New Department and Course Offerings!

[_Gadianton]

As most of you are aware, coming up mid-august is our university's first critic-apologist rowing competition. While the faculty at Cassius University has mostly been optimistic about this "bridge-building" event, there has arisen some criticism that Cassius is neglecting the arts in its favor of sciences and athletics. As Dean of this school, I've found myself troubled over what appears to be a valid criticism. So not long ago, I called an emergency faculty meeting to brianstorm over how we might bring the school back into balance. The result of this discussion, a solid first step toward our goal, is the creation of a new department, the school of Mopologetic Aesthetic Hygiene. I for one am very excited about this program and encourage all students to get a copy of the updated course catalog for fall. For your convenience, below is the augmented section.

The School of Mopologetic Aesthetic Hygiene
Course offerings for Fall Semester 2009

MAH 101: Discerning "Trash" from "Real Art" - This course teaches students the basics of selecting "respectable" art from the Mopologetic point of view. Special attention is given over to knowing how to reject anything that is bawdy, anything that contains profanity, or anything that features sexuality beyond a 6th grade level.

MAH 102L: Students registered for MAH 101 are encouraged to enroll in MAH 102L concurrently. A lab focused on Mopologetic interpretations of the dramatic work Camelot. Students will employ the safe, one-to-one method of symbol interpretation and appreciate how they are "Knights of the Round Table" (priesthood-holding apologists) valiantly defending "Camelot" (the Church).

MAH 123: High Art vs. "Low" Art. Discusses strategies Mopologists use to avoid seeming like uneducated, humorless philistines. In particular, the course addresses Mopologetic favoritism shown towards classicist art, and the seemingly-savvy dismissals of "low" forms like the Broadway musical, or "non-serious" operas like Rigoletto.

MAH 301: Understanding Mopologetic Humor. This course explores the reasons why apologists are unfamiliar with post-Marx Brothers American comedy, with a special emphasis on their grimly humorless attitudes towards "edgy" or "bawdy" comedians like Chris Rock, Sam Kinnison, Sacha Baron Coehn, and Ellen DeGeneres. The course will also examine the Mopologetic technique of accusing Church critics of being "humorless" in the light of Mopologetic bad behavior.

MAH 302: An intense study of the conflicts between privilaging the GA-approved safety of Marx Brothers thematic tools and the stereotypical tone of the establishment found in the apologists' grim dismissals of critics' tastes as uncultured. Attention will also be paid to role reversals where the apologists let go the contradiction of preserving 18th Century Europe from a 1950's TBM living room and style themselves as "wicked and irreverant" commedians, engaging in cheap insults and bathroom humor while castigating critics as stale.

MAH 460R: Understanding Der Zauberflote as a "Degenerate" Text. This course looks at Mozart's The Magic Flute (Der Zauberflote) from the Mopologetic point of view, helping students to understand why this rates as the most "anti-Mormon" in the composer's canon. In particular, discussions and analyses will cover the Masonic motifs littered throughout the libretto, with emphasis on their ties to Mormonism. Due to spurious readings of anti-Mormon liturature, permission must be obtained by the MAH department head to enroll in this course.

MAH 461R: Special Seminar on Gender Issues. Examines reasons why apologists hate art created by females, and the way(s) that this attitude intersects with beliefs pertaining to the priesthood. The course also looks at favored Mopologetic artists like Wagner and Eliot, with an eye to understanding the relevance of the "martyred masculinity" evident in their work.

MAH 499R: Senior thesis, for MAH majors only. Students will compose a single essay suitable for publication utilizing the principles learned in their undergraduate careers as rhetorical tools servicing the seemingly unrelated Mopologetic end of their choice.

[_harmony]

How do you find the time to think up this stuff? I mean... didn't you go to your ward's 24th of July celebration last night? Haven't you been water skiing several times this summer? Have you seen your town's summer theater offering? Visited the Farmer's market regularly? Planted and weeded your garden? Mowed your lawn? Watched a baseball game or two or ten?

I mean... really. I hope this isn't your reality.

[_Gadianton]

I'm fortunate to have a dedicated falculty, virtually none of the above is original with me. As far as what I do for enjoyment, I don't feel the need to announce my activities in the hopes that others will think I'm living an envious lifestyle.

[_Daniel Peterson]

LOL. This is a joke, of course. But even as a joke it's . . . well, a joke.

Incidentally, Die Zauberflöte -- that's The Magic Flute, for those of you who object to foreigners and their ridiculous, pompous-sounding "foreign languages" -- was the earliest opera that I came to love (I first saw it in Zürich, on my mission), and it's still a huge favorite of mine. I have large portions of it memorized. Auf Deutsch, of course.

Perhaps my favorite single passage is this one (I.14), about marriage:

Ihr hoher Zweck zeigt deutlich an,
nichts edlers sei als Weib und Mann
Mann und Weib und Weib und Mann
reichen an die Gottheit an.

What could possibly be more Mormon than that???? And, as Dieter Cherubim, Karlheinz Jakob, and Angelika Linke observe in their Neue deutsche Sprachgeschichte, on pp. 86-87, "Liebe lässt die Menschen in der Ehe gottgleich werden. . . . Nicht der Mann alleine, sondern Mann und Weib und Weib und Mann zusammen. Hier wird sogar in der Formulierung auf das Gleichberechtigtsein von Mann und Weib geachtet."

http://books.google.com/books?id=so6wVk ... t&resnum=7

Which, of course, brings up another subject:

I guess, since I really don't like to criticize other faiths, that I won't mention my life-long enthusiasm for the novels of Jane Austen. It's Scratchite dogma that I dislike her because she was a woman, and that, in fact, I disdain any art or literature by women. (My wife and I have even gone on pilgrimage to the home of the Brontë sisters, in Haworth, West Yorkshire. But to mention that might be to rub the salt of reality a bit too cruelly into the Scratchite wound.)

And so forth.

I wish Gadianton Scratch luck in his "brianstorming" [sic] with the other Scratches. They're going to need it.

P.S I don't know who "Sacha Baron Coehn" is, but I find some of the work of Sacha Baron Cohen excruciatingly funny. And etc.

[_marg]

P.S I don't know who "Sacha Baron Coehn" is, but I find some of the work of Sacha Baron Cohen excruciatingly funny. And etc.

Really..I've only seen Borat, but my memory of it, is that it was crude, rude, vulgar, nasty, immature, distasteful and only on rare occasions funny.
Interesting that you found it excrutiatingly funny, unless you are talking about some other work of his.

[_EAllusion]

Borat is hysterical, though it dulls on repeat viewings. DCP was just defying the expectation he'd dislike or possibly avoid it due to it also being quite vulgar. That generally offends many LDS sensibilities unless it's older or culturally distant.

[_EAllusion]

for those of you who object to foreigners and their ridiculous, pompous-sounding "foreign languages"

[_marg]

Borat is hysterical, though it dulls on repeat viewings. DCP was just defying the expectation he'd dislike or possibly avoid it due to it also being quite vulgar. That generally offends many LDS sensibilities unless it's older or culturally distant.

It's just generally offensive, never mind offensive to Mormon sensibilities. And by the way, I'm no prude. I watch porn, I don't mind swearing, blah blah blah.

However that movie was distasteful. I seem to remember as an example the opening in which he introduces his family and presents his sister as the town slut, possibly even that he had sex with her. You find that funny? At this point I don't remember the details of the whole movie, but in general it was an attempt to put people into awkward or shocking situations unaware of what was going on, that they were being had, in order to make fun of them. Right, really funny.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Dean Robbers---

This looks terrific. I'm sure the students will be excited about these courses. I know we'd discussed this earlier, but what do you think about an Honors Seminar dealing with the influence Borges has had on Mopologetic thought? In particular, I thought we could spend several weeks discussing "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," since it's about geographical places that suddenly become a physical reality after they are mentioned in a book.....

[_Calculus Crusader]

Incidentally, Die Zauberflöte -- that's The Magic Flute, for those of you who object to foreigners and their ridiculous, pompous-sounding "foreign languages"

I don't object to "foreigners and their ridiculous, pompous-sounding 'foreign languages'" in general but I do object to German. (Although, I do like the Nibelungenlied and Wagner very much.) I'm not fond of Arabic, either.

I wish Gadianton Scratch luck in his "brianstorming" [sic] with the other Scratches. They're going to need it.

P.S I don't know who "Sacha Baron Coehn" is, but I find some of the work of Sacha Baron Cohen excruciatingly funny. And etc.

There is no need to be a pedant, professor.