nervousIt's not like there's been a whole lot of discussion of this movie in our lives lately, but it would come up occasionally, so we would think about what it was that made us so sad when we saw it. I think part of it really is what we discussed in our reaction post back when we first saw it, but there's something else we've identified that is really a lot less of our business, and yet...
The main thing is Twitter. We stopped going to Twitter partly because it wasn't really any more informative than any of the other internet stuff we follow, partly because it took up more of our time than we liked, and partly because more than giving us happy fun things to think about, we read a lot of tweets (and articles linked from tweets) that made us feel...really a bit ill.
One of the main things causing this was The Book of Mormon: The Musical. We followed some celebrities on Twitter, and some of them liked this musical. A lot. And to be fair, we haven't seen it, but we did read Ken Jennings's review of it, and it seemed like the musical, too, would have made us feel ill. Like it perpetuates...I don't know what ideas, but some ideas about our religion that make it "okay" to hate us or think of us as mentally challenged.
One of the celebrities that was an avid support of the musical made an appearance in The Muppets, and after that, it was hard to see a cameo and not think, "I bet they liked that musical, too."
We don't talk about it a whole lot, but our religion is really important to us. Maybe we already talk about it more than people are comfortable with (and we hope that uncomfortable people will kindly ignore those posts). It's hard to put it into words, or to explain why, but it's not something we can just stop doing because it's uncool, or because you have to be mentally challenged to agree with it. In fact, we think we're not mentally challenged, but we feel very strongly about our beliefs, to the point where we would say we know the LDS Church is true. (Whether or not everyone in the church does everything right all the time is another story entirely.)
But the point is, watching the movie, it was easy to think, "None of these people would ever be my friend." And not because we wouldn't get along, or our personalities clashed. Just because we identify with the wrong group. Last time we went to Disneyland, I mentioned someone giving us her email address. My first thought when I got it was, "I can't email her! She'll find out we're Mormon and hate us!" (We haven't emailed her yet, but that's not why.) I was genuinely terrified. In fact (because we haven't emailed her), I'm still not convinced it's not true.
We know some people will think, "Then what about the groups that your church bullies? How do you think they feel?" Well, it's true that we disagree with certain groups, but it's actually against our church's teachings to bully anyone, and we hope you'll agree that we've shown by example that not everyone in our church is a hateful bigot.
...And I don't really know where we're going with this. Just wanted to vocalize (er...write down) some thoughts. I think the main thing is that labels are bad. There are good and bad people in every group, and we can't make generalizations based on the limited information labels provide. And that goes for labeling yourself, too. You can't just assume that everything you do is right just because "I'm in the good group."
Today I'm thankful for getting to be helpful at the Family History Center last night, the cathartic effect of translating Chisame (though on the other hand, it's possible that it's less "catharsis" and more "bad influence"), having plans to have a Cheesy Bites Pizza for dinner, the real Book of Mormon, and being given cupcakes today.
