From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #933 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 Wednesday, January 8 2003 Volume 01 : Number 933 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 15:48:21 -0800 (PST) From: Colin Douglas Subject: RE: [AML] R-Rated Movies Well, there's the problem: one man's erotic junk is on another's (mine) list of most highly prized literature. I think the Song of Solomon demonstrates exactly how erotic material can be appropriately worked, and since sexuality is central to our vision of eternity it surely has a place in the art of Zion. Thom Duncan wrote: What do you do when you read the Scriptures? Don't you find you have to sift through the junk (the erotic poetry of Song of Solomon, for instance) to get the stuff of value? - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 21:45:16 -0700 From: "Scott Parkin" Subject: [AML] Authoritative Interpretations (was: Titanic) D. Michael Martindale wrote: > Jacob Proffitt wrote: > > > I sometimes worry that we assign too much validity to our vicarious > > experiences. I'm not one to go in for the whole existentialist dogma > > and say that we can't communicate with each other at all, but I wonder > > if we aren't sometimes too facile in our belief in our own > > understanding. Is seeing the Titanic enough to claim we know just what > > it's like to have been there? Is seeing NYPD Blue enough to claim we > > know just what it is like to be a cop in New York? Is watching Notting > > Hill enough to claim we know what it is like to date a movie star? Is > > watching the West Wing enough to claim we know what it is like to be the > > President of the United States when terrorists take down the Twin Towers > > in New York? Maybe. I'd approach such claims with some care, though. > > Then why bother with any art at all? We can't try to get an inkling of > what something was like because it doesn't give us the full experience > as if we lived it? Why is it necessary to make it an all-or-nothing question? The fact that Jacob suggests that reading is not always a complete vicarious experience seems like a simple statement of truth. Sometimes literature is incomplete. Arguably, all storytelling is incomplete--even literature. Suggesting that we think about what we read or see, that we analyze the claims of all our storytellers (not just the ones we don't like or that offend us), seems like ordinary prudence and reasonable, non-exclusionary caution to me. Sifting. I didn't hear anyone say the works shouldn't be produced; but I did hear Jacob say that we should take all portrayals with a grain of salt and at least a little bit of probing thought to determine what other aspects of a particular story remain untold. This is something I've had a real struggle with over the years, and I think it has as much to do with the claims of the authors as it does with the completeness of their tales. An awful lot of authors seem to believe that they've told THE one and complete, TOTALLY true and irrefutable, ABSOLUTELY correct and iconic story of their tale's central experience. But human experience is so broad, so varied, that I'm not sure one story can ever tell the whole story of anything. What's THE true story of what it means to be Mormon? What's THE true story of what it means to be a woman? Or black--or white, or any other race or ethnicity? Or tall, or fat, or ugly? It's only been in the last few years that I've stopped being angry at authors for not telling all viewpoints of a story, for leaving stuff out--stuff that I think is part of the whole and complete story. It's only just recently that I've started...hmmm...not so much *mistrusting* the author as accepting that even the most engaging and vivd and apparently real viewpoint is necessarily limited to one set of experiences, be they real or imagined. Oddly, it's the very verity of the form that confused me. Like most, I read adventure stories as a young person, but I never saw them as realistic. I've read quite a lot of science fiction and fantasy stories over the last thirty years, but again I approach those stories knowing that they aren't real, that what I'm reading is at best speculation about how things might be (or might have been). No matter how many fundamental truths I find contained within the situations and conditions presented, the knowledge that it's *speculative* fiction gives me a certain safe distance from the material. But this distance is specifically and intentionally absent in much of what we call literature. We are asked to accept these stories as real, as Gospel Truth, as THE interpretation of a set of experiences or events. Under those conditions, it seems like an all-or-nothing question--either the story gets it right and is complete and true or it doesn't. I'm just not sure that's a useful way to approach either the interpretation or the production of art. The best we can expect (or produce) is a limited viewpoint. That some argue for other viewpoints does not require that they reject those perspectives we agree with or that represent our own experience. I won't argue whether some people *do* expect and require such binary judgment; but I do question the usefulness of that kind of either/or approach. FWIW. Scott Parkin - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 23:47:18 -0500 From: "Eric D. Dixon" Subject: Re: [AML] Dutcher Movies News So, Richard, do you anticipate any fallout over the fact that Val Kilmer is playing famed porn star John Holmes in a biopic slated to open in 2003? I can imagine many church members would think it's "inappropriate" for Kilmer to portray Joseph Smith after playing Holmes -- although I don't think those arguments have much, if any, merit. Still, it will be interesting to see how people react. At any rate, I can see Kilmer pulling off a great Joseph Smith performance. The man is a chameleon... Eric D. Dixon - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 23:54:32 EST From: LSWeber@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] R-Rated Movies I've been fascinated by the discussion about R-rated movies. I think this go around is even better thant the one a year or so ago. I only have two questions to ask: 1, is anybody thinking about writing a story about this subject? Talk about the potential for tension and conflict. I can't think of any plot lines off the top of my head, but I think this could be used in a comedy or something more serious. On the comedy side, I'm thinking of something along the lines of _Benediction_ by Neal Chandler. Question 2, is it permissable to take (steal, borrow?) text from some of the posts to incorporate into a story? I guess it would be plagiarism, but boy, there's been some great stuff said in this thread. It would be a shame if it couldn't be used. Just wondering. Lloyd the Lurker (Lloyd Weber) - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 21:50:09 -0700 From: "Nan McCulloch" Subject: Re: [AML] Free Books on Friday (My Christmas Present to AML) Yes, some of us found wonderful things to read. Thank you Stephen for your generous offer. Can't wait to start reading my new books. Nan McCulloch - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 22:03:08 -0800 From: "gtaggart" Subject: RE: [AML] Free Books on Friday (My Christmas Present to AML) Stephen, as the lucky one who got the "two" sets of your Harvard Classics, let me put your mind at ease about how you ended up with two sets: You didn't. The two boxes that you helped me carry out to my car contained only the 50 volumes of one set. I don't write this to complain. (Who could complain about so many fine, free books? Not me. The whole deal was too generous on your part, Stephen.) No, I mention this so that Scott Parkin will know that he didn't miss out on the second set of Harvard Classics after all. Thanks again, Greg Taggart - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 22:49:46 -0700 From: "Eric D. Snider" Subject: RE: [AML] R-Rated Movies >"Lots of people have told me that The Ring is rated PG-13, which >kinda negates the whole point of my post. Ah well. In my >defense, let me say the following: >> >>I never pay attention to the ratings of films. When I saw The >Ring, I did pay attention, because we were having this thread. As >I walked into the theatre, I looked up at the marquee and it said >it was rated R. I swear on my mother's ironing board that this >really happened. " Elizabeth Walters: >It is very likely that The Ring was originally given an R rating, >but changed either due to the director re-editing the movie to get >under the radar or the producers appealing the ruling to the >MPAA. The latter has happened with films like Poltergiest which >were threatened with an R rating, but the producers appealed to >ratings board their case on why it deserved a PG rating and they >got their wish. Of course this was before PG-13 existed which >likely would've been that movie's rating today. This does happen fairly often, of course, usually with filmmakers trimming or editing to get a PG-13 instead of an R, though now and then to get an R instead of the dreaded NC-17. "The Ring" actually didn't go through any such revisions to avoid an R rating, and looking at it, you can tell. Maybe I watch too many movies (change "maybe" to "for sure"), but I can almost always tell when something's been edited. In some cases, you can tell by looking at the actor's mouth that an F-word has been dubbed into something else. Or in a fighting or killing scene, the scene cuts away abruptly and oddly just before something gruesome is about to happen. Or maybe a sex scene ends abruptly and oddly (just the way many real-life sex scenes end, I might add). The recent debacle "Extreme Ops" had examples of all three categories I just named, to achieve the PG-13 rating. Extreme cases are usually the result of a bad movie having been made and the studio, in a panic, insisting it be edited down to PG-13 to reach the widest audience possible, because if it sucks AND teen-agers can't see it, there's less chance to make money than if sucks and teen-agers can see it. Anyway, in "The Ring," there is no onscreen violence -- there's not really any place in the script where it would make sense to have it, and you get the idea the director (Gore Verbinski) wanted the violence to be implied rather than shown, which means a PG-13 is probably what he had in mind to begin with. Ditto the nudity and sex - -- there isn't any, and there aren't really any openings for it within the framework of the story. I mean, you can always come up with a way to include something gratuitously if you want the R rating. But my point -- and I do have one -- is that "The Ring" is a good example of a movie that is highly effective in what it's portraying WITHOUT violence, nudity, swearing, etc. I'm not saying all movies can do this -- certainly many films require such things in order to properly tell their stories -- but in this case, the film actually works better (i.e., it's scarier) without the violence. And certainly including sex or nudity wouldn't have helped the filmmaker reach his goal of scaring the pants off us. So good for him for knowing what to include and what to leave out. Bad for him for directing the upcoming "Pirates of the Caribbean," based on the Disneyland ride, which surely will be a very, very awful movie. >The Ring is actually based on a Japanese horror movie >called, "Ringu" thought I don't know what that movie was rated, >not that it matters. "Ringu" was not released in the United States and thus didn't receive an American rating. The ratings it got in other countries suggest it probably would have been R in the U.S. -- but since it never officially got tagged, all the people who don't watch R-rated movies are free to watch it with impunity. Eric D. Snider - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 07:16:16 -0800 From: "gae lyn henderson" Subject: [AML] Intolerance and Diversity in the Church > >I think outside the box a great deal, but have never been labeled an >apostate, and I raise my hand often in church to offer a contradictory >opinion. (My wife cringes, but the other members seem to enjoy hearing a >different view.) There is plenty of room for contrast and diversity in the >Mormon Church. Those who do it intelligently, in fact, are often labeled >"scholars." What we need a lot less of is self-righteous intolerance, and >it can come from critics of the Church as much as from members. > >Richard Hopkins I stood up in testimony meeting and said, among other things, I was thankful to be a part of a church that included evolutionists and feminists (because I had heard these members speak at Sunstone). Afterwards, I had members of the ward speak to be in highly disapproving ways. Also the bishop said not too long after that to confine testimonies to a strong witness of Joseph Smith, the restoration, and Jesus Christ and leave out everything else. I know he was referrring to other testimonies as well, but I also know he was referring to me and some of the things I say. I haven't stood up since because I know my "testimony" is not the same as would be the mainstream. Yes, maybe there is a lot of self-righteous intolerance by critics as well as members of the church and I believe we should try to help each group understand the other. But I also believe that it is imperative to be able to express one's honest feelings, one's personal experience (however quotidian that may be) about these issues without being labeled self-righteous or intolerant. Gae Lyn Henderson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 07:26:56 -0800 From: "gae lyn henderson" Subject: [AML] Re: R-rated Movies Richard Hopkins said: >The saddest thing about the rating system, IMHO, is the excuse it gives some >people to exercise unrighteous judgment on their fellow Mormons. For >example: > >Rebecca Talley wrote: {I mean no offense, Rebecca. Truly. I'm sure you >didn't mean to be judgmental. It's just that what you wrote provides me with >a good foil for a general discussion of this problem.} > >>> filth, but rather inspire us? > >>But the bottom line is this: Please do not judge those of us who do watch >such movies (and read such scriptures). It is far worse to misjudge your >fellow man, to be intolerant and self-righteous, than it is to watch any >R-rated film! Richard offers this "judgment" about what is worse--it is far worse he says to misjudge your fellow man than to watch an R-rated film. But I think that Rebecca is doing exactly what the church teaches her to do. If she is to take the advice of the leaders seriously, then I believe her position logically follows from their strong admonitions. In fact she is speaking out courageously about what she believes is good and right--just as we are constantly taught to do from youth upwards. Just as Samuel the Lamanite standing on the wall or like we hope our teenagers will walk away from the temptations and even be leaders in telling their friends to resist them. That is why I don't think we can judge Rebecca (or the young me) for judging others. What we have to do is look at the church behind the judgment, and ask where we got these judgmental attitudes in the first place. Gae Lyn Henderson. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 07:28:52 -0700 From: "Kathy Fowkes" Subject: Re: [AML] Free Books on Friday (My Christmas Present to AML) - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Needle" > You cannot know how angry I am right now that I don't live in Utah! > > I hope many of you find some wonderful things there. > Ditto. I was seriously considering a road trip to get to this, but my family would have been left high and dry, so I had to painfully set the desperate desires aside and drool with envy over the rest of you up there. Anyone care to report on their particular treasures? I can take it. Really. I won't slit my wrists. Promise. (jk) Kathy Fowkes - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 13:09:55 -0900 From: Stephen Carter Subject: RE: [AML] Free Books on Friday (My Christmas Present to AML) It was quite a party. Some really big names attended: Melissa Proffit (and offspring), D. Michael Martindale, Christopher Bigelow, Eric Samuelsen, Scott Parkin (just to name the people we hear from frequently) plus a bunch of people who turned out to be very interesting indeed. (Switch to Monson voice) Boxes were loaded, trunks filled, but none as full as our hearts. Everyone who came also received a free online subscription to The Sugar Beet. Scott performed the incredible feat of stuffing hundreds of books into his Geo Metro. Melissa was lucky that she brought her mammoth van, so she could get her kids home as well. Greg Taggart arrived on the morning of the first resurrection and made off with the Harvard Classics and the Church History, plus a carload or two of various other stuff before any competition had the chance to arrive. I wish I could remember the names of the other people who came: a very interesting psychology student, Rebecca I think, with a dutiful and helpful husband who loaded the trunk, another guy who liked philosophy as much as I do, and the McCullers (?) who bestowed a goodly sum of books in their fancy Mustang. Paul Browning graced the occasion with his stunning looks. And even after the feeding frezy, I had 500 books left in 23 boxes. It was an amazing experience. I had never met people as bibliophilic as I am before. Now I know I am not alone. It's a swell feeling. Hope you all enjoy your books. And thanks for helping me out of a jam. Hopefully I can do the same for you someday. Stephen Carter Fairbanks, Alaska - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 12:13:31 -0800 From: "gtaggart" Subject: [AML] Boyd Jay PETERSEN, _Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life_ (Review) For the Defense: The Life of Hugh Winder Nibley Book review of Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life by Boyd Jay Petersen. Published by Greg Kofford Books, Draper, Utah. 480 pages, including preface and appendices. $32.95. ISBN # 1-58958-020-6. Anticipated publication: Early January 2003. Reviewed by Greg Taggart. Boyd Petersen, Hugh Nibley's biographer, is also his son-in-law. And he's my friend. This past August, I e-mailed Boyd, asking for some help on an assignment I was preparing for my freshman writing class at BYU. I wanted to send my students on a sort of footnote scavenger hunt in the Harold B. Lee Library. Their job would be to take a few well-annotated pages from any book and check the actual sources to see how the book's author had used or abused those sources. Could he recommend any books or articles? Boyd wrote back, "I have a couple of suggestions. One, [Hugh's] talk 'Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift' has a couple of misrepresented quotes in it from Brigham Young." Boyd has always spoken his mind, but his suggestion surprised me. I'd heard that Nibley sometimes got it wrong, but I never expected to hear it from his son-in-law. Nevertheless, I checked the quotes against the Journal of Discourses, the original source, and sure enough, Boyd was right: His father-in-law got it wrong--at least that time. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life, on the other hand, got it right. No hagiography, Nibley's authorized biography is a balanced and thoroughly engrossing tale of Mormonism's gadfly scholar by someone willing to rummage though the closets without losing sight of the spectacular view. Take those Brigham Young quotes, for example. Petersen's book explains how errors like that could creep in. According to Gordon Thomasson, Nibley's graduate research assistant, they were once in the "cage" of the Church Historian's office studying the original volumes of Brigham Young's manuscript, filling out a 3x5 note card anytime they found something interesting. To avoid the possibility that A. William Lund, senior assistant church historian, might confiscate any of their notes, Nibley asked Thomasson to take "accurate but indecipherable word for word notes." Thomasson, in turn, suggested that they use the "Spanish equivalents for English words but writing them using the Greek alphabet." As Petersen explains, that was fine with Hugh because he had "always done his own notes in Gregg shorthand, with assorted Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, or Egyptian notes thrown in." Once again, Petersen balances the account: Lund was only doing his job. Quoting Thomasson, "No one else was going to embarrass the Church by exploiting the Historian's office as Fawn Brodie had done, if Lund had anything to do with it . . . Neither of us enjoyed the subterfuge. That was simply a reality of working there." If you're a Nibliophile like I am, you've been waiting for this book ever since you read his short autobiographical essay, "An Intellectual Autobiography," published in 1978. Who is this man behind all these essays and books--half text, half footnotes? What's the real story behind the briefcase he acquired during World War II? Did he really ask Phyllis to marry him the first time he met her? And most importantly, is the private man any different from the public one? The answers to the last two questions are no and no. You'll have to read the book to answer the first two. Organized in alternating chronological and topical chapters, Petersen's book covers Nibley's life and contributions, starting in 1810 in Scotland with Hugh's great-grand parents, James and Jean Nibley and ending with Nibley finally turning over chapters of his last baby, One Eternal Round, to his editor. (Until recently, this 92-year-old scholar and defender of his faith put in three to four hours in his office each week day.) The book's topical chapters cover Nibley's roles as social critic, naturalist, and educator. They tell of his faith and his defense of The Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price. They reveal a man as opposed to war and as he is in love with the Temple. Petersen drew extensively on interviews, private correspondence, journals, and other never-before published materials, in addition to Nibley's large corpus of published writings, to tell the story of this extraordinary man. We read from a letter from Klaus Baer to the Tanners that Nibley's "articles in [the Improvement Era on the Book of Abraham] hit very close to home if you know something about the field." We learn from a letter from Spencer W. Kimball to his wife, Camille, that "we are fortunate to have such men of his scholarly attainments and sweet faith in our University." But best of all, we discover from his correspondence with his son Alex that this very public defender of his faith also bore frequent testimony of its truthfulness in private. For example, quoting Brigham Young, he writes Alex, "'Tell the Saints to get the Spirit of the Lord,' and 'Don't be in a hurry.' On the few occasions when I have been willing to take that advice seriously I have flourished like the green bay tree--the rest of the time has been a struggle, and no need for it." This man is not the conflicted scholar some have maintained, a man playing mind games with the faithful even as he fought battles in his own mind over his own faith. This man believed what he wrote and wrote what he believed. Well written and thoroughly researched, Petersen's biography is a must have for anyone struggling to reconcile faith and reason. For Nibliophiles, it should stand at the top of their wish list. (By the way, the book's forward written by Nibley's daughter and Boyd's wife, Zina Nibley Petersen, is alone worth the price of the book. Among the many vignettes of Nibley family life she relates is the one where she remembers--in high school--calling herself a "daughter of a false god," in reference to her father's fawning groupies. "I think this is funny," she continues. "I think if I told it to the groupies sitting at Daddy's knees they would not get it.") I think I got it. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 15:04:39 -0600 From: Jonathan Langford Subject: [AML] Resumption of AML-List Folks, Apologies to all that the holiday break went on longer than expected. Anyway, we're back online now, and expecting a full set of messages over the next few days until I get the backlog taken care of... Jonathan Langford AML-List Moderator - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #933 ******************************