From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #397 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Wednesday, July 18 2001 Volume 01 : Number 397 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:05:15 -0600 From: Steve Subject: [AML] Nauvoo Temple You can follow the progress made on building the Nauvoo temple at: http://deseretbook.com/nauvoo/ - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:53:14 -0000 From: "Tami Miller" Subject: Re: [AML] Artists vs. Illustrators > > To me, Greg Olsen is an illustrator, not an artist. > > > > It's not all that subtle a difference, in my opinion. An artist may >paint >a > > picture of Christ but it won't be Christ sitting on a rock, looking at > > Jerusalem. The artist is likely to show us an interpretation of Christ >we've > > never seen before. I think of Salvador Dali and his clean-shaven Christ >hanging > > magnetically to a cross both of them hovering over the globe of the >earth. >That, > > to me, is an artist's representation of Christ. > > > I'm sure Greg Olsen considers himself and artist. As do I. I feel the spirit whenever I look at that picture of Christ sitting over Jerusalem. It makes me think. It's not just a cardboard picture of Christ, it's a picture of him looking down on the city of Jerusalem, with heartache and real emotion, and it makes me think about what must be going through his mind. I also enjoy the `illustration' of the little girl praying before she goes to sleep. I find it moving. The detail is wonderful. I have that painting hanging over my little girl's bed, she loves it! It helps her remember to pray before she goes to sleep at night. It also shows her that she doesn't need me to sit next to her and tell her word for word what to say. I hope Greg Olsen continues with his work. I would fill my home with it. - -Tami [Miller] _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:49:14 -0600 From: Deborah Wager Subject: Re: [AML] (Andrew's Poll) Church-Sponsored Art > If Christensen is the one who did the Parable of the Ten Virgins, he didn't > do his homework very well. Although the people look exotic & Eastern, most > of the peoples in the Middle East wouldn't have had a pig in their midst. > Certainly the women that the Savior told about waiting for the Bridegroom > wouldn't have had a pig with them. Pork is considered unclean for food, as > an animal needs to have a cloven hoof AND chew its cud to be considered > acceptable. Moslems won't touch pork either. About 14 years ago I heard the artist, a woman whose name I can't remember, talk about this painting. The pig, being carried by one of the unwise virgins, was put in the painting specifically to show her uncleanness. Each of the virgins characterized a virtue or vice (vanity, satanism, gluttony--I can't remember much more than this after so much time). Harking back to another thread, that fireside was the first time I'd heard an artist say that she'd been told later about symbolism she hadn't consciously put in her art. Again, I can't give more specifics about this, but I know she printed up a sheet listing some of the symbolism she'd used that was available with the purchase of copies of the painting. Debbie Wager - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:49:38 -0600 From: Deborah Wager Subject: Re: [AML] Steed Family > Orson Scott Card said that some people thought the stories he invented for > the Living Sciptures tapes were themselves scriptures. He said that those > people needed to actually read the scriptures themselves so they'd know > what was and wasn't in there. Several years ago I taught a primary class (8-year-olds?) in which we talked about the story of Nephi and his brothers building the boat, and the kids' version of the story included, "and then Laman picked up the tool and said..." or something like that. That's when I started making sure the stories were read from the scriptures in class. Debbie Wager - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:49:37 -0500 (CDT) From: Rich Hammett Subject: [AML] Re: Writing About "Good" Mormons On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, D. Michael Martindale wrote: [snip] > Since we've beaten up on poor Jack Weyland recently, I might as well > beat a little more on him, and not bloody another author. (Remember, I'm > talking about a Jack from twenty years ago. I haven't read much of him > recently. Maybe he's better now.) In the world of Jack Weyland, the > Mormon boy meets a non-Mormon girl, and literally days later, she's > taking the discussions from the missionaries. Of course she ends up > baptized. This just doesn't happen in real life. [snip] Actually, this happened to me three times, once before my mission and twice afterwards. The third one I got to keep. She was also the only person I've ever baptized. (Finland was kind of a dry mission.) While I like to think of myself as far more cynical than everybody, for my life, at least, this plot is quite realistic. BTW, did anyone ever come up with documentation on the "no fiction in church mags" policy? My returned missionary e-mail list thinks that I made the whole thing up. rich - -- Rich Hammett http://home.hiwaay.net/~rhammett rhammett@hiwaay.net The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. --GBS - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 01:36:53 -0600 From: Scott and Marny Parkin Subject: Re: [AML] LDS Publishers vs. National Publishers Darvell Hunt wrote: >It's kind of like this: it's better to have sex with someone whom you love >as opposed to doing it in a hotel for money. It's basically the same >act, but the intent and the rewards are so much different. Theoretically, painting a house and painting a canvas are also basically the same act, but I'm not ready to honor Shermann Williams in the same breath as Rembrandt. Similarly, I'm not sure it's fair to equate writing to a paying audience with prostitution. If it is, then anyone who gets paid a wage for anything--be it writing, manufacturing, knowledge working, or performing--is just a different form of prostitute. In each case, you sell your passion or talent for money. You seem to be saying that one must either write for money or for love, but I simply disagree with the premise. Every choice a writer makes is a trade-off of one thing for something else, and I'm not sure anyone is qualified to look at another's work and declare this work to be a prostitution and that one to be a good and worthy offering. It's a logical dichotomy that makes no sense to me. I write for money and for love. I take the challenge of crafting stories that have both market appeal and that satisfy my own esthetic as the ultimate expression of art. Merely writing what's in your head is not art, in my opinion, and should never be confused for it. Art is work and technique and careful effort combined with enough trust of oneself to follow where a story leads and take chances on both technique and content. This basic discussion goes around often in pretty much every literary forum--LDS or otherwise--and people argue passionately on both sides of the issue. I went to a World Science Fiction Convention in 1996 and listened to some of the best editors in the business scream at each other for several hours about this same question. It's fundamental to how each writer approaches their work, and is an issue that will probably not be resolved by our little discussion. I won't argue that there aren't literary prostitutes, because we all know that there are. But to equate commercially successful writing with necessary corruption in the heart of the writer is a judgement that I consider neither accurate nor useful. And I'm certainly not prepared to name stories written only for oneself as the epitome of art. Some may be art. But art that seeks only to to tickle the fancy of the author is just another form of self-gratification that makes the author feel good but does nothing to build up the greater community. To me, art is that which goes out to the public and attempts to illuminate or expand the understanding of all the world. Until we cast our bread upon the waters, we cannot claim the title of artist; we remain dabblers. (If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear, is it Art?). We are each responsible to our own muse. If we betray our own esthetic, then shame on us for failing to be true even to ourselves. But to measure the work of others against a rule devised for one's own work is to do a grave disservice to the entire community, in my opinion. >Writing for the love of writing is so much better than prostitution >writing. But with the writing market of today, even the LDS market, >prostitution writing is what sells. and if you want to sell, you >have to write what the masses want. We agree on one point--if you want to sell, you must reach an audience other than yourself. If you want to reach a larger audience, you must choose how to present your story in such a way that it can appeal to widely different kinds of people. Perhaps that means simplification, but I think that's the easy way out. The best books both challenge and edify the reader rather than just pandering to broad appeal. I still think the highest expression of art is to produce work of value that reaches a broad audience. I just can't see quality and success as exclusive choices. >I think it might be helpful here to compare Richard Dutcher to Neil Labute. >I recently saw that _Your Friends and Neighbors_ by Neli Labute was on my >satellite dish, so I decided to see what all of the commotion was about. I >watched about five minutes of the beginning and changed the channel. I >didn't like it. I occasionally swtiched back to see if I had missed >something, and I still didn't like it. It wasn't an LDS story and >wasn't something that I considered appropriate for me to view, and >I'm pretty liberal when it comes to viewing movies. > >Now maybe that's Neil Labute's passion, I don't know. But it was NOT the >same passion that I saw in _God's Army_ or _Brigham City_, but I bet >it made more money. And if neither GA nor BC had made money, I can pretty much guarantee that we wouldn't be hearing about Dutcher's upcoming film on the life of the prophet Joseph Smith. If he doesn't make money at that, we may never hear from him again. Financial success means that the story reaches a larger audience. Getting a good message out to a large audience is always better, in my opinion, than getting it out to a small one. It's up to the author to get that message in there in either case, and is what separates good artists from merely ordinary ones, IMO. Whether I like Neil Labute's work or not, I can see little or no evidence that he's sold out at any point. He has consistently produced work that is intended to offend a great many people, and that has largely limited his broader appeal. From where I sit, he has been remarkably consistent despite the pressures he's received from all sides. I think that says much about where his passion lies, and suggests to me that he has remained true to his own passion. Every viewer has the right to dislike anything. But conflating personal dislike with righteous judgement and dismissal of a work's value is a step I'm not ready to take. >Did Labute write and direct that movie for himself or for the movie viewers >"of the world?" (I personally cannot say, but I have my opinion.) See comments above. If he was aiming for "the world" then I think he missed by a lot. Despite the critical buzz, he's not selling millions of copies. >Look at it this way: If Steve Young had gone to San Francisco and changed >who he was by living the life of a famous football player and forgetting >this LDS ideals, would he have "sold us old?" Steve remained true to who he >was and let everybody know who he was. He was both an LDS icon AND an >American icon, not just an American one. He played on Sundays. Sounds like a sellout to me. He wanted the money and the fame more than he wanted to keep the Sabbath holy. He's taught an entire generation of young Mormons that it's okay to break the Sabbath as long as you're really good at it, a lot of people like you, you get good ratings, and you talk about being Mormon now and again. (He's also made a great deal more money than Neil Labute.) Oddly, we rarely hear about the LDS players who choose not to enter the NFL because of Sunday play (there was a great BYU lineman here a couple of years ago who was drafted by the Raiders but refused to play; it got one three-minute segment on local TV and no national coverage at all). These non-players quite arguably demand more of our religious respect than Steve Young does. Or do they? Perhaps, each stayed true to their own passion and were honest to their own muse. If we want to judge muses then I think Steve loses out on this one, because I believe the most moral choice would have been to stay home on Sunday. Sadly, I have never been faced with that choice, and even if I had it wouldn't do me any good to judge Steve Young--my moral choices are between my god and myself. I think Steve Young is a good man, and worthy of our respect and admiration. But his situation does illustrate how personal taste can undermine our critical response and make us blind to the flaws in one artist that we condemn vigorously in another. >One thing that I dislike very much is when people explain what I said, >basically inerpreting my words to mean something else than what I meant. But that's the way the game is played. When you put your words out to an audience, you run the risk of being misinterpreted. That's part and parcel with writing fiction--everyone has their own opinions, the right to state them publicly, and the real likelihood that they will interpret meanings out of your work that you never intended. That's half of what fuels the discussion on this list, and most of the critical community. The only way to avoid being misinterpreted is not to play the game. We can console ourselves that the audience is artistically or intellectually bereft, but the simple fact is that reasonable people can and do disagree. Discussing how and why we disagree is a powerful tool in helping each of us understand how others of us feel. A forum like this one often generates responses that have little to do with the original post. Sometimes people read something and it causes them to think about something else and to argue that new point (your Lehi Free Press tale seems to bear that out). I know I do that quite a bit. If you feel that I've misrepresented your thoughts, I apologize; it was not my intent to put words in your mouth. But your thoughts did spark me to join conversation with Michael on a related topic. Your words helped me to think about an issue and publish my own thoughts to our little corner of the world, and I don't see how that's bad. >Now I suppose that some of that is my fault and wouldn't happen if I had been >completely clear in the first place, but you can't always write so >that everyone with a different point of view and a different >experience can understand. Be careful of conflating understanding with agreement. I understand a great many things that I don't agree with (like the Eucharist and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity). Whether I understand what you intended to say is a mystery that may never be solved, because neither one of us can climb into the other's head and verify our hypothesis. At some point we just smile and nod and walk away and trust that our words stand on their own. Walking happily away.... Scott Parkin - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #397 ******************************