OPINION: It's almost impossible not to be offended byTheBook of Mormon. If it's not the language that gets you(numerous f-bombs are far from the worst of it) it might be the use of female genital mutilation as a punchline. It might be the characterisation of Ugandans as AIDS-riddled hut-dwellers. Or the large phalluses. Or the light-hearted references to paedophilia.
Or you might be Mormon.
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Andrew Rannells and Elder Price, centre, and Josh Gad as Elder Cunningham in the original Broadway production of The Book of Mormon.
At first blush, the followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints areThe Book of Mormon's main satirical target. The story follows American missionaries Elders Price and Cunningham, the former vain and over-confident, the lattersweet but socially awkward and prone to lying, who are sent to a small Ugandan village to proselytise. They, along with the other missionaries they meet there, are painted as having a relentless positivity borne of suppressing their true feelings - per the song Turn it Off, they have taught themselves to ignore grief, fear, doubt and homosexual desires. The missionaries are arrogant, self-righteous and, even within the musical theatre canon, extremely camp.
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It'soffensive. It's very, very funny, but it's offensive.
Richard Hunter, communications director for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Pacific region, told me that while he hadn't seen the show and didn't plan to, his understanding was that it portrayed missionaries as "somewhat naive and not really genuine" (which is in actuality a weak way of putting it).
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The Book of Mormon portrays missionaries as self-righteous, naive and relentlessly positive.
"The missionaries that I meet are really intelligent, good young men and women who've given up 18 months or two years of their lives to just go along and serve communities and help individuals who might need a lending hand," he said. "The humanitarian work the church does, which is mainly by missionaries and other volunteers, it's pretty significant I think in terms of the impact it has on individuals and families and communities."
Knowing a marketing opportunity when it saw one, the Church hadset up a Facebook pagefeaturing practicingMormonstalking about whatthe religion meant to them.
But Hunter questioned whyMormonswere frequently the butt of jokes about religious groups.
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Blake Bowden, left, plays Elder Price in the Auckland production of The Book of Mormon, while Nyk Bielak is Elder Cunningham.
"Imagine if a play that was a satire and a parody and in the same vein as this one was based on Judaism or Islam or Catholicism or Anglicanism," he said."Would people react (in)the same way? I just think it's an interesting thought as to why we're kind of a little bit of an easy target."
It is a good question with a few answers, one of which is - as the show makes very clear - some of the Church's beliefssound sort of wacky to the lay-person. These are parodied most explicitly in the song I Believe: "I believe that God lives on a planet calledKolob/I believe that Jesus has his own planet as well/And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri," sings Elder Price.
But the musical's target here is less specificallyMormonsimthan fundamentalism. The song's refrain runs "I am aMormon/And aMormonjust believes" - swap out "Mormon" for "Jew" or "Muslim" and it works just as well. Every religion requires a level of blind faith from its followers;Catholics believe in transubstantiation, Buddhists believe in reincarnation.
The trouble comes,The Book of Mormonsuggests, when followers don't see the forest for the trees - when they become so focused on the individual tenets of their religion that they fail to understand the power of its overall message.
In the number SalTlayKaSiti, a Ugandan villager namedNabulungiimagines Salt Lake City, which has been described to her as the beautiful seat ofMormonism.
"This perfect, happy place," she sings, "They have vitamin injections by the case/The warlords there are friendly/They help you cross the street/And there's a Red Cross on every corner/With all the flour you can eat."
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The Ugandan villagers in The Book of Mormon need humanitarian aid, not spiritual salvation.
Nabulungi doesn't need salvation of a spiritual kind. She needs humanitarian aid. If that comes in the form of religious missionaries - so be it.
The Book ofMormon'sultimate message is that it doesn't matter what the specific tenets of a given religion are, but that love, compassion and humility are positive forces in the world.
Ever sinceThe Book ofMormondebutedon Broadway in 2011, followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have been dang nice about it.
The Church's savvy official line has been only that they have no problem with the musical or anyone who wishes to see it, but they would encourage people who are interested in the Church to pick up a copy of theactualBook ofMormon, its core doctrine, instead of basing their opinions about it on a parody.
Mormons' niceness is probably another reason why they're an easy target for parody, but it's also whatThe Book of Mormonultimately loves about them.
The Book of Mormonis at Auckland's Civic Theatre until April 26.
Read more:
The Book of Mormon is offensive, sure, but it's got a point to make - Stuff.co.nz
