Des News Article Re: "Under the Banner of Heaven" Mini Series

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Calm said:

I just started.  It showed the picture of a dead bird on some farmland before showing Provo.  Does that have any significance besides something ‘drama’?

Not really. 

[CA Steve]

I watched both episodes. I was looking forward to it as I remember the book being very good.

Great cast, great filming, horrible dialogue/writing. It just seems like they are dragging out every scene twice as long as it needs to be. 

At times it is really hard to watch.

[Calm]

 

56 minutes ago, pogi said:

I grew up in Orem in an active household and had a totally different experience from you.  Church was only talked about at church, family home evening, young men's activities, and seminary, and only rarely outside of those contexts.  That is still a lot compared to most Americans experience, but hardly was it a dominant focus of discussion in my life.  But it sounds like I was also younger with my junior-high and high-school years being in the 90's   

My husband said it was like a fish in water, no one talked Church except at the structured times (your list) because it was just there, everyone had the same context…or at least assumed they did.

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

 

My husband said it was like a fish in water, no one talked Church except at the structured times (your list) because it was just there, everyone had the same context…or at least assumed they did.

I could have dealt with that. In our little town it was in everything. Even as an active member it drove me crazy. 

[Calm]

21 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Not really. 

Ohhh….

This is not going to be a labor of love.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Calm said:

Ohhh….

This is not going to be a labor of love.

Just be prepared for really bad dialogue. I can’t believe that guy won an Oscar. 

[bluebell]

31 minutes ago, Calm said:

I just started.  It showed the picture of a dead bird on some farmland before showing Provo.  Does that have any significance besides something ‘drama’?

That sounds to me like an attempt at some foreshadowing.  Kind of a "things are not all roses here" or "death's coming" thing.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, bluebell said:

That sounds to me like an attempt at some foreshadowing.  Kind of a "things are not all roses here" or "death's coming" thing.

Yeah, maybe. That might be too subtle for the script, though. 

[Calm]

30 minutes ago, bluebell said:

That sounds to me like an attempt at some foreshadowing.  Kind of a "things are not all roses here" or "death's coming" thing.

That is what I was thinking.  It was not particularly done well if so. 

Edited April 29, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

43 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I could have dealt with that. In our little town it was in everything. Even as an active member it drove me crazy. 

My husband is oblivious to a lot of stuff in his environment that drives me crazy, so I do not exclude the possibility he didn’t notice. I do know I was actively looking for discussion, but also on a non superficial level, so I may have ignored trivial comments. 

Edited April 29, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

13 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I lived in a 95% LDS town in Utah County back in the 90s. Church was discussed everywhere: at the town council meetings, when I was paying my utility bills, at town picnics, parades, and everywhere else. I worked in Provo, and the church was a  constant topic of discussion. 

The clasped hands thing was a little odd. 

We talk town stuff at Church in my little town. I fell in love with it one of the first Sunday when they were announcing irrigation turns.  First time I really thought of myself as living in a neighborhood.  They announce blood drives, yard cleanups, welcome homes for military personnel or celebrations for retiring emergency service personnel, Music in the Park.  It just felt like I lived in a community, not just a place to have a house. Home extended beyond my yard. 
 

No doubt if I had done more volunteer work than volunteering at libraries, I would have developed the same feelings in other places I lived.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Calm

[Rivers]

Watched the first two episodes of the show. It’s ok.
 

 The dialogue is a bit clunky.  A lot of the mormon jargon feels forced and awkward.   

Andrew Garfield is fine in the role.  The actress playing Brenda is great.  
 

My biggest problem is that it feels too reminiscent of September Dawn.  

[smac97]

40 minutes ago, Rivers said:

Watched the first two episodes of the show. It’s ok.
 

 The dialogue is a bit clunky.  A lot of the mormon jargon feels forced and awkward.   

Andrew Garfield is fine in the role.  The actress playing Brenda is great.  
 

My biggest problem is that it feels too reminiscent of September Dawn.  

It seems like Dustin Black leans way too much on his relatively limited experience in the Church.  Being a kid who grew up in the Church in 1980s' Texas is just not going to go far in conveying the adult culture of the Church in Utah County at that time.

Jim Bennett has made similar observations on FB:

Quote

Sorry, folks. “Under the Banner of Heaven" is unwatchably bad.

Right from the outset, we have problems. The first thing we see are Garfield’s daughters wearing Little House on the Prairie dresses, suggesting a level of familial fundamentalism that is foreign to mainstream Mormons. Immediately, it’s clear that we’re going to see a lot of lazy stereotypes that don’t match the lived experience of those on the inside. Yes, there is a throwaway line that these are “costumes,” but it’s hard to believe that the obvious association with modern polygamist couture is unintentional. When we see the Laffertys at a picnic later in the episode, the young girls and even adult women are similarly attired, reinforcing the deliberate choice to paint Mormons as weirder than we actually are.



In fact, all the Mormon cultural references are weird and jarring, even the small ones. When Garfield says that he’s going to take the lead on the investigation and speak to the suspect “Mormon to Mormon,” he says it with the confidence of someone who assumes this is a normal thing for a Mormon to say. As an active Mormon for 53+ years, I can confidently say that it really isn’t, although I can’t quite put my finger on why. Yes, Garfield speaks his tin-eared dialogue with grace and conviction, but when he’s forced to deliver clunkers like “the Church vigorously discourages beards,” it’s not really his fault that none of it rings true. And when he bursts into the interrogation room quoting the Doctrine and Covenants from memory and barking questions about covenants and altars and temple recommends, it finally shifts from awkward to laughable.



 

Then we get a flashback where Brenda Lafferty talks about how much our Savior hates Democrats and how she can’t go to the ungodly cities of New York and Chicago and how Jesus wants her at BYU in Salt Lake City, despite the fact that BYU isn’t in Salt Lake City. At this point, the Simpsons episode where Bart gets married in Utah got more things right than this show does. There’s absolutely no way Church members are going to see themselves in this increasingly ludicrous narrative.



 

And it just doesn’t let up. “Heavenly Father knows you can’t turn an upside down cake to save your life,” Garfield tells his wife. Who talks like that? In or out of the Church? The Attack of the Clones monologue about the evils of sand sounds almost Shakespearean in comparison. In the next flashback, Brenda meets her future in-laws immediately tell her that “gossip is the devil’s playground” and she responds by saying “President Kimball said ‘stand ye in holy places,’ and BYU is a far better fit for those who want to live gospel standards.” It’s as if they lifted all the dialogue from New Era MormonAds.



 

The problems here, then, have little or nothing to do with the Church. It isn’t just that these characters aren’t authentic Mormons; they’re not authentic human beings. It’s impossible to care about what happens to these stilted cardboard cutouts. No human being has ever asked another human being “Do you all abide by the Word of Wisdom at BYU?” In fact, no human being has used the word “abide” in casual conversation since 1896. Given that Brenda Lafferty was a very real person, it’s sad that her death is being used as agitprop in a weirdly disturbing melodrama that is entirely disconnected from reality.



 

We get a bizarre lemonade party Book of Mormon reading, and then Brenda causes a scandal for leaving the womenfolk at the lemonade stand to do unwomanly manual labor. Did someone decide that the best way to research Mormon social gatherings was to watch an Amish barn raising? And why couldn’t they be bothered to get simple details right?

Thanks,

-Smac

[Tacenda]

14 minutes ago, smac97 said:

It seems like Dustin Black leans way too much on his relatively limited experience in the Church.  Being a kid who grew up in the Church in 1980s' Texas is just not going to go far in conveying the adult culture of the Church in Utah County at that time.

Jim Bennett has made similar observations on FB:

Thanks,

-Smac

I watched part of the first episode...Jim missed the part that it was pioneer day and the girls were dressed that way because of it..maybe because of a parade or something.

[BlueDreams]

4 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I just remember that my wife and I were very uncomfortable with the predominance of Mormonism in so many aspects of our little town’s life. Texas was a pleasant change. 

I literally had the reverse experience. But I moved from out east where religion was rarely talked about to texas in a town that was strongly conservative Christian. One of the first questions people would ask me  when first meet was about my religion. Like all the time. And they cared when it was largely considered the wrong answer.  It was some major culture shock. 
Utah was also a minor culture shock (I was at BYU in 00’s-10’s) but for different reasons. Religion largely came up when the context warranted it…but not much outside of specific religious activities except if I was having some deeper conversations with a good friend. Now, in a utah county town (I’d say medium sized) it doesn’t come up where I wouldn’t expect it to. Outside of my job (it would specifically come up in therapeutic contexts) and church I don’t think I see god talked about excessively. But that’s now several decades from when this is set.

 

side note: I’ll probably not watch it…It’s not my usual type of entertainment. I just thought it was funny that your place of reprieve was the place where I experienced  religious overkill. 
 

with luv, 

bd 

Edited April 29, 2022 by BlueDreams

[Calm]

23 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The first thing we see are Garfield’s daughters wearing Little House on the Prairie dresses, suggesting a level of familial fundamentalism that is foreign to mainstream Mormons.

I thought he was fixing the bike for a Pioneer Day parade and that was her costume.  I went there because I thought “no way is he going to picture a “typical” believing member in Provo as having a daughter dressing like that in 1984 like that and what better conveys the feel of a Utahn neighborhood than the Primary’s Pioneer Day Parade”.  (Yeah, I know it was an elaborate thought just based on a glimpse, but I am in that kind of mood.)  But I stopped watching it at that point because I was still focused on dead bird at the beginning and wanted that resolved before I continued and hadn’t been back yet as too antsy.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Calm

[LoudmouthMormon]

As a reminder for some, and news to others, here's the 18 year old FARMS review of Krakauer's book: 

Foster, Craig L.. "Doing Violence to Journalistic Integrity." The FARMS Review 16, no. 1 (2004): 149-174.

 

I took a chance and watched the first episode of the Hulu miniseries.  There's a shower scene, and after the credits is a teaser for the next episode, which shows brief temple content.  So if you want a general feel for the miniseries, if you skip the shower scene and post-credit material, there's nothing offensively sacrilegious in the first episode.  

[Calm]

Apparently an original promo on the site featured the temple scene, but they have altered it.

[Rivers]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

It seems like Dustin Black leans way too much on his relatively limited experience in the Church.  Being a kid who grew up in the Church in 1980s' Texas is just not going to go far in conveying the adult culture of the Church in Utah County at that time.

Jim Bennett has made similar observations on FB:

Thanks,

-Smac

He didn’t mention the ridiculous french fry scene.  Apparently mormons shouldn’t eat french fries. 

 

 

 

[Hamba Tuhan]

There is a known phenomenon in history writing where people visit a 'foreign' place imaginatively before they visit it in person. Then, even after arriving in person, they tend to record what they had imagined instead of what the local people actually say/do because the imaginary encounter has the power to impose itself onto and even overwhelm lived experience. This imaginary framing of the other is surprisingly persistent, in part because, having arisen from the cultural/intellectual expectations of the visitors, it is more 'satisfying' both to them and to their intended audience (i.e., those who share these expectations) than is the often very unexpected reality of the encounter.

In other words, the imaginary encounter sounds and feels more authentic to the outsiders ... and therefore tends to get endlessly repeated, even in academic literature. At the same time, what is written/shared is often completely foreign to the subjects of the description, who reside, in all their complexity, outside of the visitors' imaginations. This is one of the most dominant features of colonial contact literature, and avoiding it in postcolonial narratives is the goal of every informed historian.

Unsurprisingly, it sounds like this program is what happens when people imagine what it must be like to be faithful Latter-day Saints. No doubt, their imaginative product satisfies their cultural/intellectual expectations and will therefore satisfy the expectations of their intended audience. Meanwhile, we 'natives' will struggle to see ourselves authentically represented. That one of the apostate 'consultants' chose to dismiss this disconnect as 'hubris' is evidence of just how colonising this entire project is: clearly, Mr Black and his crew are so enlightened that they can understand our reality better than we understand it ourselves!

[sunstoned]

On 4/27/2022 at 5:07 PM, Teancum said:

I did not make that statement.  And I don't agree with it just for the record.

 

"Mormonism creates dangerous men" is a quote from Under the banner of heaven.

 

 

[sunstoned]

On 4/27/2022 at 5:40 PM, smac97 said:

In the same way starving plays a part in following medical advice about moderating caloric intake.

In the same way taking steroids plays a part in following medical advice about physical exercise.

Your continued refusal to differentiate between A) a sound principle and B) a gross distortion and misapplication of that principle is even more so.

But when it comes to casting blame on the Church for the murder of a woman and her baby . . . any port in a storm, I guess.

Thanks,

-Smac

Brenda Lafferty was killed in the same manner that I pantomimed many times during the pre-1990 temple ceremony.  

[sunstoned]

6 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

My biggest issue is ridiculous dialogue so far. 

I also found the dialogue jarring.  Growing up in a rural area on a family ranch (my father and his 4 brothers and families) I was surrounded by all things Mormon.  Most of the religious dialog that was in the first two episodes I had heard many times from my very devout family and extended family.  But LDS beliefs was not brought up in every conversation like is portrayed in the series. 

[sunstoned]

4 hours ago, Rivers said:

Watched the first two episodes of the show. It’s ok.
 

 The dialogue is a bit clunky.  A lot of the mormon jargon feels forced and awkward.   

Andrew Garfield is fine in the role.  The actress playing Brenda is great.  
 

My biggest problem is that it feels too reminiscent of September Dawn.  

This is what I was trying to say.  You said it better.

[jkwilliams]

7 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

I literally had the reverse experience. But I moved from out east where religion was rarely talked about to texas in a town that was strongly conservative Christian. One of the first questions people would ask me  when first meet was about my religion. Like all the time. And they cared when it was largely considered the wrong answer.  It was some major culture shock. 
Utah was also a minor culture shock (I was at BYU in 00’s-10’s) but for different reasons. Religion largely came up when the context warranted it…but not much outside of specific religious activities except if I was having some deeper conversations with a good friend. Now, in a utah county town (I’d say medium sized) it doesn’t come up where I wouldn’t expect it to. Outside of my job (it would specifically come up in therapeutic contexts) and church I don’t think I see god talked about excessively. But that’s now several decades from when this is set.

 

side note: I’ll probably not watch it…It’s not my usual type of entertainment. I just thought it was funny that your place of reprieve was the place where I experienced  religious overkill. 
 

with luv, 

bd 

We lived in Houston, and religion rarely came up. My kids did have some experiences being treated badly when it came out that they were LDS. But that wasn’t the norm. We had a pretty diverse neighborhood.