The Book of Mormon - on the boundaries of political incorrectness
Photo credits: show’s poster - https://www.broadwayinlondon.com/the-book-of-mormon
By Pia Tasso
Blasphemous, racist, undeniably offensive. In a society that seems to be tending towards a hyper-vigilance to political correctness, how is it that a show that essentially gives the middle finger to the Mormon Church continues to be so widely acclaimed?
Winner of 9 Tony Awards including Best Musical, The Book of Mormon, written by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone has grossed over 1 billion dollars internationally and continues to be one of the most enduring Broadway plays. From John Stewart to Oprah Winfrey, the show has been overwhelmingly well received, so much so it would nearly seem out of place to put in question the legitimacy of its jokes and overall message.
Loosely, the show follows two missionary Mormons, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham – the former a bright attractive man and the latter a gullible man who adulates the former. Sent to Uganda on a missionary operation, they endeavour to convert the local population to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Living in precarious, dirty houses that are depicted to be Ugandan ones, they initially fail to convert the locals. Discouraged by such an outcome, they eventually start lying – making up stories to convince the people that Mormonism is relevant to them all. This eventually leads to their realisation of the metaphorical nature of religious accounts and encourages them in the spread of their new religion across Africa.
On paper, one would think that a show simultaneously mocking a religious minority and the colonised populations it has converted would spark some controversy. Perhaps the key to understanding the reason for the show’s surprisingly socially acceptable nature lies in the choice of actors to embody this synopsis – namely the Mormons and Ugandans.
One of the catchiest lines of the show might just be ‘I am a Mormon, and Mormon just believes’, evidently mocking the Mormons’ naïve credulity and lack of pragmatism. But could the same joke not be made just about any other religion? ‘Religion’, and by extension faith, arguably necessitate a degree of non-entirely empirically rational belief, in the contemporary Western understandings of science and factualness. In other words, isn’t it the very premise of a religion to ‘just believe’? It could be argued that the same statement could be applied to nearly any other religion – or in fact to supposedly ‘non-religious’ entities too. This might suggest that Mormons are the scapegoats through which to mock ‘faith’. But because 'faith' is so intrinsically human, perhaps we should consider the idea that our laughs also vent our own insecurities regarding ‘God’ and ‘religion’ in the broad understanding of the terms.
Photo credits: Julieta Cervantes - https://qcitymetro.com/2018/07/27/time-that-a-black-person-reviewed-the-book-of-mormon/
This recognition of the show’s broader underlying themes begs for a parallel with other religious groups. Would the show have been equally acclaimed if it treated Islam, and depicted Muslims as naïve worshipers who ‘just believe’? Or would it for the same matter be guiltlessly enjoyed if it poked fun at the Jewish community’s blind faith, considering their complicated history? Though this line in itself bears little importance, such analogies open the door to the reconsideration of the jokes that flow through the play, starting from its very title. Just consider the show being called ‘The Koran’.
Though these are only abstract speculations, my point is to denounce the bias that is intrinsic to our tolerance of political incorrectness, revealed through the boundaries of socially acceptable humour. The metrics by which we abide humorously are defined by an unspoken script, and the show is a contemporary example of those implicit preconceptions. This is not to question the legitimacy of the authors to mock the Mormons – their humour is somewhat beyond their control, predetermined by social norms and values. But precisely because of that fact, irony powerfully informs our understanding of the underlying socio-political dynamics that permeate our world.
Though the show may in part be ‘funny’ because it took an easy scapegoat to mock religion, we must not forget the other party in the show – the Ugandans. The script is flooded with racist jokes, yet it seems no one gets offended. To give one example, one of the running gags is a man explaining how he now has sex with frogs instead of babies to deliver him from his aids. Another character also complains that he has maggots in the scrotum, but they cannot get a doctor, because he is the doctor…LOL! In theory, those jokes mock the missionary’s conception of Uganda and Africa and thus serve more as a criticism of Western prejudices. But is that really so? The ironic nature and setting in which those statements are embedded make them acceptable. Irony is by definition ‘not true’, and getting offended would theoretically be a lack of humorous awareness. In this context, however, doesn’t irony serve as a façade to enjoy a good old racist joke?
This opens the door to an important theoretical debate surrounding the role and boundaries of irony. Humour and satire are irrefutable pillars of freedom of speech, and constitute valuable political tools. This being said, though everything can be poked fun at theoretically, we must recognise the blatant bias in the choice of groups that embody those jokes, as well as the underlying ideas that incite us to laugh at certain jokes. The playwrights disappointingly use irony to reinforce pre-existent dominant and racist narratives when they could, and arguably should, have challenged this very status quo. Irony is therefore powerful but also dangerous and I merely want to debunk the idea that one cannot take offense because it is ‘not true!’. Perhaps the key is that we should be more introspective of the boundaries of irony as a marker of the limits of our freedom of speech and the collective moral code we tacitly abide by. The Mormons and Ugandans are just defenceless props of our ritual of moral and intellectual ablution, and our laughs a vain form of penitence.