News: 2005 AML awards list posted

The Association from Mormon Letters has posted the list of 2005 AML award winners. Congratulations to all the winners.

I especially enjoyed the winners for film -- "New York Doll" by Greg Whitely -- and novel -- Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Two very different works, but are infused with a way of capturing and exploring the Mormon experience that I think is somewhat new to Mormon art and is (I hope) indicative of my generation of Mormon artists and readers/viewers.

Here is the text of the award citation for AMV's award for criticism:

"The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Criticism for 2005 to A Motley Vision weblog and its principal authors, Patricia Gunter Karamesines, Kent Larsen, William Morris, and Eric Russell.

"While cultural pundits have been debating the significance of that curious new practice of online journaling known as blogging, the writers at A Motley Vision, a weblog devoted to discussing Mormon art and culture, have proven that this new literary form fulfills the goals of good criticism that the Association for Mormon Letters has long promoted.

"Like the AML-List that preceded it, A Motley Vision is an online forum where LDS books and movies are reviewed and discussed. Its writers have made serious efforts to give sustained discussion to important issues, rather than simply aggregating fragments and chatter. The organization and coherence of the site, with its archives and references, has made possible the very sort of communal discussion of art and literature that AML encourages at its conferences, but does so asynchronously and electronically, allowing a greater breadth of participation across space and time.

"We have yet to see where the world of blogging will develop, but any new frontier needs trustworthy pioneers, and the Association for Mormon Letters wishes to encourage through this award the ongoing serious effort shown by A Motley Vision to energize and broaden the discussion of Mormon literature and culture."

Criticism: A small warning for Mormons who engage in ethical criticism

And that's pretty much all of us (and it should be, I think, but how it should be is open for discussion).

I've begun reading Wayne Booth's "The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction." It's much too early for me to have much of an opinion of the work, or even for me to engage any of his ideas.

But it's not too early for me to indulge in pedantry and pull a quote from pages 51-52 and wave it around like a terrible banner:

"All critics are tempted to over-generalize, but ethical critics have seemed especially open to the temptation. Having experienced some artistic gift that feels unquestionably valuable, they have leapt to proclaim it the only true gift. Having experienced some offering that feels unquestionably threatening or harmful to the spirit [nudge, nudge -- Wm], they have hastened to damn it as the unfailing source of all artistic evil. The step from intense, ineluctable, personal experience to the proclamation of the truth about art is all too easy.

Anyone who comes to known, in hear or gut, that 'this thing here before me is good (or evil)' is almost certain to want to share the good (or protect those from evil)." (italics original except those between the brackets).

Word.

Elsewhere: New LDS Writers blog

I noticed a couple of sidenotes that Kaimi posted over at T&S directed towards a new blog called, “Six LDS Writers and A Frog.” I thought it’d be worth mentioning over here as I think it would be of interest to anyone who reads AMV.

It looks like a good blog. I haven’t read any of their books, but I did recognize the names of a few of the contributors from books on the shelf at Seagull. Though I’m not really a fiction writer myself, I enjoy reading about writing, and I think they’ll provide some interesting perspectives, especially as it relates to Mormon fiction. They’ve also said some interesting things on the world of LDS marketing and publishing.

I’m not sure what to think about the blog title though. I mean, it doesn’t provide a whole lot of leeway in terms of losing or gaining additional contributers. I suppose they could always tear a page out of the Big 10’s book, in which case it doesn’t matter. :)

Review: Church Ball

After having directed three consecutively worse comedies, the real question one has going into Kurt Hale’s fourth LDS comedy is just how bad is it? Suprisingly, it’s not that bad. In fact, I’m willing to say it’s actually his best. It’s a major upswing from The Home Teachers, at least. It was also much better than Halestorm’s recently released Suits on the Loose, which was so bad I didn’t even feel like typing out a review.

I also think appreciating something like Church Ball lies in recognizing it for what it is. If we go in expecting comedy on a par with the material common to the Wilson brothers, we’re probably going to be disappointed. There are a few scenes that fall flat (an odd afterlife scene near the end comes to mind) and Hale still likes to maintain his slapstick, farcical, over-the-top brand of humor. But I think if we recognize Church Ball as Adam Sandler/Chris Farley humor it becomes easier to enjoy and it really is pretty constantly funny.

The film, both in tone and story concept is very nearly a churchy version of Ben Stiller’s Dodgeball. Basic storyline: a motley bunch of church members in the Mud Lake congregation learn they need to work together and become a team in order beat the athletic, well-dressed but hyper-competitive Crystal Hills congregation. All the trappings of an underdog sports story are there, mixed in with jokes about the incongruence of a lack of sportsmanship in a church sports setting.

The good guys include Andrew Wilson as the one normal guy in the bunch, the four and a half-foot Gary Coleman, an overweight doughnut maker, a guy who keeps getting technical fouls because of swearing (all of which is fully bleeped out), an older janitor, an east-European guy who struggles with his English, and Clint Howard playing, well, the kind of guy you would imagine Clint Howard would play. Fred Willard gets some funny lines in as basketball-enthused Bishop and Thurl Bailey plays the story’s conscience as Wilson’s mentor.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is its ability to simultaneously be wholly Mormon and yet lack anything particularly Mormon at all. Neither the word “Mormon” nor “LDS” are ever used, the word “ward” is replaced with “congregation”, “Sacrament Meeting” with “services” and in the one instance they might have said “Mormon” they said “Christian.” “Bishop” as the leader of the congregation is the closest thing you get. Likewise, the humor is all very general and fully translatable to the Christian world as a whole.

And yet, it’s all very clearly and obviously Mormon. Much more so than the likes of Saints and Soldiers or Napoleon Dynamite. I imagine that it probably won’t even occur to many western Mormons that there’s anything different in the film’s Mormonness than The Singles Ward or The R.M. At the same time, I think audiences in the Bible Belt will be able to watch it without perceiving anything Mormon in its content at all. That’s a pretty ingenious marketing plan. It will be very interesting to see if the film catches on in the Christian communities as it’s clearly primed to.

The single worst thing about Church Ball is an unfortunate one because it seems so unnecessary. The cinematography is terrible. Though Kurt Hale’s level of humor became increasingly worse through his first three films, I think his picture got increasingly better. Church Ball is back to a Singles Ward level. Indeed, it looks like a film a singles ward would create. I’m not sure what happened here, if Hale lost the funds needed to create a clean picture, but the thing looks like it was filmed on his home video camera – and different video cameras at that. A few scenes had problems with the sound too. When people pay full price to see a movie in a movie theater, they expect it to look like a movie and not a Spanish TV soap opera. People are generally willing to accept a different kind of picture when it comes to small budget films, but I have to imagine that something that looks like this is going to have adverse effects on its popularity.

But at the end of the day, I think what really matters to audiences is whether they come out laughing. I have to say I laughed almost as much as I did in Dodgeball, and that’s saying something. So I like the direction Hale appears to be headed, and I can now say that I do hope to see another one from him.

Commentary: Katherine Morris on AML Conference 2006 -- Youth Literature

My sister Katherine was kind enough to write up her notes and impressions on the "Youth Literature" panel at the 2006 annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters:

The panel included Chris Crowe, John Bennion, Shanna Butler, Dean Hughes, and AnnDee Ellis, with Laura Card moderating.

Laura Card began the discussion by asking the question, "How have you seen LDS young adult literature evolve?" The panelists immediately deferred to Dean Hughes, who started out by mentioning how just thirty years ago Deseret Book didn’t publish fiction. It wasn’t until 1979 that Deseret Book finally published a work of fiction, which was Dean’s book Under the Same Stars, a young adult novel. "It’s significant," Dean said, "that the first breakthrough in LDS fiction was in youth literature."

Since Dean published Under the Same Stars, several other authors have successfully broken into the market (Jack Weyland and Chris Heimerdinger, notably). However, Dean noted, no one has made a living publishing children’s books in an exclusively LDS market. One reason the LDS market can’t sustain authors who write for children is that, although adults in the Church tend to be wary of adult best sellers, they don’t show the same hesitancy toward best-selling children’s books. This being the case, Latter-day Saint authors who write for children have to compete with the national market and so usually end up writing for the national market.

Moving on to recent trends in LDS youth literature, Dean said, "Things are picking up. Every few years now, there’s a new sensation" (this said with an accompanying nod to fellow panelist AnnDee Ellis). Latter-day Saint writers are becoming increasingly recognized in the national youth market, and Mormon themes are becoming more acceptable. Just in the last several years, Dean said, he’s not only been allowed to write about LDS themes, but he’s been invited to do so. While this indicates that publishers see the potential for new voices and perspectives in LDS authors, part of the reason publishers are interested in Mormon-themed books is because it’s becoming clear there’s an LDS market. President Hinckley’s books are always on the best seller list. Latter-day Saints might be the only ones buying them, but they certainly are buying them.

Chris Crowe talked mainly about why he believes youth literature appeals to Latter-day Saints. After briefly mentioning that LDS culture is generally quite child-friendly (meaning that we like children and we have a lot of them), Chris waxed theoretical. He said some people have observed that American culture is in its adolescence, and so it’s rather fitting that Americans would be interested in children’s books. He believes there’s a similar sort of phenomenon with LDS culture. We’re coming of age as a people, and so we like coming-of-age stories.

John Bennion said he believes that some of the best LDS literary fiction is youth fiction. He mentioned the Delacorte Press Prize—how several LDS writers have won it or achieved an honorable mention. John said he believes Louise Plummer is the best LDS youth writer.

Shanna Butler is an editor for the New Era, which stopped publishing fiction about five years ago. Dispensing with fiction apparently didn’t increase readership, so recently the New Era has made the decision to reintroduce fiction with a short story by Jack Weyland on pornography. The magazine is currently accepting submissions, but they don’t have many specific guidelines to help authors out. Though now open to publishing fiction, the New Era doesn’t necessarily have any set plans to, so submissions will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Stories must be on a specific gospel topic and no longer than 2,500 words. Since the stories have to go through several levels of approval, anything sent in now wouldn’t be published for about a year. Shanna says the New Era is the only magazine, as far as she knows, that tries to hit such a large demographic (twelve- to eighteen-year-olds). She said that online magazines created by LDS teens for other LDS teens are filling in places the New Era leaves gaps. You’ll see things about makeup and dressing modestly that you won’t see in the New Era.

AnnDee Ellis is an up-and-coming LDS author who writes for youth. She got a publishing deal by showing her manuscript to an editor while she was volunteering at a "Writers for Young Readers" conference. The book she is currently working on is about a young LDS boy who is trying to make his way through Scouts and jr. high. The book is Mormon-themed but is written for a wider audience than LDS youth. Having overheard AnnDee telling someone the first line of her novel, I would have to say it sounds like her book will be an original addition to the corpus of LDS youth literature.

News: Publication Week at BYU

BYU's Publication Lab is sponsoring Publication Week March 13-17. Two events of interest that are open to the general public:

The Publisher's Fair is being held from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 14, at the Wilkinson Center (in the Garden Court) on Tuesday.  Most of the larger (and many of the smaller) LDS publishing companies will have representatives on hand to discuss what types of submissions they are looking for and how to put your submission together.

Author Dean Hughes will present "Following the Path to Publishing" at noon Thursday, March 16, in the auditorium (first floor) of the Harold B. Lee Library.

The BYU Publications Lab also publishes a list of publication markets that is frequently updated. Looks like a good resource.

Admin: AMV snags Shawn Bailey

We are incredibly pleased to announce that Shawn P. Bailey has joined A Motley Vision.

Shawn is a lawyer, fiction and poetry writer, Bloggernacle commenter and AML-List participant, in other words, a natural fit for AMV and the Bloggernacle.

Shawn is also a 2005 Irreantum short fiction contest winner -- he took second place (and $175) with his story "They Wandered in Deserts." He will be along shortly to introduce himself.

Welcome, Shawn!

Commentary: 2006 AML Conference

Captivated and engrossed in following the words of each speaker, I ended up taking very poor notes. I write, then, mostly from memory – apologies if I mischaracterize anything anyone said.

In a session on LDS film, Gideon Burton spoke of “sacramental cinema”. Comparing film to religion, Burton said that film is a vision, and not just a vision, but a moving one that has the power to satisfy spiritual appetites. Cinema, though secular, returns us to the sacramental mode, we are quiet together, laugh together, cry together and are moved together. Both film and religion offer the threat of death and the promise of love. Burton then claimed that the use of film as “sacramental cinema” has been effectively used by Richard Dutcher and pointed out examples of Dutcher’s use of the religious traditions of penance and devotion in film.

Though I fully agree with Burton, I find it interesting that this use of film as a sort of religious experience is, ironically, exactly what makes Mormons uncomfortable about the genre in the first place. We have, somehow, created a cultural barrier between the religious and the secular, and it seems we find any intersection between the two to be sacrilegious. But I think the notion of sacramental cinema that Burton describes is a valuable thing, and possibly the very thing that could bridge some of the many gulfs between the religious Mormon world and the secular one.

In the same session, Randy Astle provided a history of Mormon film and a thorough discussion of the sources for Mormon films, noting that most of them are adaptations of something previously written. He also spoke of the fact that Mormon film is so much more popular than Mormon fiction – something that I think reflects popular culture, but may be even more so among Mormon audiences. Everyone wants to turn their novel into a movie, but not many are getting excited about turning movies into novels. Astle is apparently preparing to write a book on the history of LDS film. Like his presentation, I think it will make a great reference source for all interested in the subject.

Margaret Blair Young showed a short documentary she had written and produced about the African-American experience in the church. Originally intended just as a promo for her historical fiction series on black pioneers, it was lengthened to create the short. Some footage is taken from the stage play about Jane Manning James, but most of the documentary is an uplifting discussion with three African-American young women who discuss having come to terms with being black in the church and their appreciation for the life of Jane Manning. I’d like to see the documentary short turned into a full–length documentary about the life of Jane Manning James, as those who are not familiar with her life will probably be wondering a bit as to who this woman was that these girls admire so much. Margaret Young later predicted that, within a few decades, Jane Manning James would be the most well-known female pioneer. Thanks largely to Young herself, that very well may be true.

In a session on Mormon studies, I again found myself listening to Gideon Burton. Burton’s argument was that Mormon studies is a bigger and broader field than most of us realize. He mentioned the misconceptions that the study of Mormons is entirely historical and theological and that that Mormon studies were solely the work of Utah schools, pointing to strong collections of primary LDS texts at USC and other major universities. He also read off a substantial list of papers that were being written on subjects relating to Mormonism, subjects that varied from sociological studies to literary studies of The Book of Mormon. And these were all papers that had been published by people outside of Utah.

Finally, he spoke of the need for Mormon insiders and outsiders to value one another and their work instead of with suspicion. I do think we have not yet reached a time when Mormonism can be really studied for its own sake, without the fear or bias of it being produced to either defend or attack the church. Unfortunately, because of this, Mormon studies has the double stigma as being seen with suspicion by non-members as well as by very conservative members. I think blogs may be starting to break this down though. :)

Dennis Potter spoke of the image of Mormonism in popular culture, referring heavily to South Park episodes, particularly the episode which was all about the Mormons. Potter claimed that Mormons were portrayed in a hyper-positive manner in the media, as the innocent wholesome idealization of the American family. The claim then was that this representation was actually anti-Mormon because it denied Mormons in their natural state as fallible, normal people.

It was pointed out in comments that not all media depictions of Mormons are positive at all, that many are negative. I tend to agree that focusing on South Park, which has been rather uniquely vocal in its positive depiction of the church, isn’t the best representation for the media as whole. Even still, it’s an interesting situation. We generally like hyper-positive depictions, but there is a sense in which these depictions convey an idea that Mormon are pejoratively abnormal. I think that as Mormons become more public and more mainstream, both extremely positive and negative depictions will start to dwindle.