I finally got around to watching American Primeval. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed it. It was obviously Hollywood-ized enough that it’s clear the creators weren’t trying to pass it off as history, and I don’t think a lot of people saw it as such. (Plus the director actually had mostly good things to say about the Church when he was on Joe Rogan). Kind of like how it’s clear Quentin Tarantino wasn’t trying to pass Django Unchained off as some documentary about the antebellum South. No, it was blood spattering, over the top sensationalism, and it didn’t have pretenses of being anything else.

Conversely, Under the Banner of Heaven and their “Mormon historical consultants” took the patently absurd line that “this is historically accurate, and if you disagree you’re an apologetics scrooge,” I assume in order to try to stroke some kind of Streissand-effect overreaction from the Church that would get them views.

But anyway, it got me thinking about how some anti-Mormon materials can be so bad or over-the-top that it’s actually kind of good for the Church. I don’t think we lost anybody sincere with Under the Banner of Heaven, but maybe it, and American Primeval fits in this category, made us look so incredibly bizarre that it actually stoked an authentic interest in the Church’s story for some people. If I was told about a group that had horns that dug a tunnel under the Atlantic to smuggle plural wives out of Europe, well, let’s just say I’d be more interested in checking out a book about them than I would some Protestant group who split over some esoteric theological issue that nobody in their pews actually remember anymore.

There are some documented cases of converts actually coming out of sensational materials. Dan Jones, the super-successful missionary archetype, was initially drawn to the Church through Thomas Sharp’s Warsaw Signal attacks against the Church: “Through a careful investigation of the accusations I perceived clearly that it was impossible for them to be true, either because in their zeal they overstated the case or because they contradicted themselves in some way.”

John Corrill encountered anti-Mormon attacks during his conversion process: “Scarcely a day passed but I heard of some evil report against the new sect. These reports I need not relate. Suffice it to say, that every thing bad was reported against them, as I thought, that could be invented by man. I was always careful, however, to inquire after the author, and the truth or ground-work of his statement, and always found these reports to be without foundation. Apprehending there might be some truth in them, I went to Kirtland to see for myself, and whilst there, watched every movement with a jealous eye.”

Finally, less historical but more contemporary, when my dad was serving as a Mission President in Russia on of their best native Russian missionaries found out about the Church through–South Park; yes, that episode, (“Joseph Smith, dum dum dum dum dum”).

Now, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t more subtle anti-Mormon materials that can be damaging, just that with some of the over-the-top stuff like American Primeval or Under the Banner of Heaven, it gets to a certain point where I suspect it’s a net positive–(not that that excuses the bad faith of any creators who are trying to present it as a reliable history). The chance that the respective media will lead to somebody otherwise not interested into Latter-day Saints to look into the gospel at some point outweighs the slim chance that somebody who would otherwise be interested in the Church is dissuaded.