For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. I think Paul has something to say on the subject in his epistle to Timothy: JNS, I didn’t say it wasn’t different, I said (elaborating) that the deviation in the motivating values of what each culture would have considered to follow the admonition of Paul is far less than the deviation in what is now considered praiseworthy and of good report, where good is often considered evil, and evil good. So–do you consciously allow yourself to feel the spirit–and push all of your critique of Testaments away?Īnd do you think this compassion is making us create bad art without being objective enough? It had to be very conscious so as not to critique the scenery and horrible plants in what I was viewing. I had a particular problem with this when I first went through the temple. One more question–are you really into movies and theatre? Because it has been my experience that when I was highly involved in theater myself that I viewed things with a much more critical eye, just as an artist would likewise view a painting or a musician listen to a piece of music this way. I have even noticed if I am in another room and hear it I cringe more than if I am in the room where they are singing-and there am more likely to feel the spirit.īut HP are you saying you felt it because you cast your own sentiments upon the actors, make-up etc –you feeling personally like they had the best of intentions and were sincere? Or that their sincerity made you feel the spirit? I am more inclined to say it came from your own compassion than from theirs, maybe even your compassion towards these sincere individuals? Most often I cringe when they sing–but I can still feel the spirit. I think this post is entirely applicable to church choirs. With no motivation to improve, why should the artists among us bother trying? If they can feed the kids with spiritual kitsch, why not? There is a reason BYU is known for its design department, not for its art department. Which is too bad, because we are never going to get Shakespeares of our own at this rate. It seems like, if my read of the market is correct, most art consumers are happy to just feel the Spirit.
For something to have the Spirit, it does not have to be great art, as anyone who has heard a humble, sincere testimony will tell you. The art we find for sale in Deseret Book really does inspire those people who buy it and it isn’t because they have no taste it is because it is genuinely inspiring. So The Testaments for its multitude of flaws still managed to bear a sweet, uplifting testimony of the reality of Christ and the Book of Mormon in spite of its being a bad, quasi-Mayan, after-school-special rip-off. The thing is that the Spirit isn’t meant to help you distinguish good art from bad art generally what the Spirit offers you is an idea of the sincerity of the artist. Nonetheless, at the end of the movie, when Christ appears to the people and heals them, I felt the Spirit.
The acting was stilted, the sets and script were absurd, the make-up was horrible, the directing and scoring were distracting, and Christ was played by a kind of Nordic wisp. However, it was a terrible, terrible movie. It told the story of a group of Book of Mormon peoples and it was clear that the creative minds behind it had gone to great lengths to generate a culturally appropriate setting for the movie. They played it in the Joseph Smith building and used it as a missionary tool.
#LDS THE TESTAMENTS MOVIE MOVIE#
A few years ago, the Church made a movie called The Testaments. The quandary is that they feel the Spirit when looking at that sort of art. They want to be assured that Joseph loved Emma, that Jesus will take care of them, and that their little girls will grow up to be beautiful brides. Average consumers don’t want difficult art or morally complex messages. LDS art seems to be created to be sold and, as such, reflects the interest of the market. In part, this is because of the nature of its distribution. It is often the case that LDS art is accused of being treacly or kitschy. So this cannot be read as a condemnation of all LDS art. In fact, the mediums with which I am most familiar are film and visual art and most of the visual art I know, I know from wandering the BYU bookstore and perusing the Ensign. In writing this post, I must first admit my personal limitations.
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