Earlier this year, I heard that a TV series adaptation of Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer was coming to Hulu. The book title sounded familiar: I knew it was about Mormons, but I had never read it. I reached out to a couple Twitter friends to ask if the book was worth reading and if I should watch the show. After a couple conversations, I learned that Krakauer’s book was a flashpoint: though the book is generally scorned by historians, it’s been one of the top sellers in Amazon’s Mormonism category since it released in 2003. (In fact, the top 8 books as of this writing are all polygamy exposes of one stripe or another; #9 is the inimitable Rough Stone Rolling, so there’s that.)
I ended up volunteering to write reviews of each episode for Public Square Magazine. As I am not a historian (either of the Lafferty murders or of Mormon history as portrayed in the series), the perspective I decided to take was of a writer, and particularly a writer of Mormon fiction and nonfiction. (You can read an explanation of this perspective in the introduction to the series.) Again, as I’m not a member of the fundamentalist community, I tried to generally set aside the show’s portrayal of those parts of our tradition. But I do consider myself an expert on the mainstream LDS church, especially of the “Utah Mormon” variety, having grown up only a few miles down the highway from where the murders took place, though admittedly a few years later. My coverage resulted in me taking part in an interview with the LA Times about Mormon reactions to the show.
You can hear more of my overall thoughts tomorrow when the Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree episode on the series releases. (Subscribe so you don’t miss it!) But in general, I was really disappointed with the show. There is definitely a need for Mormon literature and film which isn’t one of the two extremes (faith-promoting perfection or anger-filled exposes). If this show had been more like Murder Among the Mormons, Educated, or Brigham City, there could have been more interesting discussions to be had about power dynamics in the church and the limitations of revelation. As McKay Coppins wrote in his piece in the Atlantic today, the show isn’t there for a complex conversation; it’s there “to serve a stereotype, to exoticize a people and flatten their faith tradition.” It’s a thesis driven show, not a conversation starter; and the thesis is one that every religious person in the world should be offended by, even if they don’t particularly like Mormons.
You can see all my episode-by-episode reviews on this page, or skip around to the episode you are most interested in:
Ep 1 “When God Was Love” & Ep 2 “Rightful Place”
Ep 3 “Surrender”
Ep 4 “Church and State”
Ep 5 “One Mighty and Strong”
Ep 6 “Revelation”
Ep 7 “Blood Atonement”
