“God loves Mormons, and he wants some more.” (tagline from the musical's promo posters)
I may be a little late to the game with this news, but apparently Matt Parker and Trey Stone, the creators of South Park, are writing a Broadway musical called The Book of Mormon, which opens March 23rd. There isn't a whole lot of information out there regarding the plot, but basically it's about two Mormon missionaries from Salt Lake City who are called to Uganda and try to deal with the issues of that nation (i.e. Aids, warlords, famine etc.) through the lens of their Mormon upbringing. It also parallels the story of the founding of the church by Joseph Smith. It has nothing to do with South Park.
I was a little surprised when I heard the news and wasn't sure how to feel about it. After doing a little Google research, I actually think it might be a good thing for the church, with some obvious caveats. Of course it is going to be profane, and exaggerated. I am certain there will be people who will be offended. But my hope is that members have enough of a sense of humor about ourselves to laugh about the more 'peculiar' characteristics of Mormon culture (not doctrine). And I have faith that they will depict the characters as real people, and the show will have heart. After all, all the references to Mormons on South Park have always been fairly accurate, and surprisingly positive, albeit critical. Matt Parker even said in a NY Post interview (see the entire thing here), "There's a lot of Mormon stuff in our work because Matt and I both grew up around a lot of Mormons," says Parker. "I've never met a Mormon I didn't like. They're really nice people. They're so Disney. They're so Rodgers and Hammerstein." From the looks of what they have said in interviews, I think they will continue their trend of portraying Mormons as happy and good people (albeit gullible) "We learned a long time ago that if something is cynical just for the sake of being cynical, it won't last too long," says Stone.
I guess we will just have to wait until March to find out for sure.
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2 comments:
oh man, interesting.
I agree with you, we need to be able to laugh at ourselves sometimes. While it's sure to be somewhat offensive, I think one thing that this show does is it includes Mormonism as a mainstream religion. It might help people recognize that instead of a weird cult, LDS people are part of very large world wide Christian church.
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