Blackness, The Book of Mormon, and Broadway: Part II

Christopher Jones

(cross-posted at the Juvenile Instructor)

When the news feed on my facebook began to be flooded with links to the same page last week, I excitedly clicked over the the Washington Post On Faith Op-Ed by John Mark Reynolds, professor of Philosophy at Biola University. Reading the title,"Amos and Andy and the Book of Mormon," I hopefully (but mistakenly) assumed that the article was evidence of Jared Farmer's critique--that lurking beneath the portrayal of religion in the Book of Mormon musical was not-so-subtle racism in the show's portrayal of Africans--starting to gain traction.

Instead, I proceeded to read the following:

"The Book of Mormon is a minstrel show for our present age with Mormons as the joke.

Ugly plays did not by themselves produce the Klan or keep some Americans from voting for African-Americans. Original sin was enough for that, but minstrel shows did give racism an artistic and comedic whitewash. When Americans were hurt by the cruel stereotypes, they were told it was 'just a joke' and were painted as petty for not laughing along."

Mormon, Reynolds appears to suggest, is the new Black. The comparison is problematic to say the least, even with Reynolds's caveat that "no group has been as cruelly treated as African Americans." Mormonism's "history of being persecuted" that Reynolds mentions certainly deserves attention, and has received such quite recently from several up-and-coming historians and scholars, including Patrick Mason, whose excellent new book on anti-Mormon violence in the postbellum South deserves wide readership, and Spencer Fluhman, whose forthcoming monograph from UNC Press on anti-Mormon literature in the nineteenth century can hardly come soon enough. In fact, instead of situating the Book of Mormon musical within the tradition of minstrel shows of yesteryear, Reynolds would do well to pick up a copy of Megan Sanborn Jones's recent volume from Routledge Press, Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama. Anti-Mormonism, it turns out, has its own history of being portrayed and performed on the stage; perhaps we would do well to look at and understand that history before making comparisons to blackface and minstrelsy.

Besides, by invoking Mormonism and race in the same breath, Reynolds wades into troubled waters. The subject is far more complicated than he acknowledges, and no op-ed can adequately address the topic. Mormons, to be sure, have a history of being portrayed as something other than racially white. Nate Oman's fine research on the legal aspects of this story is telling, and Paul Reeve's book-in-progress (under contract with OUP and entitled Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness) promises to expand on the social and cultural aspects of it all in the 19th and 20th centuries.

And Mormons, of course, have not always been innocent victims in America's racial history, as even a quick glance over at the Juvenile Instructor's posts on Mormonism and race reveals. From the so-called priesthood ban, which denied the admission of Africans and African Americans to the Mormon priesthood and restricted their entry in Mormon temples until finally being rescinded in 1978, to the Book of Mormon's complex portrayal of American Indians, to the public opposition to the Civil Rights Movement by several high-ranking Mormon officials in the 1950s and 1960s, Mormons have often found themselves on the wrong side of America's pathetic history of racism. Mormons themselves even participated in and put on their own minstrelsy shows well into the 20th century.

Perhaps most glaringly, though, Reynolds's comparison of the Book of Mormon musical to "Amos 'n' Andy" passes over entirely the portrayal of Africans in the show. While lamenting "the cruel, tasteless jokes" and "mindless mockery" leveled at the Mormons, he ironically seems to have missed the "talented African American actors hamming up 'African-ness' for cheap laughs."

And in a final touch of irony too rich not to mention, several of my Mormon friends--most of whom, like the op-ed's author, are politically and socially conservative and outspoken supporters of Mitt Romney--who linked to Reynolds's piece on facebook with apparent satisfaction that someone from outside the church was finally defending their religion and co-religionists, excerpted the following paragraph to accompany their link:

"This new play will pander to our prejudices and treat our Mormon neighbors as we would never wish to be treated. Some Americans will allow it to confirm unthinking prejudice, while cowardly Mormons will applaud it hoping for crumbs of respectability."

Mormons applauding something while hoping for crumbs of respectability, indeed.

Broadway, The Book of Mormon, and Blackness

Christopher Jones

(cross-posted at Juvenile Instructor)

Over at Religion Dispatches, Jared Farmer, professor of history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and author of the excellent On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, reviews the multiple Tony Award-winning broadway play, The Book of Mormon.

By all accounts, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's satirical look at Mormon missionaries in Africa is funny. With very few exceptions, everyone I've talked to that has seen it---including a number of believing Latter-day Saints---has praised both its humor and its ultimately touching (if somewhat condescending) message about religion: Religion (especially the brand of religion preached by Mormons) is naive, silly, and based on absurd beliefs and unprovable truth claims, but that belief can ultimately motivate adherents to do good, help others, and improve the world.

Farmer largely agrees with this assessment. "The Book of Mormon is fun, and occasionally uproarious," he writes. "If the giddy laughter I heard at the sold-out show on Easter Sunday is any indication, theatergoers love it." He then goes on to offer a more complete critique of the play than I'd previously seen, noting the ways in which Parker and Stone's portrayal of Mormon missionaries is sometimes on target ("Pairs of missionaries (“companions”) do often resent each other; sexual tension, homophobia, homesickness, and boredom strain the relationships of these co-workers/roommates. Many missionaries dislike their geographic assignments. Even as they compete against each other for baptisms in the field, missionaries often struggle to convert a single person in two years of service.") and other times not even close ("Pairs of missionaries are never equals; there is always a “senior companion” and a “junior companion.” The various missionaries (men and women) in an area are supervised by one (male) “mission president” and his wife, not by a three-person bishopric. ... The missionary program certainly no longer encourages Latter-day Saints to gather in Salt Lake City."), and the concludes by suggesting that "Most egregiously, the play mischaracterizes Mormon theology." This is tricky territory, as Mormonism has no systematic theology, and some of Farmer's points seem more credible to me than others. I think he's right that "Unlike evangelical missionaries who want to save you from going to hell, LDS missionaries want to help you reach your potential in heaven. Mormon eschatology is radically egalitarian, and very American: everyone gets a second chance, everyone wins," but his suggestion that "for Joseph Smith and his followers, the existence of the translated text—proof of Smith’s prophetic powers—was more important than its contents" is open to debate. Farmer's argument echoes that of a former generation of historians, but much new research on early Mormonism suggests exactly the opposite; that early Mormons read the book's contents with care and that the Book of Mormon's teachings shaped early Mormon theology in ways previously ignored.

Couched in between Farmer's analysis and critique of the Book of Mormon musical, though, is something that has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by numerous friends but never fully teased out---a seemingly significant critique of the Broadway hit that those too focused on the delightful ways in which the South Park creators mock Mormons have opted to either ignore or quickly dismiss. I speak of the show's racial overtones. Farmer summarizes the salient points:

The plot twists at the end raise questions about the racial politics of the show. Only a threat of American violence saves the villagers from the tyranny of the local warlord. Only the ingenuity of the white men provides Africans a useful religion. The dewy-eyed boys from Utah share the genius of Joseph Smith: the Yankee spirit of invention. The musical’s happy ending, complete with black missionaries in neo-Mormon garb, contains a strong note of American chauvinism.

And then offers his most stinging critique of the musical:

I cringed in my seat at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre as I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of Mormon wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of The Lion King and its African stereotypes by substituting more authentic stereotypes. It wants to be transgressive and conventional, blasphemous and saccharine. This combination is not impossible, but incredibly difficult to achieve. Parker, Stone, and Lopez don’t pull it off.

If nothing else, Farmer's critique on this point raises important questions about the intersections of religious and racial representation and satire, and that, I think, is a conversation worth having.