Regarding Restorationism

[Maricela Gutierrez]

Your argument for its being Islamaphobic was that the book was Islamaphobic. And your argument for the book's being Islamaphobic was rooted in the book's argument "because religion". If the show is sensitive to Mormonism, that entire argument collapses. So... no, that is exactly what your point was.

Very well then. The show is more sensitive to Mormonism than the book was, but it's still insensitive. "A generous interpretation is that the series demonstrates how some fundamentalist Mormons repackage the past to buttress their present. However, if that is the showrunners’ aim, it’s far from clear. Instead, the perspective follows that of Allen Lafferty who, after digging into the faith’s past, and witnessing its worst expression, issues a clear verdict: “If you really still believe your god is love,” he tells Pyre, “then you don’t know who you are, brother.” Mormonism, at its root, “breeds dangerous men.” Far from countering this opinion, offered in the first episode, the series only confirms it... The TV series does much better than Krakauer’s book at depicting the multitudes that Mormonism contains, but it still presents maliciousness as its core."

Firstly, no... that's not true. They barely have a Wikipedia article.

By "care" I mean that Hulu made a whole show about them murdering someone, and a lot of people watched it. Whatever their screen time, they are the central antagonists.

Why do you think I mentioned this bizarre monstrosity?

Er... I don't think anything about why you mentioned "this bizarre monstrosity" because you didn't mention it? You mentioned hand wringing, true crime, twaddle... no mention of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles or Chantal Akerman.

This is also unintentionally hilarious because internal drama was not merely a good thing in the previous paragraph but specifically a sign of good writing.

I guess I don't get the joke. There would be a difference between Brenda's interiority (her interiority would be responding to her external life) and Pyre's interiority (him taking personally a tragedy that is not really about him).

Brenda Lafferty is dead. We can't go back in time and use telepathy to read her mind and discover her internal drama.

You're right that we can't discover her internal drama. It would, however, be hypothetically possible to creatively construct an interiority that is consistent with what we do know and respects her humanity. It would not be "the real Brenda," but it would be a more human Brenda and a more articulated Brenda. It is possible to make a not-real version of someone that still respects that person, and it's possible to make a not-real version of someone that disrespects them.

That being said, I'm willing to shift my criticism of the show to a criticism of all true crime if you think that's more consistent. I think the genre's pretty gross and exploitative, and if my suggested reforms to the show are untenable, then let's dispense ourselves of it and have no Under the Banner of Heaven show whatsoever.

Like, I know people really want to forget what the last two letters in TERF stand for...

I have no interest in repeating TERF tenets or the attendant transphobia. I just didn't think Katie Doll colloquially using the phrase "patriarchy" in a review (written for Comic Book Resources nullifies the criticisms and makes Under the Banner of Heaven into a feminist masterpiece, even if you think it makes Katie Doll's writing clumsy. It struck me as not so much intentionally invoking an intellectual lineage of late-twentieth-century radical feminism in order to advance a transphobic, biologized retrenchment, and much more as just... she's a television show reviewer who lived through the late twentieth century and so some of that ended up in her vocabulary, and she has articulated this not as well than she could have. But I don't think my criticism depends on "according to specifically Katie Doll, the show is sexist." Dispense with the article, and the show remains.

[Forsher]

Your argument for its being Islamaphobic was that the book was Islamaphobic. And your argument for the book's being Islamaphobic was rooted in the book's argument "because religion". If the show is sensitive to Mormonism, that entire argument collapses. So... no, that is exactly what your point was.

Very well then. The show is more sensitive to Mormonism than the book was, but it's still insensitive. "A generous interpretation is that the series demonstrates how some fundamentalist Mormons repackage the past to buttress their present. However, if that is the showrunners’ aim, it’s far from clear. Instead, the perspective follows that of Allen Lafferty who, after digging into the faith’s past, and witnessing its worst expression, issues a clear verdict: “If you really still believe your god is love,” he tells Pyre, “then you don’t know who you are, brother.” Mormonism, at its root, “breeds dangerous men.” Far from countering this opinion, offered in the first episode, the series only confirms it... The TV series does much better than Krakauer’s book at depicting the multitudes that Mormonism contains, but it still presents maliciousness as its core."

I disagree. I've been on a bit of a "people are individually capable of being fuck ups kick" lately, and Under the Banner of Heaven seems to me to go out of its way to suggest that is the essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism.

Firstly, no... that's not true. They barely have a Wikipedia article.

By "care" I mean that Hulu made a whole show about them murdering someone, and a lot of people watched it. Whatever their screen time, they are the central antagonists.

You'd prefer that Brenda Lafferty be the central antagonist? Obviously not, but I don't know what you want and I'm not sure you know what you want. The story either has nothing specific to Brenda Lafferty (a generic 1970s slice of life plot with the theme "sexism is bad" piece, a la Mad Men but in the next decade and with an ostensibly real main character... in which case, sexism is the antagonist) or it does have something to do with Brenda Lafferty, in which case our possible antagonists are either religion (which is Islamaphobic and therefore bad) or it's her murderers (which is bad because therefore we care about them).

Why do you think I mentioned this bizarre monstrosity?

Er... I don't think anything about why you mentioned "this bizarre monstrosity? because you didn't mention it? You mentioned hand wringing, true crime, twaddle... no mention of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles or Chantal Akerman.

That is simply not the case:

This is the same as saying we should make stories about people who've done nothing interesting themselves and to whom nothing interesting has happened. There are movies like this (notoriously one was recently announced as the best film of all time) but what it actually amounts to is "tell boring stories".

Perhaps the Sight and Sound poll is more niche a subject than I imagine, but that is specifically with reference to the Belgian monstrosity's top placing in the 2022 Sight and Sound (critics) poll.

This is also unintentionally hilarious because internal drama was not merely a good thing in the previous paragraph but specifically a sign of good writing.

I guess I don't get the joke. There would be a difference between Brenda's interiority (her interiority would be responding to her external life) and Pyre's interiority (him personally tragedy that is not really about him).

Ah, but it is. For example.

I find it interesting that as the science increasingly validates the existence of this kind of trauma, the culture is increasingly hostile to validating its existence... even though it never used to be controversial and it now has recognition, I guess.

Brenda Lafferty is dead. We can't go back in time and use telepathy to read her mind and discover her internal drama.

You're right that we can't discover her internal drama. It would, however, be hypothetically possible to creatively construct an interiority that is consistent with what we do know and respects her humanity. It would not be "the real Brenda," but it would be a more human Brenda and a more articulated Brenda.

I disagree. I think the idea of presenting what is functionally conjecture as a real person's real truth is monstrously evil.

Imagine if I made a movie about this conversation from your perspective. That is the exact same thing you're proposing be done to Brenda Lafferty. Is the difference that she's dead and therefore can't protest? And if that is the difference, why is not focussing on her interiority any different? She can't protest. Or is there no difference? In which case, how can we say one is okay and the other is not? I can't see how there's another possibility but if you can please mention it. Like a totally different historical dramatisation (almost) says "I guess no-one can see how they're wrong".

That being said, I'm willing to shift my criticism of the show to a criticism of all true crime if you think that's more consistent. I think the genre's pretty gross and exploitative, and if my suggested reforms to the show are untenable, then let's dispense ourselves of it and have no Under the Banner of Heaven show whatsoever.

I do think it's more consistent. A lot more, in fact. I generally agree and avoid watching them, but, like I said, I think Under the Banner of Heaven is good television.

In fact, I am generally opposed to "based on a true story". I think film makers take the "you can polish a turd" idea and use it to justify producing films not just with bad historiography but dangerous historiography that's better termed political screed. There's an idea I've mentioned in other conversations called "true invention" and "false invention". The basic idea is that in order to produce a narrative it is necessary to make up shit. Like, for example, the interior life of Brenda Lafferty but literally just conversations between characters is almost universally going to have to be invented as well. True Invention is when these invented aspects are consistent with good historiography that's derived from good historical research. False Invention. er, isn't. True Invention is fine and unproblematic, while False Invention isn't.

True Crime also tends to run into a different issue of "is this history actually helping people or harming people that exist now"? When I was at school, for example, a classmate's father was murdered. We'll call her Laura. I didn't know what to say and in the end I never mentioned it. Still haven't. I somehow doubt I ever will at this point (and not just because Laura lives in Norway or something now).

Suppose I was to make a teen drama series based on my high school days. This, quite validly, could be a plot line... joining the multiple dead teachers, the fatal car crashes, the building site accident and a litany of other collectively semi-unbelievable things. Suppose, further, that one episode focusses on the funeral and it ends up depicting a really catty clique dynamic where Rita, someone who knew Laura from intermediate, sort of tries to exclude June, a friend from high school from being part of the "inner circle". This is a true thing. I know it's true because I happened to be standing right next to June when she complained about it to someone. I know with certainty that this is June's truth. But is the fact it's true enough? Would it not be the case, particularly given I never talked to Laura about any of this, that it's nonetheless still harmful, even though it's also true?

(If such a show did exist, Rita would definitely be having a villain arc because there's not just this incident.)

Like, I know people really want to forget what the last two letters in TERF stand for...

I have no interest in repeating TERF tenets or the attendant transphobia. I just didn't think Katie Doll colloquially using the phrase "patriarchy" in a review written for Comic Book Resources nullifies the criticisms and makes Under the Banner of Heaven into a feminist masterpiece, even if you think it makes Katie Doll's writing clumsy.

It raises the question of whether Katie Doll can recognise feminism and, more than that, whether there's even a single feminism to recognise in the first place (there isn't).

[Melrovia]

So organized religion is a cult unless you define a cult as actually being cultlike?

Honestly cults such a politically charged word from what it used to be actually defined as. Cult is far too politically expedient, and its partly why religious studies departments in various colleges and universities use the term new religious movements. Take the Raelians for example a ufologist religion that believes all the gods, and goddesses humanity worships are actually aliens and shouldn't be worshipped and has a pretty popular following in Japan. The thing that sets off alarm bells is the fact members have to sign an apostasy pledge, and their founder claims to have cloned the original eve of humanity. Its also somewhat controversial for combining the Star of David, and the Swastika (im very aware of the original use of the Swastika, but in the west it sets off Neo-Nazi alarm bells) into their religious logo.

For further and very interesting reading.

Raëlism

Not to mention, the founder of Raelism started the whole thing in order to pay for college. And their religious symbol got them in hot water with the Israeli government.

[Jedi Council]

"This is due to rampant misogyny, homophobia, and racism within these churches, as well as the doctrine that is embedded into members by the churches, namely that the Church is always right, that certain people are just superior, and that if you think outside their doctrine, you are not as good a person as everyone else, and you will go to hell or an equivalent."

OP basically described most major denominations.

[Mindhart]

I don't mind the idea, I just dislike It when they push their opinions and views onto others. However, It's important to remember that a bad experience with one person/group of it, doesn't mean it's all bad. People can believe in what they want to, so long as they do not push it upon those who don't wish to convert, join, or have made it clear the subject makes them uncomfortable. So long as nobody gets hurt, and nobody is harassing anybody, there's no harm!

[Maricela Gutierrez]

I've been on a bit of a "people are individually capable of being fuck ups kick" lately, and Under the Banner of Heaven seems to me to go out of its way to suggest that is the essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism.

I'm not quite sure how this tracks. Is Under the Banner portraying something that is an "essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism" (the religious subculture/movement), or is it portraying how "people are individually capable" of awful evil (the Laffertys as specific persons)? If there is an "essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism," that seems to be saying the problem lies not in the individual Laffertys (though their crimes are atrocious) but in the culture which created them, i.e. Mormonism (as the historian Park reads the show extending this claim to all Mormonisms, and not just fundamentalisms), and from Mormonism the show's point maps to religion broadly.

Perhaps the Sight and Sound poll is more niche a subject than I imagine, but that is specifically with reference to the Belgian monstrosity's top placing in the 2022 Sight and Sound (critics) poll.

Ohhh. Yeah, I didn't catch the oblique reference to the poll at all.

I disagree. I think the idea of presenting what is functionally conjecture as a real person's real truth is monstrously evil.

I'm surprised then at your toleration for Under the Banner of Heaven. I grant that by your measure my suggestions make it worse, but Under the Banner isn't not portraying conjecture as if it were real people's real truth. My criticism is that Brenda is out of focus, but your rubric here would suggest the show's claims on her are monstrously evil to begin with. Even if Brenda's out of focus, the show is still implying some things about her experience and interiority. Those portrayals are what the family's criticism of the show has centered on, as they attest the show gets Brenda wrong. Maybe the family is wrong about her, since Brenda is dead and not present to speak for herself, but that doesn't mean Dustin Black has a way of knowing he's right; it's still conjecture portrayed as her experience. Why, then, is Under the Banner "good television" and not "monstrously evil," even if slightly less than the hypothetical version of my suggestions?

It raises the question of whether Katie Doll can recognise feminism and, more than that, whether there's even a single feminism to recognise in the first place (there isn't).

I would agree there isn't "a single feminism" in the sense that I would consider it more accurate to say there are plural feminisms. It's difficult to discern, however, whether that's where you're going with this, or whether you're implying that there is no feminism because there is no sexism against women. I would also add that I don't think my criticism depends on any claim along the lines of "according to specifically Katie Doll, the show is sexist." This isn't an argument from authority, even if I nodded to a wider conversation. Dispense with that article and author, and the show and its troubling content remains.

[Forsher]

I've been on a bit of a "people are individually capable of being fuck ups kick" lately, and Under the Banner of Heaven seems to me to go out of its way to suggest that is the essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism.

I'm not quite sure how this tracks. Is Under the Banner portraying something that is an "essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism" (the religious subculture/movement), or is it portraying how "people are individually capable" of awful evil (the Laffertys as specific persons)? If there is an "essential problem with Mormon fundamentalism," that seems to be saying the problem lies not in the individual Laffertys (though their crimes are atrocious) but in the culture which created them, i.e. Mormonism (as the historian Park reads the show extending this claim to all Mormonisms, and not just fundamentalisms), and from Mormonism the show's point maps to religion broadly.

Only people actively trying to ignore the Mormon church organisation's attempts to discredit Mormon fundamentalism become Mormon fundamentalists.

It's like how if a teacher says "don't run with scissors" and then you run with scissors, that doesn't make your running with scissors the teacher's fault... it's your fault.

The counter argument, of course, is "why were there even scissors to run with?" And by extension "you can only have Mormon fundamentalism if there's something to be fundamentalist about". But that's not really the point because I'm just explaining the logic to you.

I disagree. I think the idea of presenting what is functionally conjecture as a real person's real truth is monstrously evil.

I'm surprised then at your toleration for Under the Banner of Heaven. I grant that by your measure my suggestions make it worse, but Under the Banner isn't not portraying conjecture as if it were real people's real truth.

We were talking specifically about the lack of interiority for other characters. In this sense, the only interiority it has is for a fictional character who, obviously, has no real truth on account of not being real. And we're sort of arguing about whether he's learning "the Mormon organisation is actively trying to stop people perverting Mormon teachings it has rejected and that's what Mormonism is" or if he's learning "the Mormon organisation can pretend all it like that Mormonism isn't like the Lafferty brothers, but it is".

My criticism is that Brenda is out of focus, but your rubric here would suggest the show's claims on her are monstrously evil to begin with. Even if Brenda's out of focus, the show is still implying some things about her experience and interiority. Those portrayals are what the family's criticism of the show has centered on, as they attest the show gets Brenda wrong. Maybe the family is wrong about her, since Brenda is dead and not present to speak for herself, but that doesn't mean Dustin Black has a way of knowing he's right; it's still conjecture portrayed as her experience. Why, then, is Under the Banner "good television" and not "monstrously evil," even if slightly less than the hypothetical version of my suggestions?

The way I see it is this. You argued that the problem with the show is that it doesn't present an interior life for Brenda Lafferty. I accept this premise. It follows, then, that the show doesn't create an interiority for anyone real.

You'r right that I may be taking too strong a tack here.

Suppose, for example, that we want to make a biopic about Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror (as opposed to his granddaughter or daughter in law). In this hypothetical you're the creative and I'm the money guy. According to one story, one thing we know about Matilda is that she wants to fuck men who beat her to a pulp. This strikes me (and others) as phenomenally unlikely to be a true story for multiple reasons, so I say to you "Make me a movie which questions all interpretations of this event; something like The Last Duel but less Rashomon-y".

Even though the whole point of the movie you make for me is to make a movie about competing hypotheses about Matilda's interior life and therefore your movie must necessarily not stake any position, by the way I've been talking in this thread, the movie must be necessarily monstrously evil.

It raises the question of whether Katie Doll can recognise feminism and, more than that, whether there's even a single feminism to recognise in the first place (there isn't).

I would agree there isn't "a single feminism" in the sense that I would consider it more accurate to say there are plural feminisms. It's difficult to discern, however, whether that's where you're going with this, or whether you're implying that there is no feminism because there is no sexism against women.

Where I am going with this is "some versions of feminism are repulsive and their adherents try to obscure their sins by hiding behind sane ideas that use the same label, i.e. feminism". But you're right, it's not really important to the conversation... I just wanted to complain about Doll unironically saying "the Patriarchy". So, are you right? Is the show sexist? Does, as you are about to say, Katie Doll hamfistedly advance a true argument?

I would also add that I don't think my criticism depends on any claim along the lines of "according to specifically Katie Doll, the show is sexist." This isn't an argument from authority, even if I nodded to a wider conversation. Dispense with that article and author, and the show and its troubling content remains.

Someone more informed than Katie Doll might take:

it keeps the patriarchy alive by leaving men—fictional and real—at the heart of the series."

and translate that to:

it embodies a sexist attitude by positioning men at the heart of a series about a woman

Is it a story about a woman? As we've discussed at some length, it's only a story about a woman insofar as it says "the interesting thing about this woman is that she was murdered". If the show was actually that, sure, that'd be sexist. But it's not that because, aside from anything else, it puts men at the heart of the story. As Katie Doll complains, it even goes as far to avoid creating an episode singularly dedicated to the Lafferty wives and daughters. Clearly, it is not saying the interesting thing about Brenda Lafferty is that she was murdered.

Okay, so maybe the problem with Pyre is that the actual investigative team was female led or even just female and therefore we've erased the role of a real woman (or women) in order to have a fictional man be the main character. As I've said, there's very little information about the real case available unless you read the book this was based on (or do the sort of research that would let you write your own book), but I'm 97% sure this is not the case.

The next two frameworks reject this argument in the sense they accept the premise that it's not actually a story about a woman at all.

Okay. so maybe it's sexist because it doesn't spend enough time on Brenda Lafferty (or any other female character in the show)? Well, the reason it doesn't have a single episode is structural... the flashbacks sort of function as Pyre's growing awareness of Brenda's (or anyone else's) movements. I would argue that the show is inherently presenting any signs of anyone who isn't Pyre's interior life as "Pyre's internal model of their interior lives". This is one reason why the crime isn't shown (though I'd argue the real reasons the crime's not shown are either budgetary or because it's now viewed as a sexist act to represent extreme violence against women), and why even the immediate lead up to the crime (the Lafferty brothers entering the house) is only shown well toward the end. This is much harder to judge. If the problem is quantity, not quality, at which point does the dial swing from sexist to not sexist.

Of course, perhaps it is sexist simply for not being a story about a woman when it should be? We've talked at length about the implications of that. As we have seen, I hold that it must necessarily become sexist if it's to still be a story about Brenda Lafferty's murder

And the final possibility I personally perceive is that the quality of the representation is insufficient. It has, you say, some interiority for Brenda Lafferty so while this may make it monstrous, this means it isn't sexist... Brenda Lafferty isn't an object that does nothing but die. As I just mentioned, the show doesn't revel in the violence against women its subject matter contains. It doesn't praise sexist behaviours on the part of its main character... though I suppose how it did that is a criticism of Mormonism. It doesn't suggest, according to Doll, that a misogynistic crime wasn't misogynistic. It possibly passes the Bechdel test, I honestly can't remember, but by the same measure it possibly fails it, too. I'm pretty sure it didn't shoe horn in an obviously stereotypical conversation in order to pass the Bechdel test, though.

As the reference to the Bechdel test implies, I'm running out of ideas here... all I've got left is stuff where you could advance contradictory cases. For example, the sex positive feminist might argue that it's sexist because it should've presented the female cast as attractive/having sexual appetites despite being Mormons? But you could also find feminist arguments that say not doing such things is why it's not sexist, or that, in fact, it did do such things and that's why it is sexist.