Mormon literature and culture
is offended
There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the AML-List, and even on the FAIR Board, about a new film Richard Dutcher is making. Allegations about the film range from claims that it will be a fairly hard nudie/slasher flick with both graphic violence and sexuality to other reports that it will actually probably be PG-13. Continue reading “Thresholds of Offense”
By some freakish law of nature, it is inevitable that the two sessions you are most interested in will end up in the same time slot. I’m a big fan of Blake Ostler’s theology and so I really wanted to hear what he had to say in response to some rebuttals from some good people, but I just couldn’t miss a session which was going to offer a panel that included Richard Dutcher and a Halestorm representative sitting together ““ especially considering that Dutcher called the rest of Mollywood a bunch of sh*t on Thursday. Continue reading “Sunstone Journal – Saturday”
To begin the day, (my day, at least, I got there late again) author Brian Evenson spoke of the tension between trying to be dedicated to both your art and the church, which I think is potentially a very interesting topic, but I must say I was underwhelmed by his story. Continue reading “Sunstone Journal – Friday”
I had always pictured Sunstone as this place where people with long beards and hippie clothes gathered to laugh bitterly about the church in dark rooms, but given its pop culture theme this year, I couldn’t stay away. It was actually a lot of fun ““ even if I was probably still among the most orthodox ones there. Continue reading “Sunstone Journal – Thursday”
The Book of Mormon Roundtable, held this evening at the Salt Lake public library, involved a different type of discussion of The Book of Mormon than I had anticipated, but it was still fairly interesting nonetheless. The panelists included Richard Bushman, Book of Mormon scholars Mark Thomas and Robert Rees, and two Episcopalian religious scholars, Robert Price and Phyllis Tickle. Continue reading “2006 Book of Mormon Roundtable”
I’m a non-discriminatory laugher. By that I mean that I’ll laugh at anything I think is funny. I don’t have any ideological limitations on my sense of humor. For example, I don’t need to “agree” with the point of a joke to think it’s funny. I mean, I laughed all the way through Fahrenheit 9/11 and I thought it was all a bunch of rubbish. I’ll also laugh at things that offend me and I’ll even laugh at things I think are mean. Continue reading “Laughing at the Sacred, Part 1: The Problem of Reverence.”
In light of the recent discussion of how to get people more interested in literary fiction, I’ve often wondered what it is about literary fiction or the art film that people are so resistant to in the first place. Continue reading “In Defense of the Critics”
