The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2024

[Kishkumen]

I will definitely be looking forward to a Smithmas episode of CWK.

I wonder whether it would make sense to make it a live show. How can one truly celebrate is a static video? I will give this some thought.

[Gadianton]

Whatever you do, it should be epic, in congruence with this epic Holiday. Maybe a custom Smithmas synth track? Or a Smithmas dish? I wonder what Joseph's favorite holiday dish is as he mingles with the Gods in the Eternities? A special blend of coffee?

[I Have Questions]

Whatever you do, it should be epic, in congruence with this epic Holiday. Maybe a custom Smithmas synth track? Or a Smithmas dish? I wonder what Joseph's favorite holiday dish is as he mingles with the Gods in the Eternities? A special blend of coffee?

Perhaps a cheeky little single malt, in its fifteenth year...

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Well, a backlash may be coming. I noticed a smug post on SeN where the Afore seemed downright gleeful that SC’s film project has been “delayed.”

It's sad that Half Sphincter feels he must attack other organizations (and plagiarize their logo) to feel relevant.

[Kishkumen]

Whatever you do, it should be epic, in congruence with this epic Holiday. Maybe a custom Smithmas synth track? Or a Smithmas dish? I wonder what Joseph's favorite holiday dish is as he mingles with the Gods in the Eternities? A special blend of coffee?

My mind is racing through so many possibilities. A synth track is one of them. Definitely johnny cakes are a possibility. Joe loved those.

[Moksha]

I wonder whether it would make sense to make it a live show. How can one truly celebrate a static video? I will give this some thought.

Just remember, Kirton McConkie will push for a copyright strike if you include any LDS Church music such as Jingle Bells and Santa Baby.

[Dr. Shades]

Just remember, Kirton McConkie will push for a copyright strike if you include any LDS Church music such as Jingle Bells and Santa Baby.

So, falsehood = comedy?

[Kishkumen]

Just remember, Kirton McConkie will push for a copyright strike if you include any LDS Church music such as Jingle Bells and Santa Baby.

Good point, Moksha! I need to be very careful about poking the Kirton McConkie bear! Heaven knows I don’t need their wrath upon me!

[Physics Guy]

Just remember, Kirton McConkie will push for a copyright strike if you include any LDS Church music such as Jingle Bells and Santa Baby.

So, falsehood = comedy?

Sort of, actually. Academic study of humor is kind of perverse; it takes explaining the joke to the next level. But one conclusion is that a lot of humor consists of incongruity. So a lot of things are funny precisely because they are obviously false, but there is a trope of some kind, somewhere, that would seem, if taken to extremes, to imply those false things. So we see the logic, but also that it is absurd, and this is funny.

[Rosebud]

Ho ho ho! Seasons Greetings, my dear Friends and Colleagues! The wintry holiday times have arrived once more, and a festive air has settled here on the campus of Cassius University…...


Yes: full-length theatrical features will be *screened*! Right here on campus! Movies are a perfect way to celebrate the holidays!

In fact, it seems lately like moviemaking has replaced traditional Mopologetics in certain ways. While it's true that we have been treated to the occasional hit-piece or dust-up--with the expected and usual "controversies," as it were--the fact is that 2024 was an uncharacteristically "slow" year in the world of Mopologetics. So much focus and energy seemed given over to the Mopologists' sophomore movie-making effort--i.e., the propaganda film Six Days in August. More on that movie later, though it can be said here and now that the film was, uh, not good. That's not to say the LDS-related movies are *all* lousy. In fact, one of the greatest Mormon films of all time was released a mere 5 years ago. You may have heard of it: it came out in 2019 and was directed by Ari Aster (of Hereditary notoriety. The name of this movie is Midsommar.



The film stars the charming Florence Pugh as a young woman going through a terrible tragedy: she just lost her sister and parents in a horrible murder/suicide, and in an effort to hit the "reset" button in her life, she goes with her rather flippant boyfriend on a trip to Sweden--ostensibly part of his and his friend's grad school research project, so that they can observe the rituals taking place there which only happen once every 90 years. The folks at the Swedish commune seem friendly enough, if a bit conservative and "weird," but the countryside is lovely (the film features terrific cinematography). And yet from the outset, you get the sense that the the commune is hiding something.



Indeed, things take a turn towards grim inevitability as the American visitors are invited to watch a ceremony in which an older, married couple from the commune voluntarily take a leap off a high cliff and onto the rocks below. The woman lands face-first and dies instantly. The guy, though, survives the fall, though a fellow commune member helps him out by bashing his head in with a mallet. The visitors, quite understandably panicked, are told that everyone in the commune does this at the age of 72 (the "age of accountability," in a sense, perhaps?), and it is considered "an honor."



From there, things go from bad to worse: more people die, more ceremonies take place, and older males wind up having ritualistic sex with much younger females. There is dancing, hallucination, and religious structures are burned. No doubt you can see where this leads: the parallels with Mormonism are remarkable, since Church history is also chock-full of dancing, hallucination of things like angels and gold plates, the burning of temples, and ritualistic sex with younger females. Plus, the movie is populated by loads of creepy white people who are constantly smiling in a faint yet ominous way, and who are often dressed in white clothing. And can it be any coincidence that Florence Pugh's rotten boyfriend is named "Christian"? Well, just as EVs would say about Latter-day Saints, he's not a *real* Christian! LOL! No worries, though: he's ultimately stuffed into a bear suit and burned alive.



Without a doubt, Midsommar is the greatest Latter-day Saint movie to have been made in the past ten years, and perhaps ever. You can just imagine how much jealousy the film inspires in the typical Mopologist: not just of the filmmaking prowess that went into producing the movie, but in the lifestyle that it depicts. If the movie had been called Added Upon instead, would it have become an instant icon within Mopologetic circles? Perhaps. But we have to remember that it was rated "R," so there is a good chance that the ever-obedient Mopologists never saw it at all. But who knows?

In any case, enough chit chat! It's time for the main event. Friends and Colleagues, it is my great duty and honor as the B.H. Roberts Chair of Mopologetics Studies to present you with The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics in the Year of Our Lord, 2024....

Not a Mormon or exmormon woman mentioned. Not surprising.

These top-ten awards are yet another example of the same old Mormon pattern. Yes, even in their beautifully summarized display of that pattern, they also exemplify the pattern. This isn’t ironic — it’s typical.

The majority of Mormon and exMormon men get into bull fights over time-wasting stupidity because their identities are tied up in who’s right and who’s wrong about the ridiculousness Joseph Smith Jr. began because he wanted access to sex and money.

The world runs on sex and money, it’s no secret. Mormons and exMormons have just decided to try hide it in their own idiosyncratic way.

Yet it’s plastered all over all our foreheads, whether individuals among us are aware of it or not.

And guess what the women from Mormonism can give the men a little information about when the men are able step out of their patterns for a few minutes and think more broadly? Yep, how sex and money really run Mormonism.

We, of course, experience sex and money from a different angle than the men. Yes, from the powerless angle. We have sex thrust upon us in all sorts of ways that aren’t right for us, and we are very often financially exploited.

But these perspectives aren’t often heard because…. well… because of the obvious. I mean look at all the male names in this top ten. It’s almost as if women don’t exist among you. It’s so weird and and it’s so Utah. And it’s creepy, not as creepy as Midsommer, but creepy.

It’s also creepy that some can be aware enough to know that Midsommer really does represent some of Mormonism, but not aware enough to realize that their own lack of acknowledgement of 50% of the population has its own creepiness.

[Curmudgeony ex-Mormon man over 50]”If only those cursed ex-daughters of Eve would accept what we keep telling them about themselves. All would be well if they’d just see that what they see isn’t what we see so that means they’re crazy but lack too much self-awareness to know it. Or at the very least, all would be well if they’d just shut up and accept what they’re given.”[/Ex-Mormon Curmudgeon]

As for Midsommer, I don’t think it accurately represents all of Mormonism. There are many good, religious people on the fringe edges who aren’t deep enough to be lost in the inner cults of Mormonism. These good people practice their religion with honesty and live good lives, unaware of how sex and money are used at the center of Mormonism.

But as for me, Midsommer was so Mormon I had a trauma reaction watching it — a trauma reaction related to what I experienced as a child growing up close to Mormonism’s sex and Money power center, including, importantly, the role exMormonism played in that center. Midsommer does, very accurately, display what is real for those of us born too close to the middle of what Joseph Smith Jr. began: the sex, the money, the exploitations, and the value of the Mormon vs. exMormon bull fights in the coverup.

I think it would be positive (and wise) for the Mormon and exMormon men who might be lucky enough to have been born a little further out on the fringes to stop bull fighting and start listening to the perspectives the few of the other 50% who have the information, the ability to speak, and who are willing to do so. The coverup strategies are very powerful; there are very few among us who survive well enough to meet the criteria necessary for speaking.