{"id":101,"date":"2008-08-19T18:48:58","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T23:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=101"},"modified":"2025-07-31T20:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T01:57:12","slug":"mormon-as-its-own-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/mormon-as-its-own-genre\/","title":{"rendered":"“Mormon” as its own genre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, so I\u2019ve been through the whole \u201cLDS fiction\u201d genre discussion here<\/a> and here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But not here<\/a>. I\u2019m not late to the party, as I\u2019ve been stewing about this for a while, but the LA Times<\/em> article gave me something else to throw in the stew pot.
\n<\/p>\n

\"MovieRichard Dutcher, the regrettably monikered \u201cfather of Mormon film,\u201d has released his latest film, Falling<\/em>, in a limited number of venues. As of last year, he also released the moniker and the church.<\/a> In a statement made last year, he said he was \u201cleaving Mormon moviemaking to the Mormons.\u201d Which is sad because as far as I can gather, his work was seen by some as \u201cso very supportive of both our community and its faith<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Psst: Mr. Dutcher. Call me!)<\/p>\n

On LDS Review<\/a>, which refused to review the film, one commenter opined:<\/p>\n

Dutcher said he was done with \u201cMormon cinema\u201d so this appears to be his breakout and break away from that genre.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A partial quote from the LA Times article:<\/p>\n

Despite its provocative handling of LDS faith, Dutcher insists Falling<\/em> is, in effect, a Mormon movie<\/em><\/strong> insofar as its themes and imagery will be most meaningful to Latter-day Saints (never mind that, by default, they are embargoed from seeing an R-rated film). But then, doesn\u2019t that still make him a Mormon filmmaker?<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the beginning, I was proud to say, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m a Mormon filmmaker\u2019 because then, I was defining what a Mormon filmmaker was,\u201d Dutcher said. \u201cIt quickly got completely out of my control. Now, no one wants to call themselves a Mormon filmmaker because you\u2019re associating yourself with a genre that\u2019s fallen into disrepute. It\u2019s like having porn on your r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fallen into disrepute because of what, boys and girls? Ding ding ding! That\u2019s right. Mediocrity in the name of being safe and inoffensive. William Morris has asked this question: \u2026 can the believing LDS community produce great art?<\/a> but I don\u2019t know if he has received a satisfactory answer yet.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a month ago I was reading the distress call about the death of Mormon film (sorry, can\u2019t remember the blog) for the exact reason Dutcher stated: It\u2019s fallen into disrepute.<\/p>\n

So is \u201cMormon\u201d\/\u201cLDS\u201d its own genre? I had thought I\u2019d wrapped it all up nicely in pretty paper and bow with \u201cLDS fiction is its own genre,\u201d but the difference between Mormon fiction and Mormon film is that Mormon fiction isn\u2019t seen in the wild (e.g., Barnes & Noble), but Mormon film is (e.g., God\u2019s Army<\/em> and Brigham City<\/em> and Falling<\/em>). Seems to me that art headed for the great beyond (i.e., not just for church members) ought to have some other genre identifier than \u201cMormon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this where we are? As long as it\u2019s got \u201cMormon\u201d slapped on the front of it before being sent abroad, it\u2019s been adequately defined?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, so I\u2019ve been through the whole \u201cLDS fiction\u201d genre discussion here and here and here. But not here. I\u2019m not late to the party, as I\u2019ve been stewing about this for a while, but the LA Times article gave me something else to throw in the stew pot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[549,562,94,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon","category-movies","category-religion","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17072,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/17072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}