Talk:Latter Day Saints in popular culture

This page is not a forum for general discussion about personal beliefs, nor for Apologetic/Polemic debates. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this article. You may wish to ask factual questions about personal beliefs, nor for Apologetic/Polemic debates at the Reference desk.

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Religion Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Christianity Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Latter Day Saint movement Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Latter Day Saint movementWikipedia:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movementTemplate:WikiProject Latter Day Saint movementLatter Day Saint movement Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. Popular culture (inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Popular culture, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.Popular cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Popular cultureTemplate:WikiProject Popular culturePopular culture

This article was nominated for deletion on 2006 August 6. The result of the discussion was withdrawn by nominator.

A fact from Latter Day Saints in popular culture appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 August 2006. The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that the controversy over the portrayals of Mormons in popular media includes Arthur Conan Doyle's very first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2006/August.

The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to any paid contribution; see WP:PAID. For advice about reviewing paid contributions, see WP:COIRESPONSE. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk · contribs) has been paid by BYU. Their editing has included contributions to this article.

I recall seeing a South Park episode that was pretty critical of Mormonism, is there anybody who knows about it that could add it to this article?Gregmitch 19:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• From the original version of the page:

  "There was an entire episode, All About Mormons, about Joseph Smith and the origins of the Church. There was the Super Best Friends episode featured Joseph Smith as a superhero."

• — Scm83x ^{hook 'em} 20:13, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The South Park episode, while definitely poking fun at Mormonism at times, also makes pro-Mormon comments (well, at least, fairness to all religions), and since this article seems rather biased in its content, that episode would probably not fit in well with it. --ba 23:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • What this article is is sourced in its content. Nothing should go in unless it is accompanied by a cited source. There's nothing wrong with discussing South Park here, and indeed the 21st century section could benefit from expansion, but only if you can point to some TV critic who has actually analysed the portrayal of Mormons and Mormonism in South Park. If there's no such analysis to cite, South Park cannot be mentioned. Wikipedia is not for the personal analyses of television shows by its editors, per our Wikipedia:No original research policy. Uncle G 23:57, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• This section seems overtly biased, misinterpreting the use of Mormons in the show, particularly "In South Park it is only the Mormons who "got it right" and who go to Heaven after death," which A) is of little consequence, and B) could very well be considered to be satirical or sarcastic. Moonty 15:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I changed this a bit because Hicks indicated the show was a bit more offensive than this was implying. He states it had a serial killer who directly was inspired by Mormonism and that Mormon characters in it were all "oddballs." That said Cold Case, even though I enjoy it at times, is just in general a show that has problems with religion. In one episode a boy dies and it's found out he was on a Little League team ran by a Catholic priest. On learning this they instantly say something akin to "Oh we know what that means" and even though the priest is innocent the "Priests are all pedophiles" assumption is not really questioned or apologized for.--T. Anthony 00:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about the portrayal of Mormons in Mormon media, like The Singles Ward, etc.? The Jade Knight 08:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See also LDS cinema Cool Hand Luke 08:12, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does anybody know anything about the general Mormon reaction to the portrayal of Mormons in Tony Kushner's "Angels In America"? (Specifically in the HBO series, because I figure the play doesn't count as "popular media" so much.)

I've actually watched this with a girl who was raised Mormon, and she loved it, but also seemed to think that more devout members of her family and church wouldn't be too keen on it.

I'd just be really interested in how it would fare under Mormon scrutiny, because while it's a pretty scathing portrayal at times, there are also some really positive aspects to it...and I think the negative ones are fairly juxtaposed with similarily harsh reflections of Judaism, which is Kushner's own background.

Any thoughts?

Ohmynoti 17:16, 22 September 2007 (UTC)Ohmynoti[reply]

I added the npov-section template message to the Further Reading section. At first glance, it appears all of the references in this section are "pro-Mormon" oriented, which tilts the POV of the section significantly. It would be nice if this section had equal weight to so-called "pro" and "anti" material. Better yet would be to have (only) balanced material listed, though I'm not sure if that exists. tedder (talk) 02:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... I wonder if the article on "Portrayals of Jews in popular media" links to anti-Semitic material... 66.75.28.139 (talk) 03:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is The Prophet, the Gold and the Transylvanians too anechdotical to be mentioned? --Error (talk) 01:00, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome her persecution by members of her LDS church. Shouldn't that be in the article? --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is this page meant to list every time Mormons/LDS people have appeared in some work of popular culture (in which case it could probably be considerably expanded), or only those where they've played some significant role? I'd say the latter, in which case the 'brief appearances' in Burn Notice, Psych and The Strangers should be removed. Robofish (talk) 22:56, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this and a few other trivial examples, which I removed. This isn't the place to say "there was an LDS missionary in this film." That's bordering on original research to collect them here. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 23:17, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Latter Day Saints in popular culture. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060923063139/http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/041094.html to http://historytogo.utah.gov/salt_lake_tribune/in_another_time/041094.html
• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.moviecitynews.com/Notepad/2004/040120_pr.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 04:21, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]