Tuesday, August 30, 2011

People and Religions in "The Book of Mormon"

“ The Book of Mormon” is a Tony Award winning, musical comedic Broadway play about people and religions created by the creators of “ South Park”, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and the co-composer of “Ave Q.” The play highlights religions in a comedic way through Mormon missionaries and people of Uganda using satire and dark humor in the songs.


In the song, “Turn it off”, the creators of the play point out that Mormons like to be ignorant, just like the first verse of the song, “ when you start to get confused because of thoughts in your head-don’t feel those feelings- Hold them in-in-stead!” The song says that Mormons are good at locking their feeling away by showing three different situations in which normal human should not be able to not feel anything: having an abusive father, having sister passes away, having homosexual thought. The song says that sometime, despite these are serious issues; the song has a fun, happy tone.


In the scene in which the two missionaries arrive in Uganda, the creators show the contrast between Mormons and Ugandans. As said in the song, “Hasa Diga Eebowai”, the Ugandans have completely lost faith. The song is made similar to “ Hakuna Matata” from “Lion King” to show that the real world is pessimistic, unlike fictional, animated world. Again, although the song talks about death, the creators still put it in a comedic way.


Although, the whole play may seem offensive to Mormonism, the creator actually showed the admiration toward Mormonism. In the song, “ I Believe”, the main character goes through character crisis. The song shows the strong courage to not lose faith even in the darkest moment, which is one of the qualities of Mormons, they never lose faith.


Overall, the satire and dark humor in “ The Book of Mormon” helps people realize how there are two sides of different beliefs: either strongly believe in something or not at all , and it is better to have a balance between those, not like the Mormons or the Ugandians in the play.

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