We are all aware of the infamous, and now award-winning, musical "Book of Mormon" on Broadway. While Mormons and non-Mormons alike have cheered the show (for different reasons), the Mormon community has also had many attack the show for being cruel, prejudicial, tasteless, and more for mocking (in the form of parody) an entire faith.
One of our defenders is John Mark Reynolds who wrote this intellectual and insightful piece that appeared in the Washington Post. As I read this article and others, a statement by Michael Otterson, Head of Public Affairs LDS Church, ran through my head: "Of course, parody isn’t reality, and it’s the very distortion that makes it appealing and often funny. The danger is not when people laugh but when they take it seriously – if they leave a theater believing that Mormons really do live in some kind of a surreal world of self-deception and illusion."
So the question is, do people take parody like this seriously? In my experience, the answer is yes. Here's the story.
When I was a freshman in college (a non-LDS college in the state of Washington), I was a Mormon girl dating a frat boy. We were both active in our respective religions (mine involved a church, his involved lots of alcohol), which led to some...cultural differences. He accepted my choices and I accepted his (as much as I dislike the smell of beer). Things were great between us for the most part. However, trouble began once his best friend, who was an evangelical Christian, started telling him about what Mormons 'really' believe. Then he started getting pressure from his frat brothers...not just to get laid, but because of what they had all seen on the South Park episode about Mormons. He was really torn. However, my boyfriend didn't ever ask me about what I believed; he only came to church with me once (hung over, I think). Instead, he listened to his friends, who got their information from South Park. Then his family, who loved me before we got more serious, jumped on the anti-Mormon train. I'm not sure what his family knew about Mormons, probably not much either seeing as I had never talked to them about it and we grew up in the same area where there are few Mormons.
After all this pressure from his friends who got their information from parodies and anti-Mormon literature, he dumped me and I got my first broken heart. I've had many experiences where people have asked me questions or made assumptions after getting their information for incorrect sources like South Park. So, do I think Mormon parodies are dangerous? Yes (especially the 19 year old me who didn't recover from her broken heart until she met her future husband at the age of 20...but that's a different story). Do I think Mormons shouldn't be parodied? I hate to say there's a group or individual that shouldn't be joked about because no one should be safe from a tasteful joke. However, the danger of Mormon parody, like the Book of Mormon Broadway show, is that most people know so little about the religion and lazily accept what they see on South Park and Broadway as the truth. When opportunities to hear the truth of the Church arise, whether it's academic or proselyting, we are called pushy, whiny, and weird.
I like to think of myself as a relatively thick-skinned Mormon; I like a good Mormon joke as much as the next person. However, my personal experience tells me that people take the distortion of Mormon parody very seriously and, in fact, that's where many people get their only information about Mormons. In turn, I think that scares them away from getting information from more accurate sources and, so, misinformation and prejudices are perpetuated. It's an ugly cycle.
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