There were some in the community that were offended. The musical and the book tackle mature themes. There are drunken sailors, scenes of exploitation, whores, and yes, swearing. My son approached his role with pleasure and a commitment to the integrity of the script. Perhaps too much pleasure, but I didn’t mind. It was a great performance from all involved.

There was one particularly ugly incident during an intermission when an exceedingly offended adult expressed his outrage to members of the cast in the hallway. But the students handled it well, the show must go on, and on it went. They tackled the mature themes, but they also explored the nature of law and grace, justice and mercy, love, honor, duty, sacrifice, and ultimately, redemption. It is one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, and one of the most beloved musicals of the past few decades.

I was impressed with the courage of the director and the maturity of the students. They immersed themselves in the characters and, by so doing, opened the door to deeply significant conversations between the cast, their parents, and the community. Artistic explorations have the power to touch us deeply, in ways that detached discussion about concepts cannot.

My thoughts turn back to my experiences with art, and this play in particular, with the news this week that BYU canceled a performance of The Bakkhai due to “difficult material” and an approach that “could be problematic for members of [BYU's] audience.” Part of the official statement from BYU:

“‘The Bakkhai’ itself is difficult material and the particular approach and concept for this production will be problematic for some of our audience members which we felt we would like to not have.”

That last bit saddens me. Clearly, from the late cancellation to the statements about the value of the content, both schools thought The Bakkhai a worthwhile performance. Director Larry West describes the play as “about sex, wine and losing one’s inhibition”, but “at its core [it] is about defining God.” BYU seems to be a prime location for such discussions, no?

I don’t begrudge the BYU Theatre Department for making this call, and both parties appear to be handling it well and maintaining a commitment to future productions together. In fact, it was probably a good decision – politically expedient, professionally safe.

The problem, it seems, is with our culture. A culture that prompts decisions to pull a play about topics that are relevant to students, and to us. BYU is preparing LDS students to engage the larger world, perhaps we should give it the latitude to do so?

Corianton - A Story of Unholy Love - Juvenile Instructor 11/1931 - ht Ardis Parshall

Long thought lost, it resurfaced again seven decades later when Park’s surviving daughters donated what is suspected to be the only print in existence to the Harold B. Lee Library’s L. Tom Perry Special Collections department. After a three year digital restoration project, the film has been preserved for historians (and, hopefully, the public) to view and appreciate as an important historical relic in the LDS film genre.

Frankly, the story behind the film is much better than the actual product. Ardis Parshall documents the history in a screamingly funny essay over on Keepapitchinin, and follows up with an equally entertaining essay on Orestes Utah Beane, the writer of the play and film. Seriously, go read her posts, they will give you a much better appreciation of the film than this review ever will.

The film actually opens in impressive fashion, with grand sets of Zarahemla and hundreds of actors all set against a fine musical score. It quickly moves into dialogue-heavy scenes introducing the main characters of Prince Seantum (a fictional character created by B.H. Roberts in his serialized novella), Korihor, Alma, Corianton, and Shiblon.

The first scenes are promising, as they touch in dramatic fashion Korihor’s preaching and echo the debates of the turbulent 1920′s (and, timelessly, echo debates today). Included in these first few minutes is a fairly shocking special effect as Korihor is struck down by a lightening bolt (Industrial Light and Magic this is not, but for 1931? Not bad).

But the film quickly devolves into a poorly-paced series of scenes full of forced dialogue, mediocre acting, and horribly funny fighting. And I’m being generous. Pointing out that this film was produced in the 1930′s does not redeem it. As I tweeted my 140 character review after leaving the library:

Short review of Corianton: By today’s standards, it wasn’t a very good movie. But by 1931 standards? Well, it wasn’t a very good movie.

Corianton – A Story of Unholy Love is black and white, with sound, and would probably earn a PG-13 rating today. There is some brief female nudity/near-nudity, largely just an incidental side shot. It follows the key scene depicting the seduction of Corianton, complete with dancing women and free-flowing wine. In the remarks before the screening, the staff at Special Collections and the family tried to put this in context with other productions from this time period, and seemed genuinely concerned about the reception of potentially risque scenes.

Those concerns may be appropriate for the LDS audience, but I think they are overblown. Viewed in 2009 the limited costume coverage is unremarkable, and the hip-grinding choreography is fun but chaotic and unimpressive. Honestly? Beyonce’s music video has more skin and hip-grinding action. (Hat tip: Kanye)

At 147 minutes, it is about 117 minutes too long. It’s heavy on dialogue, it moves slowly, the choreography is a mess, and the fights are laughable.

But viewed as an interesting project from the early years of LDS film, it’s worth the time. At least once. And who knows? It might be fun to watch this in a campy, cult-film fashion, dressing up (or down) in the costumes, repeating dialogue, and doing a little bit of hip-grinding dancing.

We desperately need an alternative to Saturday’s Warrior. Corianton just might have the makings of a hit.

My brother’s new wife curls up against him on the pew, toying with his hair. Two of my little girls sit on his lap. A third stands on the bench next to him to better rub his back. He stares rigidly at the speaker and blushes. His wife smirks.

A morose priest slouches morosely to the podium and morosely gives a 15-minute talk he wrote himself. He morosely bears his testimony and sinks back into his chair.

My girls tire of my brother. They squall up and down the bench, bearing their testimony in ribbons and ruffles of the natural man.

Comment at the Junior Ganymede.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great acommandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Thus Christ’s summary of the Mosaic law.

But Christ came to fulfill the law. He gave a new commandment:

As I have loved you, love one another.

Loving our neighbors the way we love ourselves is no longer enough. We must love our neighbors with the love that Christ has–swift, implacable, the love that moves the stars.

Comment here.

He tells the Nephites that they are “lifted up in the pride of their hearts.” . He says that “pride” and “being proud in your heart” are “abominable to him who created all flesh.” He is not pulling punches.

But then he says,

And now I make an end of speaking unto you concerning this pride. And were it not that I must speak unto you concerning a grosser crime, my heart would rejoice exceedingly because of you.

He then speaks against unchastity. So according to Jacob, pride is bad but sexual sins are lots, lots worse.

That’s interesting because, well, President Ezra Taft Benson said differently.

He gave a talk famous among Mormons called Beware of Pride. Like Jacob, he’s against it, but he doesn’t say that pride is relatively minor when compared to sexual sin.

In fact, President Benson says that

Pride is the universal sin, the great vice. Yes, pride is the universal sin, the great vice.

President Benson draws heavily on C.S. Lewis, who also thought that pride was the worse sin, certainly worse than unchastity. Remember The Great Divorce? The sinner who is afflicted with sexual sin (in the form of a lizard) is in a bad way, but the sinners who suffer from naked pride are much worse off. The sexual sinner repents and sees his sin turn to glory. The proud sinners do not and are condemned to hell.

Each prophet has a message for his own time, so they can contradict each other. But we should go out of our way to avoid dismissing *anything* we have that came through one of God’s mouthpieces. So how to reconcile the American prophet Ezra Taft Benson with the Nephite Prophet Jacob?

My opinion: the key is in President Benson’s statement that “pride is the universal sin.” Unlike Jacob, he is not talking about pride as one specific kind of sin. He is talking about pride as the common factor in every sin. If President Benson had written Jacob 2, he would have denounced the pride that led the Nephites to get wealth and think well of themselves, but he would have denounced even more the pride that led them to use women as status symbols and tools for the satisfaction of lust.

There’s pride, and then there’s pride.

Comment here.

[they] are necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens

So, the deepest, most mystical, most mind-blowing things are . . . passwords? Secret handshakes? Door codes? Jon Stewart says, “Really, Brigham Young? Angel security guards. Really?”

How crude. How earthy. How unspiritual. Its like God is some kind of man and salvation is a thing and the Kingdom isn’t a metaphor. Really.

Mormonism is the deal God makes us:
Less vanity, more reality.
Less discussion, more answers.
Less everywhere, more somewhere.
Less theology, more God.

A prophet has no honor in his own country, Jesus says. In Mormonism, God asks us to honor a prophet from our own country. He asks us to honor a God from our own country.

If I had to bet, I’d bet that the Navajo didn’t really used to do that, or if they did they didn’t do it to all adulterers, male and female, in-group or out-group, alike. But that’s not the point. Adultery is something that matters a lot to people. It hits them in the gut. And widespread tolerance of adultery is an acid to the institution of marriage. But our law hardly does anything about it.

Today Maggie Gallagher proposed a revived adultery tort (alienation of affection) that would make the other man or the other woman liable to the wronged spouse. Something like it sounds like a good idea to me.

I would also favor making adultery a prominent factor in determining custody in a divorce. Making adultery a crime again has its attractions to, though whether we should have laws on the books that rarely get enforced is a question.

My (limited) understanding is that a law to this effect has been in place for awhile but that the current budget bill overrides this law. The amendment that was just defeated sought to restore it.

I suppose a Mormon could make an argument for involuntary sterilization under some circumstances. Is there any Mormon argument to be made coerced abortion? I don’t see any, but the bloggernacle often surprises me. What about this amendment–is there anyone out there convinced that the United Nations Population Fund is doing such good work that the good outweighs the bad? Or has China been misrepresented and local authorities there aren’t really coercing abortions like people say?

When I was a law clerk, I worked on a fair number of immigration cases. Chinese often claimed asylum because of fear of coerced abortion or sterilization or severe persecution for having more than one kid. Under the circumstances, they would have an incentive to lie, of course. But much of the evidence, including some medical evidence, seemed credible to me. Still, the scope of the problem might be exaggerated, at least.