I can't decide if I want to see the Book of Mormon Musical or not. That's actually a lie, I should say I can't decide how much I want to see it as compared to other things I could do. We thought about going when we were in New York a few months ago, but the ticket prices were Broadway ticket prices, New York prices that will leave someone from Utah feeling a little faint and sick to their stomach. They take prices very seriously in New York. They expect to be able to afford to live in Manhattan with what you pay them.
You don't just get to stay in a not really all the way clean hotel and eat somewhat tasty sometimes food on the same island where they set Friends and practically every other TV show and all those Woody Allen movies and not expect to feel a bit of a sting when you see the bill. Sting is a euphemism, of course. A sting is what someone like Bill Gates or Woody Allen might feel when they see a bill from even a middling-economy-roughing it-sort of New York deli (By deli I mean food cart). A person, like myself for instance, who still kind of barely has a job that is okay and can barely see a possibility of a frugal retirement on the horizon but who is better off than a majority of the country might feel something a little worse than a sting. More of a gasping, heart clutching reaction, adrenaline surging, looking for places to run, wondering if they'll catch you type of reaction. But I'm from Utah, and New York is a wonderful and exciting city to experience in TV shows and to read about online.
So we didn't go to the Broadway show in New York. We didn't go when it came through Salt Lake either. They were at Park City prices by that time, which are much more reasonable than New York prices but desperately trying to attain the status of New York prices.
We may never see it. I grew up Mormon in Utah, and as I indicated before all the digression, I feel ambivalent about seeing the show, not because it makes fun of Mormonism, which probably deserves worse than whatever they give it, but because it was written and created by the South Park guys, who are outsiders, very funny and talented outsiders, but still definitely outsiders. By outsiders I mean guys who did not grow up in Utah and did not grow up Mormon. If I sound like an ignorant hick by using the term "Outsiders", well, I am from Utah. They've done funny takes on Mormonism before, in Orgazmo, and the South Park Mormon episode. I've only seen the South Park episode in bits and pieces and once in mostly entirety under circumstances where I don't remember it, but what I've seen is funny, and would be beneficial for Mormons to see to get an accurate picture of how they and the missionaries are viewed by the world. For one thing, when most people think of Mormons, they think of missionaries; young guys in suits, at a very low level of educational and personal development, going door to door in an intrusive and annoying way, and worse, of a mindset that they've been told, commanded to annoy people by - the Creator of the universe.
I think most Mormons would be astonished to learn that the missionaries are seen by outsiders as worse than telemarketers.
And to outsiders, Orgazmo and the South Park episode - and the Book of Mormon musical - are probably just amusing takes on an entertainingly weird American cult.
I found them amusing too, the bits I've seen, I just found little annoyances connected to the outsider thing, little things that have no doubt made the rounds on the Internet many times; the missionary in Orgazmo saying "Jesus and I love you," to his girlfriend, or even talking to his girlfriend at all while on his mission. Mormons don't call Jesus Jesus, they say "Christ." The Mormons in Orgazmo talk more like baptist evangelicals than middle America Utah Mormons. But that's the point, isn't it? To an outsider, Mormonism sounds entertaining, so the individual Mormons must be too. They must be crazy Jesus camp types. The truth about individual Mormons is somewhat disappointing, at least as far as my experience in Utah goes. The beliefs are wacky but the people are conservative, very normal, very boring. Normal to a fault. Ultra-normal. Eager to be seen as normal. Eager not to talk about the interesting bits, the wacky background, anything about Joseph Smith (the classic and archetypal non-Utah Mormon, also known as The First and the last interesting Mormon).
Here's Utah Mormon life: As a boy, I remember Mormon church services, -- the meetings where they supposedly discuss the crazy doctrine? - as boring, mind-numbingly boring, sensory deprivation level boring. My mother would give me scratch paper to draw on (Cheerios for smaller kids), to alleviate my suffering, and but sometimes I would run out of paper, or she would forget to pack her purse with paper, and I would be left to my own desperate devices. Usually that would be a hymn book. The hymn books contained a list of approved hymns, numbered so that the ward choir director could announce the name of the hymn along with the number, so it could be easily and quickly found. But the hymn book also contained secret messages, written by highly connected members of the super intelligent society known as Teenage Boys. These secret messages would be instructions to turn to a certain hymn number for a secret message that would usually be an instruction to turn to another hymn number until after mounting excitement (the first time you went on one of these secret message scavenger hunts) you came to the final message, which would be an incredibly disappointing (the first time) message to go screw yourself, or a note to add "in bed" to all the previous hymn titles. After the first time, even knowing the ending, I would still sometimes resort to the secret message hymn book hunt during paperless services. The alternative was to actually look through my mother's triple combination (bible, Book of Mormon, D and C/Pearl of Great Price). The first two of those were mostly devoid of anything remotely interesting to a ten year old, except for the fantastic Arnold Friborg paintings in the BOM) but one Sunday while listlessly paging through the Pearl of Great Price, I made a fantastic discovery: an illustration, a mysterious hieroglyphic, which the notes described as The Planet Kolob!! My ten year old self was overcome with astonishment. I'd never heard of the planet Kolob. They don't talk about that stuff in kids Sunday school classes, at least in Utah. They tell stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, they encourage you to say your prayers and obey your parents and go to church, but they don't talk about Kolob. I did not know why, back then. I asked my parents and my older siblings. I thought it was wild and strange and, unbelievably, for church stuff, interesting. A planet Kolob, where God lives and directs the universe? Science fiction! War in heaven! Laser swords! Spirit armies! The ultimate evil villain! Nobody wanted to talk about it. They said it was sacred stuff, and it was not to be talked about. Later I realized they were just embarrassed by it. Real scholars had translated the hieroglyphic, and it had nothing to do with Kolob. I don't even know if they still include it in newer prints of the PGP. Too interesting. Ten year olds might pay attention in church.
Now I've come to realize, in my advancing years, that Boring stuff is a Camouflage. Boring hides something. You put on camouflage when you don't want to be seen, when you're a gazelle and you don't want the tiger to see you, or you're a tiger and you don't want the gazelle to see you. History textbooks are boring because of all the exciting bits they want to hide. And there is no place on earth that does boring like a Mormon church service (I hope).
I've led us all (myself and my mother, anyway) on this high level scientific analysis of boring, and have completely left the original subject, the musical. To summarize, we'll probably end up seeing it, and I'm sure it will be an inaccurately entertaining depiction of the zany madcap world (I still wish, even as I'm approaching 50) of Mormonism.
Next post, in the year 2016 perhaps: Ranches!
No comments:
Post a Comment