“Meet the Mormons?
What is that?” I asked myself when my sister me to listen to a new song by our
very own David Archuleta. Mr. Archuleta is from the same city as me, good old
Murray, Utah. In fact, we went to the same high school. All of this to say, I
was not opposed to listen to his new song but had no idea what the title under
the song was all about. I proceeded to ask my little sister about the title and
that is when she told me it was a new documentary coming out about our church.
I didn’t give it much thought after that, the song didn’t even strike me at
first but little did I know how big this song and movie would become, even if
just in the world of Mormons. The purpose of my contextual analysis of Meet the Mormons is to explore how
social media impacted various contexts as it relates to the film.
Then I started to
see it. “Nieniediologues” posted an Instagram picture of her talking to the
press about the film. Another post featured her and David Archuleta as she
mentioned “Glorious,” the song David sung for the film. This is when I realized
this show was going to be significant. The social media guns had been pulled
out; this film meant business. No surprise there since we live in a world where
promoting ideas we care about is at our fingertips. Paul Bond (2014) supports
this idea when he states, “The church is advertising the movie on TV and radio
in Utah, Idaho and Arizona where many of the nation’s 6 million Mormons live,
and then relying on the faithful to do much of the rest of the marketing” (para.
11).
This brings me to the first mediated context,
the social context. The social context has a lot to do with the roles we play
and the inherent rules that accompany those roles. The role in this case is
being a Mormon. Stephanie Nielson, David Archuleta, and many other significant
names within the LDS bubble, took seriously their role as Mormon as well as
social media user and went to work, posting and promoting. Post after post on
Instagram debuts people in front of movie marquee, raving about the film. The
social context has a lot to do with networking and spreading the word and that
is exactly what is happening.
One vlog I found
while researching the film, made by Shay Carl, was full of exuberance for the
premiere of the movie he was about to see, not to mention the fact that he was
able to meet Jeffrey R. Holland, a General Authority of the church. The impact
of the vlog and Shay’s excitement was important because social media is empowering
the cultural context. The LDS faith is a culture and when the public has access
to a blog that has as its star, a member of the faith who is so full of life
and thrilled about what he is sharing, that thrill is contagious and possesses
the ability to pique curiosity. “Okay, so here we are, at the premiere with the
other Mormons on Youtube…” says Shay with a zeal that makes you want to be a
part of something. My point is, social media is setting the stage for the cultural
context to be influential. Not only are Shay’s attempts representative of the
cultural context but it also proves the power of citizen journalism and all
that has come to mean.
An article in the
Deseret News hits on another cultural concept that is unique to this film.
“What makes this tricky is the bulk of the movie’s target audience-namely members
of the LDS church-are not expected to attend the movie on Sunday because of the
faith’s emphasis on Sabbath observance, Roberts said” (Evans, 2014,
Challenges). This speaks a lot about the
culture the film is about. Interesting to note though, in the same article,
Whitney Evans cites a YouTube video of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explaining that
the film “…is informational only, and not meant for proselytizing” (Leaderships
Report). The LDS faith and culture has received a lot of attention throughout the
years and through this film, which was first meant to be exclusively for
preview at the Legacy Theatre on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, the Church is
anticipating the public to be more informed about the LDS faith.
In my opinion, the
psychological context of this movement is paramount. When discussed in class, I
wrote down “emotion” next to this context and I think this is most adequately
represented by the myriad of tweets, Facebook statuses, and Instagram posts
that continue flooded feeds in response to the film.
Excitement about the film through
emotional responses like this really speaks for the psychological context of
the Meet the Mormons film.
