After a week's break and a very successful choir concert, I'm back in the saddle again. I hope you didn't miss me too badly.
So, The latest hubbub around these parts is Big Love's decision to include part of the LDS Temple endowment ceremony on yesterday's episode. Mind you, no one had seen the episode, but that didn't stop the outrage from flowing thick and fast. I was skeptical that this would really end up being that big of a deal—when Big Love has portrayed anything about Mormonism it has been fairly accurate and not with a tone of mockery.
Having watched the episode last night, my reaction is . . . meh. It probably wasn't necessary. I understand that the producers wanted to portray her emotions and what she was giving up by being excommunicated. And I did think it was tasteful, although the disembowelment thing was kind of silly and the filter that was on the camera turned the green into a strange shade of teal. They did do a great job of allowing the viewer to feel Barb's feeling about the "presence of the Lord" during the scene. But overall, it did kind of seem salacious. It kind of felt shoe-horned into the plot.
More importantly, the goofs were distracting—Barb wasn't going to "take out her endowment," she did that a long time ago. She was going through the endowment. The temple worker wouldn't have kicked them out unless the temple was closing. And whose temple recommend did she use? We aren't talking about a guest pass at Gold's Gym. Those kinds of things annoyed me. Maybe my priorities are skewed, but if you're going to go through all the trouble of putting together a temple scene and tweaking the LDS, at least get the details right.
UPDATE: Having talked to some friends, I think it would be productive to discuss the question of what the line of propriety is for an outside observer to a faith tradition to discuss or display that faith tradition's sacred rites, images, etc. Look for that post next Thursday.
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7 comments:
This episode and the general tone of the show is an attack on the Church for the strong support of Prop 8. I was shocked at the negative turn that the producers have made and how it is casting major characters as so negative. There is not one member of the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS in this show who has been portrayed in a positive manner. They are either self-righteous, naive, ignorant, self-serving, calculating, and basically anything that is evil or bad. Screw you Big Love and your political agenda.
So Yass... How many episodes of Big Love have you watched?
I take serious issue with the comment, "when Big Love has portrayed anything about Mormonism it has been fairly accurate and not with a tone of mockery." You obviously have not seen many episodes of this show, because you are wrong. All they do is mock the church, it s members and the beliefs, this season the tone has been take up a notch. I cannot believe how casually you write, that you could not believe members were upset beforehand that they were airing our private sacred ceremonies for entertainment purposes and not in the right context. The producers did what they wanted to do...offend and disrespect the church members.
I actually have seen about 85% of them, they are on HBO Sunday night, Tues and Thurs...me and my roommates used to think it was weird and creepy, but not that inappropriate, until this season....it takes a hell of a lot to offend me and you know that.
Then it would be easy for you to list some other examples where Mormons were mocked.
I did in our facebook chat...xoxo
I think it was inappropriate, no question. While it is not offensive for me to see a portrayal of the prophet mohammed, I wouldn't throw that on a t.v. show in Muslim's faces to advance a storyline... especially if it was, as you pointed out, not really advancing the storyline. Can I speak to how offensive it was? no. I haven't seen Big Love. Will I ever watch it? no. I was intrigued before and might have netflixed it, but it is now relegated to one of those things that my life is too short to waste time on.
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