I know there are discussions going on elsewhere on the Bloggernacle, but I wanted to offer a few quick thoughts and solicit some comments.
1)I was only going to watch the first night’s programming for a few minutes and then go to bed, but I was really drawn in by the quality of this production.
2)Terryl Givens got a very large percentage of face time. He is one of the most articulate people I have ever seen, member or non-member. Wow, what a way with words! (Yes, I read his book, but he is even more impressive on-screen).
3)There was too much emphasis on the Mountain Meadows Massacre and polygamy, but I expected worse. They did a good job of putting the MMM in its historical context. And ending with Elder Oaks expressing regret was a good closing.
4)Overall, looking at the first night’s show, this is about the best we can expect from a documentary done by non-members. Even the evangelical Mouw was mostly sympathetic to us (yes, I know he is one of the few, and he has a history of being sympathetic, but still his comments were quite good).
My wife, a convert, had never heard of the Mountain Meadows Massacre before she watched the broadcast. She was left with more questions than answers, although we only watched the first hour of the broadcast before going to bed.
I’m definitely going to order a copy of the DVD so my wife and I can watch the show together and spend time discussing historical issues of which she was previously unaware.
Brian D.,
You can also just catch the show in its entirety online at http://www.pbs.org/mormons; it’s to be made available (at least part 1) sometime today.
I too thought the MMM took up too much time, but a non-member friend told me he thought something that big needed to be covered in depth and he found it fascinating. Overall I thought it was great, I’m surprised some people in my family actually had bishops warn them against watching it.
I think the Church wasn’t really sure how to deal with this before it came out. There were a lot of Church public affairs announcements but also a lot of anxiety about what would be shown.
Based on the first night’s show, this is about the best you could expect from a non-Church presentation. As I said, I thought it was quite good.
I too thought the production was pretty good. There were a few minor nitpicks, such as the part that showed some green/gray corpse-like feet with grimy toenails while talking about the visit of the angel Moroni. That seemed so unappealing that I don’t know what they were thinking. Artistic license is one thing but that was more grotesque and eerie than uplifting.
It was too late for me to watch, so I set up the VCR to record it. I was impressed that the antique show that was on before it was shot in Salt Lake City with lots of old Deseret mementos. Pretty good coordination in the broadcast programming.
What was up with all the strange imagery and creepy music? Hardly what I would call objective reporting. Maybe these folks would have better luck producing cheap horror movies.
Did we see the same program James? I’m having trouble figuring out how this broadcast would compare in any way to a horror movie.
Some parts were pretty good, some parts I did not think were necessary. Why spend so much time talking about modern day polygamists, when they aren’t Mormons? Historical polygamy needed to be discussed, but not modern day polygamy. And I was quite annoyed that right before and after the clip of Pres. Hinckley saying they were not “Fundamentalist Mormons”, the narrator called them “Fundamentalist Mormons”. I thought that was disrespectful on the part of the director.
I think they could have used the time more effectively, I’ve seen other documentaries that gave a more accurate picture of the subject matter. This often felt like it was the opinions of 10 people; 6 of whom found Mormons interesting (sympathised with these deluded people) and 4 who believed despite the ‘lack of evidence.’
I too was disturbed by a number of strange images I’d never seen in connection with church doctrine. I rather enjoyed however, the pictures of the Temple and the Tabernacle with the American Flag and the red white and blue. I’d never seen those before, among other images I enjoyed seeing again, like Salt Lake around the turn of the century.
I missed the opening hour tonight, did they discuss growth, conversion process, or humanitarian aspects?
After watching this “documentary”, I couldn’t believe how inaccurate and biased it was. It made me wonder if PBS were to produce a similar documentary on Blacks, would they ask the KKK to research and present their history. It’s amazing to me that after all this time that Mormons are still persecuted.