I just binged watched American Primeval

[Teancum]

On 1/12/2025 at 12:47 AM, Calm said:

A recap of the series by episode, with the good and not so good identified.

”This six part mini-series set in 1850s Utah follows a makeshift family of people struggling to survive the various threats in the wilderness, including the Mormons who are depicted as a ruthlessly violent organization that uses religion to control others and justify violence against anyone they see as a threat.”

CB, sunstoned, MSeed, and anyone else who has watched the series, do you disagree with this assessment of portrayal of the Mormons in general or at least the leaders in this series?  And if you do, why?

text.pdf 174.09 kB · 5 downloads

I agree with the assessment and find the portrayal of the Mormons and cartoonish and one dimensional.

[Teancum]

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

She doesn't claim that. She says it's "fiction," based on "imagined scenarios."  She says it's "definitely not an accurate history of anything." Which is all true.

Thank you for the clarification.

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

Peter Berg has made a number of films that are "based on a true story" (Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, Patriot's Day), but this is not one of them. At best, it is loosely inspired by some actual historical characters and events. Its depiction of Mormons is a lazy caricature, but why is anyone surprised by this? Has no one here seen the portrayals of Mormons in Hell on Wheels, Godless, or Under the Banner of Heaven? This is the norm. See also, September Dawn, The Avenging Angel, etc.

I saw Hell on Wheels and again found the portrayal of the Mormons cartoonish.  And I found Under the Banner of Heaven so so but the idea that BY and John Taylor had Joseph killed was nonsense.

1 hour ago, Nevo said:

I'm glad there isn't a historically accurate portrayal of the violence in 1850s Utah, because the truth is as chilling as anything shown in fictional TV movies. Rasmus Anderson having his throat slit over an open grave. Thomas Lewis being castrated "by a square and close amputation." The Parrish-Potter murders. The Aiken party murders. The Yates murder. The Hartley murder. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. All of which were ordered or sanctioned by Church leaders. Scripture Central and FAIR would have their work cut out for them if those events were accurately depicted onscreen.

True. Maybe some of this dramatic portrayal is accurate?  Maybe the Utah Mormons in the 1850s were a violent, ruthless paranoid bunch.

[Nevo]

31 minutes ago, Teancum said:

Maybe some of this dramatic portrayal is accurate?  Maybe the Utah Mormons in the 1850s were a violent, ruthless paranoid bunch.

It's not completely off base. 

Consider this description from Patrick Mason:

"Particularly during the first decade of the Latter-day Saints’ settlement in the Great Basin, they employed violent means in asserting their religious and cultural dominance over the region. Traumatized by multiple bouts of persecution and dispossession, the Saints determined not to let anyone — whether dissidents, Indians, non-Mormon emigrants, or even the US Army — threaten their existence and drive them out again. But just as it had with the Danites in 1838, self-defense quickly morphed into more assertive and repressive violence, this time against a wider array of enemies. Latter-day Saint violence reached its climax — or nadir — in 1857, then tapered off quickly.

Once the embers of the Mormon Reformation had cooled, the Utah War had been resolved peacefully (with the army permanently ensconced outside Salt Lake City), most Indians had been removed from areas of white settlement, and the horror of the Mountain Meadows Massacre became known to at least some in the church leadership, the appetite for using violence as a legitimate method of building the kingdom of God seems to have waned."

— Patrick Q. Mason, Mormonism and Violence: The Battles of Zion, Elements in Religion and Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 57–58.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Nevo said:

Latter-day Saint violence reached its climax — or nadir — in 1857, then tapered off quickly.

As long as comments about violence don’t forget to add a fuller context to show that such things were not a defining, inherent, or foundational characteristic of the community as Banner of Heaven was trying to establish and this series appears to me to also do so (though it’s also trying to establish such violence is inherent in American culture as I understand it, imo) I don’t see a need for debate.  We do need to be aware of the dark side of our history as a religious community as well of the things we can be proud of or just enjoy.  And that includes where violence in our American community was tied to the greater Christian community…something that should trouble Saints as much as violence occurring in our smaller LDS community.

Btw, I came across a few sites that were focusing on how the Native Americans were being portrayed and instead of gushing over the authentic clothing, language, and song, they were critical (one mentioned ‘where are the dogs?), at times angry about how their community was being portrayed, one example was the children scavenging among the dead bodies, another was a rape scene.  I am not seeing this anywhere else (kind of reminds me of the early days of the Book of Mormon Musical where there was quite a bit debate online on how Mormons were portrayed, but it took time to build criticism of how they portrayed Ugandans specifically and Africans in general…a portrayal I found to be much more insulting than what they had to say about Saints and our faith and culture).

I would much prefer to write ‘Utah Territory was remarkable for a very low level of violence even while being surrounded by other quite violent territories’, but that isn’t accurate. I can at least say Utah Territory was at least no more violent and available stats and many anecdotes often show us less violent.  It seems our towns were better organized from what I have read, our lawmen not as likely to cross to the criminal side.   It’s not like math though (unfortunately) where the positives can cancel out the negatives.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/virt_2024-history/foster-murder_mayhem_mormons

Quote

The purpose of this paper has not been to cast aspersions upon the named denominations nor their members. Nor is it to justify incidents of violence among and by early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether or not the LDS Church and its members really were a violent religious subculture within a violent national culture and were even more violent than their religious counterparts.

When looking at the larger picture, the answer to the question is that it’s obvious The Church of Jesus Christ and its members were not more violent than their religious counterparts. For that matter, in most cases, it appears they were less violent than some members of other religious denominations, as demonstrated with the examples given

 

[webbles]

3 hours ago, Nevo said:

It's not completely off base. 

Consider this description from Patrick Mason:

"Particularly during the first decade of the Latter-day Saints’ settlement in the Great Basin, they employed violent means in asserting their religious and cultural dominance over the region. Traumatized by multiple bouts of persecution and dispossession, the Saints determined not to let anyone — whether dissidents, Indians, non-Mormon emigrants, or even the US Army — threaten their existence and drive them out again. But just as it had with the Danites in 1838, self-defense quickly morphed into more assertive and repressive violence, this time against a wider array of enemies. Latter-day Saint violence reached its climax — or nadir — in 1857, then tapered off quickly.

Once the embers of the Mormon Reformation had cooled, the Utah War had been resolved peacefully (with the army permanently ensconced outside Salt Lake City), most Indians had been removed from areas of white settlement, and the horror of the Mountain Meadows Massacre became known to at least some in the church leadership, the appetite for using violence as a legitimate method of building the kingdom of God seems to have waned."

— Patrick Q. Mason, Mormonism and Violence: The Battles of Zion, Elements in Religion and Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 57–58.

Interesting that Mason says that the violence reached its climax in 1857.  I would have thought that the Black Hawk war would be the climax.

[Nevo]

19 minutes ago, webbles said:

I would have thought that the Black Hawk war would be the climax.

He discusses the Black Hawk War a few pages earlier:

"Outbreaks of violence continued throughout the 1860s, notably during the Black Hawk War of 1865–1868. One of the low points of the conflict came in April 1866, when the Latter-day Saint settlers of Circleville, an isolated and exposed community in south-central Utah, massacred at least sixteen captured Paiutes, slitting the throats of some and individually executing women and children. Even given the fog of war, local settlers’ fears, and the depredations committed by Indians in the area, the Circleville Massacre stands out as a particularly ruthless atrocity. Following the conclusion of the Black Hawk War, relations between the Saints and Paiutes on Utah’s southern frontier settled into a more comfortable and largely nonviolent pattern, with frequent intermingling and even occasional intermarriage, though by then the regional power dynamic had been well established.

Latter-day Saint violence against Native Americans in pioneer Utah is in many ways easy to explain in its historical context, though still hard to stomach. Quite simply, the Saints acted like other white American settler colonists – first on their own accord, then as willing agents of US government policy. . . . Latter-day Saint violence against Utah’s original inhabitants was largely typical of the disastrous history of white–Indian relations on the American frontier, with cultural differences and competition over land and natural resources precipitating conflict, war, and atrocities. Though sung in a Mormon key, the tune of white settler violence was depressingly familiar" (43–44).

[halconero]

As someone who lost family in the Holocaust, I'm going to be blunt:

This is about as close to modern blood libel as anything, and were it a number of other communities, it would be called out as bigotry.

I don't care if it's not trying to be historically accurate, a lot of blood libel was just made up too. To draw on Jean-Paul Satre:

Quote

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

 

[Calm]

Just an FYI for anyone who is interested, this is a FAIR presentation on Brigham Young by Dan Peterson. It starts with a trailer from Six Days In August.

 

[MustardSeed]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Just an FYI for anyone who is interested, this is a FAIR presentation on Brigham Young by Dan Peterson. It starts with a trailer from Six Days In August.

 

I’ll watch. I’ve never heard of that movie six days. At first glance, it got pretty poor ratings. My kingdom for a quality movie to represent my people! 

[Analytics]

I finished watching American Primeval last night, and this morning I listened to a two-hour Mormon Stories podcast featuring Barbara Jones Brown (Turley's co-author of Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath published by Oxford University Press) and Darren Parry, an expert on Shoshone history. Here are my thoughts on the show:

The show is not about a comprehensive, nuanced view of Brigham Young and the Latter-day Saints. Rather, the show is about what happens when you take otherwise civilized people with different cultures and allegiances, put them outside the edges of civilization, and see what those circumstances reveal about human nature. The main storyline is about how a civilized lady from Pennsylvania slowly learns that her civilized sensibilities just don't work in the wild west.

The show takes real people and real events and liberally rearranges them in time and place so that a fictional story about human nature holds together. However there were many, many details of this that were meticulously accurate; for example, the vast majority of how the Shoshones were portrayed was spot-on: everything from their dress, villages, language, and tribal governance were all precisely accurate. There were a few details that weren't accurate (e.g. the Shoshones weren't into scalping as the movie implies, they weren't interested in kidnapping white women, the Nauvoo Legion at this time didn't have uniforms, they didn't wear potato sacks on their heads in the MMM, the real Fort Bridger was smaller than the fictional Fort Bridger). Nevertheless, a lot of the minute details used to create the overall ambiance was exactly correct. And like I said, the time and place of the historical events are severely scrambled. 

In terms of how fairly various groups were portrayed, they may have been a little too negative in how they portrayed the natives, and they definitely made the army soldiers appear more virtuous than they really were. But regarding the Mormons and mountain men, I think that in aggregate they hit the right overall tone for that place and time.

One of the main plots of the movie was that a handful of the MMM victims escaped, and thus the perpetrators needed to hunt them down and kill them in follow-up battles so that there wouldn't be any witnesses to the fact that the MMM was executed by Mormons and not by natives.  In the movie, Brigham Young is accurately depicted as not having ordered the original massacre and being lied to about who did it. He is then depicted as only reluctantly condoning the surviving witnesses being taken care of (this isn't historically accurate, but it doesn't seem out of character, either). But what actually happened was much more violent, horrific, and sinister than what was portrayed in the film--in the film it took them a handful of battles to kill all the witnesses; in reality, they efficiently killed all of them at once.

When you look at the complete, actual history, which includes Brigham Young's violent and provocative rhetoric that led to the massacre, his strategy of helping the Paiutes steel cattle from non-Mormon pioneers, their other tactics in the Utah War, and the Mormon direct and indirect involvement in not only the MMM but also the Bear River Massacre, the Circleville massacre, the Provo River massacre, and perhaps most damningly, Brigham Young's extermination order against the Timpanogos People in Utah Valley (i.e. Brigham Young ordered that the Timpanogos had to leave their native lands of Utah Valley or literally face extermination by the Mormons), and its easy to imagine a 100% accurate movie that would have portrayed Brigham Young and his people as being much more vile than how they were portrayed in American Primeval.

Of course this is just the darkest chapter of Mormonism's history and isn't at all representative of other chapters, but it is still something that happened. A relevant insight into human nature is that both individually and as groups, we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and to judge others by their actions. That's just something to keep in mind when thinking about these things.

That all is my personal take, but it is informed by and generally in harmony with the view of Barbara Jones Brown:

 

Edited January 17, 2025 by Analytics

[tana]

Analytics, it's interesting how one rates this film depending on their altitude. I can see your points. I'm looking at it from ground level and scene by scene, and rating it just on entertainment value, I give it a yawn. I'd say it is pretty much a cross between a boiler plate horse opera, John Wick, Dudley Do-Right and The Revenant.

 

For instance, horses, when they go lame don't buck off their rider and stomp them because they're mad that the rider is trying to get them to keep walking. They just stop walking. A guy with two bullets in the back and an arrow through the leg does not get up and back in the fight two days later because the natives treated him with ancient Ivermectin. Writing a good, plausible escape scene is difficult. In fact, the only one I've ever seen is in the movie Rob Roy. So, to have the crew get the upper hand on the gang of cut-throats by having the little girl run through the camp with a burning branch is pretty much not even trying. And this is just the obvious stuff, and not getting into travel distances, mountain passes in winter, sharpened shovels.

 

It's always a sure sign of a good bad movie when the writers can't figure out how to wrap things up and tie up loose ends...so they just kill off everybody. Since I don't want to take the time to look up character names - Half scalped guy, whom the writers want us to like, knowing that it's the white guys that did the dirty, goes ahead and saddles up with the white guys to go kill natives, and in the process kills his sweetheart. Then kills himself. Yeah, I know, they both needed to die to protect the white guy secret but, you didn't you have to turn him into a bad guy to do it. As for Dudley, I guess the writers felt they hadn't put in enough disappointment and carnage so... no California for him and Nell.

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, tana said:

Analytics, it's interesting how one rates this film depending on their altitude. I can see your points. I'm looking at it from ground level and scene by scene, and rating it just on entertainment value, I give it a yawn. I'd say it is pretty much a cross between a boiler plate horse opera, John Wick, Dudley Do-Right and The Revenant.

 

For instance, horses, when they go lame don't buck off their rider and stomp them because they're mad that the rider is trying to get them to keep walking. They just stop walking. A guy with two bullets in the back and an arrow through the leg does not get up and back in the fight two days later because the natives treated him with ancient Ivermectin. Writing a good, plausible escape scene is difficult. In fact, the only one I've ever seen is in the movie Rob Roy. So, to have the crew get the upper hand on the gang of cut-throats by having the little girl run through the camp with a burning branch is pretty much not even trying. And this is just the obvious stuff, and not getting into travel distances, mountain passes in winter, sharpened shovels.

 

It's always a sure sign of a good bad movie when the writers can't figure out how to wrap things up and tie up loose ends...so they just kill off everybody. Since I don't want to take the time to look up character names - Half scalped guy, whom the writers want us to like, knowing that it's the white guys that did the dirty, goes ahead and saddles up with the white guys to go kill natives, and in the process kills his sweetheart. Then kills himself. Yeah, I know, they both needed to die to protect the white guy secret but, you didn't you have to turn him into a bad guy to do it. As for Dudley, I guess the writers felt they hadn't put in enough disappointment and carnage so... no California for him and Nell.

I think it could be a lot of fun watching a movie with you the second time through (I allow myself to buy into the premise the first time I watch a movie, so I generally like it as long as it doesn’t drag and isn’t too violent or vulgar; second time through I like to nitpick movies to the death and if I have someone who does the same with sharp humor, it’s quite fun and you seem fully capable).

[tana]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I think it could be a lot of fun watching a movie with you the second time through (I allow myself to buy into the premise the first time I watch a movie, so I generally like it as long as it doesn’t drag and isn’t too violent or vulgar; second time through I like to nitpick movies to the death and if I have someone who does the same with sharp humor, it’s quite fun and you seem fully capable).

Sounds good! Next time you're in Bend Eugene give a call. I think you should know though, I'm not too fond of moles. In fact, I carnage on their evil little heads to the tune of about ten a year.

[MustardSeed]

We just finished it.  fwiw I was completely and thoroughly entertained.  

[Tacenda]

13 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

We just finished it.  fwiw I was completely and thoroughly entertained.  

I haven't dared watch, but people are sure giving it good reviews.

[MustardSeed]

7 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I haven't dared watch, but people are sure giving it good reviews.

I’m glad I understood how fictional it is, there’s no way to know for sure how I’d feel about my life choices had I not known- but I highly suspect it wouldn’t have thrown me a bit.  I get Hollywood, and how easy it is to hate and blame “the Mormons” -

I’m always starving for a show with decent acting and solid directing.  My husband loves all TV and will watch anything so I sit though a lot of, well, intolerable entertainment 🤪

[why me]

I think that the series showed Mormons to be cultish personalities, controlled by a hard hearted madman, Brigham Young. The facial expressions of Young were sinister and cultish. And when converts were introduced he patted them on the head as if giving a blessing. The series showed that mormons were basically evil and nutty with Young's wives joke to make a point of Brigham's libido. The hero's were the non Mormon woman, son and protector, all non Mormons. 

[halconero]

On 1/15/2025 at 11:47 AM, Nevo said:

It's not completely off base. 

Consider this description from Patrick Mason:

"Particularly during the first decade of the Latter-day Saints’ settlement in the Great Basin, they employed violent means in asserting their religious and cultural dominance over the region. Traumatized by multiple bouts of persecution and dispossession, the Saints determined not to let anyone — whether dissidents, Indians, non-Mormon emigrants, or even the US Army — threaten their existence and drive them out again. But just as it had with the Danites in 1838, self-defense quickly morphed into more assertive and repressive violence, this time against a wider array of enemies. Latter-day Saint violence reached its climax — or nadir — in 1857, then tapered off quickly.

Once the embers of the Mormon Reformation had cooled, the Utah War had been resolved peacefully (with the army permanently ensconced outside Salt Lake City), most Indians had been removed from areas of white settlement, and the horror of the Mountain Meadows Massacre became known to at least some in the church leadership, the appetite for using violence as a legitimate method of building the kingdom of God seems to have waned."

— Patrick Q. Mason, Mormonism and Violence: The Battles of Zion, Elements in Religion and Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 57–58.

This is true if we:

- don’t consider Indigenous persons or Chinese immigrants people; of all the massacres that occurred during the settling of the west, Church members were responsible for <5, in numbers that pale compared to some of the most egregious examples. Some of the same army units and officers entering Utah at the end of the Utah War were involved the Bear Creek Massacre just a couple years down the road.

- ignore counterfactual examples of the Church members officially or informally assisting wagon trains during the exact same period, including mediating relations between wagon trains and Indigenous persons

- ignore court records and journals of both members and non-members surrounding the investigation and handling of the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

Church members were absolutely responsible for the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Decontextualizing it or fictionalizing it to advance some sort of uniquely fixed trait that makes us seem radically more violent or out of step with the west is, as I said, a sort of quasi-blood libel in my opinion. Perhaps worse (I can shrug off slander), it severely underplays and de-emphasizes much more egregious examples of violence committed by the US government and other settlers during the same period.

[Tacenda]

17 minutes ago, halconero said:

This is true if we:

- don’t consider Indigenous persons or Chinese immigrants people; of all the massacres that occurred during the settling of the west, Church members were responsible for <5, in numbers that pale compared to some of the most egregious examples. Some of the same army units and officers entering Utah at the end of the Utah War were involved the Bear Creek Massacre just a couple years down the road.

- ignore counterfactual examples of the Church members officially or informally assisting wagon trains during the exact same period, including mediating relations between wagon trains and Indigenous persons

- ignore court records and journals of both members and non-members surrounding the investigation and handling of the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

Church members were absolutely responsible for the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Decontextualizing it or fictionalizing it to advance some sort of uniquely fixed trait that makes us seem radically more violent or out of step with the west is, as I said, a sort of quasi-blood libel in my opinion. Perhaps worse (I can shrug off slander), it severely underplays and de-emphasizes much more egregious examples of violence committed by the US government and other settlers during the same period.

I always love your evenhanded insight on matters!

[Nevo]

3 hours ago, halconero said:

This is true if we:

- don’t consider Indigenous persons or Chinese immigrants people; of all the massacres that occurred during the settling of the west, Church members were responsible for <5, in numbers that pale compared to some of the most egregious examples. Some of the same army units and officers entering Utah at the end of the Utah War were involved the Bear Creek Massacre just a couple years down the road.

- ignore counterfactual examples of the Church members officially or informally assisting wagon trains during the exact same period, including mediating relations between wagon trains and Indigenous persons

- ignore court records and journals of both members and non-members surrounding the investigation and handling of the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

I think your criticism here is way off. I encourage you to read the rest of the book, or at least Chapter 3. It's not long. Mason certainly considers Indigenous persons and Chinese immigrants people. He also doesn't claim that Mormons were uniquely violent.

3 hours ago, halconero said:

Church members were absolutely responsible for the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Decontextualizing it or fictionalizing it to advance some sort of uniquely fixed trait that makes us seem radically more violent or out of step with the west is, as I said, a sort of quasi-blood libel in my opinion. Perhaps worse (I can shrug off slander), it severely underplays and de-emphasizes much more egregious examples of violence committed by the US government and other settlers during the same period.

I think your blood libel analogy also misses the mark. Jews never ritually murdered Christian children (hence the title of Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia's book, The Myth of Ritual Murder). Mormons, however, did murder apostates, Indians, and non-Mormon emigrants. I fail to see how acknowledging this fact "underplays and de-emphasizes" so-called "more egregious" examples of violence perpetrated by others. 

Rather than playing the victim card, I think we would do well to honestly reckon with the Church's history of violence and take lessons from it. Not sweep it under the rug or point to others' supposedly worse atrocities to make ourselves feel better.

Edited January 21, 2025 by Nevo

[webbles]

Barbara Brown Jones (co-author of Vengence is Mine) wrote an article about the show at Deseret News - https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/21/american-primeval-left-this-historian-confused-and-frustrated-heres-why/

Some points I thought interesting:

Quote

My concern is that, on one hand, many viewers believe that the false tropes and sensationalized depictions are real, leading to an increase in the very stereotypes, suspicions and even hate that contributed to this 19th-century violence. Disturbing hate speech and threats of violence being expressed on social media by some after watching “American Primeval” bear this out.

I haven't heard about "hate speech" or "threats of violence" on social media.  Has anyone else?  Who is it against?

Quote

“American Primeval” could have inspired thought-provoking questions and introspection about the dangers of religious bigotry and zeal, of conflict between national and local government, and of the race-based and oft-violent imperialism on which the United States was built — issues that continue to divide our country today.

Unfortunately, the series squandered that opportunity, instead lazily relying on old and false tropes of the past — fanatical Mormons, savage Indians, saucy emigrants and “good guy” U.S. soldiers just tryna’ keep the wild, wild West safe for the spread of civilized, white colonization from the East.

She had also mentioned the use of tropes in her interview with Mormon Stories.  Did the show really use a lot of tropes?

[gopher]

17 hours ago, webbles said:

I haven't heard about "hate speech" or "threats of violence" on social media.  Has anyone else?  Who is it against?

That seems a bit too overwrought on her part.  I think people are more likely to leave Mormons alone after watching the show, especially after learning what they are capable of doing.  The comments I've seen online are the same comments made anytime the Church is mentioned - South Park quotes and "Mormons sure are f'ed up".  I'm curious if she's found other examples.

 

17 hours ago, webbles said:

She had also mentioned the use of tropes in her interview with Mormon Stories.  Did the show really use a lot of tropes?

There are jokes about polygamy and BY seemed kind of weird.  There were probably more, but I was distracted by all the gratuitous violence. 

It does show that Mormons aren't all bad.  During the massacre, one Mormon violently vomits after shooting to death a young boy at close range.  I guess that was to show his heart wasn't fully in his work?  He didn't vomit after shooting the boy's mother a second earlier though.   Also, after the massacre, the Mormon leaders give the surviving white women to the Indians to rape, but instruct the Indians to kill them when they are done.  I guess that is supposed to be an act of compassion?  I'm not sure if the Mormon leaders realized the white women from the wagon group were also Mormon.

The show does allow the other rape victims to brutally kill their attackers.  The little Indian girl is able to stab to death her much larger assailant (was he her dad?) and the lead character goes John Wick on her rapist and shoots nearly everyone else in his group at close range with a pistol.  She only spares an old lady and a young girl.

My impression is that the show spent most of their energy on making the violence as realistic as possible and the dialog and acting as unrealistic as possible.  It didn't improve the story for me by showing the arrowhead sticking out of the forehead of the woman shot in the back of the head.  But I understand some feel differently.

 

[Tacenda]

20 minutes ago, gopher said:

That seems a bit too overwrought on her part.  I think people are more likely to leave Mormons alone after watching the show, especially after learning what they are capable of doing.  The comments I've seen online are the same comments made anytime the Church is mentioned - South Park quotes and "Mormons sure are f'ed up".  I'm curious if she's found other examples.

 

There are jokes about polygamy and BY seemed kind of weird.  There were probably more, but I was distracted by all the gratuitous violence. 

It does show that Mormons aren't all bad.  During the massacre, one Mormon violently vomits after shooting to death a young boy at close range.  I guess that was to show his heart wasn't fully in his work?  He didn't vomit after shooting the boy's mother a second earlier though.   Also, after the massacre, the Mormon leaders give the surviving white women to the Indians to rape, but instruct the Indians to kill them when they are done.  I guess that is supposed to be an act of compassion?  I'm not sure if the Mormon leaders realized the white women from the wagon group were also Mormon.

The show does allow the other rape victims to brutally kill their attackers.  The little Indian girl is able to stab to death her much larger assailant (was he her dad?) and the lead character goes John Wick on her rapist and shoots nearly everyone else in his group at close range with a pistol.  She only spares an old lady and a young girl.

My impression is that the show spent most of their energy on making the violence as realistic as possible and the dialog and acting as unrealistic as possible.  It didn't improve the story for me by showing the arrowhead sticking out of the forehead of the woman shot in the back of the head.  But I understand some feel differently.

 

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/21/american-primeval-left-this-historian-confused-and-frustrated-heres-why/ I know this link has been shared, but I was left wanting because it didn't go into more detail about women being raped. In the past I thought I read that the women were raped, but not by the native Americans. Or Shoshone tribe? But by the Mormon men. I could definitely have this wrong. Do we know if women were raped and by whom?

 

[gopher]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/21/american-primeval-left-this-historian-confused-and-frustrated-heres-why/ I know this link has been shared, but I was left wanting because it didn't go into more detail about women being raped. In the past I thought I read that the women were raped, but not by the native Americans. Or Shoshone tribe? But by the Mormon men. I could definitely have this wrong. Do we know if women were raped and by whom?

 

The rapists in the first two episodes are Indian and French, not Mormon.  That's as far as I got last night.  My understanding is that most rapes that occur in these movies and shows are committed by the directors or producers.  Not sure if that answers your question.

[Tacenda]

10 minutes ago, gopher said:

The rapists in the first two episodes are Indian and French, not Mormon.  That's as far as I got last night.  My understanding is that most rapes that occur in these movies and shows are committed by the directors or producers.  Not sure if that answers your question.

I found a wiki article mentioning two girls. It doesn't make it very clear or I'm dense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_and_aftermath_of_the_Mountain_Meadows_Massacre#:~:text=50 years later%2C a Mormon,were then sworn to secrecy.