Mountain Meadows Hack Job

In case no one has noticed lately, one of the GOP Presidential candidates is a Mormon, and the polls continually suggest that Americans are at best uncertain about Mormonism, and many are highly skeptical about its motives. some say they won't vote for Romney because he's part of a cult and well he might cast this cult in good light.
So in the midst of this campaign out comes a film portrayal of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. This event is a dark spot in LDS history -- a Mormon group waylaid a wagon train heading west. According to the review below by Seth Perry, the intent is to blame Brigham Young and cast Mormons as a whole in very unwholesome light. Just as the Da Vinci Code did for Catholics, September Dawn seems to do for Mormons. It's too bad. I'm not a big fan of Mormon theology, but all the Mormons I've known in life have been good people. I'll not be voting for Mitt, but that's not because he's a Mormon. So consider this excellent response to an unfortunately timed movie -- that like too many films takes way too many liberties with history.

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Sightings 9/13/07

September Dud
-- Seth Perry

On September 11, 1857 , a group of Mormons and Native Americans slaughtered over 120 members of a wagon train passing through southern Utah in what became known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The event is a blot of abiding shame on the frontier heritage Mormons revere, and has been the subject of a number of critical, considered studies over the last 150 years. September Dawn, a new movie about the massacre directed by Christopher Cain (Young Guns), is certainly critical, but not so much considered. Cain's ham-fisted approach to sensitive historical details is standard enough for Hollywood fare, but two other interrelated features of the movie are gravely problematic. First, Cain presents the movie not just as historical fiction but as historiography—he wants the viewer to believe that there are details of the actual events which he is bringing to light, in the manner of a documentarian. Second, the handling of these "newly-revealed" details constitutes a bald-faced attack on Mormonism and, to the point, Mormons.

September Dawn is not a documentary; it's a disaster movie with largely fictional characters, and not a very good one. With the production values of a History Channel re-enactment, the romance of a Lifetime special, and the dialogue of a television movie-of-the-week, September Dawn operates according to the familiar historical-disaster-movie format, with a treacly romance set against a backdrop "inspired by actual events." Poorly-written disaster movies are harmless enough—sometimes they even win Oscars—but Cain contends that this movie is much more than a simple yarn set in a semi-recognizable past. One of the posters for the movie proclaims, "Who ordered the massacre, and why, has been hidden in a cloak of secrecy and conspiracy….Until now." The "historical background" text that appears on the screen at the beginning and end of the movie similarly lays claim to a "factual" representation of history. "Factuality," of course, is endlessly contested ground among historians, but no especially robust theory of historiography is required to undermine this particular claim to it—the main "evil Mormon" character is completely fictional, for starters, and Cain has said that the research for the movie was done "on the internet."

The major detail that Cain claims to have uncovered is that Brigham Young was personally responsible for ordering the massacre. The question raised by this contention is not whether it bears any resemblance to historical reality. Scholars are divided on the question of what and when Young knew about the massacre, because most believe that the documentary record doesn't offer enough material for a clear determination. The question the movie raises is why Young's involvement matters so much to the makers of this movie. Cain has said that he is making a point about religious fanaticism, with all of the weight that phrase carries in our time (note the date of the Mountain Meadows incident). While this point could have been made by sticking to local Mormon leaders whose behavior could well be called fanatical and who were demonstrably involved in the attack, Cain seems to feel that his point about blind obedience to authoritarian religious leaders is lost if he can't implicate the highest Mormon leader of the time in inciting the slaughter.

This obsession with Young's culpability takes on a sinister cast in light of the movie's general portrayal of Mormons. The movie features exactly one redeeming Mormon character, and he leaves the faith; all other Mormons are depicted in variously negative ways. In one representative sequence, prayers by the Mormon bishop and the generic Protestant minister traveling with the wagon train are juxtaposed: we see the peace-loving minister—who might as well be wearing tie-dye and sandals—praying for God to bless the Mormons, while the evil Mormon prays that all the settlers go to Hell. Elsewhere, Cain employs flashbacks to paint the Church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a brutal autocrat. In light of this tone, Cain's unhistorical flogging of Young feels like an instrument for branding all Mormons as fanatics through one of their most well-known and honored leaders.

A movie focusing on the demonstrated culpability of certain Mormons local to Mountain Meadows in 1857 might well be the affecting story of religious fanaticism that the director wants the viewer to think he has made. This movie feels like an assertion that Mormonism is inherently authoritarian and violent. B-movies should not be construed, let alone conceived, as vessels of historical truth; neither should even they have room for such dangerous and ignorant stereotyping. Those wanting to know more about Mountain Meadows should read Juanita Brooks's The Mountain Meadows Massacre. Those wanting to see an absurd but entertaining fictional movie about Mormons should rent Orgazmo.


Seth Perry is a PhD student in the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Comments

Mystical Seeker said…
Elsewhere, Cain employs flashbacks to paint the Church's founder, Joseph Smith, as a brutal autocrat.

Well, actually, he was a brutal autocrat. While his murder by mob violence was an inexcusable atrocity, we should not forget the event that preceded his being jailed and his subsequent murder; he and his cronies had confiscated and shut down a newspaper that criticized him as mayor of Nauvoo. I would say that shutting down a free press that criticizes a governing figure counts as being autocratic.

That being said, I also have known Mormons who were good people, and one should not judge individual Mormons on the basis of what Joseph Smith or Brigham Young did or did not do. Nor should Romney or any other politician be judged on the basis of their religious affiliation.
Anonymous said…
The reviewer is assuming a lot. His assumption that MMM was an isolated event of violence in Mormon History shows an appalling ignorance. All he would need to have done is what many who are not in post grad studies at divinity school have done. That is read some of Brigham Young's corrected by hisself for publication speeches. He indeed did preach from the pulpit the violence that is woven through Mormon History. The reviewer does a great violence to truth by assuming such a benign status to Mormon History and doctrine. Mormons are not free to this very day to remain in good fellowship in their church and question for instance Brigham Young's Adam is God the Father doctrine. While that is not murder it is violence of another sort. Yes there are people who are Mormons who are really nice people. I really prefer people who are nice to me because I am a fellow human being not a potential convert.
The point is we can love the Mormon people just as we are called to love all. But when you see something that is dragging a whole people away to hell, why not stand up and say something. Why bother to study history if you must be careful to not offend a certain group. By the way Smith did not just confiscate the Nauvoo Expositor, he had it destroyed and burned it. The printers of it had pled with Joseph Smith to repent of gross sins but wound up fleeing town at the threats to their life. The groups who are faithful to Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor, the first three prophet/presidents of the Mormon Church have blood drenced/pedophile laden histories right up to this decade.
In the 1980's the current prophet/ president of the Mormon Church was purchasing documents of antiquity that were embarrassing to the Mormon Church. This kept them out of the hands of the press and public. The archives of the church were having fraudulent forgeries made out of historical innuendo added to them. The criminal that Pres Hinckley was purchasing them from eventually pipe bombed two innocent people into eternity to throw Hinckley off track because he the forger had promised Hinckley more documents than he had time to produce.
Because of the twisted doctrines of the early Mormon leaders much violence has been done both by Mormons and those who reacted poorly to them. The persecution trail the church loves to paint is a very incomplete picture if the Mormon Church is exclusively allowed to tell it. But that seems to be the way our doctoral student likes it.
Alma Allred said…
Two comments: 1) Most reports claim that MMM took 120 lives--obtaining this information from a monument at the site. Your reviewer Seth Perry wrote that "over 120" people were slaughtered. Promoters of September Dawn have set the number at 180. Juanita Brooks explained in the 4th edition of her book on the massacre that fewer than 60 were killed, and Congressional testimony concludes that the number of dead was "grossly exaggerated."

2) Randy Gavin's comments could reasonably be linked to an article this morning by Dean Barnett "If You Don't Like the News, Make Stuff Up." His comments are basically nonsense from the claim that Brigham Young's personally corrected sermons are available for perusal to his assertions of pedophilia, murder and Mormon efforts to purchase forged documents in order to suppress them. (The LDS Church did purchase embarrassing, faked documents and published the entire text of the documents after the purchases--a classic example of how not to suppress something.) Gavin's claim that "Smith did not just confiscate the Nauvoo Expositor, he had it destroyed and burned it" is more than nonsense--it's a base falsehood. The press was not burned, and the city had the right to abate nuisances within the city limits. The decision to abate this particular nuisance followed more than 12 hours of public deliberation by the Mayor and City Council, the minutes of which were published to the city before the actions of the police department. From the Utah Law Review of 1965, this description is given of the police department's action:

"The marshal demanded the press, Higbee refused, the marshal opened the door (one witness said he ordered it "forced," another said "a knee was put against it," another named a man who had opened it; several said there was little or no noise or delay at its opening), Higbee left the premises unhindered, and from seven to twelve men went inside and carried out the press and type. Except for one minor deviation, all witnesses also agreed that there was no violence, and that nothing was destroyed or damaged that did not pertain to the press.105 The contemporaneous account of Charles A. Foster, one of the Expositor publishers, states that the police broke down the door with a sledge hammer "injuring the Building very materially," but in other respects he does not contradict testimony given at trial." (The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor Utah Law Review Volume 9:862)

The intent of the publishers of the Nauvoo Expositor was to incite mob violence against the Mormons.

Randy Gavin and Christopher Cain both think they can make stuff up about history, but Mormons have been very careful to preserve documented history which ultimately will trump emotional and false propaganda.
Mystical Seeker said…
If anyone thinks it is acceptable for a city government to declare a newspaper a "nuisance" because it doesn't like what it prints, and then shut it down, well then that is certainly an opinion. I'd love to see a mayor try to do that today and see how far it would go in the courts before it got struck down. Americans back then with a sense of what the First Amendment meant were as outraged then by the actions of Smith in and his cronies then as they would be now.

And the fact that the decision to shut down the paper was debated by a city council is neither here nor there. In a democracy, it is not under the purview of a city council, a mayor, or his cronies to debate whether or not to shut down a newspaper. It doesn't belong on a city council agenda. Human rights are often trampled on by majority rule. That's why we have a First Amendment.

The reality is that the act of banning that newspaper was in blatant defiance of the First Amendment. All the justifications in the world about how terrible that newspaper was doesn't justify it. Generally, dictatorial governments do not concern themselves with banning or censoring newspapers they don't consider "nuisances" or which print things they agree with. The "nuisance" justification is par for the course. Ask any newspaper publisher who has ever been banned.

Oh, lest anyone try to use the "libel" argument to justify what Smith did, city councils also don't get to ban newspapers on that basis either. Libel is a civil matter that is decided in the courts; if mayors got to ban newspapers on the libel justification just by having the city council pass a law, there'd pretty much be no free press at all.

No matter how you slice it, the decision to ban that newspaper and seize the press was a dictatorial act.
Alma Allred said…
That "mystical seeker" would "like to see this [tried]today" really avoids the possible validity of the Nauvoo City Council's actions by an appeal to presentim. Of course this doesn't happen today because of a process of lawsuits subsequent to 1844; but other municipalities did precisely the same thing and were upheld by the courts. In 1927 the Minneapolis newspaper Saturday Express was abated as a public nuisance by order of the county attorney. The case was appealed twice to the Minnesota Supreme Court and both times the action was affirmed without dissent. The court said, "The distribution of scandalous matter is detrimental to public morals and to the general welfare. It tends to disturb the peace of the community. Being defamatory and malicious, it tends to provoke assaults and the commission of crime." The United States Supreme Court reversed this ruling with a 5-4 majority, demonstrating that Joseph Smith was on solid legal ground in the eyes of 4 Supreme Court justices.

It's easy to say this was a blatant assault on the First Amendment today in 2007, but in 1844 and 1927 the question was far from settled.
Robert Cornwall said…
One of the reasons why I posted this review -- besides the fact that I do post the Sightings columns anyway -- was because of its timing. The film, whether it gets all the facts right or wrong, comes at a time when a Mormon is running for President. It seems to confirm in the eyes af at least some that Mormons are prone to violence and therefore should not be trusted. Like i said, I'm neither a proponent of Mormon doctrine nor a Mitt romney supporter, but I think we need to be careful about how we percieve folks in the present in light of the past.
Mystical Seeker said…
Sorry, but the "other people have also done it" argument doesn't hold water. Throughout US history, there have been violations of human rights against dissidents, and sometimes the courts have supported what has been done in those cases (much to their discredit). Doesn't make it right, and there have always been people in this country who understood that such assaults on human rights were fundamentally undemocratic and morally wrong. Assaults on free expression go all the way back to the Alien and Sedition Acts, and continued right on through the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism. The fact is that many people in Joseph Smith's time did object to his assault on a free press. The fact that there has always been authoritarianism in American politics does not alter the fact that there has also always been a commitment to free expression by many Americans as well.

All the excuses in the world don't justify Smith's theological fascism. His acts were an assault on freedom of the press.
Mystical Seeker said…
It seems to confirm in the eyes af at least some that Mormons are prone to violence and therefore should not be trusted.

I think that this is obviously not true of the overwhelming majority of modern Mormons, except perhaps for some of the fundamentalist breakaway Mormons like Warren Jeffs. I do have a problem when people make excuses for, or act as apologists for, any shameful actions that took place in the past (such as Joseph Smith's violation of human rights in Nauvoo). I think that in most cases, making excuses for events long in the past is mostly just academic and doesn't have any bearing on the world today.

One thing to bear in mind is that when one's faith is threatened by any suggestion that an early figure or founder of the faith was a flawed human being who didn't always do the right thing, then you get this whole circling of the wagons phenomenon. It turns people into apologists, and it closes down the mind. It is a shame that this happens so often in religious faiths. But there you have it.
Anonymous said…
I worked in Salt Lake in the late 80s. During that time, my father became terminally ill. My co-workers tried to console me by saying that when he had been dead for two years, he would have the opportunity to convert.
These people were well educated scientists. I could not believe my ears. Although I understand that they were attempting to be kind, their "concern" chilled me to the bone.
I have long since moved from that place, but I will never forget this.
It would not surprise me in the least if the Mormon church ordered this massacre. It is compatible not only with the history of that time, but of fanaticism at any time.

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