Take the story of Meredith, for example. When her husband of fifteen years decides he is gay and leaves her, it is almost unbelievable that she could ever find that “eternal perspective.” But in reading the details of her story you find out that, well, it actually possible for a woman to move forward with faith. Jana Reiss (of Flunking Sainthood fame) is startling–both in her bifurcated path to baptism and her tendency to pray with people at the drop of the hat–but also delightfully familiar in her struggles for devotional perfection. And then there’s the story of Bindu that makes you stop and say, “Wait. There are Mormons in India? I never even though to ask that question.” What is most astounding is how many, many Mormon women are changing the world at large through creative humanitarian forays.

Reading the MWP interviews is a little bit like climbing on a merry-go-round. The stories spin quickly enough and pull you in enough different directions that you think you will be pulled right off the ride. But what you are really experiencing is like centripetal force–something that pulls you in enough directions that you end up being held exactly in the center.

LHC: Do you have any favorite stories that have been shared on MWP?

NM: I think every interview we publish is the best one yet, so it’s hard to pick just a few! What I love about working now with a group of volunteers – I have about half a dozen saintly interview producers who work with me regularly – is that everyone finds different stories interesting. I’m constantly surprised by which interviews on the site go through the roof and which have a more tepid response. A volunteer will suggest a story or pick someone from off our list of nominated women and I’ll think, “Well, I guess that’s okay,” and then when then interview’s published it’ll be hugely popular. Objectively though, the interviews that have been read most are our anonymous interview with the author of Seriously, So Blessed, and our interview with Elaine Bradley, the drummer for the Neon Trees. I am most proud of our forays into the “unspeakable” subjects: our sexual abuse forum, our interviews that discuss eating disorders, infertility, divorce, pornography, homosexuality, adoption, etc. I feel that in these interviews we uncover not the proactive choices a woman makes about her job or how she’s going to spend her time, but the reactive choices about how she’s going to respond to a situation and who she’s really going to be, which are usually even more defining than her hobbies or jobs.

LHC: Are there themes or ideas that come up again and again in the interviews?

NM: The theme that arises in almost every interview is the idea that Heavenly Father knows who this woman is and He is directing her path. Regardless of whether that path leads her to be a drummer in a rock band or the mother of twelve foster children, God knows each woman and acts as a cheerleader, a prompter, a supporter and even an instigator of dreams, ambition and righteous goal setting. The common thread of His presence in these interviews never reveals Him to be an oppressor or a killjoy.

LHC: MWP is coming up on its second year anniversary in January. How has it grown in its second year? What hopes do you have for its future? In what ways can others who are passionate about the stories of Mormon women help out?

NM: Although I launched the MWP in January of 2010 without a distinct publication calendar, we’ve managed to average one new interview per week since that launch. We just published our 114th interview, and we’ve featured women in fifteen countries. There is power in that sheer volume of contemporary Mormon women’s stories. We also introduced this year Snapshot Portraits, which offer our readers the opportunity to submit their own short essays in response to specific prompts.

Our major achievement as an organization this year was to receive our 501©3 status, designating us as a non-profit. The MWP follows in the grand Mormon tradition of being a volunteer endeavor, but we chose to pursue this designation for a few reasons. First of all, it was an issue of establishing our brand as something that is of valuable even outside of the Church community. One of the pieces of feedback we receive time and time again is that members really like to share our interviews with non-member friends because they feel like it looks like and has the quality of a professional endeavor. Of course it takes money for the MWP to look that way, and for us to maintain the website. Even though we don’t need very much money, establishing ourselves as a 501©3 allows us to raise money from official sponsors as well as from private donors. Above and beyond website upkeep, we want to continue doing live events, like our annual Salon, so that the MWP has a physical presence in our community and provides us with a forum to come together as like minded women in person. I also have a dream of being able to subsidize transcription services for our volunteers so they don’t have to spend 5-15 hours transcribing (and sometimes translating) the interviews from the recorded conversation.

I think it’s quite obvious that the MWP approaches the subject of Mormon womanhood from positive, almost culturally apologetic, positioning. Some have called this naïve, that you can think the Lord loves you to bits but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the currency of power is not distributed equally within the institution. I believe there are many valid and important conversations going on online about the role of women in the Church, but I think the MWP plays important role in those conversations by reminding women that our spiritual lives are played out in our relationships, our actions and our prayers, and not in our institutional roles. I’ve had MWP readers tell me they appreciate the safe haven the project offers, the ability to step back and say, “God’s plan for me is real and it is beautiful,” rather than focus on the deficiencies of the modern church. For women who are seeking for a way to be actively involved in forwarding this emboldening vision of Mormon womanhood, I invite them to join us at the MWP. We’re always looking for more interview producers. Reading the interviews, discussing them, sharing them and letting them resonate really is the best way women can support the project.

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

Now, besides the gross error that Mormon women aren’t allowed to speak in Church, it’s pretty distressing to me that what characterized this group of women as liberals was that they wanted change tables in the men’s room. Really? Getting the men to help care for the babies? Isn’t that a little quaint? The picture this anecdote paints is one done in broad strokes with inexact coloring where the women come out in an ill-educated, unsatisfied, barefoot-in-the-kitchen kind of way. There is little nuance or subtlety and it is ultimately dissatisfying to me in a very personal way.*

However, what makes this piece stand out from so many other misrepresentations is the fact that there was a group of Mormon women who saw a need and found a way to get it met. They were polite, they were strong, and they got the job done. That’s the kind of Mormon woman I identify with–and the kind of women Neylan McBaine is seeking out and presenting to the world with through her Mormon Women Project. The stories she chronicles are the kind so many, many Mormon women identify with as their own. Subjects covered include women of many nationalities, races, and backgrounds. There are stories about surviving sexual abuse and difficult marriages. There are women who come from long legacies of Mormon membership and new converts. The portraits drawn by MWP are detailed, with many tones and hues, and offer a great richness to the picture of Mormon women.

Neylan graciously agreed to answer some of my questions regarding the project and it’s significance in Mormon culture.

Laura Hilton Craner: You have a unique name. How is it pronounced? Does it have any significant history in your life?

Neylan McBaine: I’m so happy you asked about my name! It’s pronounced “NY – lin,” (The first, stressed syllable rhymes with “high”.) It was my great-grandfather’s surname – John Francis Neylan – and thus my grandmother’s maiden name and my father’s middle name. John Francis Neylan was a powerful and brilliant man who was William Randolf Hearst’s lawyer and best friend and was known for his red-headed Irish temper. In fact, the Joseph Cotten character in “Citizen Kane” is based on my great-grandfather, and he was on the cover of Time magazine in 1935. But even more interesting to me is that he is a genealogical mystery: We can’t find where he came from, who his parents are, where he was born…

How much programming in our genes comes from our ancestors has always been a fascinating subject for me because, quite honestly, I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the choices and personality traits I have made and cultivated in my life are not entirely my own but come from predetermined traits. However, either because of admiration or intrigue or some unknowable connection, I do feel a special kinship with John Francis and am honored to carry his name.

LHC:What inspired you to start the Mormon Women Project? How does it coincide with other work that you’ve done?

NM: Usually when I explain the motivation to start the MWP, I don’t have time or context to explain how my family and my upbringing played a critical role. But since I’ve already introduced you to my great-grandfather and my father’s side of the family, allow me to introduce you now to my mother: the middle of five children born to a humble school teacher of extensive Mormon pioneer heritage. How, you might now ask, did a Mormon girl who grew up in a trailer in Southern California end up marrying a lapsed Catholic of San Francisco high society? The answer was opera. What my parents didn’t share in socioeconomic or religious background was made up for in their love of opera, but the tension between the identities of my two extended families produced in me – the only child of this union – a paradox of interests and influences that has allowed me to have a foot in different worlds: it was my father who pushed me to attend the best schools possible, travel and enjoy the best and most beautiful the world has to offer, and it was my mother who kept me rooted to faith and family.

My mother was a professional opera singer the whole time I was growing up in New York City and, as you might have already guessed, a single mother for much of that time. As a single, working mother with only one child, you wouldn’t imagine her to be the poster child of the Mormon faith. But she was. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, my mother was asked by local church leaders and general authorities to present firesides, perform for church and political leaders, and to appear in official church videos and messages. Her skill as a singer and her willingness to share that talent for the glory of God catapulted her into a position of spokesperson for the Church. As a child witnessing the tremendous affection of church leaders for my mother and, in turn, my mother’s affection for the Church, it never occurred to me that there wasn’t a place in the Church for women whose lives don’t fit a mold.

My mother also did a beautiful job of teaching me that getting the best education I could, working as hard as I could, and enjoying the beauty of the world as much as I could – all those good qualities my dad had brought to the table – were actually a way of magnifying God’s presence in my life and honoring Him. Our doctrine encourages us to aim high, and she fiercely taught that performing at the “worldly” standard that my earthly dad expected was actually the way I could magnify my Heavenly Father’s expectations for me. “The world” was never a scary, evil place in my home; on the contrary, it was a glorious gift to be enjoyed and learned from. It was simply my job to bring God into it through my active participation.

But when I left my home in New York and started functioning in a broader community of LDS women, I realized that I was unusual in feeling that my doctrine was the very thing that gave me permission to explore my potential. Even at Yale, where I went to college, I encountered Mormon women who were pursuing education sheepishly, fighting a constant internal struggle between the seeming paradox of their innate gifts and the kinds of pursuits they believed were “right.” I saw these internal struggles continue among some of the women in my San Francisco ward after college, culminating in one very dear friend leaving the Church over these issues and several more since then, and I was forced finally to ask myself the question, “What does it mean to be a Mormon woman? Is it a limiting proposition, or an emboldening one?”

Both because I think it is a much happier way to live and also because I fiercely defend that it is true, I see being a Mormon woman as an emboldening way to live. In contemplating an effective and positive way to assert that belief so that it might take root in our broader culture, I turned to the age-old tradition of story-telling. My mom had been held up throughout my childhood as a woman for Mormons to look to; why couldn’t I take some of the other women I admired and share their stories in a similar way? In Mormon culture, we don’t have a systematic way to tell the stories of our women, the way many of our men do in formal speaking and writing assignments. My goal was to create an environment of “deliberate disorientation” for the reader: by sorting through hundreds of stories about women who prioritize the gospel and yet still make unique and intriguing choices about how to maximize their potential, it is impossible for a reader to pick any one story and say, “This is who my church wants me to be or that is what my church wants me to be.” The breadth of examples forces the reader to turn within herself and ask, “What does the Lord want me to be?”

LC: You are not only an accomplished writer, but you are also the mother of three young girls. How has being a woman in the Church and then having daughters to raise in the Church influenced MWP?

NM: Like many other Mormon mothers, the foremost goal I have for my daughters is that they have a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. (And that they love music comes in a close second.) But I recognize that, at some point, they will have to define for themselves what it means to be a Mormon woman and decide if they are emboldened or limited by that definition. For many Mormon women, that internal struggle surfaces in young adulthood or even older as they come to terms with the Church’s gendered institutional structure and so I don’t expect my little girls to self-define for quite some time yet. However, I believe the MWP can play a role in their lives now by establishing a paradigm for that self-definition in which doubt of God’s intentions regarding His daughters is not a factor in their construction of themselves. In other words, as they grow up with the MWP as a presence in their spiritual lives, they will launch their self-defining journey from a solid foundation of trust in the Lord’s support for them as women.

Growing up with Mormon women I admired allowed me to sidestep the question “What does God think of me as a girl?” and focus instead on developing a very personal relationship with Him as my Heavenly Father. I am trying the best I can to provide a cleared path of spiritual development for my own girls as well.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II: Emboldening Women (Through Story)

For more of Neylan McBaine’s writing check out this podcast at The Round Table, this post at By Common Consent, or her articles at Patheos.com and Busted Halo. She has also authored a book, How To Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.

*Now, now, I know this interview was about Romney and the anecdote was meant to show how he was able to deal with politics within a charged religious setting. But still. Gross factual error and dirty diapers? Come on.

Assimilation and youth

I wrote: “Mormon culture is our best chance to save our youth. Assimilation has taken its toll and will only get worse and those things that made it easy to assimilate become less effective.”

It’s no secret that the LDS Church is experiencing a crisis of inactivity when it comes to our youth. It’s not unique to our church. It may not be as bad in our church, but it is a problem, and part of the reason that it’s a problem is that we have so successfully assimilated into American culture — it’s easy to slide away from Mormonism into the culture at large. Let go of just a couple of practices and you can easily pass. But, paradoxically perhaps, we are also reaching a period in our history where the post WWII assimilation that has been so successful is under increasing pressure because of changing social and economic conditions.

Whether or not culture is of use in addressing this issue is up for debate. I for one think that it is so it is with that assumption that I proceed with the rest of this post.

Literary respectability

I wrote: “Those who lust after the fleshpots of American culture; who yearn for literary respectability; who dismiss native materials do so at their own peril and especially at the peril of the youth they are charged with educating.”

Look, I understand the appeal of literary respectiblity. I understand the provincial’s ashamed-ness of their roots. I understand snobbery and elitism. I really do. I also know that chasing respectability is a sucker’s game. It’s how the powers that be (innocuous and nice as they may be) gentrify and co-opt the foreign and the weird.

And I am convinced that dismissing native culture and attempting to cosmopolitanize our youth is a recipe for disaster. Now, of course, education is a process of opening avenues and experiencing the world and other cultures. And, of course, there can be an ugliness to provinciality. But that process can be an additive one — one that isn’t dismissive of what the student brings to the feast. That’s what I experienced at Berkeley, which because of its emphasis on a truly democratic meritocratic-ness and the almost pathologic commitment to diversity and cultural sensitivity never made me feel weird or bad to be a Mormon, and, in fact, equipped me with the tools of the ethnic, the hybrid, the emerging, the marginal.

Is the Church enough?

I wrote: “We think that the Church is enough. But the Church can only go so far in its modern form because of the strictures of late capitalism and modern democracy. There is still a need for culture that exist around and among and aside from the faith as is.”

Many assimilated American Mormons live bifurcated lives. Not in the sense that they are Sunday-only religionists. Or that they hide their faith from others. Quite the opposite, in fact. However, when it comes to culture, they consume church-sanctioned culture, and they consume American culture. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. It works for some people. But there is a danger there, a danger when the culture and the Church collide and Mormons, especially Mormon youth, think that a) they have to decide between the two or b) that the official discourse and praxis is all there is when it comes to their Mormon identity and yet feel something missing.

We weren’t always like this. We didn’t always live like this. But this is where assimilation has brought us. For all that it is the kingdom of God on earth, the Church operates within the constraints of our socio-political situation as well as within the boundaries of its own bureaucracy and official discourse. As I have said in the past, unlike many other culture-makers, I have no problem with this. I even think that the Church does quite well within its constraints. But I see signs (both in myself and others) that that isn’t enough. There are cultural gaps that the Church can’t (and probably shouldn’t, at least not in our current society) fill. Yes, there are those for whom what the Church provides is enough. And they have their hobbies and cultural consumption that’s separate, and it all works fine together. Not all of us are like that, and I worry that especially our youth aren’t making it work. The Church is enough to provide exaltation, but culture can help make that process work better and work for more people when friction arises. Culture can help us understand others who struggle. Culture can help us with our own struggles, offering ways to vent off steam or approach things differently or renew our engagement with the official.

Retreat into isolationism

I wrote: “The retreating into isolationism only works in a few cases and a few locations (and I would argue never truly works).”

In the face of what I’ve written in the sections above, it’s tempting to deploy isolationism as a strategy. That never works, and it especially doesn’t work in a networked world. As I’ve written before: things that are forbidden often become quite attractive, especially for youth.  In addition, isolationism always unnecessarily constricts the boundaries so that those with individual interests think that they are partially on the outside of their culture so why not just go all the way out? Rather we need to draw the circle around them (mostly around them — some stuff does need to get left out in the cold).

This is to not to say that we don’t do what we can to mitigate exposure to certain things or that we don’t create boundaries to what media we consume. We definitely should and do. But the world always intrudes. Our youth need to be equipped to deal with such intrusions.

Orthopraxis, cultural pride/expression

I wrote: “The only viable road to safety is to yoke orthopraxis with cultural pride and expression and create an engine with which to enact acts of piracy and subterfuge and illusion against the culture. Outmaneuver the co-opters; make foolish the naysayers; jujitsu the haters; lure the curious; forge bonds with the friendly.”

Monsters & Mormons is just an anthology of Mormon-themed genre stories, and I would definitely not have wanted submitters to attempt to intentionally accomplish the theoretical foundation for it. But is it also an attempt to do what I describe in that tortured engine metaphor? You betcha.

This is not easy to do. And I couch the enterprise in language that is not entirely comfortable for modern day latter-day saints (for more on that, see the radical entry in my radical middle series). But after more than a decade in the business of thinking about, reading about and discussing Mormon culture, this is where I have arrived. And I’m not talking about some shallow use of Mormon materials to exotify ones cred with the broader culture (especially the elite literary culture). I’m talking about working in tandem with orthopraxis — the living of our religion; the practice of it within our institution — to create products, and perhaps more importantly to create role models, viable alternatives that provide diverse but faithful ways of being Mormon. Look, if the Church can employ a PR agency to enlist Brandon Flowers to appear in a YouTube video, surely, we can do something just as cool and resonant (or even more so).

In fact, I just realized that the LDS Church has outflanked me: I’ve been mulling about how to use cultural and modern storytelling to create a sense of Mormon pride and to showcase Mormon creativity. Duh. That’s exactly what the I am a Mormon campaign is trying to do. Of course, watching a bunch of I am a Mormon commercials isn’t quite the cultural experience of reading a novel, viewing a film, playing through a videogame. And the Church can only engage in so much jujitsu and subterfuge (see the section above about constraints). That’s where we come in.

In short:

The summary isn’t anything groundbreaking but hopefully how we’ve arrived here is new or at least useful: culture is an important aspect to Mormon identity. Assimilation has been both a boon and a curse. Moving forward, our young people will need to be able to consume and create via Mormonism rather than apart from it. This will help them continue along the path of dedicated orthopraxy because they will feel more whole as individuated but connected Mormons. That’s why culture is important to the future of Mormonism.

I’ve known Mister Tim for more than 5 years and witnessed many artistic incarnations. The earliest (for me) was as our ward choir director. Intense, focused, squinting with the effort of tweaking our voices into a semblance of harmony and with one ear always turned toward the choir Mister Tim–er, I mean, Brother Tim–did his own arrangements of hymns and sang all the music as if it were being performed for the first time every time. Ward members still talk about his performance of “O, Holy Night.”

The next incarnation, which he had been inhabiting since college, was Moosebutter. Like most college a cappella bands Moosebutter focused on and perfected the silliness inherent in singing “classic” music, like “Popcorn Popping”, with that characteristic BYU-comedy flair. They were big with the ten year olds and all their parents for being able to comically riff on everything from Harry Potter to Spam to Jon Williams (who is most definitely the man), for which they were nominated for a People’s Choice Award.

From there Mister Tim went on to work on the Vegas Strip and put together, manage, and perform in many other a cappella groups. When his stint in Vegas ended and he and his family rolled back into Colorado he came with yet another incarnation: Vocal Magic.

Vocal Magic is a multifaceted one man show that hinges on Mister Tim’s prodigious vocal textures, far-reaching vocal range, and his ability to work three sound effect pedals that enable to sing with himself and mix his voice in real time–a process called live looping. Part stand-up comedy, part poetry slam, and part performance art, Vocal Magic was like nothing I had ever seen before. My first thought: If T.S. Eliot could have sang and Allan Ginsberg had known how to beatbox and been stuck in one body, they could have been reincarnated as Mister Tim. Vocal Magic was like nothing I’d ever seen but it was definitely something I wished to see again.

Mr. Tim graciously agreed to be interviewed. His answers were thorough enough and thought-provoking enough that I split the interview into two parts. Here’s part one.

LHC: How are you feeling today? (Fuzzy, spacey, ???)

Mr. T: Perpendicular.

LHC: Tell me about the modern a cappella scene. Until I saw your show whenever I thought of a cappella I always thought of those guys from “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?” How has a cappella grown and changed?

Mr. T:There is a great deal of detail and nuance to this answer. “A Cappella” to most people, I think, means Rockapella (Carmen San Diego), or a barbershop quartet, or a college group like BYU’s Vocal Point, or, more and more frequently, “GLEE” (even though there has only been one actual a cappella song on that show). But, even Rockapella, still touring the world 15 years after Carmen San Diego went off the air, is nothing like they were on that show: [now] they are a technology-dependent pop act. There are groups that use stacks and stacks of expensive sound gear, like Naturally 7 who are touring with Michael Buble.

Really there are three ways to define “a cappella”: 1) the most basic– meaning any music performed without
instruments, regardless of style (including when rock bands sing a section of their song without instruments, like the beginning of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”); 2) what seems to be the popular interpretation of a cappella, which is the Rockapella version, or the college a cappella version, or even the barbershop version, which carries a fragrance of dorkiness; 3) and “contemporary” a cappella, which is a movement of modern musicians doing modern music at a very high level, usually incorporating vocal percussion, and usually depending on technology to create the same auditory punch as a ‘real’ band.

My history in a cappella really follows the progression of contemporary a cappella. I listened to The King’s Singers (classical) in high school, saw BYU’s Vocal Point at one of BYU’s very first a cappella jams; I had friends bootlegging a cappella radio programs onto cassette tapes and passing them around; I was introduced, through rumor at first, to The House Jacks, and then by the late 90’s to m*pact. I started attending a cappella conferences, and growing less satisfied with the traditional a cappella standard and wanting… more. And there were groups doing more, and I gravitated to them. Then I started making my own groups, and have been skewing further and further from “traditional” a cappella since then, although I still keep the traditional stuff around because it makes $.

When most people call me wanting to hire “an a cappella group,” they want something like early 90’s Rockapella, or like a college group. Recognizable covers, bare-bones vocal sound, oftenthey want something a little corny (which is part of that old-school a cappella… thing).

LHC: What attracted you to live looping? How is it different from traditional a cappella?

Mr. T: My wife and I used to joke that I was constantly disappointed with the other singers in my groups because what I really wanted was for all the singers in my group to be me. Well, looping lets me do that! I get to sing everything just the way I want it sung, and I don’t have to wait for other people to learn their parts.

Other reasons I started live-looping: a) I want to go out and perform as often as possible, but couldn’t get the other people in my groups to go all the time; b) There are lots of paid shows that come up that don’t pay enough for a whole group, but are good money for just one person; c) I saw other people do it, and it looked like fun.

But, one of the biggest factors: I love teaching. I love teaching. The problem with the kind of teaching I do, where I drop in and talk to kids in their regular music classes, or in assemblies, or at music festivals, is that if they don’t know who I am, they don’t care about what I have to say. If I’m there with a group, they hear the group sing, they think it’s cool, then they’ll listen. But I want to be teaching as often as possible, visiting classes, flying out to music festivals, showing up at concerts. I can’t afford to fly a whole group out to these kinds of things for free, which most of them demand (even the big a cappella festivals where I teach I have to pay my own way there unless I’m one of the headline performers). But now that I’ve got a solo act, I can drop in on a class with my small sound system that takes less than 5 minutes to set up, sing a couple of songs,
the kids think it’s cool, and then when I speak, my words matter. It’s a pedagogical thing.

Artistically, what attracts me now to continue live-looping is that it really is rare to have one person doing looping with just the voice. Novelty factor, and if done well and if we find the market I’ve got a corner on the market. I do enjoy the constraints: a lot of my material has developed to address specific issues of how to keep the show from being boring, dealing with the repetitive nature of the loop, not being able to change the music once it’s laid down without completely starting over. Limiting, yes, but has forced me to adapt in ways and to develop new approaches to my performing that I think have greatly improved the overall impact of my
performance.

LHC: I know you’re a fan of all types of music, but what musicians and songs/works have stuck with you over the years?

Mr. T: The 3 B’s: Bach, Beethoven, Barenaked Ladies (I don’t like Brahms); Midnight Oil; Kingston Trio; Manheim Steamroller; Spike Jones; Weird Al Yankovic; Alan Sherman; Smothers Brothers; Brandon Flowers; John Adams

To be continued, but while you are waiting feel free to enjoy this:

Most of us involved with the LDS market simply assume that there is a consumer need or desire that is being filled, and that the audience will always want Mormon materials. Less frequently, many assume that separate LDS stores and perhaps publishers will eventually be absorbed into the rest of the market for books, music, film and other cultural goods, because, they believe, there isn’t any reason that consumers need separate LDS stores.

Perhaps.

The current LDS market is best defined as a niche — a small portion of the overall market that consists of customers with specific interests or needs different from the rest of the market. A niche is usually small enough that it is overlooked or ignored by the rest of the market. It often also has some kind of impediment or ‘insulation’ from the rest of the market, something that keeps those in the  rest of the market from simply adding one additional product to serve the needs of the niche.

The answer to whether or not the LDS market will continue lies in this “insulation” form the rest of the market. Without some impediment, companies currently outside the market will eventually see the niche as attractive and absorb the market.

So what are the impediments? What, if anything, keeps Random House from publishing books for Mormons? or what keeps Barnes and Noble from becoming the preferred seller of LDS titles for most buyers?

I’m not sure that I have all the answers to these questions, but several possible impediments have occurred to me:

1. Unique Products — By and large the products in the LDS market are different from those outside of the market, and many of the products outside of the market won’t work inside the market. The language and terms and other cultural elements that we use in Mormon books, music and film make us comfortable and help us understand what the author means, and the doctrines and cultural beliefs that most Mormons share are reflected in these works. While we understand outside works just fine, in certain kinds of works (religious works, or fiction with Mormon settings) outside language or beliefs seem strange or out of place. Outside publishers and other companies would likely need to have LDS employees in order to get these things right in books for the LDS market, and it doesn’t seem likely that they will make the necessary expenditures anytime soon.
2. LDS Consumer Interest in “Safe” Products — Many Mormons, influenced by Church counsel to seek wholesome entertainment and avoid that which might fill the mind with impure thoughts, look for materials that are “safe.” They are cautious about purchasing books, music and film from non-LDS sources, because the works they purchase may not be as “safe” as they want. They then look for indications of what to expect — publisher/imprint names, authors, etc., that they know will fit what they believe to be “appropriate.” At least in part, they believe that books in LDS stores are “safe” and prefer to shop there for some kinds of materials. This doesn’t mean that they never purchase elsewhere, just that they have a preference in some cases where the risk seems greatest. This preference will, I think, continue at least as long as Church leaders continue to emphasize avoiding unwholesome materials.
3. LDS Publishers and Marketing Information Often Unavailable — While most LDS Publishers do make their books available to the rest of the market in the U.S., that doesn’t mean that their books find much of a market there. Other than basic availability, LDS books largely aren’t noticed and haven’t much of a presence in the market. LDS publishers in general don’t try to sell their books to stores outside of the LDS market–no sales calls are made to stores, no marketing materials sent to vendors and no advertising to the non-LDS consumer outside of areas where LDS members are a large portion of the population. The few vendors like Amazon.com that list LDS books, music and film are lucky to categorize books as LDS at all, let alone divide them into categories meaningful to consumers. Of course, this could change, but both LDS publishers and outside vendors would need to perceive this as worth their while.
4. The Christian/LDS Split — In a sense the most likely market to absorb the LDS market is the general Christian market. I believe that, if asked, most professionals in the national market would assume that these markets are already the same. But most LDS Church members and most evangelicals know that any combination of the two is impossible. The few LDS authors, musicians, publishers, labels or producers who have attempted to get their works into Christian bookstores have been roundly rejected, even when their works are not specifically Mormon. While in contrast LDS stores have been somewhat more open to Christian materials, they are often different from LDS materials in a way that makes it difficult for LDS consumers to relate.

There could be other impediments that keep the LDS market separate from the rest of the market (please let me know if you think of something). But even if these are the principal impediments, I think they are quite substantial. And I don’t see them changing much in the next few decades.

I won’t be surprised if someone believes that the Internet, or print-on-demand, or ebooks will somehow overcome all this. Personally, I don’t see that happening. While the Internet continues to have a substantial effect on the market, it most likely means that the division we see in the physical portion of the market will continue, as it has, transferred to the virtual portion of the market. LDS products will still be different from other products, LDS consumers will still want different products and want assurance that what they purchase is “safe.” Print-on-demand and ebooks are simply changes in form and production process. While important advances, they won’t overcome these impediments.

That isn’t to say that these impediments are permanent. It is possible to overcome them, or for preferences among consumers to change. But those changes are most likely to take decades, if they happen at all, because they involve long-standing cultural assumptions and needs, not technology. In the meantime, I think we can safely assume that there will be some kind of LDS market.

More or Less Mormon? The Problem(atizing) of Mormon Identity

In his 1997 Dialogue article, “‘Awaiting Translation’: Timothy Liu, Identity Politics, and the Question of Religious Authenticity,” Waterman interrogates the notion of a coherent Mormon cultural identity, a religious sense of communal self constructed around nineteenth century Mormonism’s flirtation with nationhood and ethnic identity separate from that of the nineteenth century American mainstream. This “incipient nationality,” Thomas F. O’Dea observes, was born of the “combination of [Mormonism's] distinctive values, separate and peculiar social institutions”—as, among other things, its lay ministry and its insistence that humans can receive direct revelation from God—”and [its] geographic segregation” from the rest of America (qtd. in Mauss 291 [from this]). Such “protonationality,” as Armand Mauss labels it, was “strengthened by three ‘Mormon wars’”—the 1838 conflict with neighbors in northwest Missouri, the 1844-46 conflict with neighbors in west Illinois, and the 1857-58 conflict with the Federal Government over Utah Territory—and “‘constant … conflict’ with the [world] outside [Mormonism] to produce a total Mormon cultural environment and worldview that became ‘progressively more distinct’” (291).

Yet this distinctness faded some as Mormonism made inroads into secular American culture, assimilating, to a degree, in order to accommodate the organization’s need for expansion: if the culture of the saints had stayed too peculiar, refusing engagement with what O’dea labels “modern secular thought” in order to be wholly separate from the world, the institution may have remained indefinitely stagnant and small.

Such accommodation, even in the midst of—perhaps even in spite or as a result of—the church’s continuing growth and church leaders’ efforts in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s to return this “new” Mormonism to its earlier theological and cultural distinctness (most notably through the continuing effort to correlate church policies, programs, and teachings under a single banner) has had a profound influence on Mormon cultural identity. For instance, though some may lament the religious culture that has room enough for the church headquarters bureaucrat and New York Doll, the minivan-driving at-home mom and the powersuit-wearing business executive, the tatoo-toting-former-drug-dealing Maori and the long-bearded caucajewmexdian, the writer of YA love stories and the writer of erotic romance novels populated with flawed-enough-to-be-human Mormon characters, I find such cultural pluralism a mark of contemporary Mormonism’s growing vitality.

And I’m convinced Waterman would agree, though, as he implies throughout his essay, this increased plurality has been a source of anxiety and concern for others, especially those with a vested interest (for whatever reason and however justifiably from a theological standpoint) in correlating and perpetuating a fairly rigid cultural identity.

Working from similar assumptions about the dynamic making of Mormon identity, Waterman takes up the efforts of many Mormon literary critics (specifically England, Cracroft, and Jorgenson) and (as an aside) of those reviewers adhering to what he calls “the thirteenth article of faith school” of Mormon criticism. He positions the latter as an attempt to codify and perpetuate aesthetic standards of moral “loveliness, etc., [that can be] as difficult to pin down as the word ‘Mormon’ is to define.” And he concludes that this difficulty—which begs the question, “[I]f ‘we’ base our literary tastes and canons on prescriptive categories such as ‘virtuous, lovely, or of good report,’” then “What authority polices these categories?”—”only increases the muddiness of the ‘Mormon’ critical pool,” bogging the critic down in the murky work of trying to fix, patrol, and/or defend relatively dynamic and diffuse cultural, aesthetic, and (increasingly) market boundaries, something I don’t consider the literary critic’s job.

Yet, this is where much of Mormonism’s critical energy has been spent: on prescribing, policing, and defending boundaries. To be fair, Waterman does acknowledges “that ‘Mormon’ criticism’s tendency toward prescription [...] has been paralleled in the early stages of many ‘minority’ literatures and criticisms.” As an example, he cites Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong’s 1993 observation that “critics [of Asian-American literature] have not reached any agreement on how their subject matter is to be delimited. Prescriptive usages exist side by side with descriptive ones; some favor a narrow precision, others an expansive catholicity.” The question of critical approach, then—whether it’s best to outline what makes a text (and by extension, a writer) more or less part of the tradition in question or to allow descriptive categories and theories of literature to “grow [...] out of a body of work already recognized as belonging to the tradition”—is not unique to Mormon letters. In fact, the expense of such critical energy seems necessary in the initial stages of canon formation, allowing early critics (and on) a position from which to build/expand the tradition.

In this light, Waterman recognizes the value of England’s call for a Mormon literature that “contain[s] elements derived from Mormon experience and history,” tropes formed around “a certain epic consciousness,” around “mythic identification with ancient peoples and processes,” even as he (Waterman) wants to move beyond such categorization. Indeed, he observes that, “Rather than allowing one pat label [...] to pretend to unlock all the secrets of a text, we can use such categories (if we want or need to) as starting points” for discussing a text, always “recognizing the primacy of individual experience over the group identity of the author.”

The Primacy of Individual Experience

Waterman thus calls for a movement in Mormon criticism beyond the cataloging of tropes—a taxonomic effort that belies, not so much the desire to facilitate identification with a distinct Mormon cultural identity (although that does play a role here), but to pre-scribe the texts of Mormon writers. That is, to write or to order them before they’re written. Or more accurately, to dictate the standards against which a text—written or to-be-written—ought to be judged worthy of the community’s sanction and, by extension, its intellectual and literary attention and investment. He calls for Mormon critical discussions to move beyond the essentialism of group identity, beyond asking only, “Is this literature Mormon?” or “Is this author faithful?” to recognizing the problems of group identity—to wondering, “How can this literature be profitably read as coming out of a Mormon tradition?” and “What does it have in common with other work that is recognized as ‘Mormon’ in some way?” His focus, then, is less on preemptively excluding texts from the Mormon canon based on how Mormon the writer and the text is or is not and more on the process of reading as a Mormon, of attending to the Mormon aspects of a text “without seeking to quantify or define Mormonness.”

As a case-in-point, Waterman points to Susan Elizabeth Howe’s insightful exploration, “‘I Do Remember How It Smelled Heavenly’: Mormon Aspects of May Swenson’s Poetry,” which opens by admitting Swenson into the Mormon canon by virtue of her lifelong engagement with the Mormon experience:

Any discussion of Mormon culture or doctrine in the work of nationally prominent American poet May Swenson must begin with the caveat that Swenson, for virtually all of her adult life, was not a believing Mormon. She rejected Mormonism when she was in college, moved to New York City a few years after graduating from Utah State University, and never looked back. Nevertheless, she was raised in a devout Mormon family, her parents having emigrated from Sweden to live with the Saints. She learned Mormon teachings at home and attended church meetings weekly throughout her childhood and youth. She maintained lifelong affection for her parents and eight brothers and sisters, and occasionally came to Utah to visit them. Mormonism shaped her attitudes and perceptions both consciously and unconsciously. And because her poetry rises directly from her life experience—her interests, her study, her thought, her travels—she could not help but respond to Mormon culture and beliefs in some of her poems.

Poet Javen Tanner mirrors Howe’s observations about the lasting influence of early life experience in his 2007 interview with Meridian Magazine’s Doug Talley. When asked how “[his] religious sensibility inform[s] and guide[s] [his] work,” Tanner responded by referring to Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, who writes his poems “first in Polish and then translate[s] them into English” because, Milosz observed (according to Tanner’s paraphrase), “you must write in the language you learned as a child,” the principle being that the experience we’re socialized into when young has a profound influence on how we perceive and respond to the world for the rest of our lives, even if we drift away from that experience as we mature. And since “Mormonism is the language [Tanner] learned as a child,” he affirms that, while “[his] poems are not overtly religious, [...] the language of [his] experience [as an active Mormon] is in them,” an unconscious inclusion that can add another layer to any critical interpretation of Tanner’s poetic corpus. (Of course, it’s not the only thing to consider about Tanner’s identity and work, even though a person’s religiosity/spirituality can inform most every aspect of their lives.)

However, as Howe and Waterman imply, every Mormon-ism is not constructed equally and the critic should attend to these differences by considering the possible ways a text might, yes, acknowledge, but also revise or subvert conventional Mormonisms according to the writer’s degree of (self-)identification with Mormon culture and theology. Howe provides an excellent example of such critical consideration in her discussion of the Mormon aspects of Swenson’s work, which includes an exploration of Swenson’s poetic critique of (among other things) Mormon conformity to unquestioned cultural norms and of Mormonism’s rigid patriarchy.

Howe also provides here an excellent example of the politics involved in canon-formation and of the fluid matter of (group-)identity construction. By claiming Swenson as one of Mormonism’s own (though I’m sure Howe wasn’t the first to make this claim and she definitely isn’t the last), she radically challenges the decision made by Eugene England and Dennis Clark, editors of Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems, to exclude Swenson from the main body of their anthology—and by extension, of Mormon literature—by sitting her at the “friends and relations” table, which, though an amenable place of (relative) acceptance and honor, is still a place apart, an-other place: a place of Otherness. Constructed as an outsider, it becomes easier, I think, to dismiss her pointed critique of Mormonism and to gloss over a sexual identity not in keeping with the Mormon theological or cultural standards of her time or, for that matter, of ours. But to dismiss either aspect of Swenson’s identity is to deny the agency of her experience, is to make less valid and compelling her position on the fringes of cultural Mormonism.

And what does the Mormon literary community lose by opening space in the canon for those speaking from the fringes? Or to phrase that more positively: how might the community be enhanced, made more rich, more meaningful, even more transformative, by recognizing the validity of Swenson’s experience–or anyone else’s–as a “post-Mormon”?

So where to from here? Find out next week when I confess my personal agenda and search for Mormon criticism’s liberating paradoxes.

I’ve been reading Shannon Hale’s YA novels to my daughter, now 13, for four years.  The Books of Bayern are wonderfully emotionally textured, edgy enough to challenge my daughter, and filled with lots of girl power to encourage her to consider her options.  Hale’s attention to language attracts my interest sharply.  I’ve come to trust her writing as a source of fine language and narrative prowess for my daughter’s developing mind.  We snatch up her YA novels whenever they come out.

But I wasn’t interested in Hale’s adult novel, The Actor and the Housewife, until this discussion on AMV.  Complaints that the novel’s readers registered there piqued my curiosity.  Just before William’s not-necessarily-a-review, Kevin Barney put up this post reviewing the church’s article on emotional infidelity that drew a lot of comments.  In January, a BCC-er linked to this article in Slate on opposite sex friendship.  The stars seemed to align.  I decided to drop other projects and pick up The Actor and the Housewife, see what was what.  To make the narrative journey more interesting, I read it aloud to my husband Mark, who during our married life has done such gracious deeds as taking the kids outside so I could talk with male friends or helping me understand the man-side of baffling conversations.  I have included in this essay bits of our discussion of the novel as we read it.

We had a rough start.  The Actor and the Housewife opens with a flash flood of “spiritual signs” and unlikely coincidences that seemed to strain the storyline.  The banter between the main characters—Mormon housewife Becky Jack and movie star Felix Callahan—seemed at times to flip over into barely tolerable giddiness.  Sometimes the dialogue felt downright immodest, as in a scene where Becky tells her husband Mike about her first encounter with Felix.  In the wake of the recounting’s excitement, Becky and Mike wind up in bed.

Mark: Mike’s insistence on Becky’s femme fatale powers affects him.

I think I was expecting a story and language more along the lines of Hale’s Bayern Books—lovely, deep, connected all around and through, each book a satisfying environment in itself.  The tenor of the language in Actor and Housewife was so different, so abrasive by comparison that Mark and I wondered at times if Hale disliked Becky.

Patricia: This reads like a script.  And the witty dialogue seems contrived and irritating.
Mark: [Hale] is taking the book where she wants it to go.

Only my previous experience with the author’s writing made it possible for us to suspend our early judgment and trust that Hale would take us someplace interesting.  I began relaxing into the story when passages like these appeared:

“In a way, it almost feels like falling—“ No, she wasn’t going to say it.  “There should be a new term—falling in friendship or something like that.  I wish there was a word for it!  The English language is seriously flawed … (56)”

and

“I wish the English language gave us a better option.  ‘Pals,’ ‘chums,’ ‘buddies’ … but a word that implies the sudden and unusual nature—like ‘metabuddies’? (56)”

The “no language for this” issue surfaces repeatedly as Becky tries to relate her new experience to what she knows but can’t make it fit.  Through wordplay, Becky and Felix finesse the relationship, negotiating a space for its existence and continued development outside what the usual language of friendship allows for.  Language and relationship—for me, an absolutely dynamite combination.

Mark (speaking of the Valentine’s Dance scene where Becky and Felix go outside into the night air so Felix can test his theory that he’s falling in love with Becky): Becky wants to “get out there” and remain chaste.  How can she make it work?  She “goes outside” with Felix.

As the story progresses, the matter of social expectations and limitations—lines—where they are and whether or not Becky should cross them—arises frequently.  As Becky follows her instincts and her heart across her lines toward Felix while maintaining her lifelines to Mike and her kids, the flash flood turns into a deep, sinuously flowing river.  For this reader, the current became fully compelling.

Mark: The reader is not in control here.  The writer is.  Hale takes us through a series of emotional states.  By the break-up, the writer is exerting powerful control.

(By “break-up,” he means the point in the story where Mike expresses his misgivings about how deeply involved his wife and her movie star buddy are becoming. To save her marriage, Becky and Felix break up.)

As the story continues, Becky’s iconoclastic nature becomes increasingly apparent.  As she follows her attraction to Felix, she makes leaps of faith that shake up friends and extended family members, all of whom express their doubts about the relationship which they either expect or hope will fail.  Why would they expect or hope for the worst?  Because the friendship’s failure would confirm their own moral takes on the world.  The family get-together where Becky discovers her siblings are betting against her is one of the most important parts of the book.  There we begin to see just how deeply the Becky-Felix dynamic affects others’ lives as, watching the relationship intensify, Becky’s mother, her brothers, a sister, and a sister-in-law either manifest or confront their own social fears and limitations, including and especially, the fear of attraction.

Mark: As much as Becky loves her Mormon world, she has a hunger for something else—not instead of, but in addition to.  She has complete confidence in her social lines.  But she’s experimenting with various individuals to see “Can I make this work within the social universe where my children and husband live?”
Patricia: Becky and Felix’s relationship changes both their worlds.
Mark: Their relationship ends up relegating her older, primary relationships to supporting roles.
Patricia: She tries including the bishop.  He draws his line, re-thinks, changes.  Change is a main current in the book.
Mark: She was successful at integrating Mike.

One of the amazing elements of this book is how Hale makes Mormonism sexy.  This isn’t a matter of imbuing the book with only erotic energy but rather with life-begetting fertility operating within a Mormon moral context.  More than once, Felix calls Becky “a goddess” and clearly means it.  Likewise, he alludes to her physical fertility.  But the fertility language doesn’t just remark upon Becky’s childbearing prowess. Body and soul, Becky is a fountain of happy fecundity.

Mark: She is powerful as a demonstrably fertile woman, terrifyingly brave to outsiders.  Her character as a character is more developed than Felix’s.  More than Celeste’s also.  Celeste is supposed to be the demonstrable paragon.  But what is she in the face of this Becky power over her husband?  Celeste submits to the goddess.  She keeps what she can, relinquishes what she can’t hold on to.
Patricia: By virtue of their more open marriage, Felix and Celeste are completely vulnerable to the “cheeky [Mormon] minx” (12).

At the book’s outset, Felix and Celeste are statistics in Europe and Britain’s demographic winter.  Felix is hardened in his aversion to children and to fathering them.  This means that, philosophically, emotionally, and sexually a kind of sterility exists in Felix’s erotically charged bond with Celeste.  Following their involvement with Becky and her family, this cultural sterility leads to the collapse of Felix and Celeste’s marriage.

Mark: Becky could have Felix but doesn’t.  Celeste can’t have Mike.

Some readers complain that the story is unbelievable, a fact Hale herself has fun with toward its conclusion: “[S]eriously, who would buy a Mormon housewife as a romantic comedy heroine (320)?”  But Hale uses the device of extremity to frame up the story firmly.  If there weren’t unlikely extremes in the tale—the Hollywood scene vs. the Layton, Utah scene; Mormon housewife vs. famous actor—it might come off as “too Mormon.”  Yet via extremities, Hale brings Becky’s brand of Mormonism into relief.  Otherwise, the lines Becky draws and crosses wouldn’t show up nearly as vividly.

Mark: This is going to take everybody somewhere they haven’t been.  Is Hale working at illustrating a future archetype?

Some readers lament that Felix gets the best lines, making less stellar husband Mike look boring by comparison.  Me, I was amused by but not terribly impressed with Felix.  Nor did I find Mike boring.  Mike’s lines of dialogue are understated but impressively brave, since in a practical yet courageous way he navigates new seas he finds himself sailing as he opens his home to Felix.  Why does Becky love Mike?  She just does.  At first sniff she knows they have compatible pheromones and their genetic prospects are excellent: “His pheromones practically danced down my gullet and straight to my ovaries” (289). This line goes to the fertility motif woven throughout the book.

Mark: The best lines support the Becky character and they support the relationship.  It makes sense that Felix has charismatic lines.
Patricia: I want this to be a more beautifully written book, but it’s a screenplay.
Mark: The book is dependent on and devoted to that device.

Felix appears to have the male lead in this made-for-a-novel screenplay.  As it turns out, he can’t rival plain ol’ Mike, either his pheromones or his stolid Mormon stance.  Even after he dies, Mike exerts influence on the story and gets in Felix’s way, though many might wish that, when alive, Mike could have competed more compellingly against flamboyant Felix.  But it’s Becky that provides the narrative’s driving force. That neither Mike nor Felix as characters are as developed as is Becky’s character is hardly surprising.  The story is really about a Mormon woman and her “indomitable Mormon willpower” (214). In Hale’s stories, male characters commonly act in supporting roles, standing back as the strong female leads do their thing to keep the world in balance, plying extraordinary gifts separately and in alliance to unseat tyrants and preserve their families.

No tyranny overtly menaces the storyline of The Actor and the Housewife, only doubtful imperatives of social conventions and expectations bent on circumscribing the relationship.  Yet the language wrestles to pioneer a narrative trail for a definitely outside-the-usual mingling between two unlikely soul mates and their at-odds worldviews, thus directing its energy into deep space exploration.  In entering The Dance with Felix, Becky Jack, married Mormon mother of four, bravely goes where not very many Mormon mothers—maybe not many women at all, and with reason—have gone before.  Given the outcome for most of the story’s characters—more life for everyone all around—she does it with style, holding open prospects for everybody.

It’s important to the story that Becky and Felix not follow the usual romantic comedy script and become fully sexually entwined.  In my opinion, the reason is pretty simple. Becky is fully Mormon; Felix is fully not.  For Becky, family is everything.  Felix has estranged himself from even his mother.  By the end of the book, Felix, at nearly fifty years old, is only just coming to accept the prospect of being a father and “[settling] into [his] adult skin (301).”  By standards not just embedded in Mormon culture but also in other family-oriented societies, his social arc is way behind Becky’s.  But mainly, the idea that what she does and whom she does it with will affect prospects for others fully informs her sensibilities.  “Others” here include her children, whose lives are rather dramatically affected by her relationship with Felix; her husband, who must face his own fears and take his own leap of faith; her mother, who worries; her siblings, betting one an other that their doubts will be confirmed; her friends, who have their own lives to work out; and her church community, which at times behaves less than elegantly in response to Felix’s presence, an actual problem that exists between the church and the not-church communities.  Finally, there is Felix himself, so caught up in following Becky into “whatevership” that he makes himself vulnerable.  She is careful not to take advantage.  With her out there taking such chances, the agency and narrative prospects for everyone whose lives touch hers hangs in balance.  Fertility—not merely sexual fulfillment and not simply physical ability to bear children but also life-begetting, possibility-multiplying, world-building spiritual and emotional abundance—is the name of Becky’s Mormon game of risk.

Mark: The whole point is to prepare the Mormon reader to approach the point of agency.  Readers experience their own fears, doubts, expectations—all of which will be broken by this iconoclastic Mormon character.

Or not. Some readers, seeing Becky cross lines they themselves have taken pains to hold in place, will find the story unacceptable.  Many there be that have experienced worry, heartbreak, or the destruction of their families in situations that will uncomfortably resemble the arc of The Actor and the Housewife’s storyline.  To such people, the premise of the novel—that some men and some women can work through the confusion and intricacies of attraction—including sexual attraction—to establish positive, productive metafriendships might well come off as unbelievable, perhaps even painful.  This book isn’t trying to bully its point across, only to prompt thought: What if …?  The Actor and the Housewife is not for everyone, a fact Hale acknowledges and accepts.  I suspect that only a relatively small audience will find the novel to carry a stronger punch than can either an unconvincing and quirky romantic fantasy or an irresponsible and/or dangerous love story.  Yet The Actor and the Housewife’s intent is to be more than either-ors allow for.  I found it neither this nor that, but something else altogether different: a remarkably courageous work that chips away at the horns of social and spiritual dilemmas.

In the latter vein, I came across the story of perhaps the first major Mormon actor, Tom Lyne, who already had a substantial reputation as an actor in Philadelphia when he joined the Church. Here is an account of his relationship with the Church.

The following is from Chapter 1 of The Mormons and the Theatre (1905) by John S. Lindsay:

…Back in the days of Nauvoo, before Brigham Young was chief of the Mormon church, under the rule of its original prophet, Joseph Smith, the Mormon people were encouraged in the practice of dancing and going to witness plays. Indeed, the Mormons have always been a fun-loving people; it is recorded of their founder and prophet that he was so fond of fun that he would often indulge in a foot race, or pulling sticks, or even a wrestling match. he often amazed and sometimes shocked the sensibilities of the more staid and pious members of his flock by his antics.

Before the Mormons ever dreamed of emigrating to Utah (or Mexico, as it was then), they had what they called a “Fun Hall,” or theatre and dance hall combined, where they mingled occasionally in the merry dance or sat to witness a play. Then, as later in Salt Lake, their prophet led them through the mazy evolutions of the terpsichorean numbers and was the most conspicuous figure at all their social gatherings.

While building temples and propagating their new revelation to the world, the Mormons have always found time to sing and dance and play and have a pleasant social time, excepting, of course, in their days of sore trial. Indeed, they are an anomaly among religious sects in this respect, and that is what has made Salt Lake City proverbially a “great show town.”

Mormonism during the Nauvoo days had numerous missionaries in the field and many converts were added to the new faith. Among others that were attracted to the modern Mecca to look into the claims of the new evangel, was Thomas A. Lyne, known more familiarly among his theatrical associates as “Tom” Lyne.

Lyne, at this time, 1842, was an actor of wide and fair repute, in the very flush of manhood, about thirty-five years of age. He had played leading support to Edwin Forrest, the elder Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Ellen Tree (before she became Mrs. Charles Kean), besides having starred in all the popular classic roles. Lyne was the second actor in the United States to essay the character of Bulwer’s Richelieu—Edwin Forrest being the first.

The story of “Tom” Lyne’s conversion to the Mormon faith created quite a sensation in theatrical circles of the time, and illustrates the great proselyting power the elders of the new religion possessed.

Lyne, when he encountered Mormonism, was a skeptic, having outgrown belief in all of the creeds. It was in 1841 that George J. Adams, a brother-in-law of Lyne’s, turned up suddenly in Philadelphia (Lyne’s home) where he met the popular actor and told him the story of his conversion to the Mormon faith. Adams had been to Nauvoo, met the prophet and become one of his most enthusiastic disciples. Adams had been an actor, also, of more than mediocre ability, and as a preacher proved to be one of the most brilliant and successful expounders of the new religion. Elder Adams had been sent as a missionary to Philadelphia in the home that his able exposition of the new evangel would convert that staid city of brotherly love to the new and everlasting covenant.

In pursuance of the New Testament injunction, the Mormon missionaries are sent out into their fields of labor without purse or scrip, so Elder Adams, on arriving at his field of labor, lost no time in hunting up his brother-in-law, “Tom” Lyne, to whom he related with dramatic fervor and religious enthusiasm the story of his wonderful conversion, his subsequent visit to Nauvoo, his meeting with the young “Mohammed of the West,” for whom he had conceived the greatest admiration, as well as a powerful testimony of the divinity of his mission.

Adams was so convincing and made such an impression on Lyne that he at once became greatly interested in the Mormon prophet and his new revelation. This proved to be a great help to Elder Adams, who was entirely without “the sinews of war” with which to start his great campaign.

The brothers-in-law put their heads together in council as to how the campaign fund was to be raised, and the result was that they decided to rent a theatre, get a company together, and play Richard III for a week. Lyne was a native of Philadelphia and at this time one of its most popular actors. It was here that Adams had met him a few years before and had given him his sister in marriage.

The theatrical venture was carried through, Lyne playing Richard and Elder Adams, Richmond. The week’s business, after paying all expenses, left a handsome profit. Lyne generously donated his share to the new cause in which he had now grown so deeply interested and Elder Adams procured a suitable hall and began his missionary labors. His eloquent exposition of the new and strange religion won many to the faith; one of the first fruits of his labors being the conversion of Thomas A. Lyne.

Such an impression had Adams’s description of the Mormon prophet and the City of the Saints (Nauvoo) made upon Lyne that he could not rest satisfied until he went and saw for himself. He packed up his wardrobe and took the road for Nauvoo. With a warm letter of introduction from Elder Adams to the prophet, it was not long before Lyne was thoroughly ingratiated in the good graces of the Mormon people. He met the prophet Joseph, was enchanted with him, and readily gave his adherence to the new and strange doctrines which the prophet advanced, but whether with an eye single to his eternal salvation or with both eyes open to a lucrative engagement “this deponent saith not.”

The story runs that after a long sojourn with the Saints in Nauvoo, during which he played a round of his favorite characters, supported by a full Mormon cast, he bade the prophet and his followers a sorrowful farewell and returned to his accustomed haunts in the vicinity of Liberty Hall.

During his stay in Nauvoo, Mr. Lyne played quite a number of classical plays, including “William Tell,” “Virginius,” “Damon and Pythias,” “The Iron Chest,” and “Pizarro.” In the latter play, he had no less a personage than Brigham Young in the cast; he was selected to play the part of the Peruvian high priest, and is said to have led the singing in the Temple scene where the Peruvians offer up sacrifice and sign the invocation for Rolla’s victory. Brigham Young is said to have taken a genuine interest in the character of the high priest and to have played it with becoming dignity and solemnity. Here was an early and unmistakable proof of Brigham Young’s love for the drama.

Mr. Lyne, while relating this Nauvoo incident in his experience to the writer, broke into a humorous vein and remarked:

“I’ve always regretted having cast Brigham Young for that part of the high priest.”

“Why?” I inquired, with some surprise.

With a merry twinkle in his eye and a sly chuckle in his voice, he replied: “Why don’t you see John, he’s been playing the character with great success ever since.”

There are still a few survivors of the old Nauvoo dramatic company, who supported “Tom” Lyne, living in Salt Lake. Bishop Clawson, one of the first managers of the Salt Lake theatre, is among them.

Lyne played a winning hand at Nauvoo. He made a great hit with the prophet, who took such a fancy to him that he wanted to ordain him and send him on a mission, thinking that Lyne’s eleocutionary powers would make him a great preacher. But “Tom” had not become sufficiently enthused over the prophet’s revelations to abjure the profession he so dearly loved, and become a traveling elder going about from place to place without purse or scrip, instead of a popular actor who was in demand at a good sized salary.

Lyne had made his visit remunerative and had enshrined himself in the hearts of the Mormon people, as the sequel will show; but he drifted away from them as unexpectedly as he had come. Having become a convert to the new religion, it was confidently expected that he would remain among the Saints and be one of them; but he drifted away from them and the Mormons saw no more of “Tom” Lyne till he turned up in Salt Lake some twenty years later, soon after the opening of the Salt Lake Theatre.

Lyne was the first star to tread its stage and played quite a number of engagements during the years from ‘62 to ‘70. He made money enough out of his engagements at the Salt Lake Theatre to live on for the remainder of his days. For the last twenty years of his life, he rarely appeared in public except to give a reading occasionally. With his French wife, Madeline, he settled down and took life easy, living cosily in his own cottage, and in 1891 at the advanced age of eighty-four Thomas A. Lyne passed peacefully away, a firm believer in a life to come but at utter variance with the Mormon creed, which he had discarded soon after his departure from Nauvoo.

To enter the drawing for the free tickets, you may do one of three things: Give a shout out to the movie on Twitter, as your Facebook status, or as a group email to your friends. Then either send a cc of the email or a link to your Twitter/Facebook status to tigerindustryfilms@gmail.com. The drawing will be held at 5:00pm Mountain Time on Thursday, Oct. 1. Winners will receive a Fandango confirmation number to their show of choice. So the contest is done entirely by email and you have no tickets to pick up anywhere. Let the games begin!

Now, onto a little fuller explanation of the film.

Most of the reviewers I’ve read can’t help but compare White on Rice to Napoleon Dynamite, which is an interesting enough commentary on what Mormons have been contributing to the world of cinema. We seem to do really well in two genres: first, there are the insular comedies and melodramatic dramas that are so inaccessible that no one outside of the Intermountain West even bothers to take a side in the debates that ensue over how appropriate they are, and then there are the screwball comedies about lovable, bumbling, socially inept protagonists that do remarkably well with sarcastic college kids across the nation.

White on Rice falls squarely into Category 2, but what I love about it is its ability to avoid some of the over-the-top nonsense (not that protagonist Hajime “Jimmy” Beppu isn’t over-the-top; it’s just not nonsense) that plagues Jared Hess’s films, and also the amazingly innovative stabs that director Dave Boyle isn’t afraid to take. At the risk of sounding like the deconstructivist nihilist that I’m not, here are the pleasant ways in which White on Rice effectively pushes the envelope:

1. It’s subtitled. Not the whole movie – in fact, I can’t remember what percentage of the dialog is in English; maybe half. But they jump over the American box office assumption that subtitles are too much for our poor little demographic to handle, and throw entire Japanese scenes into the film. This shows significant faith in their audience, an audience that Boyle knows probably includes a fair share of anime enthusiast white kids who are going to latch onto this quirky indie film like there’s no tomorrow, not in spite of, but because it hits a particularly live cultural vein. (NPR once called Japan the first nation whose economy is supported by its ability to be hip.)

2. It uses violence to humorous effect. Not that I’m a fan of violent movies. (I Am Legend kept me awake and shaking for two weeks.) But White on Rice manages to open with a parody of a bloody samurai film and twist it to a commentary on the ridiculous role that violence has taken in our entertainment culture. Why on earth would someone laugh at a bloody samurai film? I don’t know. Why on earth do we pay millions of dollars to see machine gun blockbusters? Why is it OK to send our kids on virtual alien-slaying missions and call it playtime? I don’t know. Perhaps that’s something we need to examine.

3. It tackles cultural stereotypes head-on. The Deseret News criticized White on Rice’s use of ethnic humor. The fact that it was Asian people making the Asian jokes doesn’t seem to register. The most endearing and well-played character in the film is Justin Kwong’s 10-year-old Bob, Jimmy’s nephew who is a straight-A student, concert pianist and profitable entrepreneur. Because his strict Asian immigrant parents pressured him to achieve? No, actually, because he sneaks around and does it under their radar. Another highlight is when Aiko, Jimmy’s sister, is presented with  a woefully misunderstood attempt at “cultural sensitivity” by an emergency room doctor – and she laughs in his face.

4. It’s not actually an American comedy. Director and co-writer Boyle may be American; the film may be set and shot in Salt Lake City; the movie maybe be ostensibly western in its plot structure, but everything about this film, including the quirky, irreverent humor and the decidedly atypical approach to violence, is extremely Japanese. This movie had more in common with one of my favorite quirky Japanese films, The Taste of Tea, than it did with Napoleon Dynamite. It runs on a different cultural spectrum than what we’re used to seeing. For this reason, it might not sit well with a lot of American LDS audiences. But not for the same reasons that “edgy” attempts at art like the U of U’s production of The Bakkhai won’t sit well with those audiences. (Reviewers have claimed that White on Rice has sexual references – they’re not blatant and they’re not thrown in to tease and titilate or intentionally provoke the audience. In fact, they’re deliciously unromantic and Japanese-pragmatic and one of my favorite lines of the movie is what Aiko’s husband Tak says to the salesman at the adult store he enters to buy an anniversary gift for his wife.) It’s a truly international piece of cinema. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for an original, international piece of LDS cinema?

The film is rated PG-13, mostly for the samurai-style violence and for one memorable use of the S-word, and probably isn’t appropriate for young children. But I think it would do well with teens and young adults and I encourage you to catch it while it’s still playing in Utah and California or at an upcoming opening in Denver or Hawaii. And let me know what you think – let me know if this indie take on entertainment has a future or deserves a spot in the Mormon art world.

Defining Mormon literature from the writer’s/editor’s/publisher’s perspective is probably the most labyrinthine discussion in the world of Mormon letters–with most definitions leaning toward anything and everything relating to Mormons. Irreantum’s definition is a good example. In the submissions section it says:

Irreantum seeks to publish high-quality work that explores the Mormon experience, directly or by implication, through literature. We acknowledge a broad range of experience with Mormonism, both as a faith and as a culture — on the part of devoted multi-generation Mormons, ethnic Mormons, new converts, and people outside of the faith and culture who interact with Mormons and Mormon culture.

Under the reviews section it states it more succinctly. Mormon literature is basically, “any books of fiction or poetry, films, or plays written by, for, or about Mormons, or that also may be of interest to a Mormon readership (such as books with strong religious themes).” That’s pretty open and that seems to be where most other magazines and publishers draw the line.

However, it’s also obvious that many, many readers don’t agree with that open definition. Take last year’s snafu over LDS Publisher accepting Angel Falling Softly as a contest sponsor as an example. Or AMV’s heated discussion of Brother Brigham by D. Michael Martindale. Both books are obviously by, for, and about Mormons. But many, many LDS readers were offended by the association.

So why the gap between the writers/editors and the readers? That’s where the Mormon Literary Litmus Test comes in.

Most readers will readily admit that defining great/worthy/recommendable literature is highly subjective. But, when it comes to niche marketing and writing, the subjectivity becomes limited. After all, niches by their very definition are limited and specific and in the case of the Mormon market those limitations come in the form of *gulp* morals. It is the Mormon/LDS stance on moral issues that sets its members apart from the culture at large and it is how individual Mormons relate to those moral stances that set Mormon/LDS readers apart from the the national market. The doctrinal idea that no Mormon can be a fence-sitter, that we cannot be lukewarm and still be part of the body of Christ, only makes this debate more heated.

Of course not every reader will relate to the morality the same so there is a degree of subjectivity but that subjectivity is hedged by the inherent culture expectations and pressures to make moral stands. (This, in part, explains the success of Deseret Book even though so many readers are displeased with the books they find in the stores. Deseret Book understands and caters to the cultural moral expectations.) In other words, because we are readers and because we are Mormons we each have our own litmus test, the way we take a stand,–they may all be different litmus tests, but we have them all the same. My personal litmus test: Do I identify with the work in question? Does the literature represent me, my beliefs, and experiences in some way?

At first glance this sounds almost as open as Irreantum, but I worry that it isn’t. I’m a pretty normal Mormon gal and I’ve lived a pretty normal Mormon life. Raised in Utah, married young, had kids–it’s a story that many Mormons could tell as they introduce themselves in sacrament meeting. But the Church doesn’t only exist in the Rocky Mountain west. It doesn’t belong only to born-in-the-covenant members. There are a lot of members (and ex-members) out there and each of their stories IS part of the LDS experience, but they aren’t necessarily part of MY LDS experience.

My litmus test makes it easy to like books like Bound on Earth or, because so many other LDS chicks read them, Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight Saga, but classic books like The Backslider push the limits of my litmus test. There is almost nothing in that book I identify with. The only thing that feels even remotely familiar is the protagonist’s intense yearning to understand the nature of Christ’s love and atoning sacrifice. On the other hand, other classics, like Marilyn Brown’s The Earthkeepers and Virginia Sorensen’s Where Nothing is Long Ago don’t reflect directly on my experience, but the moods of those books feel comfortable and stretch my litmus test without trying to break it. In fact, that might be the very reason they are classics: because they push people just enough but not too hard.

A friend and ward member who is also an avid reader defines her litmus test much like Madeleine L’Engle does in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Wheaton Literary Series). In talking about her actor-husband’s roles on stage she said that if the kids couldn’t see him in it, then he wouldn’t accept the part (p 79). My friend chooses which books to buy and keep according to the kind of reading experiences they will give her children. She asks herself, “Would I ever want my child to read this?” If the answer is no then she doesn’t keep the book. L’Engle says this kind of screening and thought process is the mark of artistic integrity and I would venture that many Mormon readers feel the same.

For me, I’ve decided that a litmus test in and of itself is not bad. It is limiting but only if readers don’t recognize they have one. Of course, now I have to know, what’s your litmus test?