July 21, 2006 at 12:51 am · Filed under Teevee
I finally saw the South Park take on the foundations of Mormonism from a few seasons back. It’s maybe 90% accurate. Not too bad. I think Mormons would take issue with the dozens of holes Joseph Smith digs to find the plates (the angel told him where to dig), and with the assertion that no one else ever saw the golden plates. (Eleven men, most related to Smith, signed one of two documents saying they had seen the plates.) The “dum dum dum dum dum” editorializing does not have a scriptural referent as far as I know.
In a side note, Martin Harris, who is featured in the second half of the clip and who financed the publication of the Book of Mormon, is buried in a cemetery in Clarkston, Utah surrounded by literally dozens and figuratively millions of dead Godfreys, all of whom I am related to.
bk_keywords: Joseph Smith.
March 13, 2006 at 2:02 am · Filed under Teevee
Jessica and I watched this tonight. A little racy for TV — the central joke of the first episode is that the husband needs Viagra — and I would say because of that not for Mormon consumption, but it wasn’t particularly heretical. They do make it clear, in dialogue and in a disclaimer at the end, that the characters, after all, aren’t “recommend” Mormons to begin with.
The show follows The Sopranos on HBO, and there’s definitely an attempt to turn Harry Dean Stanton’s patriarch character into a sort of Mormon mafia don, which they’ll need to preserve the audience lead-in. He’s not really that different from the press accounts of people like Rulon Jeffs, such as depicted in the Krakauer book, and I’m sure he’s modeled after him.
There are very few actresses I dislike more than Chloe Sevigny (really, there’s only Juliette Lewis and Sean Young, and neither seems to be working these days). I can’t really put my finger on why I hate her. Maybe because she’s a terrible actor — her affect is flat, her face a blank — and she always looks sleepy. I don’t really like Bill Paxton either. I don’t think either were terrible in this, and they won’t keep me from watching the show.
Some of the dialog seemed realistic Utahn. I was very happy they worked an “Oh my heck” in there, and the highlight of the first episode was a conversation between a regular Mormon teen trying to suss out what ward her chaste-but-polygamous coworker is in. “Are you in MIA Maids or Laurels?” Nobody actually sounds like they are from Utah, though. Everyone sort of talks like they’ve seen Raising Arizona a few too many times.
None of the polygamous characters wear garments. I thought that was weird, but maybe they don’t in real life. Anybody know?
In looking for polygamist reaction to the show, I found this: Principle Voices – What Do You Think of Big Love?. The first (and so far, only) response to the question has nothing to do with the show, but raises concerns about legalizing polygamy, and particularly polygyny, that hadn’t occurred to me: If people start practicing widespread polygyny, will it create a society of outcast angry loser men who can’t get women because all of the non-loser men will have snatched them up, so to speak, by the threes and fours?
January 11, 2006 at 9:38 pm · Filed under Asides, Teevee
Cuh-ray-zee! Am I the first person to blog this? I am the geek winner!
January 5, 2006 at 12:11 am · Filed under Asides, Teevee
“Why not?” asks the indignant Jessica. “I’m not indignant!” she declares, indignantly.
