Peculiar Portrayals

Collection of essays analyzing the role and treatment of Mormons and Mormonism in popular media: film, television, theater, and books.

With this helpful guide, preachers can find new and powerful resources for preaching in Johannine language and thought, as well as its use of narrative and discourse. It combines the practical with proposals for understanding the Gospel and 1 John.

Renowned historian Richard Lyman Bushman presents a vibrant history of the objects that gave birth to a new religion. According to Joseph Smith, in September of 1823 an angel appeared to him and directed him to a hill near his home. Buried there Smith found a box containing a stack of thin metal sheets, gold in color, about six inches wide, eight inches long, piled six or so inches high, bound together by large rings, and covered with what appeared to be ancient engravings. Exactly four years later, the angel allowed Smith to take the plates and instructed him to translate them into English. When the text was published, a new religion was born. The plates have had a long and active life, and the question of their reality has hovered over them from the beginning. Months before the Book of Mormon was published, newspapers began reporting on the discovery of a "Golden Bible." Within a few years over a hundred articles had appeared. Critics denounced Smith as a charlatan for claiming to have a wondrous object that he refused to show, while believers countered by pointing to witnesses who said they saw the plates. Two hundred years later the mystery of the gold plates remains. In this book renowned historian of Mormonism Richard Lyman Bushman offers a cultural history of the gold plates. Bushman examines how the plates have been imagined by both believers and critics--and by treasure-seekers, novelists, artists, scholars, and others--from Smith's first encounter with them to the present. Why have they been remembered, and how have they been used? And why do they remain objects of fascination to this day? By examining these questions, Bushman sheds new light on Mormon history and on the role of enchantment in the modern world.

What do Americans think about Mormons - and why do they think what they do? This is a story where the Osmonds, the Olympics, the Tabernacle Choir, Evangelical Christians, the Equal Rights Amendment, Sports Illustrated, and even Miss America all figure into the equation. The book is punctuated by the presidential campaigns of George and Mitt Romney, four decades apart. A survey of the past half-century reveals a growing tension inherent in the public's views of Mormons and the public's views of the religion that inspires that body.

"When newsworthy violence occurs, mental illness is frequently blamed. This overemphasis on mental illness fuels social stigma and cognitive bias that exaggerates the link between violence and mental illness. But science shows this link is weaker than commonly believed and that numerous other risk factors are stronger predictors of violence, such as psychopathy, younger age, being male, access to guns, substance abuse, and anger. Because overemphasizing the role of mental illness leads to underemphasizing the role of these other risk factors, this leads to suboptimal violence prevention policy. Conversely, if the media, policymakers, and the public recognize these stronger, multiple risk factors for violence, then this opens up the door to developing and implementing more effective strategies for evidence-based violence prevention that will lead to greater public safety"--

This volume addresses the relationship between irony and popular culture and the role of the consumer in determining and disseminating meaning. Arguing that in a cultural climate largely characterised by fractious communications and perilous linguistic exchanges, the very role of irony in popular culture needs to come under greater scrutiny, it focuses on the many uses, abuses, and misunderstandings of irony in contemporary popular culture, and explores the troubling political populism at the heart of many supposedly satirical and (apparently) non-satirical texts. In an environment in which irony is frequently claimed as a defence for material and behaviour judged controversial, how do we, as a society entrenched in forms of popular culture and media, interpret work that is intended as satire but which reads as unironic? How do we accurately decode works of popular film, literature, television, music, and other cultural forms which sell themselves as bitingly ironic commentaries on current society, but which are also problematic celebrations of the very issues they purport to critique? And what happens when texts intended and received in one manner are themselves ironically recontextualised in another? Bringing together studies across a range of cultural texts including popular music, film and television, Isn’t it Ironic? will appeal to scholars of the social sciences and humanities with interests in cultural studies, media studies, popular culture, literary studies and sociology.

This is the first scholarly study to explore the ever-expanding world of online Austen fandom and fan fiction writing. Using case studies from the Internet writing community and publisher, Wattpad, as well as dedicated fan websites, it illuminates the literary processes and products that have given Austen multiple afterlives in the digital arena.