Religious artwork is beautiful and captures the imagination thousands of years later.
I would not put Witnesses (2021) anywhere near that category. When it is released on video, the videos will end up on Goodwill shelves after their faithful owners have died and their families discard the film. Even here outside of Utah, the shelves at Goodwill are littered with disposable LDS books and videos.
Do you think it really ever tried?
I am sure they endeavored to do the best job they could, of course. It was probably a very devoted and conscientious effort.
But I really doubt they set out to make great art here.
I have no doubt that if they could produce something great, like say The Mission (1986), they would do it. But the LDS church isn't set up for that. It's the McDonalds hamburger of religion. Mass produced, study grouped, correlated together in tall office buildings.
If the Joseph Smith story were true, it should be easy to create something beautiful from it. But instead we get the temple videos. Seminary videos. Sunday school videos.
I have no doubt that if they could produce something great, like say The Mission (1986), they would do it. But the LDS church isn't set up for that. It's the McDonalds hamburger of religion. Mass produced, study grouped, correlated together in tall office buildings.
If the Joseph Smith story were true, it should be easy to create something beautiful from it. But instead we get the temple videos. Seminary videos. Sunday school videos.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
"If the Joseph Smith story were true, it should be easy to create something beautiful from it."
LOL!
Wow. I am speechless.
Do you realize how ignorant that looks? How ignorant it is?
Since when is the truth of a story determinative of the creativity it can inspire?
You can't really compare whether or not the world would have produced better art without religion because culture itself defines the standards by which the art is graded. If atheism won historically, then whatever art existed at its high points would be considered the standards, independent of any other factors. And how do you really compare periods? Would Jackson Pollock's work, which isn't religiously inspired and pretty free of constraints, be considered clearly superior to Michael Angelo's?
And there are also localized factors. Religion, say that it's rigid and stifling, but then isn't discipline itself stifling? Creating increasingly complex productions within a narrow realm isn't by default a bad thing. Try making it in death metal as a non-conformist; I mean, isn't it a given that everyone doing it is already a non-conformist? The bar gets higher and higher for the underlying musical complexity, but the gold rush isn't what a rebellious imagination can invent that's new, but how to take the fundamentally loud and heavy sounds -- the products of the rebellion, and from there, absorb the plain old boring music theory that has existed for centuries in churches.
We've noted the great work of Robert Duvall, who has achieved artistic acclaim in cinema of a religious theme -- he's Christian Science. Yeah, laugh away, but no Mormon has made a film equal to his, and likely never will.
Mormonism has its fair share of music and art talent, and look, you've got the Osmond's and Brandon Flowers as examples of musicians who have made a name for themselves. But Christian Science has Sergei Prokofiev and James Hetfield. Okay, James may have rebelled against his faith, but without having that heritage with everything that is presumably wrong with it, he wouldn't have had his driving inspiration. A similar story for Maynard J. Keenan. But Prokofiev, he was an adult convert to Christian Science and believed deeply in science and health. I don't know whether it improved his music, but it was certainly compatible with his overall vision as an artist.
Last edited by Gadianton on Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
Since when is the truth of a story determinative of the creativity it can inspire?
All I'm saying is that if Mormonism is true, with everything that implies, you would expect incredibly beautiful captivating works of art from it. It doesn't make any sense for Mormon God to sit back and let the most important movement in human history become a middling obscure religion with movies like Witnesses to spread the good word.
It makes perfect sense if it was just some bull made up by a 19th century con-man though.
All I'm saying is that if Mormonism is true, with everything that implies, you would expect incredibly beautiful captivating works of art from it
Certainly, that's what president Kimball believed, and the movie Witnesses, has failed to achieve the vision.
Kimball's vision is such an odd contradiction. It's almost like, Mormonism is the greatest parasite in the universe; it absorbs whatever it can latch its greedy sucker onto.
This really defines the limited world of DCP. In high art, Mormons tend to mimic what's already there. In popular art, such as cinema, it's the same thing, a movie by the numbers. Witnesses was to include all the elements that define a commercialized popular movie, rather than tell its own unique story.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
There are a bunch of atheist artists that are "great" in the art world like Matisse and Monet. So, perhaps it isn't "stunningly bizarre" to think that maybe just because religion and myth had an outsized influence in the past that necessarily other forces weren't at work contributing to the supposed "greatness" of which you write. Maybe the "greatness" happened in spite of the overly controlling religious environment? Maybe even greater works would have been created sans religion?
Anyway, I was looking for an explanation as to why you think the way you do. I studied the sciences and then went into law. I didn't have the humanities education that you did. But if you simply want to rest on your assertion then that is your prerogative.
You know, no offense, Dr Exiled, but you can be a little thin skinned sometimes. I can too, but still . . . .
In any case, I really don't sympathize with the assumptions that inform your questions here. Religion is not an entity that exercises agency. It does not control people. It is an intellectual category constructed to make sense out of a collection of human ideas and practices that more or less appear to fit together. Among those ideas and practices are expressions of great artistic creativity and skill.
We can discuss the latter phenomenon in shorthand by talking about the genius works that have been produced by tradition A or B, but it makes little sense to ask whether great works of human creativity would exist without those cultural traditions. I suppose they would, but, really, who cares? The simple fact is that the vast majority of works of human creativity over the course of millennia have sprung from traditions in which myths and spiritual practices were simply a fact of life.
I am not interested in theorizing the existence of an ideal utopia in which "religion" does not exist and yet the greatest works of genius abound. Richard Dawkins is no more prescient on the future super arts of his ideal world than Spencer W. Kimball was.
To clarify what I was getting at for our present readership of committed anti-religion ideologues: I think people emerging from the Mormon tradition can make great art that is informed by their Mormon experience, and I look forward to seeing it. This does not mean that other traditions can't do the same, or that atheists can't do the same. I am sure they can. But they weren't the topic I was writing on.
Right, I ask for a little more on your opinion, get called bizarre for doing so, and then get accused of being thin skinned when I respond. Ok. You don't need to respond with more than "it's your opinion and that's all there is to it." Who cares anyway, right? I guess anything is possible and we can leave it at that.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
Right, I ask for a little more on your opinion, get called bizarre for doing so, and then get accused of being thin skinned when I respond. Ok. You don't need to respond with more than "it's your opinion and that's all there is to it." Who cares anyway, right? I guess anything is possible and we can leave it at that.
I actually did say a lot more than that, and I was fully prepared for you to ignore it because you were offended.
All I'm saying is that if Mormonism is true, with everything that implies, you would expect incredibly beautiful captivating works of art from it. It doesn't make any sense for Mormon God to sit back and let the most important movement in human history become a middling obscure religion with movies like Witnesses to spread the good word.
It makes perfect sense if it was just some bull made up by a 19th century con-man though.
Boy, you guys are really gnawing on that bone of religious resentment, aren't you? Mormonism needs to prove itself true to you by living up to Spencer W. Kimball's fantasies or else.
LOL!!!
This is all getting more than tedious. I get it, everyone is really torn up that they had a bad experience in the LDS Church. I wouldn't think that meant that everything that happens in connection with Mormonism becomes a time to reaffirm your rejection of a church, but please prove me wrong.
I have no doubt that if they could produce something great, like say The Mission (1986), they would do it. But the LDS church isn't set up for that. It's the McDonalds hamburger of religion. Mass produced, study grouped, correlated together in tall office buildings.
If the Joseph Smith story were true, it should be easy to create something beautiful from it. But instead we get the temple videos. Seminary videos. Sunday school videos.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
"If the Joseph Smith story were true, it should be easy to create something beautiful from it."
LOL!
Wow. I am speechless.
Do you realize how ignorant that looks? How ignorant it is?
Since when is the truth of a story determinative of the creativity it can inspire?
I think I see what drumdude is getting at. LDS leaders throughout their history have boasted at the sheer brilliance and artistic creativity of the Saints, that they doggedly pursue the arts and sciences with a passion never before seen manifested from the children of God. One would think if this were the case we’d have our knickers blown off from the sheer jaw dropping beauty of LDS architecture, music, painting, and academic achievements.
Sure. Some Mormons have done some wonderful things. No doubt. No argument.
