September Dawn
I saw this movie tonight with two friends of mine, one active Mormon and one former Mormon. We all agreed that it’s basically anti-Mormon propaganda, since it takes the most negative possible side in the ongoing controversy over the LDS Church’s role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and there’s only one Mormon in the entire movie who’s not a total psychopath. Also, the movie makers apparently think Brigham Young was English, maybe because every good bad guy has to be.
My assumption, even before seeing the movie, was that it would be a thinly veiled allegory suggesting that all conservative religion will eventually end in mass murder. I let my expectations mislead me, because I didn’t figure out the movie’s real motives even after seeing it, although one of my friends did. (No, it’s not a product of the Giuliani campaign.) While I’m sure many people involved in the production, it seems to me including the producer, saw it as a way to warn against generic “religious extremism,” that wasn’t the screenwriter’s agenda. Her website and this interview make it clear that she meant the movie as a conservative Christian attack on Mormonism. Her bias is definitely apparent when she describes Mountain Meadows as “the first act of religious terrorism in the United States”–ignoring not only nativist violence but also the widespread persecution of Mormons before they migrated to Utah. In fact, violence against Mormons gets only a couple passing references in the entire movie, while violence by Mormons is played up to the hilt.
Also, Michael Medved makes two good points: 1) Hollywood won’t make movies in which Muslims are terrorists; and this is explained by 2) Salt Lake City’s not engulfed in riots at the moment, and no one firebombed the theater while I was there.
Finally, I’ve been the only person posting on here for a couple weeks. I’m not posting again until someone else does!
on September 4th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Under the Banner of Heaven, a book by Jon Krakauer on the Fundamentalist LDS, is a very good, pretty evenhanded account of Mormon inspired violence - with a lot more context and less sensationalism than it sounds like this movie brought out.
And why is it that conservative Christians seem incapable of making any art that is better than mediocre?
on September 4th, 2007 at 9:46 am
In response to Dan’s question:
It’s not that conservative Christians are incapable of doing art well (or any better than anyone else). There’s a ton of secular art that is really mediocre at best, as well.
Part of the problem, though, is that conservative Evanglicals tend to pay less attention to how something is said rather than what is said. They tend to view art as merely a vehicle for ideas, so they have the sort of attitude to art that some people have to cars: “Who cares what it looks like if it gets me where I need to go?”
I’m sure there’s a lot more to it then that, but that’s my initial thought.
on September 6th, 2007 at 6:39 am
So you’re saying Christians don’t care about aesthetics?
on September 6th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I probably should have been more careful about how I wrote that last comment. No, I wasn’t trying to say that they don’t care about aesthetics so much as that they care more about the content.
on September 7th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Kind of an ironic clarification, Marty.
on September 8th, 2007 at 5:21 am
How so? I think I know what you mean, but I just want to double check…
on September 25th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
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