The Mopologists Vs. Hollywood

[Tom]

It’s evident that the Interpreter Foundation spent several million dollars on the wrong movie. The Foundation should have produced a faith-promoting dramatization of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to counter this renewed assault on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the Hollywood entertainment industry, whose primary objective is to make evil look good, and good look evil, and to depict Latter-day Saints as fanatics holding a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other to contest slam dunks by critics of the church.

[drumdude]

On the Peterson Patheos blog, Dr. Peterson was unaware that the Oath of Vengence against Americans had been repealed and is not part of the current Temple ceremony. Information travels slowly to Utah County.

What is with the apologetic Mormon aversion to history? Do they feel they need to deny it every time Hollywood mentions LDS doings of the past? Why not just fess up to it?

As RfM says, DCP is an “artful dodger.” Why deal with the criticism when you can just shut it down with the blanket of sacred secrecy?

[sock puppet]

Spoiler Alert! If you plan on viewing American Primeval, you might want to skip this post.

I watched the entire series. Here are some of my thoughts. The series was dark, gritty, and extremely violent. The violence was relentless throughout every scene. In my opinion, this excessive violence detracted from the overall quality of the series. On a positive note, the acting was excellent, and the directing was top-notch. The attention to detail and authenticity was the best I have ever seen. One of my passions is researching and collecting artifacts from the American West, including antique firearms from that period. I usually can spot anachronisms in Western films, but I didn’t find any in American Primeval. I even paused the stream to examine some of the clothing and firearms closely. It was clear that someone made the effort to ensure the film had a realistic and authentic appearance.

However, there was a significant amount of poetic license involved. The film placed the Mountain Meadows Massacre (MMM) site as being close to Fort Bridger, which is in Wyoming. Perhaps this was just the editing, but it was confusing to me. Additionally, the film depicted the Shoshone tribe camping near the MMM site. To the best of my knowledge, Shoshone people primarily inhabited Wyoming, Idaho, and Northern Utah and did not typically travel in Southern Utah.

The film also portrayed the Nauvoo Legion (Mormon Militia) and the Paiutes as being responsible for the massacre. They were, but it showed all of Francher's party being killed except 6 women. This is not correct. Some young children were spared. The film also showed the Mormon militia conducting a night raid that resulted in the demise of a troop of U.S. soldiers. While I’m not a professional historian, I don’t believe this actually happened. I know that Lot Smith engaged in some hit-and-run tactics against Johnston’s army, which involved burning a few wagons and scattering livestock, but I don’t recall any direct military confrontation leading to dozens of U.S. casualties.

The film did place the blame for the MMM directly on the church, as it should be. It also portrayed Brigham Young as being aware of the MMM. The actor who played Brigham Young did an excellent, well-researched job. Young came across as an arrogant authoritarian, which I believe he was. Hickman was also correctly portrayed as Brigham Young’s henchman.

I watched the entire mini-series this past weekend. I find your review of it spot on--I too was confused by the geography presented knowing the distance from Ft Bridger to Mountain Meadows and the areas that the Shoshone inhabited. There were a few characters painted out as single minded, like henchman Hickman, but many of the primary characters were drawn out with multiple and sometimes conflicting purposes. It involved the three great literary conflicts: man v. nature, man v. man, and man v. himself.

[Gadianton]

It’s evident that the Interpreter Foundation spent several million dollars on the wrong movie. The Foundation should have produced a faith-promoting dramatization of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to counter this renewed assault on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the Hollywood entertainment industry, whose primary objective is to make evil look good, and good look evil, and to depict Latter-day Saints as fanatics holding a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other to contest slam dunks by critics of the church.

It's a good point. How would the Mopologists portray it? They'd have to blame everyone but Mormons, for starters, so they'd have to make a lot of people look really bad in order to make their team look blameless. I'm imagining details of the kind Densley wants. Gobs of time spent depicted LDS worship services as Jesus-centered and helping the sick and poor. I'm just trying to imagine how to pull it off. You have all these Mormon folks and leaders at peace with themselves, the land, their Indian neighbors, and blessings those who curse them back east, and then suddenly it happens? How?

I'm just imagining all this peace and love from the Mormons, but then how to make everyone outside Mormonism vile in a way that leads to the incident in a way that's remotely believable?

[Moksha]

It’s evident that the Interpreter Foundation spent several million dollars on the wrong movie. The Foundation should have produced a faith-promoting dramatization of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to counter this renewed assault on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the Hollywood entertainment industry, whose primary objective is to make evil look good, and good look evil, and to depict Latter-day Saints as fanatics holding a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other to contest slam dunks by critics of the church.

Would they need to reactivate the Utah sugar beet industry to provide sufficient sugar-coating?

[Dr. Shades]

The Foundation should have produced a faith-promoting dramatization of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to counter this renewed assault on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the Hollywood entertainment industry, whose primary objective is to make evil look good, and good look evil, and to depict Latter-day Saints as fanatics holding a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other to contest slam dunks by critics of the church.

I agree that the Mountain Meadows Massacre scene was deceptive anti-Mormon propaganda. The show depicted, what, less than 80 people being killed, whereas the actual total was 172. These vile anti-Mormons cheated the Latter-day Saints out of the proper magnitude of their victory.

[Tom]

Netflix reports that American Primeval was Netflix’s number two show for last week with 10.4 million views. I wonder how this figure compares with the number of people during the nineteenth century who knew or read about the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Did Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, and other church leaders know that John Lee was lying when he gave an initial report of the massacre? From Woodruff's journal entry dated 29 September 1857:

Elder John D. Lee also arived from Harmony with an express [A figure depicting an arrow piercing a heart] and an awful tale of Blood a company of Calafornia Emigrants of about 150 men women & children many of them belonged to the mob in Missouri & Illinois they had many cattle & Horses with them as they travelled along south they went damning Brigham Young Heber C. Kimball & the Heads of the Church saying that Joseph Smith ought to have been shot a long time before he was. they wanted to do all the evil they could so they poisoned Beef & gave it to the Indians & some of them died they poisioned the springs of water several of the saints died the Indians became inraged at their conduct & they surrounded them on a prairie & the Emigrants formed a Bulwark of ther waggons & dug an Entrench- ment up to the Hubs of there waggons but the Indians fought them 5 days untill they killed all their men about 60 in Number they then rushed into their carrall & cut the throats of their women & children except a some 8 or 10 children which they brought & sold to the whites they striped the men & women Naked & left them stinking in the boiling sun when Brother Lee found it out he took some men & went & buried their bodies it was a horrid awful Job the whole air was filled with an awful stench many of the men & women was rotten with the pox before they were hurt by the Indians. the Indians obtained all ther cattle Horses & property guns &c their was another large company of Emigrants who had 1000 head of cattle who was also damning both Indians & Mormons they were afraid of shareing the same fate Brother Lee had to send interpeters with them to the Indians to try to save their lives while at the same time they are trying to kill us.

we spent most of the day in trying to get the Brethren ready to go to the Mountains Brother Brigham when speaking of the cutting of the throats of women & children as the Indians done south said that it was heart rending that Emigration must stop as he had before said Brother Lee said that He did not think their was a drop of innocent Blood in their camp for he had too of their children in his house & he could not get but one to kneel down in prayer time & the other would laugh at her for doing it & they wo-uld sware like pirats. The scene of Blood has commenced & Joseph said that we should see so much of it that it would make our hearts sick.

[drumdude]

As DCP recently pointed out, only perhaps 6-20 toddlers and infants were slaughtered in Bethlehem at Christ’s birth. The MMM and the slaughter of innocents wasn’t really noteworthy, and we should instead focus on keeping the temples busy with dead dunking.

[Doctor Scratch]

It’s evident that the Interpreter Foundation spent several million dollars on the wrong movie. The Foundation should have produced a faith-promoting dramatization of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to counter this renewed assault on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the Hollywood entertainment industry, whose primary objective is to make evil look good, and good look evil, and to depict Latter-day Saints as fanatics holding a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other to contest slam dunks by critics of the church.

It's a good point. How would the Mopologists portray it? They'd have to blame everyone but Mormons, for starters, so they'd have to make a lot of people look really bad in order to make their team look blameless. I'm imagining details of the kind Densley wants. Gobs of time spent depicted LDS worship services as Jesus-centered and helping the sick and poor. I'm just trying to imagine how to pull it off. You have all these Mormon folks and leaders at peace with themselves, the land, their Indian neighbors, and blessings those who curse them back east, and then suddenly it happens? How?

I'm just imagining all this peace and love from the Mormons, but then how to make everyone outside Mormonism vile in a way that leads to the incident in a way that's remotely believable?

And here you’ve seized on the fundamental reason why Mopologists will never make interesting cinema. Good narrative storytelling requires conflict, and the most interesting conflicts in Mormonism involve controversy that the Mopologists would be unwilling to depict. Even in their two films, controversial material was *mentioned* (e.g., polygamy, or the Kirkland banking fiasco), but these things were not *depicted.*

[Moksha]

When visiting the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre Brigham Young had the grave cairn erected by the US Cavalry ripped apart and the stones strewn about, he uttered the words, "Vengence is mine saith the Lord, and I have taken some".

Anyway, Mormons are now absolved of this murderous mayhem through the atonement of John D. Lee.