Of Giants and Stereotypes

A short article that I wrote for Meridian Magazine went up this morning: “The Case Against Sola Scriptura: From the Bible Itself”

And this new article appeared today on the unchanging and effectively dead website of the Interpreter Foundation: Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: “Of Book of Mormon Stories—and Giants,” written by Brant A. Gardner:

Abstract: Stories of giants have occurred throughout the ages and in different cultures. These stories contrast to the scientific evidence that there never have been races of giant humans, even though there are some specific cases of unusually tall individuals. If the stories don’t come from true experience, where do they come from?

It’s accompanied on the website by Interpreting Interpreter: “Book of Mormon Giants,” written by Kyler Rasmussen:

For a while, I had the impression that all Latter-day Saint women always wear long 1950s-style pastel dresses and wear their hair up in exactly the same way, as illustrated by the polygamous wives of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  (See here.)

Apparently, though, I was uninformed.  I now realize that, in their dress and grooming, typical Latter-day Saint women look like television’s Mormon Wives.  Here, from Cosmopolitan is the well-researched and scholarly article that changed my mind: “There’s a Reason You Can’t Tell the ‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Cast Apart: Hint: It’s the “Utah look.””

I suppose that the common ground between the Mormon Wives and the FLDS wives is that they are all seen as some variation of Stepford Wives.

I’ll admit to being frustrated with the stereotypes of Latter-day Saints that I continually encounter, and particularly in a cultural moment that professes to dislike and reject stereotyping.  While I was spending a summer at Princeton University quite a while back, we attended a performance on Broadway of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, the first part of Tony Kushner’s massive play, which won a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards.  Later, my wife went to see the second part, Angels in America: Perestroika.  (For reasons that I no longer recall, I was unable to attend.). Much of Kushner’s story focuses on “Mormonism,” a caricature version of Moroni plays an important role, several of the characters are Latter-day Saints, a portion of the two-part play is set in a Latter-day Saint visitors center, and, well, I wouldn’t describe the play’s treatment of my faith as precisely reverent or respectful.

During Perestroika’s intermission, the man seated next to my wife (who was, by the way, wearing a yarmulke), turned to her and asked “Have you ever been to Salt Lake City?”  And then, without waiting for her answer, he told her “That’s exactly what they’re like” and proceeded to make some denigrating remarks about Latter-day Saints.

I was glad, when she told me of her encounter at the theater, that I had not been there.  I would have responded to the man’s comments with some comments of my own, probably about caricatures and stereotypes of Jews and New Yorkers.  She handled it rather differently than I would have.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of Utah women, here’s a new announcement from the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:  “Women Can Now Serve Missions for the Church of Jesus Christ at Age 18”

My wife and I like the work of the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt very much.  In fact, a reproduction of Klimt’s famous work Der Kuss hangs in our bedroom.  I suppose that its gold background speaks to my inner Byzantinist, and the painting as a whole speaks to my very Latter-day Saint sense of the holiness and eternal significance of marriage, for which I borrow lyrics from the duet “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (“The Magic Flute”):

Pamina and Papageno:
Wir wollen uns der Liebe freu’n,
wir leben durch die Lieb’ allein.

Pamina:
Die Lieb’ versüßet jede Plage,
ihr opfert jede Kreatur.

Papageno:
Sie würzet uns’re Lebenstage,
sie wirkt im Kreise der Natur.

Pamina and Papageno:
Ihr hoher Zweck zeigt deutlich an:
nichts Edler’s sei, als Weib und Mann.
Mann und Weib, und Weib und Mann,
reichen an die Gottheit an.

My uninspired translation:

Pamina and Papageno:
We shall rejoice in love,
We live by love alone.

Pamina:
Love sweetens every sorrow,
All creatures pay it reverence.

Papageno:
Love adds spice to our days on earth,
It works through all of nature.

Pamina and Papageno:
Its high purpose expressly shows:
Nothing is more noble than man and woman.
Man and woman, and woman and man,
Attain Godhood.

As I say, we like the work of Gustav Klimt.  But, although I like the specific painting involved, I’m having a hard time with this story:  “Gustav Klimt portrait breaks modern art record with $236m sale: The painting helped save the life of its Jewish subject from Nazis during World War II.”  Two hundred and thirty-six million dollars would feed a very great number of people.  It could pay the medical expenses of many who are now struggling.  It could build multiple temples, in which marriages would be solemnized for all eternity.  It could build (and furnish) a superb art museum on its own.  Is any single painting really worth so much money?