From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #640 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Monday, March 11 2002 Volume 01 : Number 640 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 14:42:31 -0600 From: "gae lyn henderson" (by way of Jonathan Langford ) Subject: [AML] J.C. Duffy on _Brigham City_ (Paper Part 1) [MOD: With John-Charles's permission, I'm forwarding his actual paper (sent on by Gae Lyn) on AML-List, so that those of us not there when it was read can chime in with our own opinions--or at least follow the exchange of differing views with more information... I've split the paper into two parts for length reasons.] Serpents in Our Midst: What Brigham City Tells Us about Ourselves1 By John-Charles Duffy "Nothing attracts like a serpent like a paradise." So reads the tagline for Richard Dutcher's most recent film, Brigham City, a story about good people threatened by evil forces--conventional fare for thrillers. But Brigham City aspires to be more than a conventional thriller. It aspires to address theological questions, like, "Do we have to lose our innocence to gain wisdom?" or "Can a murderer find forgiveness?" And, of course, it is one of the very first nationally distributed feature films to present a Latter-day Saint community through the eyes of an insider rather than those of an outsider. It's said that literature holds up a mirror to life. So what do we see in the mirror that is Brigham City? What does this film tell us about ourselves? How is our community, the community of the Saints, portrayed in Brigham City, especially in relationship to the outside world? And what does the film's preference for that particular portrayal suggest about our community's values? One of the principal messages--perhaps the principal message--this film sends is that the Saints cannot afford to be innocent, at least not in the sense of being gullible. We have to recognize that we live in a world where terrible things happen, that simply praying and leading a good life will not provide immunity from evil, and that we therefore need to take precautions. It's a reasonable message, but as I look closely at how the film goes about making its case, I become concerned. During a scene in the first half of the film, Ralph, the construction foreman, tells the story of being robbed by one of his employees and discovering afterwards that this employee had a criminal record. "It's my own fault," Ralph concludes. "I never did any kind of background check. . . . I took his word. I deserved to get robbed. And from then on, anybody who's on my crew, I know who they are and where they come from. And I don't hire no man with a shady history." Ralph's story foreshadows the conclusion of the film, when Wes discovers that his own failure to check Terry's background has brought a wolf into the center of the flock. Had Wes taken the precautions that Ralph takes, the film proposes, these murders would never have happened. Ralph's refusal to "hire [any] man with a shady history" implies a philosophy of "once a criminal, always a criminal." This philosophy denies the possibility that a person can change, which is to say that it denies the principles of repentance and forgiveness. And the film knows this. Ralph admits that his approach "may not be Christlike." Later, Terry will cite this same unforgiving attitude on the part of the people in Snowflake, Arizona, as the reason that he felt forced to adopt a new identity. "They don't forgive you," Terry says, "not ever. For the rest of your life, no matter how good you are." But while the film acknowledges the un- Christlike, unforgiving nature of the strategy it promotes, still the film insists that this is the strategy the Saints need to adopt for coping with life in a dangerous world. What the film ends up saying, intentionally or not, is that forgiveness and Christlike behavior are luxuries we cannot afford, at least not in our relations with strangers. Within our own community, yes, we can live out the principles of repentance and forgiveness, as in the moving sacrament meeting scene which brings the film to a close. But we cannot afford to live out those principles in our relationships with outsiders. It's not safe, this film says. That leads us to another message this film sends: that there is a sharp divide between the community of the Saints and the outside world. The Saints of Brigham City are depicted as representing all that is good and innocent--a Mormon Mayberry, a "paradise." By contrast, the film's hero sums up the outside world as "murderers, rapists, robbers, kids with guns . . . the same story over and over again." Where Brigham City follows the stereotypical Utah Mormon pattern of a chapel on every corner, one of the outsiders in the film brags that where he comes from, there are taverns on every corner and whorehouses in between. This isn't exactly a nuanced or sophisticated worldview; and indeed, Dutcher seems to realize that he is vulnerable to accusations of not being sophisticated, because as Wes Clayton, he addresses those accusations explicitly in the film. In a conversation with Meredith, the non- LDS federal agent from Manhattan, Wes says, "I've heard it all my life. Because we don't want to experience some of the things out there, some people think we're naive." In what we are apparently intended to see as a clever rhetorical move, Wes flips the accusation of naivete, maintaining that, actually, the Saints are experienced in the things that truly count, and that it's the world who is naive because they don't share those experiences. "We have our own experiences," Wes insists. "We get down on our knees, and say our prayers, and we do our best to live the way God wants us to live; and every now and again, He gives us a little experience." Wes adds, "I guess we're both naive to one extent or another, just about different things." Note that while that last statement sounds egalitarian, it isn't really, because the kind of naivete Wes attributes here to the Saints is desirable, while the kind of naivete he attributes to the outside world is undesirable. Earlier the film had asked: Do we have to lose our innocence to gain wisdom? The film's answer is two-pronged. On the one hand, the film argues that, yes, regrettable though it be, the Saints have to lose their innocence, in the sense that they have to give up their childlikeness, their trustingness, their gullibility, in order to protect themselves. But the film wants the Saints to retain their innocence--their naivete, as Wes puts it-- in the sense of not experiencing the wickedness which the film represents as originating in the outside world. Once again, we see the film's dichotomous worldview. The Saints are innocent, good, righteous; the world is sinful, corrupt, wicked, and threatens to overrun the community of the Saints. The film suggests that there was a time when the Saints of Brigham City were sufficiently isolated from the outside world to keep themselves safe. But times have changed; growth and prosperity have brought the Saints into closer contact with outsiders. A new way of life threatens to seduce the Saints away from the old values. Hence Wes tells Ralph that he wishes he could slow down the town's growth; "I'm . . . trying to keep things reined in," he says, implying that he feels things are spinning out of control. Stu expresses the same feeling when he gives the speech that provides the tagline for the film: "Little places like this--our days are numbered, you know. The rest of the world won't let us be. They're going to drag us in, whether we like it or not. See, what we've got here is a little paradise. And nothing attracts a serpent like a paradise." This fear that the Saints' paradise is threatened with destruction gives rise to the film's insistence that the Saints need to be on guard, even if that means being unforgiving or un-Christlike, in our approach to the outside world. Scholars often call this fear a "siege mentality," and it is a commonplace in Mormon studies to see such a mentality as a significant force in our people's history. Gordon B. Hinckley frequently cautions against a siege mentality (though he doesn't actually use that term), urging the Saints to be optimistic, not fearful; to reach out across historical barriers; to not be clannish or holier-than-thou. But the very fact that President Hinckley perceives a need to keep reiterating this counsel suggests that the siege mentality is alive and well within our community. Brigham City, with its black and white worldview and its fearful, hostile attitude towards those it dubs "outsiders," demonstrates the mentality President Hinckley cautions against. One of the great dangers of the siege mentality is the possibility that it will lead to violence; the Mountain Meadows Massacre would be the most horrific example of that in our history. In that context, it is troubling to observe how easily Brigham City's characters turn violent when confronting people whom they suspect of being the metaphorical serpents in paradise. When Sister Peck refuses to let her home be searched, on the perfectly justifiable grounds that no one has a warrant to search her home, Wes pounds on her door and threatens to break it down if she doesn't open up. A few minutes later, when Steve balks at opening a locked closet, Terry slams him up against the wall, face-first, while Wes shouts at him, "I want you to open this door before somebody gets hurt!" The film's most horrific act of on-screen violence comes, of course, at the climax of the film, when Wes shoots Terry, blowing him out of his chair, in the presence of his wife. The film could easily have ended more peacefully: Wes could simply have wrestled Terry to the ground and cuffed him instead of standing there, ordering Terry to cuff himself while Terry calmly reassembles his gun, until things have reached a point where Wes is forced to shoot Terry in self- defense. But the film seems determined to bring about a violent ending. In fact, this ending looks uncannily like an act of blood atonement, a notion the film itself brings up early on, when a jack Mormon federal agent tells Wes, "Relax, Sheriff, this woman's only been dead for a day and a half. It's not like her blood is crying out for vengeance just yet." Those in our tradition who have subscribed to this particular notion hold that atonement for murder requires the shedding of the murderer's blood, which is, of course, what happens to the murderer in this film. Furthermore, the execution is performed by a man who holds both civil and ecclesiastical authority, which Bruce R. McConkie maintained was a prerequisite for practicing blood atonement (93); and the execution occurs with the tacit consent of the murderer, consistent with a claim that blood atonement requires the voluntary shedding of the murderer's blood (Snow 131). (Earlier in the film Terry has told Wes that execution is the only "cure" for a murderer.) - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 14:48:00 -0600 From: "gae lyn henderson" (by way of Jonathan Langford ) Subject: [AML] J.C. Duffy on _Brigham City_ (Paper Part 2) [MOD: This is the second part of a two-part post.] Even if I'm pushing too far in reading Terry's death as an act of blood atonement, the fact remains that Brigham City adopts a shockingly violent response towards those who are, or who are merely suspected of being, enemies of the community of Saints. We saw that same kind of response in God's Army: the violently angry reaction of Dutcher's character to Elder Kinegar, the doubting missionary. Dutcher's films are not about turning the other cheek, or loving our enemies, or burying the weapons of violence. As we saw earlier, the philosophy promoted in Brigham City is that such Christlike behavior is impractical in our dangerous world. If we, the righteous, are to survive in the midst of the wicked, we need to learn mistrust. We need to learn to be unforgiving. We need to learn violence. "All is well" in Brigham City, Stu and Wes declare near the beginning of the film. Clearly, we're meant to see this as dramatic irony; perhaps we're even meant to recall the Book of Mormon's warning to those who declare that all is well in Zion (2 Nephi 28:21). As it turns out, things aren't all well in Brigham City; but that doesn't mean what it might at first seem to mean. When I watched this film for the first time, I anticipated that the cry "All is well" would prove to be ironic in the sense that the black and white worldview promoted by Wes at the beginning of the film (we're good, the outside world is evil) would be shown to be overly simplistic. To borrow from a saying of Jesus, I thought the film was setting us up to recognize that it isn't just outsiders who have beams in their eyes. But that's not, in fact, the message of this film. The cry "All is well" proves ironic only in the sense that the Saints of Brigham City have naively believed they are safe from evil and have therefore failed to take the necessary precautions. Instead of unraveling Wes's black and white worldview, the film reinforces it: the reason all isn't well, according to this film, isn't that the Saints have major moral deficiencies of their own; it's that evil forces from the outside world are closing in, but the Saints haven't yet opened their eyes to the threat. Perhaps motivated, again, by accusations of not being sophisticated, the film does contain moments where the black and white worldview is challenged. But in every case where this happens, the film neutralizes the challenge so that the black and white worldview ultimately emerges unscathed. In the end, the film cannot bring itself to depict the Saints with a beam in their eye--a mote, maybe, but not a beam. The first moment where this dynamic plays itself out comes when Wes confesses to Terry that he has the same "taste for killing" which he believes motivates the serial killer. Wes describes the dark thrill he felt as a twelve-year-old shooting a rabbit in the head: "I had this strong feeling--I mean, I mean I liked it, you know. There was some part of me that really liked killing that animal. It was like some part of me came up that I didn't like, so I went home, and I put the gun away, and I never went hunting again. You know, I hadn't thought about it, but I haven't fired a weapon at any living creature since then. . . . I think some men just have a taste for killing. I think they like it." This is an amazing moment in the film, because Wes places himself here in the same category as the serial killer, the category of men who like to kill. For a moment, the sharp dichotomy the film otherwise draws between Saints and sinners has collapsed: the hero has confessed to having the same vice, the same impulse, as motivates the villain. A Jungian literary critic would see in this moment "the realization of the shadow," a recognition that the murderer embodies qualities which Wes is uncomfortable recognizing within himself and therefore prefers to conceptualize as Other. (A Jungian critic would interpret Wes's black and white worldview in the same terms: Wes's thoroughly negative vision of the outside world is a projection onto the Other of qualities which Wes refuses to recognize within his own community). But having made this provocative move, the film declines to follow up on it. Wes immediately starts speaking of "men [who] have a taste for killing" in the third person: as "they," not "we." And the conversation shifts away from Wes back to the murderer. "This guy we're looking for," Terry says, "you think this guy could ever be cured? You think he could, I don't know, repent?" "I don't know," Wes replies. "I have a hard time imagining it." "Well, I know one cure," Terry says. He raises his gun, blows away the entire row of targets in rapid succession, smiles . . . and in the very next scene performs a baptism. There are disturbing things going on here: the chilling suggestion that a murderer is beyond the life-changing power of the Atonement; the juxtaposition of vigilante violence with a saving gospel ordinance; the self-loathing implicit in Wes's statement that he can't imagine how a man with a taste for killing--a man like himself--could be made whole. But I see no evidence that we're meant to be disturbed by this scene. Ultimately, it appears, the function of this scene is simply to provide foreshadowing and to justify the film's violent climax. Since Wes's confession is forgotten as soon as this scene ends, it does not seem intended to make us rethink the black and white dichotomy between Saints and sinners. As near as I can tell, the function of Wes's confession is to make Wes look all the more good (this man condemns himself for killing even a rabbit) and to pre-empt Terry's later claim that he cannot control his impulse to kill (since Wes has managed to control the same impulse, Terry has no excuse). The film thus justifies its treatment of Terry as an accountable moral agent who merits violent punishment rather than as an extremely sick man who needs help. Another moment where the black and white worldview is challenged comes when we discover that Steve has a secret stash of adult videos. Suddenly we are faced with a Latter-day Saint who is not, after all, an innocent-- who has a beam in a eye. But the film neutralizes this challenge to its otherwise rosy depiction of the Saints by portraying Steve from the beginning as someone who doesn't really fit the LDS mold. In other words, the film distances Steve from the LDS mainstream. For one thing, Steve wears a beard-- and we are reminded that facial hair is a sign of being out-of-step with LDS norms when Peg tells Wes, "Bishops aren't supposed to have mustaches." Whenever we see Steve in church, he's wearing a brown shirt with the top button undone beneath his tie, giving him a somewhat unkempt appearance, in contrast to the white shirts and blue business suits of the bishopric. We learn early on in the film that Steve has confessed some past transgression to the bishop ("You kept my secrets; I'll keep yours"). Steve looks to be around thirty yet is unmarried. Later we discover he comes from a fatherless home. In short, Steve stands at the margins of the LDS community. It comes as much less of a surprise to find that Steve is a closet porn addict than it would be to discover the same thing about Steve's next-door neighbor, a clean-cut, married, father of three. Because Steve doesn't altogether fit the LDS mold, he isn't altogether "one of us." Indeed, in what I suspect is a Freudian slip on Dutcher's part as screenwriter, Wes speaks of Steve as if he were not a member of the community. "Don't call me Bishop!" Wes snaps at him. "Right now I have to care about the people in this town a lot more than I care about you." Note that Wes did not say, "I have to care about the other people in this town a lot more than I care about you." Rhetorically, at least, Wes has cut Steve off from the community of the Saints. The film thus minimizes the challenge that Steve would otherwise present to the depiction of the Saints as a model community. It's worth noting, too, that Steve would have had to bring his adult videos in from outside Brigham City, again reflecting the film's tendency to represent evil as originating in the outside world. The serpent infiltrates paradise; it isn't native. Potentially the most serious challenge to the black and white worldview is the discovery that the serial killer is a trusted member of the LDS community. Prior to this discovery, the film has had great fun playing off our own inclination, as audience, to look to outsiders, or individuals on the margins, as suspects. The killer doesn't turn out to be a patron of the local bar, or the out-of-town construction worker, or the newly baptized member, or the member with a beard, or "the only character whose skin isn't a perky shade of pink," as one reviewer puts it (Fox). Instead, as frequently occurs both in literature and in real life, the serial killer turns out to be the last person anyone would have suspected: an insider, an Eagle Scout, a returned missionary. But there we run into the catch: Terry isn't really those things. He isn't who he appears to be or claims to be. Terry is an ex-con who has stolen the identity of a young LDS man who drowned in Snowflake, Arizona. It's not even clear from the film if Terry (or whatever his name is) is himself LDS. We're told that "church folks" in Snowflake describe Terry as having turned his life around in prison. Does that mean Terry was baptized? We don't know. But it doesn't really matter. In either case, Terry is presented to us as a fraud, someone merely posing as an insider, not really one of us. Thus the LDS community is kept untainted. The Saints are not forced to confront the reality that one of our own has proved capable of such heinous crimes. The moment in the film when everyone, LDS and non-LDS alike, was suspect has safely passed. Our hands are clean. The only failing that can be imputed to our community is our over much innocence, our overly trusting natures. We're too good for our own good. The one Saint who attributes guilt to himself is Wes, who believes that because of his failure to check Terry's background, he is as much responsible for the murders as if he himself had pulled the trigger (recalling Ralph's statement, "It's my own fault. . . . I deserved to get robbed" for having failed to check the background of the employee who robbed him). But the film rushes to assert that Wes should not be condemned. "Nobody blames you," Meredith assures him. "You're a good man, Wes. You really are." Actually, Meredith is mistaken: when Wes walks into sacrament meeting, we're given the impression that the ward does blame him, especially Ernie and Evelyn, the parents of one of the murdered girls. The creative and moving scene which follows--in which Wes declines to partake of the sacrament and the rest of the ward stands in solidarity with him by likewise declining to partake--is clearly meant to absolve Wes from condemnation. But it's not clear on what grounds this absolution occurs. When the ward refuses to partake of the sacrament, are they saying to Wes: "We don't think you merit condemnation in the first place; on the contrary, we think you're such a good man that if you're not worthy to take the sacrament, then none of us worthy"? Or are they saying: "We think your negligence was blameworthy, but we forgive you"? (Though in that case I'm tempted to ask: Will Steve, or Judy Perkins, receive such ready forgiveness?) Or are they saying: "We think your negligence was blameworthy, but we recognize that we've all been guilty of that same negligence and gullibility"? It's not clear. What is clear is that this scene is meant to restore our sense of the community's innocence (meaning guiltlessness). All is well in Brigham City as the final credits roll. The Saints have had a horrific experience, but they've learned from it how to protect themselves, and their virtue, from the threat posed by the outside world. The black and white worldview, the siege mentality, has prevailed. Brigham City could have been a highly thought-provoking film. It could have been a film about complex LDS characters motivated by complicated arrays of good and bad impulses. It could have been a film about an LDS community grappling with the reality that one of its own is a serial killer, or groping to figure out what would be a Christlike response to a series of horrific crimes against some of its members, or struggling to move beyond provinciality to work out a place for itself as part of a larger, more diverse society. But Dutcher didn't tell any of those stories. Instead, Dutcher told a story that reflects a siege mentality, an unabashedly isolationist, unforgiving, "us versus them" approach to the world. After watching, first, God's Army and now Brigham City, my sense is that Dutcher wants his films to be seen as sophisticated, as tackling tough issues. But whenever his films begin to move into truly complex territory, Dutcher retreats to safer, familiar ground. Ultimately, his films cannot resist the impulse to represent the world in simplistic, black and white terms. Granted that LDS cinema, and Dutcher's own oeuvre, is still in its infancy. Granted that it is thanks to Dutcher's pioneering endeavors that we can even speak of such a thing as LDS cinema. Granted that Dutcher is a talented filmmaker and that Brigham City is a well-crafted thriller. But Brigham City leaves me wondering: What does it say about our community when our most celebrated cinematic storyteller thus far--the man who is slated to go down in the history of Mormon letters as the father of LDS cinema-- tells stories as reductive and unchallenging, however well-told, as this one? NOTES 1. My thanks to Richard Dutcher and Zion Films for allowing me to use a demo copy of Brigham City, which is not yet commercially available, as I prepared this paper. WORKS CITED Fox, Ken. "The Town That Dreaded Sundown." Rev. of Brigham City, dir. Richard Dutcher. TV Guide On-line. http://www.tvguide.com/movies/ database/ShowMovie.asp?MI=42864 (26 Feb. 2002). McConkie, Bruce R. "Blood Atonement Doctrine." Mormon Doctrine. 2nd ed. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966. Snow, Lowell M. "Blood Atonement." Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Vol. 1 of 4. Ed. Daniel H. Ludlow. New York: Macmillan, 1992. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the Mstar2 mail system at mail.mstar2.net - -- AML-Board discussion list To unsubscribe, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe aml-board" in the body of the message. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 15:10:51 -0700 From: "Todd Petersen" Subject: Re: [AML] Sugar Beet in SL City Weekly Nothing makes me happier than having Gae Lyn voicing her concerns. They made me go back to the article she mentioned. After reading it, I realized I had a lot to say, suddenly. At the Sugar Beet, we have a pretty strict policy about satire concerning church doctrine, its leaders, and deity. We've actually rewritten and rejected pieces according to that standard. As an active and committed member of this church, I'm required to avoid evil speaking about the Lord's annointed, and I can see how people might think this kind of treatment might be construed as evil speaking. But really that piece on Boyd Packer is about over-veneration of our leaders when they are NOT wearing the mantle of an Apostle. I'm reminded of the story of the saints who came upon Joseph Smith wrestling in the yard with some boys. They were so offended by the occurance that they turned around and left, thinking it was beneath a prophet to do such things. Of course, such a thing is absurd, but it happened. I think this piece points out that fact as well as a number of others. (1) Our neighbors don't really hold these people up as prophets--they're just folks. Admitedly the piece might have worked better if we had chosen Elder Ballard, who's connection with the Alliance for Unity, might have made for a much subtler laugh. I do appreciate Gae Lyn's response, though. I for one, think that humor has a very important purpose--in fact, I don't believe we can come to a complete understanding of anything unless we understand its humorous side. Once on a mountain top in Oregon I got into a discussion about humor and deity with a Muslim and an Australian. I wasn't LDS yet. The Australian suggested that God had a sense of humor--witness the platypus. The Muslim, said, "My God does not make jokes. You think He burps? Do you think my God takes a crap?" I wish I would have been LDS then, because I would have answered his last question with, "He used to." - -- Todd Robert Petersen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 21:44:56 -0800 From: "Levi Peterson" Subject: [AML] Death of Neila Seshachari [MOD: Thanks to Levi for mentioning this. Actually, I believe that Neila was president-elect of AML--that is, not the president this year but slated to become president next year. And I understand she was editor of Weber Studies (which received an AML award for service in 1993 for the Tenth Anniversary issue, celebrating Mormon literature). I understand from Cherry Silver that the family is planning to hold a memorial service on the Weber State campus in about two weeks, to which the public will be invited. If AML friends have comments or tributes that could be included in a memorial book, please send them to her husband's e-mail address which is cseshachari@weber.edu.] Neila Seshachari, professor of English at Weber State University and past president of the Association for Mormon Letters, died unexpectedly early Sunday morning, March 10, 2002. I understand that an obituary will appear in the Desert News, the Salt Lake Tribune, and the Standard-Examiner Tuesday and Wednesday. Levi Peterson althlevip@msn.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #640 ******************************