Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

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drumdude
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by drumdude »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:42 pm
But the hype doesn’t quite match the reality.
I think the McMansion temples are a great example of this. Trying so hard to reach the heights of Christian architectural beauty and making a mockery of it.

On the flipside, the Mormon Tabernacle choir has produced genuinely beautiful music. I would expect more of that, if Mormonism was the one true church. That's all I'm saying.
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

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Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:33 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:38 pm
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.
Ok, do you want to start over? Is there something about religion that lends itself to inspiring great art or is it just incidental? Atheists seem to be able to create great works of art without believing in society's myths. Perhaps creativity is independent of religion or atheism? Had the holy atheist empire ruled and had been the benefactor for the arts, would we have had the same great works, but instead of the Christian based works, perhaps different subject matter, yet still just as creative?
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by Kishkumen »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:42 pm
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.

But the hype doesn’t quite match the reality.

- Doc
The root problem here is that the LDS Church is run by middlebrow salesmen and business types, who are by nature and habit all about hype and short on following through on promises. I am not sure Mormonism itself is to blame so much as the LDS Church and its interpretation of Mormonism. Their big achievement of the early 21st century was to build a shopping mall in downtown Salt Lake City. Need we say more?
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Kishkumen
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by Kishkumen »

drumdude wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:51 pm
I think the McMansion temples are a great example of this. Trying so hard to reach the heights of Christian architectural beauty and making a mockery of it.

On the flipside, the Mormon Tabernacle choir has produced genuinely beautiful music. I would expect more of that, if Mormonism was the one true church. That's all I'm saying.
I think you are a little rough on the temples. The problem with buildings in modern LDSism is the corporate mentality behind their design and construction. Given all of the impediments to fine art, the temples are still on the whole fairly attractive to my eyes. Still, they fall so far short of artistic and architectural greatness as to be disappointing to be sure.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Kishkumen
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

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Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 9:07 pm
Ok, do you want to start over? Is there something about religion that lends itself to inspiring great art or is it just incidental? Atheists seem to be able to create great works of art without believing in society's myths. Perhaps creativity is independent of religion or atheism? Had the holy atheist empire ruled and had been the benefactor for the arts, would we have had the same great works, but instead of the Christian based works, perhaps different subject matter, yet still just as creative?
Holy atheist empire? That’s an interesting thought. One might argue that we are living in the Holy Atheist Empire, albeit not the Wholly Atheist Empire.

Ahem.

Human beings exercise their creative and imaginative faculties with special energy and freedom in the realm of religion, so I think religion especially lends itself to the kind of artistic greatness we are talking about. But your way of approaching the question is tangled up in knotty problems. What does individual belief in this or that have to do with the collective language with which people have communicated their creativity and imagination? Just because I write a great Mormon play, does that mean I must believe X? Would not believing X make the play “not Mormon”? How do you know or how can you judge the connection between private belief and mode of expression? I don’t think the necessary logical connection is there at all.

That the vast majority of the arts of the world springs from “religious” traditions. It is impossible to extricate literature, music, and art from religion, even if that were a desirable goal. The arts are and will continue to be rooted in religious traditions, whether the people producing those arts are personally religious or not.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by Dr Exiled »

Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 9:35 pm
Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 9:07 pm
Ok, do you want to start over? Is there something about religion that lends itself to inspiring great art or is it just incidental? Atheists seem to be able to create great works of art without believing in society's myths. Perhaps creativity is independent of religion or atheism? Had the holy atheist empire ruled and had been the benefactor for the arts, would we have had the same great works, but instead of the Christian based works, perhaps different subject matter, yet still just as creative?
Holy atheist empire? That’s an interesting thought. One might argue that we are living in the Holy Atheist Empire, albeit not the Wholly Atheist Empire.

Ahem.

Human beings exercise their creative and imaginative faculties with special energy and freedom in the realm of religion, so I think religion especially lends itself to the kind of artistic greatness we are talking about. But your way of approaching the question is tangled up in knotty problems. What does individual belief in this or that have to do with the collective language with which people have communicated their creativity and imagination? Just because I write a great Mormon play, does that mean I must believe X? Would not believing X make the play “not Mormon”? How do you know or how can you judge the connection between private belief and mode of expression? I don’t think the necessary logical connection is there at all.

That the vast majority of the arts of the world springs from “religious” traditions. It is impossible to extricate literature, music, and art from religion, even if that were a desirable goal. The arts are and will continue to be rooted in religious traditions, whether the people producing those arts are personally religious or not.
Mormonism can produce greatness.
I probably should have just quoted this from what you said earlier in the thread. It caught my eye and I had the same view as Aristotle Smith that Mormonism can't produce great art while maybe Mormons can. I agree that a Mormon would have to be willing to push on the religious tradition and the suffocating authority in order to produce "greatness." I think the authoritarianism squelches any creativity because as you say, artistic expression challenges conservative authority and that is the basis of religion, at least for Mormonism. This is why that perhaps even though one cannot escape religious roots and that religion is somewhere involved in art simply because it has been so dominant throughout history, one probably needs to leave belief or at least distance oneself sufficiently in order to be creative and achieve "greatness."
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

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drumdude wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:51 pm
On the flipside, the Mormon Tabernacle choir has produced genuinely beautiful music.
Love their rendition of "You're Having Our Baby".
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by Lem »

Human beings exercise their creative and imaginative faculties with special energy and freedom in the realm of religion, so I think religion especially lends itself to the kind of artistic greatness we are talking about.
For me, this statement is difficult to accept at face value, as it seems to indicate that religion holds a singularly unique place in the production of human beings’ efforts to produce artistic greatness. While I agree that there is much history of artistic greatness occurring within a religious setting, the historical correlation of the two is not sufficient to imply unique causality, especially since so many examples of equal artistic greatness have occurred and continue to occur outside the realm of religion, as well as the extreme variety of religious approaches, including religious regimes that may limit or stifle expressions of artistic greatness by various groups or types of humans.

I have no doubt a religious setting may positively influence outcomes, but so do many other non-religious settings. Defining religion as a singularly unique influence seems an unnecessary restriction on the human ability to aspire to artistic greatness.
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by Kishkumen »

Dr Exiled wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 10:39 pm
I probably should have just quoted this from what you said earlier in the thread. It caught my eye and I had the same view as Aristotle Smith that Mormonism can't produce great art while maybe Mormons can. I agree that a Mormon would have to be willing to push on the religious tradition and the suffocating authority in order to produce "greatness." I think the authoritarianism squelches any creativity because as you say, artistic expression challenges conservative authority and that is the basis of religion, at least for Mormonism. This is why that perhaps even though one cannot escape religious roots and that religion is somewhere involved in art simply because it has been so dominant throughout history, one probably needs to leave belief or at least distance oneself sufficiently in order to be creative and achieve "greatness."
One thing that I have been thinking of writing in a separate thread because of this discussion is the following:

Restoration=/=Mormonism=/=LDS Church

Also, I don’t see how one separates the Mormon from the Mormonism in trying to locate where the creative inspiration is coming from.

Finally, plenty of artists have produced great work as believers-participants in churches. I do think that the authoritarianism can suppress artistic greatness, but artistic greatness can also defy or transcend authoritarianism.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Which is the Better Film: "September Dawn" or "Witnesses"?

Post by Kishkumen »

Lem wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 11:14 pm
For me, this statement is difficult to accept at face value, as it seems to indicate that religion holds a singularly unique place in the production of human beings’ efforts to produce artistic greatness.
I did not intend to posit a unique causal relationship, so maybe we can leave it at that.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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