Well, what a weekend it was.
(And I’m not talking about the ongoing attempted coup by the Muskrat - I recommend following Alt National Parks, Heather Cox Richardson, and Rebecca Solnit for updates and ways you can resist. In addition to passing along information on social media, I have been calling representatives daily. Phones are seriously busy today. Do what you can - resistance to fascism is going to have so many facets, and everyone can do something.)
But, for today, I am going to talk about what I saw on stage.
First, on Friday, I took an adult kid to see Avenue Q at our local theater, Ovation. Second, I joined my wife’s group of knitting friends to see the traveling production of The Book of Mormon.
Both of these plays are transgressive, irreverent, shocking, borderline obscene, and funny as hell. (And literally hell in one case…) They are also related.
For reasons I cannot understand, a lot of people have no idea that The Book of Mormon was created by the South Park guys. Really? How did they miss that? South Park was also a huge influence on the writers of Avenue Q. In turn, Avenue Q itself influenced The Book of Mormon.
I feel silly giving a warning like this, but apparently people are clueless. Both of these plays are not for children. Don’t let the puppets in the one, or the Mormons in the other, make you think these are good clean fun. They aren’t. They are good, aggressively filthy, fun.
To be clear: puppets having sex on stage, discussion of pornography and sexuality in the one case; graphic discussion of female genital mutilation, rape of infants, and beastiality in the other. So, yeah, this may or may not be for you. South Park. Got it?
The reason both of these plays are as fun as they are, though, is that they are wicked satire, not just vulgarity for its own sake.
Avenue Q subverts the good-intentions liberalism of Sesame Street with some uncomfortable truths about human nature and human systems.
The Book of Mormon takes on not just LDS doctrines (which it does) but also the problem of religion generally, and “White Savior” missionary work specifically.
Both plays are funny - and uncomfortable - because they present truth.
Since I saw it first, I’ll talk about Avenue Q first.
The premise is very much a Sesame Street spoof - the neighborhood, the local characters, human and puppet. There are the conflicts, the resolutions, the happy ending.
But, this is a good bit more gritty, and often surreal. Rather than the beloved Maria, we get…Gary Coleman. Who, in this timeline, after losing his money, went to work as a building Super. Kind of sadly, this is a better ending than the real-life Coleman got.
Leaving that aside, though, Liz B. Williams was hilarious in the role, getting the mannerisms and the delivery of iconic lines so very right. I did realize I am old, however, because this stuff went right over the head of my kid, who has never seen Diff’rent Strokes.
Instead of Bert and Ernie, we get Rod and Nickie. And we do not have to speculate if Rod is gay - he clearly is, even if he isn’t entirely out to himself.
We also get the cute couple, Kate and Princeton, who get together, break up, and are reconciled. And, well, a bit of a Miss Piggy clone, Lucy the Slut, to provide some villainy.
Rounding out the puppet cast is Trekkie Monster, who is a porn-addicted version of Oscar.
We can’t forget the humans either. In addition to Gary Coleman, we have Brian and his mail-order bride Christmas Eve.
Wait! There’s more too: the Bad Idea Bears, which are pretty much what you get instead of an angel and devil on the shoulders - they are in full agreement about doing stupid things. In fact, I rather suspect that a number of people I know personally and professionally do in fact have their own Bad Idea Bears.
The plot is simple enough. Will Kate and Princeton find love with each other? Will Rod ever find a soulmate? Will Kate get to leave her dead-end job and realize her dream to open a school for Monster children? Will Christmas Eve ever get Brian to marry her? Will Lucy the Slut and the Bad Idea Bears ruin everything?
The cast was excellent, as has been the case at Ovation for years. The live music was welcome as well - and I know most of the band. (We have a great music scene here in Bakersfield, with a lot of really awesome people.)
I’ll give a particular shout-out to Zachary Gonzalez (as Rod), who is apparently good at everything. His puppeteering was particularly emotive, with his own body language mirroring the puppet.
It isn’t as easy as one might think to make puppets truly come to life, but this production really did, and all those involved should feel proud of their work. I won’t name everyone, but you know who you are, and I appreciated the fine work.
The songs are worth mentioning - both musicals have wicked funny lyrics. For example, “It Sucks to be Me” is the perfect satire of the self esteem genre endemic to kids television. (Not that I am against self esteem, but….it needs a bit of parody now and again.) “The Internet is for Porn” is also hilarious. And plenty pointed. The hypocrisy of religious folks regarding this is incredible - it is well proven that porn consumption is highest in religious communities, and the more Fundie the community, the higher (and more transgressive) the use. One could, um, speculate as to causes here.
The two best songs, though, were “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “Schadenfreude.”
Everyone's a little bit racist
Sometimes.
Doesn't mean we go
Around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find
No one's really color blind.
Maybe it's a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgments
Based on race.
If we all could just admit
That we are racist a little bit,
Even though we all know
That it's wrong,
Maybe it would help us
Get along.
There is so much truth in this. Despite what certain people claim, nobody is truly color blind. We all have our biases and assumptions, but more than that, we live in a society filled with unspoken and unacknowledged beliefs surrounding race. (And sex and gender as well…) We swim in the water, so to speak.
One of the first steps toward making things better is to acknowledge that all of us are at least a little bit racist (and sexist.) Once you see something, you can work toward fixing it, right? And also working as a society toward norms that work for everyone.
Making the distinction between bias and behavior helps, as does focusing more on positive steps towards dismantling the systems that perpetuate inequality rather than white people competing at performative wokeness.
(Last year, Ovation performed The Thanksgiving Play, written by Native American playwright Larissa Fasthorse, which skewers white performative wokeness really well.)
As I noted in my post about that play, here in Bakersfield, in the Trump Era, I see a lot more aggressive bigotry than performative wokeness, but mileage varies. My hope is that our current emergency will lead to more real action, and less posturing.
And then there is “Schadenfreude.” Wow. What a great song. And again, pointing out human foibles. We shouldn’t pretend that we don’t ever take pleasure in other peoples’ pain. Because we absolutely do.
GARY COLEMAN:
Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy
NICKY:
I'll say.
GARY COLEMAN:
And when I see how sad you are
It sort of makes me...
Happy!
NICKY:
Happy?!
GARY COLEMAN:
Sorry, Nicky, human nature-
Nothing I can do!
It's...
Schadenfreude!
Making me feel glad that I'm not you.
NICKY:
Well that's not very nice, Gary!
GARY COLEMAN:
I didn't say it was nice! But everybody does it!
D'ja ever clap when a waitress falls and drops a tray of glasses?
NICKY:
Yeah...
GARY COLEMAN:
And ain't it fun to watch figure skaters falling on their asses?
NICKY:
Sure!
GARY COLEMAN:
And don'tcha feel all warm and cozy,
Watching people out in the rain!
NICKY:
You bet!
GARY COLEMAN:
That's...
GARY AND NICKY:
Schadenfreude!
GARY COLEMAN:
People taking pleasure in your pain!
NICKY:
Oh, Schadenfreude, huh?
What's that, some kinda Nazi word?
GARY COLEMAN:
Yup! It's German for "happiness at the misfortune of others!"
NICKY:
"Happiness at the misfortune of others." That is German!
Watching a vegetarian being told she just ate chicken
GARY COLEMAN:
Or watching a frat boy realize just what he put his dick in!
NICKY:
Being on the elevator when somebody shouts "Hold the door!"
GARY AND NICKY:
"No!!!"
Schadenfreude!
GARY COLEMAN:
"Fuck you lady, that's what stairs are for!"
NICKY:
Ooh, how about...
Straight-A students getting Bs?
GARY COLEMAN:
Exes getting STDs!
NICKY:
Waking doormen from their naps!
GARY COLEMAN:
Watching tourists reading maps!
NICKY:
Football players getting tackled!
GARY COLEMAN:
CEOs getting shackled!
NICKY:
Watching actors never reach
GARY AND NICKY:
The ending of their oscar speech!
Schadenfreude!
GARY COLEMAN:
The world needs people like you and me who've been knocked around by fate.
'Cause when people see us, they don't want to be us,
and that makes them feel great.
NICKY:
Sure!
We provide a vital service to society!
GARY AND NICKY:
You and me!
Schadenfreude!
Making the world a better place...
To be!
GARY COLEMAN:
S-C-H-A-D-E-N-F-R-E-U-D-E!
I’ll list a few of my own instances: I loved watching Tom Brady get dumped on his little candy-ass. I love seeing reckless drivers get pulled over. (And also truckers who obstruct traffic.) I love hearing Dan Snyder whine about how the team is winning now that he sold it. Hell yes.
Perhaps, in the end, Avenue Q is a more grown-up look at the messiness of living. By acknowledging our warts and less attractive impulses and encouraging us to laugh about them, perhaps we can, in a way, live together more peacefully, and make the world a better place. FOR PORN! (Sorry, I let Trekkie Monster borrow my computer for a second….)
Moving on to The Book of Mormon. Probably even those who have no idea what they are getting into are at least aware of the plot.
To give some background here, I have a number of Mormon friends, and have since I was a kid. California isn’t Utah, obviously, but we pretty much have a lot of everything. Many of my early string orchestra rehearsals and concerts took place at an LDS church in the San Fernando Valley. And we ourselves attended a megachurch for a few years that was just down the street from a Thai Buddhist temple - which has a great weekend street food event, by the way. I know where the mosques and the gurudwaras are in my town, and that is in addition to all the other Christian denominations.
So, I have had to learn a decent bit about a variety of religious traditions, including LDS doctrine and practice.
In the musical, a group of young men is being sent out on their two year “mission” that most LDS kids do after college. They are paired up - because that’s how Jesus did it back in the day - and sent off to various places around the globe.
For the two main characters, Kevin and Arnold, they get sent to Uganda. Kevin is the golden child, the perfect Mormon on the outside at least. Tall, handsome, and charming, he is horrified to be paired with the short and very awkward Arnold. Particularly since Kevin was counting on getting sent to Orlando instead.
They get to the village, to find that nobody has been converted, and the villagers seem far more concerned about not getting whacked by the local warlord, dying of AIDS or starvation, or drawing too much attention to themselves.
When the warlord kills a local man in front of him, Kevin has a freakout and leaves to try to get a transfer.
Arnold, on the other hand, smitten by a pretty local girl with the ambition of standing up to the warlord, finds himself pressed into service.
After an abortive attempt to teach his new students the stories in the Book of Mormon, he realizes nothing in there actually resonates for modern Africans, so he starts making up stories to address their actual issues.
Including things like “don’t try to cure AIDS by raping a virgin infant.” (How he does this is…hilarious.)
Shockingly, he ends up converting the entire village, and becoming - for a short while - the hero of the LDS Church.
Unfortunately, his students insist on doing a play reenactment of the Book of Mormon - as it was taught to them. Scandalized, the missionaries are pulled from assignment in disgrace.
But. Well, Kevin, having survived having the Book of Mormon shoved up his ass by the warlord as well as a dream about hell, seems to have had a change of heart. Either that, or his coffee binge put some courage in him. He and Arnold show up at the village’s confrontation of the warlord - and since Arnold’s love interest has told them lions ate them, he is treated like a ghost, and it all ends happily.
And, along the way, it’s a crazy ride. Be prepared for a lot of sex stuff (although not quite the same sex on stage thing of Avenue Q) and some definite dysentery.
One thing I was actually surprised at is that the authors are more respectful of religion than I expected. I mean, in a way, they seem to actually support the idea of using stories (which are clearly not factual) to make sense of life and guide good behavior. The play assumes good intentions on the part of the young missionaries (which certainly has not been the case all of the time in real life), and thus treats the subject with rather more grace and gentleness than I was expecting.
With that, let’s talk a bit about The Book of Mormon itself - and how it connects to my own former religious tradition.
Let’s start with this: the whole story about the origin of the book - as the play hilariously illustrates - is utter shite. Joseph Smith was a charlatan and made the whole thing up.
Furthermore, the story of the lost tribes of Israel coming to North America is not only completely ludicrous and unsupported by any archaeological or genetic evidence, it also is a version of a very racist myth created to dehumanize the Native Americans.
And that’s before you get into the historical examples of doctrinal racism.
But my point here isn’t really to disparage Mormonism, and certainly not Mormons. I have Mormon friends who are good people, and I admire the way that the LDS church actually looks after its own better than most other denominations.
I also take issue with grouping LDS with more control-based groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists. In my experience, Evangelicals are actually worse about shunning ex-members (example: my experience in my own birth family.)
What Mormonism is, more than anything, is a particularly American expression of religion.
It represents one form of adapting an existing religion to a new cultural framework, importing the new myths to go with the old ones.
And that is exactly the point of the musical.
Let me be clear here: Evangelical doctrine is every bit as made up and 19th Century as LDS doctrine.
American Evangelicalism (particularly as practiced by white people) is every bit as much of a phony-ass man-made made up bunch of bullshit as the Book of Mormon. You would be surprised how much was just made up here in the 19th (and 20th!) centuries, and appears totally weird to those outside of the US.
I should do a whole post on it, but everything from our eschatology (John Nelson Darby!) to our embrace of capitalism and Manifest Destiny as core doctrines to our hyper-individualist approach to society - it’s all made up and modern.
The doctrines that most of us raised Protestant generally would consider to be historic Christian core doctrines are mostly present in LDS doctrine. And as far as I can tell, Evangelicalism, if anything, rejects more core Christian practice than Mormons do.
The thing that really unites both, however, is a uniquely American (and 19th Century) syncretism - the fusing of American mythologies with historic religion to tell ourselves a story about our nation and our history.
To a large extent, this includes (in both cases) an attempt to absolve ourselves as white Americans for our deep national sins, which boil down to white supremacy. We exist here on North America because we displaced the original occupants. We killed many of them with disease, enslavement, starvation, and outright murder.
To build our economy, we enslaved millions of people of African descent, and continue to use our systems and institutions to preserve white social, economic, and political dominance.
To avoid feeling guilt from these sins - and continue to commit them as a society - both Mormonism and Evangelicalism use the new syncretistic myths to tell stories in which we are the heroes.
For Mormons, the myth of the lost tribes of Israel and Christ’s appearance to them in America serve to establish a birthright for white Christians to North America. No longer are the indigenous peoples the rightful inhabitants, but interlopers on land rightfully belonging to white Christians.
Evangelicals tell themselves slightly different stories - ones not quite as rooted in easily disprovable myths, but rather in our White Savior complex. Sure, we stole land, slaughtered the inhabitants, and enslaved people. But hey, white Christians are the new Israel, donchaknow, and at least those half-naked savages both black and indigenous got to hear about Jesus so it’s all fine and we are the heroes.
There are many more too. The “everyone gets a planet to colonize” is pretty clearly an extension of the colonialist impulse, and a justification of Manifest Destiny in the present life. Dominionism (aka Theofascism) in Evangelical circles has gained popularity because it gives theological cover for white supremacy (and patriarchy.) It’s all very similar, just with different stories.
This is literally what The Book of Mormon the musical is about.
The reason Arnold struggles teaching the Book of Mormon to Africans isn’t just that it is old. And it isn’t just that it is irrelevant to modern African experience.
The problem is also that the stories, because they exist to give absolution for white supremacist actions, it really does read as “and here is why we are allowed to look down on people with darker skin and oppress them.”
This is rather how Evangelicalism feels to those outside of it as well. Except you can also add in the justification of the oppression of LGBTQ people (worse than in LDS culture - which is why Utah has more - if insufficient - protections for LGBTQ people than Evangelical-dominated states) and grinding the faces of the poor.
Arnold’s epiphany, such as it is, is thus vitally important. He realizes that you can’t just tell the same stories in the same way and reach people for whom the stories simply don’t work.
Interestingly, it is Nabulungi, the young girl, who inadvertently reveals the full truth. The villagers aren’t stupid, and they know that Arnold’s stories are made up and laughable. They also know that the point isn’t that the stories are fact, but that they tell truths in a non-literal manner.
And my god, the line about this, which I am not finding directly quoted, but is essentially:
“You don’t think anyone actually believes that man fucked a frog?”
Where was this line when I needed it during my Evangelical days?
Man, I could have used it. There are so many things in the Bible that were never meant to be literal - not when they were written, not for thousands of years of interpretation. The pseudo-scientific literalism of Evangelicals is one of those very things made up as a response to the Enlightenment. It was an attempt to give a veneer of science to religion, and it worked as badly as one might expect.
Seriously, they are the only ones who think that man actually fucked a frog.
Now, all this is very funny and very on point. But the show does have problems.
First, it is embarrassingly full of stereotypes about Africans. They did re-write some stuff a decade ago to try to fix it, but I’m not sure the story itself can be entirely fixed. That said, I do think that one can read the whole thing as a critique of colonialism. But one wonders if there were a better way to do that.
As I experienced it, the laughs at the expense of the missionaries, at white saviors, at white guys in awkward navy blue and white (just like Gothard’s cult members!) were guilt free, and well deserved. The cheap shots at Africans, not so much.
In particular, the laughs about AIDS are likely harmful to our actual work to address the disease. One wonders if the stereotypes blaming African culture for the spread of AIDS is one reason the Republican Party is so hostile to USAID and the NGOs working to save lives.
I would strongly recommend reading actual African authors for a more accurate portrayal - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes to mind first, but there are others. Heck, even Barbara Kingsolver gets things far better in her critique of white missionary savior complex.
That said, I did find the good parts of the musical to outweigh the bad. One also must, as with Avenue Q (and indeed with many forms of deliberately transgressive humor), assume the rules of the genre. Critique what falls short, but don’t be too sure you get it right either.
Because this was a professional touring production, I won’t talk too much about the cast. I haven’t seen any of them before, as far as I can tell, so I have less emotional investment in them than I have in local actors, or the regulars at other venues we frequent. They were fine, the production was good, and the only real flaw was the terrible acoustics at Mechanics Bank Theater - where I perform all the time with BSO. It made things muddy, which is what the cavernous shape does.
I won’t quote the lyrics, but I will link my favorite songs:
Hasa Diga Eebowai - classic and hilarious. And a clear spoof of Hakuna Matata.
All American Prophet - which makes it clear just how American our doctrine is…
Spooky Mormon Hell Dream - one of the funniest songs ever written, and it looks like a banging place to go - beats anything in Orlando
Joseph Smith American Moses - the play the Africans put together
And, the final takeaway:
“I can’t believe Jesus called me a dick!”
I deliberately choose the title of this post. As a kid, while my parents didn’t start out Fundie, they did have some weird cultural hangups which got worse as I got older. Basically, they were like the typical Boomer white Evangelical.
One of them was their freakout about language. I get (from a religious point of view) the opposition to the use of religious terms in a profane way - although as an adult, I realised that “taking the Lord’s name in vain” didn’t refer to “oh golly” but to using God’s name to justify your hate and violence toward others. (Something, unfortunately, my parents and Evangelicals generally do all the time.)
Less understandable now is why English-speaking Protestants are so weird about the “nine Saxon physiological monosyllables” as Sinclair Lewis put it. Shit and fuck aren’t naturally dirtier than poop or intercourse - they literally mean the same thing. The difference is, the four letter ones were used by the conquered and less educated Saxons, while the others came from the more educated Latin and French used by the Norman conquerors. It’s just a lingering class thing from 1066 and all that.
My parents also had a real hangup about the portrayal of sex. Not that we didn’t talk about it in a clinical sense - I got a fairly good sex education from them. But innuendo, dirty jokes, dirty pictures, sex - or even making out - on screen? Those were real bugaboos.
Unlike many Evangelicals I have met since, they didn’t have weird counterpart, which is the fetishization of violence. You know, where Braveheart is the best movie ever, and Saving Private Ryan is fine, except for the nude women. It’s no big deal for kids to see human brutality, but heaven forbid they get horny. Whatever. In any case, my parents had a low tolerance for violence as well, although not as low as their tolerance for sex.
I was thinking of them regarding both of these plays, because they would have freaked the hell out at both of them.
And, my own baggage about this stuff hasn’t entirely gone away, and I still have a reflexive cringe at times. Seeing stuff like this feels really transgressive and irreverent. I mean, these days, I see the equivalent of Hasa Diga in scripture, but I’d have a hard time saying it.
So yes, a very irreverent and transgressive weekend, but also another step in my journey to freedom from authoritarian and toxic religion.
