Big Love Dares to…
The Huffington Post chronicles the battle brewing between HBO and the LDS church over the depiction of at least one Big Love character attending the temple (one photo from TV Guide shows her in temple clothes, but wearing a blue apron).
Commentary below the article tends to be pretty fair (unlike the miscreants from both sides in the SL Trib’s comments section). This specific post from “jimaxwell” caught my eye. Pay attention to the sentence in bold.
As a life long Mormon I have been mulling this issue all day. We subscribed to HBO in order to watch Big Love. We love the show because aside from it’s obvious dramatic excellence, it also exposes the ugly side of polygamy. I have to laugh at the complaints about the show from people that are upset about the “narrow minded and shallow” depiction of certain members of the church, mostly because I know they”ve never seen an episode. I’ve seen those stereotypes in the flesh. There are definitely people in our church that hold the same beliefs as those being depicted in the show.
But this issue with depicting the actual Temple Endowment bothers me. If the producers were truly trying to be respectful of our beliefs, they would find a way to tell their story without actually play-acting the Endowment. To the writers and producers the ceremony is an important plot device, to me it is so much more. I wish they would show it the respect that I feel it deserves. But, I also wish that members of my community would show more respect to those with whom they disagree. It is a fair statement that if we don’t want people mocking our sacred ceremonies, we should maybe keep our noses out of other people’s right to express their commitment to one another through ceremony.
A little more respect from all people for all people could certainly make life a lot better for us all.
Can’t wait to see the episode this Sunday.
Wednesday, March 11th 2009 at 15:18
An LDS co-worker brought this up today without really understanding what the fuss was about. I explained the premise of the show and what I suspect they are trying to do with the alleged temple ceremony depiction (we’ll see for sure on Sunday).
I mentioned that Mormons tend to have a persecution complex — even when they are the majority — and he apparently got offended — or so I was told my someone else later. I guess he felt persecuted.