  I am glad because I want to shout from the rooftops to everyone who will listen to me, “Hallelujah! Go see this show!” Really, this may be your last chance.  If you’re in driving distance of Provo on those nights, please, do yourself a favor and go see it.  You’ll be a better human being for it.

Now the production isn’t perfect, nor is the script, and I’ll detail why that is later.  But, in the end, my criticisms of the show don’t matter, because there are some productions that are simply important.  Despite any flaws such shows have, the marred parts are overshadowed and outshone by the glory.  And glory, as hyperbolic as that word can be, is the right word to use for this show.  Glorious.

I Am Jane tells the story of a group of African-American Latter-day Saints, most notably the title character Jane Manning James and, to some degree, Elijah Abel.  For those who haven’t brushed up on their Church History, Jane and Elijah, and those associated with them, were important because they were part of the very small group of early Mormon black pioneers.  Jane and her folk joined the Church in Nauvoo, and Elijah joined in 1832.  One of the peculiar things about Elijah Abel, and one of the things I have found that most Mormons simply don’t know, is that he was ordained to the priesthood by Joseph Smith, and became a seventy.  That’s interesting (as most of the readers of A Motley Vision should know, unless they’re completely new to Mormonism) because people of African descent could not receive the LDS priesthood through most of the Church’s history, until President Spencer W. Kimball received the revelation in 1978 that all worthy male members, no matter their racial descent, could receive the priesthood.

This is one of the most fascinating, if not uncomfortably tragic, issues the play brings up. In Nauvoo, under Joseph Smith,  African-Americans seemed not only to have had a better time in the Church, but seemed to have been welcomed with open arms, especially by Joseph Smith.  Jane was asked to be sealed to the Smith family by Emma and Joseph (a temple/priesthood ordinance which would later be denied to African Americans), and Elijah, as previously mentioned, would receive the priesthood office of a Seventy and was considered a good friend of the Prophet. The play also shows Joseph Smith’s views against slavery that can be read in his political platform for president.

But things change drastically after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom… under Brigham Young, temple and priesthood ordinances are denied to African-Americans, and racism runs rampant in Utah, including mob violence, excommunication and blatant racism against African-Americans who don’t accept their “place” and are not “satisfied” with the “blessings already given them.”

So the set up is quite a poignant, painful juxtaposition of what could have been. Under Joseph Smith, we see a tolerant, joyful acceptance of people of all races.  In Utah, things become dark regarding racial progress and we find policies changing and injustices served and we see the prejudices inherited from the American culture of the time seeping in among the Saints and even effecting the leadership of the Church.  I have heard some argue, including Church leaders, that Joseph Smith instituted the racial policy.  I have not found convincing evidence of that. Even Brigham Young had more tolerant views of racial integration within the Church at the beginning.  It doesn’t seem to be until Winters Quarters that the winds shift (for a good, general overview of these issues, I found this Wikipedia article surprisingly helpful, offering pieces of information I had not read or heard before).

Most people will find the information presented uncomfortable, even deeply disturbing, especially if they have not heard it before.   Especially if one takes the view of a Prophet’s infallibility (which I don’t, and neither did Joseph Smith), it will create dissonance.  However, if one believes that even good, powerful men such as Brigham Young and John Taylor can make mistakes and be influenced by the culture of their time, even in regards to Church policy (note that I use the word policy, not “doctrine.” I agree with David O. Mckay who said the priesthood ban was a policy, not a doctrine), then this play should be no obstacle to anyone’s faith (quite the opposite!), despite its tragic nature.  Especially as, throughout the play, we see the powerful faith, endurance, sacrifice and soulful beauty of the title character, Jane Manning James, and those associated with her.

So these have been some of the issues surrounding the story. Let’s dwell a moment on the actual production:

I have mixed feelings about much of the cast and their performances. I found most of the African-American cast very capably portrayed, while much of the Caucasian cast to have had some strange casting choices attached to them. This is the deep irony in Utah where, due to demographics, it should be much easier to cast a white role than a black one. More on the portrayals later.

It took me a moment to warm up to Tamu Smith, who played Jane.  Her performance seemed muted compared to the lively performances of fellow actress La Shanda Hill who plays the smaller role of Jane’s sister Angeline.  However, as the play progressed and I started understanding Jane’s character better, and picking up on the subtleties and nuances of Smith’s portrayal, I became more and more impressed and simply accepted her as Jane.  It would seem to me that Smith would be very well suited to film, where these nuances would be more accentuated.  As the play progressed, her portrayal rolled a deep seated pain, a shyness, an emotional depth.  These could have been projected even more, considering the needs of a large theater as opposed to a small black box or a film screen.  However, that’s a small concern considering what Smith was able to deliver in terms of soulfulness and tragic beauty.

Abe Willis was very capable as Elijah (which will be played by Danor Gerald at the Provo performances), portraying the role with verve, energy, pathos and humor. Keith Hamilton, who also acted as executive producer for the show, also had a strong performance as Jane’s husband Isaac.  However, I would have liked a little more variance in the levels of his character.  What he did, though, he did very well.  Other major supporting roles played by Jenny Rock, Brandon Day, Peggy Matheson and Emmet C. Gill  were all strong.  I was also surprised that many of the actors who impressed the most had some of the smallest roles… Rita Martin, Danor Gerald, La Shanda Hill and Lauren Livingston could have all powerfully carried much larger roles than they were given.

This, however, had as much to do with the script as anything.  Too many roles were brought on, only to be discarded without further development.  I do not mind large casts, despite the problems it causes to a production in filling so many roles with competent actors, especially if you’re paying your actors and what that does to a budget.  Heck, I’ve written a number of large casts myself, with varying degrees of success.  What I was concerned about was how many of those roles were subsequently thrown away in the script.  If you’re going to write a role, find out the reason you’re writing it, and if it’s not an important reason, then find a way to do without that character.

What would constantly happen in the play is that we’d see a character in one scene, and they would be set up with some importance, and then we would never see them again. Three examples I can immediately think of are the characters of Eliza Partridge Lyman, Samuel Smith and the mysteriously named “Orson” (which “Orson”? Orson Hyde? Orson Pratt? A fictional Orson?). This “Orson” appears in one scene, and could have been easily replaced by a character who we have already met. Her serves no real purpose in the play, except to tell Isaac that there are some finally black women in Nauvoo who he can court. And the inclusion of Samuel Smith mystifies me!  He’s there for one very short scene, to declare (somewhat anti-climatically) Joseph Smith’s martyrdom.  If it wasn’t for the program, a person wouldn’t even know it was Samuel Smith, because he isn’t even named in the dialogue. And the scene, which carries very important information, wasn’t developed. It’s sole existence seems to be to tell you that the Prophet is dead, without any of the needed emotion or gravitas that needs to accompany that information.

Eliza Partridge Lyman, on the other hand,  is initially set up as an important character when we meet her, as she is declared as one of Jane’s best friends and Jane gives her some food which prevents Eliza’s family from starving.  First, Eliza Lyman was miscast.  Being one of Joseph’s younger plural wives (not that the point is brought up in the play), she would have been much more youthful than portrayed in the play. However, more important than a small detail like that, Eliza is declared as Jane’s good friend, one of her best. Yet their dialogue together is stilted and uncomfortable, filled with exposition-laden details that the two supposed friends should have already known about each other.  And since she was set up as such an important friend, the audience is left to wonder, where was Eliza before this point in the play?  Where is Eliza when Jane is enduring her hardships later on? If she’s such a good friend where is she? If I had read the script before hand, I would have promptly told Young to either excise the character completely, or to build her up to be a more important character.  As it is, she serves as a minor plot point rather than a developed character, a vehicle to show Jane’s kindness rather than a vital part of the story’s overarching narrative.

These examples point to a deeper problem in the script… Young doesn’t necessarily know how to adapt this story into a theatrical format.  Young, chiefly a novelist (and a talented one at that), doesn’t seem to understand the needs of the stage. In a novel, or even a film, throwing in one scene characters who don’t serve a pointed use to the plot or major characterization can be all right, because you have much more room to play with.  But on stage, you only have a couple of hours to tell the story, and to go on wild goose chases, whether to fulfill minor historical details (and I sense was often the case here), or to provide convenient exposition, is problematic.  You at least have to double cast such characters (which no effort was made to do here), otherwise the amount of actors, costumes and investment placed into the play exponentially increases.  I’ve had to learn this lesson the hard way in some of my plays, a lesson I’ve had to learn especially hard when I’ve also been a producer or a director.

But, for the most part, these roles were ably filled, especially the African-American roles. However, as I said before, some of the casting of the Caucasian roles on a whole gave me pause, especially the roles of Joseph and Emma Smith, small but vital roles in this story. Now with the casting of Joseph and Emma, I couldn’t tell if my issues had to do with the acting, the directing, the writing or the combination thereof.

Benjamin King, who played Joseph Smith, is a very strong actor.  I’ve known him for many years and his performances rarely fail to impress me.  Ironically, I have even cast him as Joseph Smith myself, in my play Friends of God, and thought that he did a fantastic job with the Prophet in that show. But something about this version of King’s “Brother Joseph” seemed off to me. King had a good friendliness, energy and mode of expression.  But this portrayal of the Prophet, in the end, seemed very one dimensional.

Part of the problem had to do with the script, which surprised me, since I enjoyed Young’s presentation of the Prophet in her novel One More River to Cross.  In the novel (which pretty much covers the same ground the play does) Joseph Smith seemed more three dimensional, more rugged, more human and thus, ironically, more likable.  This Joseph seemed simplified, stiff, overly concerned about about fitting someone’s pre-conception, and thus not fitting anyone’s pre-conception.  The Prophet became a talking point, quoting historical passages rather than having real conversations, preaching sermons rather than interacting as a human being would.  Again, I can’t put my finger on where the root of this problem is in the production, but it was a indeed a problem, and became a disappointing distraction from some very important parts of the narrative.

However, Joseph in the end, was at least set up as a symbolic beacon showing the approach the Church should have taken with race. We end up siding with him, and loving what true semblance  there is of him. The portrayal of Emma Smith, on the other hand, seemed to accidentally undermine the good that this approach was trying to do.  Again, I couldn’t tell if this problem came from the script, the director’s instructions, or Valaura Arnold’s portrayal of Emma, but Emma came off as stiff and unlikable.

For example, there is a scene where Emma tells Jane that her and Joseph want to spiritually “adopt” Jane into their family, by sealing her to them.  This could have been a powerful moment, showing Joseph and Emma’s intense love for this beautiful saint.  However, with how it played out in the production, Emma seemed somewhat awkward and even condescending with the scenario, which created a different sort of racism, albeit a more benign one.  I felt no true spark in the relationship, rather Emma set herself up as a superior over Jane, who needed the Smiths’ guiding hand, instead of being perfectly suited to being sealed to her own family.  To understand the views of sealing people to the Prophet in those days is complex, and one has to understand that it happened to many people in early Church History, but no such context is given and instead it comes off as slightly offensive, if not well meaning.  It tasted too much like the Native American placement program in the Church several decades ago, for my comfort, or the similar program of Australian Aboriginal children being adopted into white families, as chronicled in stories like Rabbit Proof Fence. Now, knowing Margaret Young’s impeccable reputation for race relations in the Church, I know this was not her intent.  However, in future drafts and productions of the script, I would recommend something on some level be fixed to avoid that sense in that scene, because it does not support the message of the beautiful story being told.

I think the flaws that mar this otherwise beautiful script are a shame because of how easily they could have been avoided. It is evident that Young is a very good writer, and this script could have benefited from the tightening a trained playwright, dramaturg or a director accustomed to working with new scripts could have given.  These issues could have been addressed and easily fixed.

However, as I mentioned before, these are small concerns when compared to the mighty things done in I Am Jane. Despite the somewhat flat nature of the white folks’ dialogue, the more important African-American characters’ dialects and dialogue is authentic, natural, specific to type and culture and filled with genuine pathos and humor. It was more like hearing the wonderful dialogue of an August Wilson play, rather than the white, culturally Mormon woman that I know that Margaret Blair Young is.  The African-American characters are fully developed, powerful and dynamic, especially Jane. Young seems to “get” this culture, even perhaps more than her own, which I think is very interesting.  She has been working for a long time within the African-American, Mormon community and it really shows by her passionate advocacy for the community’s causes.  Supported by a talented design team (the costumes and set were awesome), a great, dedicated group of actors and a production staff that obviously love the story and have a mission, they’ve helped Margaret Blair Young bring off a story that, though flawed, simply burns away those flaws with the fire of the spiritual Pentecost that the play ignites.

As I said before, this play is important. Too many Mormons do not understand, nor even seem to want to understand, the issues addressed in this play.  As faith promoting and inspirational as this story is, it in the end it comes off to me as a tragedy.  Jane Manning James, Elijah Abel, Sylvester James, the beautiful African-American-Mormon minority that surrounded them… these were real people.  And many injustices were heaped upon them.  And people like them still live today, facing the same issues that their forefathers did.

As a people who have historically suffered many injustices ourselves, Mormons should be more sensitive and knowledgeable about these issues.  We should know these stories.  We should not be afraid of analyzing our own souls, and trying to root out the remaining vestiges of racism and discrimination that remain there.  We’ve gone a long way as a Church and as a people.  But subtle intolerance and a lack of true charity are still shadows we need to address.  I’m surprised about the racist attitudes I still encounter among some otherwise good people in the Church.  Many Mormons still have not put away the cultural mythology concerning African-Americans, whether it is the “curse of Cain” or the “less valiant in the pre-existence” excuses.  I think at one point we need to come to grips that we are just as guilty, and just as influenced by the racist inheritance that many others in the world received.  We’re better than we were, but we’re not done yet.  Yet productions like I Am Jane go a long ways in helping us bring that mirror to our souls and force us to have a long, honest look at what we see there.

Tickets for I Am Jane can be purchased through The Covey Center for the Arts.

Sensitivity Rating: I Am Jane frankly addresses many offensive attitudes and actions concerning race, including the use of the “n” word.  Although culturally important to the story, parents should be prepared to have long, honest discussions with their children about what their children see and hear in the story. There is also brief references to rape, polygamy and violence in the play, although in tasteful ways not shown on stage.

Vuissa: LDS Film Festival founder Christian Vuissa is featured in the Summer 2010 issue of Marriott Alumni Magazine (HT ldsfilm.com).

Sweater Friends: Mormon singer-songwriter duo The Sweater Friends have been blogging about their new album-in-the-making The Ghost and The Guest. They will be playing June 25 at the Utah Arts Festival.

Mormon Media Studies: Papers and panel proposals for BYU’s Mormon Media Studies Symposium are due June 30. The symposium will be held Nov. 11-12.

Amri’s Finds: So my cousin Amri Brown (who most of you may know as a BCC blogger) sent me a couple of Mormon-art-related links recently. Not that neither she nor I are necessarily endorsing these, but she (and now I) thought they might be of interest 1) Photographer Zachary Taylor’s portfolio of portraits of Mormon Ex-Convicts 2) The book trailer for Mike Wilson’s new novel Zombie (Amri says that Mike is an Argentine author who lives in Chile and that he was born and raised LDS).

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Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist (Amazon) (AMV review) has been making a splash. As of this writing, it’s holding on to the last spot of the NYTBSL and I’ve been seeing articles about Udall all over the interwebz.

Here at A Motley Vision, we are “devoted to exploring the world of Mormon arts and culture. Or to be more specific: Mormon literature, criticism, publishing and marketing — plus film, theater, art, music, and pop and folk culture” (cite) and generally we interpret this to mean the culture of faithful Mormons.

With Brady Udall, whom, many of those reports report, is rather less faithful (at least as compared to his wife and kids, apparently), the question arises: How do faithful Mormons (interested in the arts or not) view our less faithful artists?

(Note: This topic has been considered at greater depth elsewhere on this site, including here and here and here and here, and I would be happy to see any of those discussions revived if you’re interested in engaging.)

Simply put, the perception is that “we” generally view “them” with at least moderate suspicion. Even enlightened artsy types like myself.

That said, let me announce here, as clearly as possible, that The Lonely Polygamist in no way knocks Mormons. Here are the three most notable quotations about mainstream Mormons in the book (please keep in mind that my copy was a free ARC from the publisher and my page numbers will not correspond with your page numbers) (also note that if you remember tiny details from blogposts, there is bit of a spoiler in the second and third quotations):

Unlike the valley’s Mormons who peopled the towns along the river, the members of the Living Church of God, who mostly lived on farms and compounds at the eastern edge of the valley, did not hold positions of power, sat on no boards or councils, had nothing but their little church on the hill and each other. (152)

Though the Mormons in the valley were suspicious, even openly antagonistic toward their polygamist brethren, a child had gone missing; they formed search parties, set up and command center in Hurricane, shut down their farms and shops and businesses to comb miles . . . . (247)

The Mormons—who had abandoned the Principle a hundred years ago . . . had many things the fundamentalists did not: they had their expensive modern chapels, their temples and their worldwide bureaucracy and millions of clean-cut members, they had their Donnie and Marie. But they did not have this priesthood authority, the ancient biblical power, borne of men of God . . . who spoke the hard truth, who conversed directly with God and had the ability, like Jesus of old, to release a dead child from her . . . grave. (249)

Mormons, as per 1970s polygamists’ perspective.

Anyone who, reading those passages, would take offense or freak out or burn a book is insane and should be treated as such (you will notice from this opinion that I do not always learn the lessons I claim to learn). Happily, I have not read any angry yellings yet, but, well, #35 on the bestseller list really ain’t that many books (and it doesn’t show up on this week’s USA Today’s top 150 at all).

But Udall knew that talking about polygamy is sensitive no matter how fair you are. And so, shortly before the book’s release, its publicist at Norton sent AMV this statement, penned by the book’s author:

Like so many others in the church, I am a product of polygamy. If my great-great grandfather and great-great grandmother had not decided to get married-even though great-great grandpa was already happily married to someone else-I and hundreds of my kin would never have been born. So it was only natural that, when asked by Esquire magazine in 1997 to write a piece about my religious traditions and values, I chose to write about polygamy. This was back before Big Love, before the raids on the Texas compound, and before Tom Green and Warren Jeffs became household names. Though I had direct connections to polygamy and thought I knew something about it, I went into my research expecting what anyone might expect: ramshackle compounds, hardened men in homemade clothes, cow-eyed women in pioneer dresses with ridiculous hair.

The people I met turned out to be disappointingly normal. They lived in suburban townhomes, drove minivans, shopped for clothes at the mall. As a rule, normality doesn’t make for interesting copy, but as I spent more time with the families I began to see that the appearance of normality was an illusion. They had to keep their lifestyle a secret, suffered the scorn of their neighbors and were criminals under the law-not to mention the fact that in a single family there might be as many as six wives and thirty-five children. These were normal people, then, living in an exceptionally abnormal way.

The Esquire article led to my upcoming novel The Lonely Polygamist which took the better part of a decade to research and write. Because novelists are routinely asked what they happen to be working on, I got into a lot of discussions about polygamy, and I noticed a common reaction among members of the church. Mostly they seemed agitated, or even aghast, wondering why I would want to write about such a prickly subject. Once or twice I was asked if I had something against the church, some axe to grind.

Of course, these sorts of reactions were not surprising. The church has struggled to distance itself from polygamy, claiming that it no longer has a connection to the practice. And yet I don’t think we can sweep polygamy under the rug so easily. Whether we like it or not, polygamy is not only a part of our past, it’s part of our present, our scripture and theology, which both suggest it will be part of our future. If we are to respect our heritage and be honest about who we are as a people, we must acknowledge polygamy’s place in our church and culture. And when we see a polygamist family among us, we must remember we are looking in the mirror; we are looking at ourselves.

At this point, we learn something new about interMormonism culture wars. As you might have picked up from the book quotations above (and likely already know anyway), any feelings of wariness Mormons feel toward the lapsed, polygamists feel toward us—for we, from their perspective, are also lapsed.

Yet, in truth, are we not all fallen?

I know everyone likely to read this post already agrees with me, but if Brady Udall, who generally strikes me as a pretty balanced and centered human being (even if some of the violence in Edgar Mint is really really awful), feels he has to wage a preemptive attack on Mormon biases, then I’m wondering if many Mormons cannot tell the difference between a Brady Udall and an Ed Decker (who, incidentally, is from my home ward, though I should point out he lost his mind before I was even born and we have never met)?

I’ve too often seen liberal-minded (in the classical sense), artsy Mormons pick on those of lower-caliber mind, and I don’t want that to happen here. But I do want to open the comments with a few questions. Feel free to address all, some, one or none of them but please be nice to those who aren’t here to defend themselves.

1) Is Udall’s seeming paranoia justified?

2) Is there a culture war between faithful and less faithful Saints? And if so, is that war based in unrighteous judgment or something more doctrinally justifiable?

3) And what do you make of this whole “war” metaphor, anyway?

4) How similar is the relationship between polygamists and mainstream Mormons to mainstream Mormons and lapsed Mormons?

5) Is The Lonely Polygamist a “Mormon” book?

And please, as I hardly touched upon it, delve into the meat of Udall’s statement as we discuss this issue.

See you in the comments.

Look for part two sometime Thursday.

* * * *

Beyond Prescription? Problematizing Mormon Identity and the Future of Mormon Literary Studies

[T]he multiplicity of religious and irreligious practices engaged in [...] by those who lay claim to the nominations “Mormon” and “post-Mormon,” much less “Jack Mormon,” [...] boggles the mind.

-Bryan Waterman

Confluences

These past several months I’ve been wrestling with myself, with the Heavens, trying to gain some hold for my intellectual desires and work in a broader conceptual universe. This struggle has really just been an extension and intensification (due to the academic path I’ve been negotiating recently) of my continuing quest to find what Wayne Booth might call “a plausible harmony” between “my many selves.” Among others, the believing Mormon, who seeks greater communion with God by trying to live by His laws as voiced by His prophets and to serve with faith in what he considers God’s church (no matter the institution’s flaws); the husband, who has obligated himself through what he considers unbreakable promises to honor his bride, her potential as a human being, their combined potential as wife and husband, and the fruits of their eternal marriage; and the poet, teacher, and literary scholar who is compelled by the incessant prodding of vocation to share his rhetorical gifts with the world—you know, the whole don’t-hide-your-light-under-a-bushel deal.

My continued challenge is learning to balance these passions, to engage with each in an honest, quality, pleasing, even—ideally—transformative experience for the parties involved. In short, I yearn to make a positive difference in the world (though I admit the intangibility and the potential “O, that I were an angel” discontent of that desire), to create a space in which I can identify with and influence others, in which I can allow their voices, their stories, their selves, to gather, to mingle, to develop, to expand into and revise the stories I came from.

I stole that last phrase—the stories I came from—from James Goldberg’s recent Mormon Artist interview with Nicole Wilkes. When asked how he came up with a name for the protagonist who wanders through the amalgam of mythologies he’s gathered in “Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg,” Goldberg cites his unique ethnic heritage—his many selves—as inspiration. Says he,

When I decided to write a story in which I was free to use the stories I came from, I came up with the name “Teancum Singh Rosenberg.” It was almost a joke at first: I’m going to create this guy with a first name so Book of Mormon I’ve never actually met anyone with it, the middle name all Sikh men take, and a sort of stereotypical Eastern European Jewish last name.

So Teancum Singh Rosenberg, as his creator, stands at the confluence of at least four overlapping cultural traditions: Mormon, Indian, European, and Jewish. He thus represents a multi-faceted identity constructed from the rhetorical material of Goldberg’s multi-faceted self.

My appropriation of Goldberg’s language seeks to borrow something of this pluralism, even as I subtly—perhaps somewhat radically—recontextualize his phrase, revising its intended meaning in order to suit my own rhetorical need, which at present is twofold: 1) to initiate a critical narrative knit around my many selves and our experience with the varieties of Mormon narrative art; and 2) to problematize the notion of a coherent and prescribed Mormon cultural identity, an assumption around which many Mormon critics have constructed their theoretical paradigms and critiques and upon which much of Mormonism’s critical energy continues to be spent (see the litany of links in my note as a small sample).

Reading through the Stories I Came From: A Critical Autobiography

A number of years ago when I happened upon the Mormon literaturstreit of the 1990’s and began considering the possibilities of and for a Mormon literature and criticism, I started to frame my own theoretical paradigm around what I thought were the essential matters at stake in the world of Mormon letters: the teachings, rites, and ordinances of the Restored Gospel. I think I titled or sub-titled my attempt “The Rites of Mormon Criticism” because it was centered (if I remember correctly) around the sequence of rituals required for entrance into the Heavenly City. The effort was born of my imagined position as the next great Mormon literary critic and, looking back, I see it was meant to suggest that for a critic to rightly judge Mormon literature and for a writer to truthfully create Mormon literature, s/he needs to have been initiated into the literary ministry through the proper gospel rites. Only when dressed in the billowing robes of this priesthood should they be qualified to write by, for, and about the Mormon experience.

I abandoned that effort soon thereafter 1) because I didn’t know where I was going with it, probably because I was still wet behind the ears when it comes to having engaged much—if any—Mormon lit beyond the scriptures and Mormon devotional texts; and 2) because it never quite sat right with me. I see now that one reason for my uneasiness was the exclusivity of the framework: not only does it deny the varieties of Mormon cultural experience that exist outside of Church Headquarters (even those, admittedly, that exist within church headquarters), it also betrays a bias toward a masculine worldview, especially because those invested with priesthood authority and the stewardship to judge in institutionalized Mormonism are men and the framework parallels that investment. Another reason I think I never got on board with myself was because I couldn’t be satisfied critically with such a culturally exclusive, boys’ club mentality. And though I probably couldn’t have articulated this reasoning then, I can trace the roots of my present theoretical narrative to that (inter)textual experience with Richard Cracroft, Bruce Jorgenson, and Gideon Burton.

At around this same time, I met Dialogue, Irreantum, and AMV, each of whom introduced me to writers and critics whose ideas have had a significant impact on the development of my own theories of language and literature. Among others:

Eugene England, father of my intellectual engagement with Mormon culture, whose short poem, “The Firegiver” (which I’ve explored elsewhere), and short essay, “The Possibility of Dialogue,” invited me into the rhetorical space and potential of intra- and inter-cultural discourse—of the possibility that I could profitably “speak with sensitivity to [another’s personal] framework or ability to hear and speak in order to communicate for each other’s welfare, not to justify or exalt [myself] at [their] expense” and that I could “truly listen to other[s], respecting our essential” kinship as part of God’s family “and the courage of those who try to speak, however they may differ from [me] in professional standing or religious belief or moral vision.”

Patricia Karamesines, whose award-winning essay, “The Rhetoric of Stealing God,” persuaded me, not just into AMV’s fold of regular readers, but into the power and authority of responsible and sustainable language use—into rhetoric that “questions itself as thoroughly as it questions Other, and when it finds itself lacking, it takes upon itself the responsibility to find the next best thing, the revelatory metaphor, the liberating paradox, the ever-expanding symbol, thereby crossing boundaries established by less productive, less creative, less pro-active, and less kind words.”

William Morris, whose “In Memoriam: Laraine Wilkins” justified my decision to study literature over sociology:

Wilkins [...] articulated an inclusive, diverse, unabashedly literary view of Mormon letters. To quote from a recent e-mail: “I’m interested in seeing more dialogue happen—*dialogue* in order to have some groundwork for Mormon culture to enjoy more respect, or at least better understanding, from the outside community. Such dialogue requires both insiders and outsiders. I’d like to see AML do more of this. I think literature has great—perhaps even better—potential than history (though history is where most work is being done) or sociology to achieve this. Literature, although an expression of cultural identity in many respects, ultimately addresses individual experience…”

And whose continued insistence that Mormon literary criticism should focus on specific examples from Mormon narrative art has kept me from circling (too far) into theoretical abstraction as I engage the growing body of Mormon letters and try to find my niche in the field of contemporary literature.

And Laura Craner, whose titillatingly short post “If You Can ‘Queer’ a Book Can You ‘Mormon’ a Book?” poses a question (about what it might mean to read as a Mormon) and a correlation (between gender/sexuality studies and Mormon studies—my main research interests) that, eventually, led me to Bryan Waterman and new ways of considering Mormon literature as an expression of diverse cultural and personal identities and experiences.

And what might those new ways be? Tune in Thursday as I lean heavily on Waterman (specifically this article he published in Dialogue 30.1 (1997)) and some others to take up the problem(atizing) of Mormon identity and what that might mean for Mormon literary criticism.

Since reading the first chapter of Elna Baker’s The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, the book has taken me on a ride. Sometimes I was filled with joy and sometimes with horror. Sometimes I felt she was very much my kind of Mormon and sometimes I wanted to slap her. In other words, it’s a good memoir.

1. Damage Control

About halfway through the book, a newly confident Elna (more on that momentarily) decides she will win the most desirable young Mormon man in New York. Her primary competition is an Amber who “is like a Heather only she’s attacking your spiritual worthiness and your dress size at the same time” (128):

And do you know what the craziest part about all this is? Amber’s popular. I’m dumbfounded by it. Not because I’m jealous or want to be popular myself, but because she’s insane. She raised her hand in church one Sunday and said that Katrina happened in New Orleans because sometimes God needs to “cleanse the world of sin.” It’s people like her than make damage control in the non-Mormon world a never-ending task. (129)

I’m with Elna here: It makes it harder for me to feel like a reasonable and respectable person when I’m put in the same category with Ambers. Seriously So Blessed owes its massive success to the existence of Ambers, and that faux Amber’s over-the-top self-righteous snidery rings plenty true — the site has both the insider lovemail and outsider hatemail to prove it.

So yay. Elna is a defender of the faith. Or is she, he said as he turned to the camera, one eyebrow raised.

Do we defend the faith alongside Elna? Or do we defend it against her?

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2. Dedication

Here’s a scan of the dedication page:

Elna is clearly not writing this dedication just for her parents. It’s written for any LDS Barnes and Noble shopper who picks this book up wondering what Mormons (like themselves) have to do with sexy short dresses (unlike their own dresses) and begins to thumb through it, looking to see whether the author is on Sister McKay’s side or not.

And, clearly, Sister McKay would not approve of a Mormon girl who uses “nine F-words, thirteen SH-words, [and] four A-holes.”

Elna’s sending a clear message to good Mormons who would sooner be murdered than speak inappropriately: “I would sooner speak inappropriately than be murdered.”

And if you believe that unclean language springs from unclean thoughts leads to unclean actions, then beware: This young lady might be exactly who you fear she is.

So if her dedication makes you doubt her dedication, this is not the book for you.

Start defending the faith.

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3. You’ll notice I’m calling her Elna

Not to make this review all about me, but yes, I am. I am calling her Elna.

One aspect of this book is that it’s difficult to finish it without believing you know Elna Baker, that you are Elna Baker’s close personal friend. And so I call her Elna. Until she tells me to stop.

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4. The Polite-Company Rule of Memoir Writing

I’m not sure what the precise ratio is, but modern memoirs have a clear x:y requirement of Stories Appropriate for Polite Company to Stories Decidedly Not for Polite Company. Elna’s in a unique spot in that, depending on what brand of Polite Company you mean, nearly everything she says is a notfor. Both Jesus and tongue tag are taboo depending on who you’re sitting down with. So her potential at making Constant Reader uncomfortable is doubled, giving her an advantage over people like James Frey and JT LeRoy who had to make stuff up to keep everyone squirming.

Mormons make people uncomfortable. Mormons are easily made uncomfortable. What a win-win for Elna.

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5. Pooping out a Fourth Grader

If you, like me, have only seen pictures of Elna like

then you may find it difficult to believe that she was not always a little blonde cutie in the traditional form. And all the available photographic evidence (coming up next) would suggest that’s what she wants you to believe. And yet, one of her book’s major emphases is her change from Large-Since-Childhood to Sexy (”Who knew that I could be sexy?” [112]).

Like any Large American, she had flirted with dieting before, but it never took. Until one day at a British amusement park she met a funhouse mirror that presented her to Thin Elna. “‘I wish I looked like you,’” (78) she says and, having seen herself Thin (”For the first time . . . [with] a sweet spirit and a sweet ass” [78]), she decides that it is time to finally drop the weight. For reals this time.

You should know that in addition to all the bad language (and so forth), this book also contains some clear and penetrating spiritual moments that are without irritating sentimentality or that feel tacked on without being first earned. The weight loss story is one of these.

She prays for grace before starting. She skips her own birthday cake. The doctor has her keep track of all her eats. She drinks gallons of water and takes “Potassium, seratonin, dopamine, a multivitamin, and phentermine . . . little circles of color. Skittles . . . only the opposite” (84).

And she starts shedding weight.

She’s a great success.

Until she realizes she’s only halfway done.

Only halfway done.

Crisis.

And then

And then she has that experience where “God wasn’t in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but God wasn’t in the fire, and after the fire a still, small voice, and God was in the still, small voice” (90) and she perseveres, together with God, and loses “eighty pounds, which is the equivalent of pooping out a fourth grader” (91) and she and God stand together in their moment of shared victory.

She is Thin.

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6. Evidence of the Past

Now. That Polite-Company Rule? Really, in most circumstances, “Stories Appropriate for Polite Company” means stories that the teller can tell without giving away any information they do not wish to part with. In other words, you don’t tell embarrassing stories. Not ones that still embarrass you.

But the memoirist makes the decision to bring these unpleasantnesses into the foreground and display them, providing a mutual catharsis shared between author and reader.

But there is a line Elna will not cross. She claims to have destroyed all pre-Thin Elna photos. For all I know this is true. I have never seen one.

And so, new addendum to the Polite-Company rule, you may tell all the inappropriate stories you want, but you are not required to show anything.

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7. The Change

Speaking of showing, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is punctuated with drawings and handwritten text. The two most significant (because recurring) offer commentary on the past and foreshadow the future and fill in untold gaps. These are a simple T-chart comparing “What I believe” and “What I used to believe”, and a map of Manhattan surrounded by a gradually growing list of boys kissed. Here is the first map (123):

Besides the fact that handmade inking is always welcome in a book, Elna uses her ink to good effect. Not to dumb down the book, but to provide additional facts on the sly. They show a respect for the reader’s capacity to figure things out. And what reader doesn’t appreciate that?

If you’re good at numbers you’ll notice that this first map didn’t appear until postfourthgraderpooping. Care to guess the reason for that?

You’re right! Thin Elna gets lots more kisses that Large Elna did!

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8. Wait, phentermine???

“Everyone gains weight back, at least a little of it. I knew this. I’d watched it happen to other people. But that wasn’t going to be me. I was a success story” (200). Only it did. When she gained back ten pounds, unwilling to disappoint her doctor, she decided to lie about her weight and order her old pills again off the Internet.

And this second experience with phentermine takes the most beautiful moment in the book thus far and turns it 90° and suddenly it’s not so otherworldly anymore: ”‘It’s basically a derivative of speed’” (203).

. . . [losing weight had been] an out of body experience — Christ was dwelling inside me. I was waking up early, jogging incessantly, my appetite was gone, and I had an obsessive need to clean: All because of God. Only this change in my behavior hadn’t started the night I . . . prayed for His grace. These symptoms began two weeks later when I first took phentermine. My BIG miracle, I realized, the closest thing I had to evidence of God’s existence, was actually just me — ON SPEED! (203-4)

How do you deal with that?

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9. An Aside, in which You Are Subjected to Some Thericonian Philosophy

I try and I try to understand why so many Christians are threatened by evolution. That many of us are is well documented and something irreligious authors love to harp on. The otherwise brilliant novel Ark Baby blows it at the end by having a religious man, faced with irrefutable evidence of evolution, suddenly just drop God like an out-of-fashion necktie.

Among the new threats scary science is currently wielding over faith is the God Spot in the brain where religious sentiment is generated. An idea Robert J. Sawyer used to prove God a brain-generated evolutionary error.

Or human cloning, which idea gives Elna the heebie-jeebies — “‘Scientists can’t create that thing that makes us alive . . . They can’t create a person’s soul‘” (163).

Now, Mormons are famously (though with plenty of exception among the laity) unconcerned with what the truth is because we are concerned with what the truth is. Or, to be less enigmatic, since we believe in gathering in all truth, we do not fear it. So if it ends up that God wants to talk to me through an evolutionary “error”, why should that bother me?

Why can’t God give clones souls?

Why shouldn’t God work through speed?

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10. How much do we love the moderately estranged? Elna Baker as test case.

Let’s start with what Bambi said:

I attended NYC singles wards at the same time as Elna and she was a rather polarizing figure. Yes, she is mostly funny, but a lot of it comes at the expense of the church or its quirks. A lot of people were bothered by the fact by Elna would be representing the church to so many people and the manner in which she did it. I think that by most accounts she stayed “active”–at least in the NYC sense of the word. She made some decisions about her act that some members would find questionable, but she is definitely a talented story teller and worth checking out at least once.

Bambi is hitting on the curious truth that many Mormons seem to labor under the incorrect assumption that Mormons are a homogeneous group. That’s bad for Mormons who think Mormon are like themselves (because they fail to reach out), and it’s bad for Mormon who think Mormons are not like themselves (because they feel pushed away).

And what happens when someone like Elna shows up, someone who forces those on the one side to realize this coin has over 13,508,509 sides? She might make us uncomfortable, but since when is being thrust out of our comfort zones antithetical to being Mormon?

Theory: the real issue (though not for Bambi, obviously — please don’t feel picked on) is that she is single.

The travails of the single Mormon woman have been done to death within Mormonism so no need to rehash it, but I had a revelation recently when a good friend of mine was married. Because I did not expect her to get married. The not-enough-Mormon-males problem is so endemic that I have stopped expecting my single female friends to marry.

Elna deals with the cutthroat Mormon singles scene with not enough boys on one side and Ambers, those “crazy dogmatic Christians on a quest to find celestial popularity” (128), on the other.

When Elna finally does start dating a Mormon boy, she warns him that “my mom says that every time I meet a guy at church I subconsciously sabotage it” (214).

And why not? Kissing your way across Manhattan isn’t a mistake on par with marrying the wrong Mormon and ending up with an eternity of bad sex (several pages). It may be a mistake and it may make some people look down on you but it’s a risk with a short shelf-life. The wrong marriage, however . . . .

Elna clearly considers herself Mormon. She just as clearly is unsure how to process that fact. She clearly has a testimony. She just as clearly is unsure how to quantify that testimony.

Thus, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is a volley of sorts — a manifesto for moderately estranged Mormons. The question begged, then, is how will “homogeneous” Mormons reply? Is our literary culture gracious enough to let in a (nonapostate but) moderately estranged believer?

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11. Until tomorrow when her book hits stores, Elna Baker will be better known for telling her stories live. Here’s one from the book. (Please be warned that it mentions v*g*n*s.)

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12. Spoiler alert

I’ve already given too much away. Sure, I haven’t touched the atheist boyfriend or the movie star or the racist baby shoppers, but now I’m now going to talk about the end of the book. So be warned.

Also, know that much of what I say will be in response to my previous post on The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance’s first chapter.

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13. The End of the Book

It ends perfectly with a primal scream on a log at a lake in the woods in the midst of the artistic release of writing this book. Release and self-acceptance and all is right with the world and one more drawing to wrap things up and tell us we are done and then huh? what’s this?

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14. Coda

Just as Elna sabotages her relationships with men, she now needs to sabotage her relationship with her readers. She had us at a place of hope and comfort and optimism for the future, but she is constitutionally unable to leave us there. As she says, she’d “sooner admit to holding a penis than to being sentimental” (271) and so she takes her advance on the book and blows it on a trip that is guaranteed to grind her into dust. Frankly, her capacity for self-immolation is remarkable. I can’t tell you how many times I ripped the book from my face, forced to psych myself up to read the next massively short-sighted (stupid) or embarrassing (horrifying) thing she would do next.

And so she takes her book’s perfect ending and gives us one more extended horror.

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15. The End of Yes?

And having done so, she realizes that she is “refusing to choose what kind of person I want to be. I’m saying yes to way too many things. I love that moment of unlimited possibilities so much that I’ve accidentally built my entire life there” (271-1).

Last time I said that

Elna demonstrates through joyous actions the pleasure and happiness to be found in living a life of YES and she makes us want to say YES as well . . . [and] by the end of page 22, as you stand in the corner of the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance with Elna and her “too many cookies and a notebook” watching “a thirty-five-year-old man — definitely a virgin — dressed in a duck costume doing the electric slide” you will pray, with her, “God, there has to be another way.”

She feels that way again as the coda ends.

But this time, the answer might not be

YES.

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One final thought……:

I’m glad it took me so long between finishing the book and finishing the review, as now I have a better sense of what its lasting impression is. The proper ending and the conflicting coda left me unsure whether Elna was providing damage control or requiring more of it.

But two weeks later, I can say, that no matter what label you want to put on her,Elna Baker is my kind of [label].

.

This is not my review of Elna Baker’s new book. This is an accident. I read her first chapter then nine minutes later gave birth to a healthy essay. This sort of thing can happen, even with virginal New York Mormons like Elna. I promise I will do whatever it takes — count to 100 by sevens, whatever — to keep from conceiving an essay per chapter. If all goes well, you will not hear from us again until her book’s estimated due date, October 15.

.

The first “chapter” (it’s not called a chapter, yet that’s what I’m calling it) of The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance is stage-setting, it’s an introduction — she hasn’t brought out the funny yet (though it’s funny), she hasn’t brought out the memoir yet (though it’s memoiric) — she’s setting the stage, she’s introducing us to her life’s dramatic conventions. She’s world-building.

Yet in these first 22 pages of her new memoir, Elna Baker carves out a rhetorical space for herself by discussing how she has carved space for herself in the real world. She is ”A Mormon in New York.”

Imagine a Venn diagram — but not one of those boring static ones we see all the time. This one’s different. At first, the circles nearly overlap, but slowly slowly they move apart until they meet at one point only, the point on which Elna stands. From the title of the “chapter” you may imagine I’m about to have you label the circles “New Yorker” and “Mormon” (as if they were two separate worlds). But don’t imagine that because that would be wrong. Although don’t feel bad! Because, you see, we have two separate Venn diagrams, one for New Yorkers and one for Mormons (as if those two groups were so absolutely separate) (though some might think so).

The two circles in each moving diagram represent “unlimited possibility” and “reality,” and the shift from being nearly overlapping to nearly separate represents the process we go through of moving from one to the other. That state in-between, which the Germans, (joke ahead), call Weltinnerschnitzelrealititz.

(Although the dynamic Venn diagram is mine, you should know that I’m taking most of this stuff [including the German] straight from page seven, when Elna first arrives in New York. She knows nothing and no one: “For another twenty minutes . . . anything was possible: my dorm room and my roommate could be anyone and anything I imagined. But twenty minutes later they’d be whatever they were.” That moment before reality, before, for instance, we read chapter one of a new book, the spine cracking as we open the pages for the first time, the moment of unlimited possibility.)

You can stop imaging now because I’m going to show you my diagram. It’s labeled using terminology that clearly demonstrates what side of the NY/M divide I’m on. (Hint: I’ve never been to the largest city on the east coast.) Behold! how the Gentile Reader and the Saint Reader move from unlimited possibility (which, let’s be honest, means “just like me”) to a single possible person: Elna.

Because you are wise, you will notice that the Saints are the first to be disabused of the notion of “I am just like Elna.”

She begins with talking about her doubts and uncertainties and her dislikes of Mormonism. And not until those are well established does she return to issues of faith and believing and liking, where she is firm but succinct.

So, question begged, why does she structure her opening this way?

A few of her possible thought processes:

1. Crassly commercial. I can sell a lot more copies to America than to Mormon America. Count and you’ll see. They outnumber us 60 to 1.
2. Nose thumbery. Screw you crummy Mormons for giving up halfway through the first chapter! I don’t need you anyway!
3. Saints will be saintly. I can trust my fellow Saints to stick with me through the wobbling, but if I don’t wobble first, other readers will write me off as a wacko and never listen to what I have to say.
4. Redefinition route. C’mon, people. There must needs opposition in all things. Without doubt there cannot be faith! Mortality’s a process for heaven’s sake! Or, more accurately, for my sake, your sake, our sakes. Let’s not fear doubt. It’s part of our whole religious package!
5. Religious people aren’t crazy. Well, some are. But not me. Because I see that religion is crazy. Crazy! But it’s like in Catch-22: if you think you’re crazy, you aren’t. Ergo, because I recognize that religion’s crazy, I must not be crazy. QED. Read my book knowing you are in the hands of a sane person.

And it’ll be nice to know she’s sane, because Elna doesn’t skimp on crazy doctrines (becoming a god will have to wait for a later chapter, but here’s an early taste):

. . . having a strong connection with God did not stop me from questioning my faith every ten seconds. Mormonism can sound pretty far-fetched: Joseph Smith digs up golden plates and translates them into a book, The Book of Mormon. This book ends up being a history of the ancestors of the Native Americans, who originated in Jerusalem and believed in Jesus.

When you write it all out like that you can’t help but reconsider. (9)

But when you Elna read closer, you’ll notice that for all her seeming apologies, she never candy coats Mormon doctrine with some tasty intellectualism. She doesn’t follow the above with Welllll, but they were probably only one source of Native American ancestry or Welllll, but you know the Aztecs were looking for a white god so obviously or anything else as apologetic as an apologist. She just says what we think and leaves it alone. She’s inviting the uninitiated to raise their eyebrows and walk away.

My defenses are up because I want her to be like ME I want her to be MY kind of Mormon. And most Mormons will feel the same. But that’s not a reasonable thing for us to feel, and no one will argue that more strenuously than myself. One of the paradoxes of Mormonism is that while we may be rigid and hierarchical, we have exquisite leeway in how we are allowed interpret what it is to be Mormon, what it means to lead a Mormon life. So it’s okay that it’s not possible for Elna to make all of us (or even most of us) happy. (It just feels like she should because she’s doing it on a stage. A literal stage.)

But Elna’s savvy. She recognizes the paradoxes working within her and she’s creating a framework the rest of the book can fit into. If her rhetorical posturing is successful now, she’ll never need to explain the big issues that inform every scene and every line of dialogue through the rest of the book. Because now the reader is Mormon. (Or at least an Elna Mormon.) Now the reader is a New Yorker. (Or at least an Elnayorker.) Because no matter our New Yorker / Mormon / Neither status, we do share something called humanity.

But while, for centuries, nonNew Yorkers have been trained in feeling New Yorkish, nonMormons have very little experience in feeling Mormonish. And so when you meet one, “every question is about whether [Mormons are] polygamist[s].”

Mormons are known for saying no. No sex, no drugs, no alcohol, and no caffeine. NO.

And this whole “saying no” philosophy makes me seem like a very boring person. But I’m not boring because while I say no to certain things (sex, drugs, alcohol), I try to say yes to everything else. I honestly believe there’s a certain power behind the word YES. (18)

Demonstration of YES is where we are now taken and what the themes of this “chapter” is ultimately proven to be. Elna demonstrates through joyous actions the pleasure and happiness to be found in living a life of YES and she makes us want to say YES as well. Her enthusiasm is infectious and whether you are a New Yorker who snorts at Jesus or a Mormon who squeals at dildoes (you’ll have to read the book), by the end of page 22, as you stand in the corner of the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance with Elna and her “too many cookies and a notebook” watching “a thirty-five-year-old man — definitely a virgin — dressed in a duck costume doing the electric slide” you will pray, with her, “God, there has to be another way.”

YES.

Today, I’m taking on the faulty analogies often used to convince people away from movies or books that may be good, “except for one little part.” Notice, first off, that I don’t intend to deal with the idea of keeping our entertainment clean or with the varying degrees of readerly sensitivity, i.e., individuals’ varying capacities to endure evil in the fictions they frequent. (So keep that in mind in the comments, if you will.) Rather, I’m approaching the language itself and intend to judge its merits in purely rhetorical terms—that is, I’m more concerned with what work the language is actually doing than with what it’s intended to do* or with whether or not we should watch this movie or read that book because of this steamy scene or that profane word.

Now for the analogies (the first two come from the same paragraph of the same source):

Faulty Analogy #1: Of Mice and Pizza

“Suppose the hot pizza you ordered arrived with all your favorite toppings- plus a tiny little mouse that had crawled onto it before being popped in the oven. Would you eat this pizza that was perfect except for one little mouse? […] Few people would choose to eat something that contained a small dead mouse […]. Yet many choose to fill their heads, often repeatedly, with movies that have ‘one little part’ that’s disgusting and possibly dangerous” (ref).

Faulty Analogy #2: Of Narcotics and Yogurt

“[W]hat if someone put just a little date-rape drug into a serving of fat-free frozen yogurt? It doesn’t matter that this would otherwise have been a healthy dessert if “one little part” was not a scary drug that could fog a person’s brain and wipe out control. Few people would choose to eat something that contained {…] a little date-rape drug. Yet many choose to fill their heads, often repeatedly, with movies that have ‘one little part’ that’s disgusting and possibly dangerous” (ref).

Faulty Analogy #3: Of Toilet Water and Orange Juice

One Sunday afternoon we were just finishing our family dinner when somehow the conversation turned to popular movies. One of my daughters mentioned a very popular movie that had one of those very objectionable scenes in it. And she said something like this, “Dad, what’s so wrong with that movie? I’d really like to see it. We can always fast forward that two minute part.” Now, she knew about the bad part in that movie. She knew it was wrong, but the rest of the movie had captured her imagination and she wanted to see it.

[…]

Well, instead of arguing with my daughter, I remembered something a friend of mine had done in a class. Sitting on the table was a pitcher of orange juice with just one cup left in the bottom. I poured that last cup, held it up, and asked her if she wanted it. Now, my children love O. J., and of course she wanted it.

Okay then I said, follow me. With most of my children curiously following, I took the glass of orange juice and walked into the bathroom. I reached into the toilet with another cup and dipped out some toilet water. Ever so carefully, I poured just one tiny drop of toilet water into the orange juice. I held it out to her. “Here you go,” I said.

She screamed ­and ran out of the bathroom. “But, honey,” I said as I held it out to her. “It’s only one little drop.” “I don’t care!” she yelled. “It’s yucky!” You know, I could not get her to come within ten feet of that glass of orange juice. I finally had to pour it out […] you know where. (ref).

Again, my problem with each of these isn’t mainly the message they convey (though I have my quibbles there, too), but that each analogy is overdrawn, something the authors—supposedly expert teachers—ultimately fail to acknowledge. While to some they may seem ingenious teaching aids, in my book they suffer a tragic rhetorical flaw: You see (or I do anyway), entertainment does not have the same molecular framework or effect on the human body as food. Sure, I know we’re talking different bodies here—the physical used to analogize the spiritual—but there are some telling differences that essentially make the analogies moot.

As Bruce Jorgensen puts it in his case for a Mormon erotica, “We are frequently, duly, and properly warned, over the pulpit in general conference, against the evil of pornography—an attitude […] I share, though [… I] also value and wish to allow a place for the erotic. But all too often, that evil is referred to in terms of poison, disease, or wounds,” as we have, in part, happening here. He continues, “I will call this the fallacy of overextended or overcredited metaphor. Yes, pornography is dangerous, as are poison, disease, and wounds. But right where we most need clarity for any genuinely moral discussion of the problem, the metaphors cloud the issue” (italics mine). Indeed, such reckless rhetoric, as I’ll call it, makes it difficult to engage in dialogue over this important issue, which falls into the “as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books” category (ref).

And while, as Jorgensen comments, “reading a Silhouette Special Edition romance or watching bare bodies simulate copulation on a screen is a kind of taking-in, […] it is not the same thing as ingesting botulism toxin from a can of vegetables or catching a cold by a kiss or breaking skin on sharp glass” or eating pizza tainted by mice or eating yogurt laced with narcotics or drinking a toilet water/OJ screwdriver. As Jorgensen concludes, “Each of these events begins a biochemical or physiological process that, unless decisively interfered with by other such processes [i.e., some degree of medical care], will proceed inexorably to its end: illness, bodily damage, death. But reading [or viewing a film] is an act of consciousness, a work of the spirit, a free act of a free agent; its consequences are not deterministically predictable, as far as my experience has shown” (italics mine). That is, reading a book or watching a movie, as opposed to ingesting poison, etc., will not follow the same course for each individual, especially according to that individual’s development of their agency. Indeed, in Jorgensen’s words, “I may ‘ingest,’ by reading, a false analogy like the ones I am talking about; I may ‘eat’ error. Yet I do not necessarily become erroneous; I can analyze and judge and even use the error to get nearer to the truth” (italics mine).

So how to break through the reckless rhetoric? What language, what analogies (if any) might best offer the clarity needed for us (meaning, Mormon culture generally) to engage in a genuinely moral discussion of the issue? Rhetoricians of the radical middle, what do you think?

* * * *

*Though the distinction here is subtle and intentions often can’t or shouldn’t be divorced from the words themselves, especially in real-life rhetorical situations, there is a difference between what words were intended to do and what they actually do (responsible rhetoric, I think, implies making every effort to wed the two aspects in our attempts to persuade others) and I’m drawing that line for my purposes here.

Bachman, for those who don’t know, joined the LDS Church in his native Winnipeg, Canada, in the 1960s, as the band he was in, The Guess Who, started to gain notoriety. At the same time that the Osmonds were known worldwide as Mormons, Bachman was regularly hitting the top of the music charts, first with The Guess Who, and later with Bachman Turner Overdrive. But despite the fame and accomplishment, he wasn’t widely known for being Mormon, and relatively few Mormons knew that he was LDS. Unlike the Osmonds, Bachman had little or no impact on Mormon culture.

I’ve seen this same thing happen over and over with LDS artists. They gain respect and even fame outside of Mormonism, and somehow fail to get any respect or even attention from within Mormonism. Its as if Mormon culture has blinders to members that don’t meet some unknown set of qualifications. Some may suggest that these qualifications include being faithful. But Bachman was faithful (until relatively recently — he left the Church earlier this decade, years after his fame had declined to  “whatever happened to…” status), as were many others who have gone through the same relationship with Mormon culture.

Another example is Clayton Christensen, who wrote the New York Times bestselling book The Innovator’s Dilemma and was earning thousands of dollars from giving speeches to business groups years before he was called to be an Area Authority Seventy. Yet it wasn’t until his call to service as a Seventy that many Mormons knew much about him, and I’d guess than most still don’t, and won’t until (and if) he is given a more visible calling. And even then, will members be aware of his bestselling book? [On the other hand, I'd bet more members know of Gerald Lund's books than his calling as a General Authority!]

My point here isn’t that fame is important, or that Mormon culture should adopt anything in particular from the culture of the world. It is that fame and notoriety are fickle things, and this is especially true in Mormon culture. Those authors and artists seeking success in the world are only rarely known for being Mormon, and their Mormon affiliation is infrequently an influence on others, and even less frequently an influence on Mormons.

It seems that success in the world only very rarely gives Mormon artists the opportunity to influence many people for good.

It’s that reach, and the administrative rhetoric derived from and meant to support it (i.e. the language used by teachers and leaders—however [in]effectively—to motivate those they lead), that I’m primarily concerned with at the moment.

In the past couple of months, the EQ presidency in my ward has turned up the heat as regards the quorum’s pretty poor home teaching record (which, I think, is quite standard throughout the Church) and the tune of “Get your butts out the door and visit your families, people” has been sung in most of our meetings lately, though in a softer, more dancing-through-the-daisies tone. The presidency (of which I am a secretarial part) seems honestly concerned more about the people than the numbers (although I don’t know what pressure, if any, is coming from the higher-ups), so their honesty comes through somewhat in the constant reminders to “get out and get it done, brethren” and in the recent need they’ve felt to implement home teaching interviews for each companionship.

As a relative newcomer in the quorum and as an acute observer of and in the presidency, I’ve watched this movement with some interest and my line of thinking in this motivational regard has started to take a different shape, directed, I think, by my rhetorical focus lately. More specifically, this teaching opportunity (which comes around once every quarter or so) has me pondering how I might best facilitate changes in my own—and even the presidency’s and quorum instructors’—administrative rhetoric such that those on the receiving end are led toward sustainable change in their lives.

In other words, I’m wondering how I can begin to best facilitate the deeper work of conversion I lamented for in yesterday’s post in my fellow laborers, how I can use the fruits of my language to care for and to be with and strengthen them in their continued efforts to know God such that they’re inspired (beyond bribery, manipulation, and the need for constant reminding and admonition—some of the fruits, I think, of administrative rhetoric) to help others know Him, too.

What say you rhetorician Saints of the radical middle? I’m interested in your thoughts as I gather mine in preparation in teach the elders this Sunday.