Mormon Folklore

ZD had a great post a few weeks ago for April Fools day. They called it: Renouncing The Philosophies of Women, Mingled With Scripture.

The title alone is brilliant, and it’s just a great tongue-in-cheek send up of several things they believe. I loved it.

In the comments, however, there arose some debate about the nature or appropriateness of satire in a religious setting. Obviously – as this is a site devoted almost exclusively to satire – I read those comments with interest (as well as a deep sense of loneliness and sadness). One of them suggested that there is no love behind satire, and that made me ask, once again, why I do what I do. I thought I would share my response to that here.

Elder Stephen Erastus Knudsen III, my “altar ego,” was the result of a satire class I took at BYU. It was a senior seminar class, and required a lot of reading and writing. And while there were certainly a few outside models for the overbearingly obnoxious and self-righteous Knudsen, most of it came from deep (or “shallow?”) within myself. One of the things I remember the professor (Gary Hatch) saying was that satire has a tendancy to “take over” — things come out that you may not have originally intended. that’s exactly what happened to me.

I took the name “Knudsen” from a guy I had met a few years early. I had corresponded with him by mail and then met him in person, where I pronounced his name as “Noodsen.” He immediately corrected me — quite irritably, actually — and said it was “Ka-noodsen” with a hard “K.” This struck me as funny, and it seemed to me that this character I was creating would be very particular to little details like this, and would insist that everyone say his name “the right way.”

“Stephen Erastus” just kind of rolled out — I don’t really know where it came from — it just sounded General-authority-ish to me (or at least how someone would label themself who had GA aspirations — you have to use three names, you know) and the “III” came because I am actually a “II” and I saw this as my baby (and also saw a certain desirable pretension in it).

As I wrote and developed a history and a mindset for this Knudsen character, I recognized deep veins in my own history and my own mindset where I had been terribly judgmental of others – terribly self-righteous – elitist, racist, misogynistic, overly-literal, unyeilding, unforgiving, intolerant – and what’s worse, extremely confident and justified in all those things, in that sense of who I was and what I stood for. Creating Knudsen was therapeutic.

But more than anything, it was funny. It just made me laugh to no end interpreting the world through Knudsen’s eyes. I have found a few people who find similar humor in Knudsen, but not many. Why? I think the answer has to do with psychic distance.

There was a time when I studied humor academically. I studied humor theories and started writing a dissertation specifically on “Mormon Humor.” I ultimately found the entire thing unbearable (and no, i never finished the dissertation, and will just have to be happy with a MA degree and ABD as a PhD candidate). There’s nothing quite as boring or dry as dissecting humor and discussing “why” something is “funny” (or what “funny” actually means). But I did learn some interesting theories on humor, and I think I understand it pretty well now — at least as well as an ABD can. And the connections between humor and psychic distance are pretty interesting to me.

Personally, as a former folklorist who had to skeptically challenge his own beliefs, I had to place some distance between myself and the things I believe. I couldn’t always do that (and Knudsen certainly can’t do that). But humor kind of forces that distance — I can “make fun” of a belief without actually “making fun” of me — or maybe it’s just that I don’t take myself or that belief too seriously, and that can feel very unwelcome to someone who does not want that distance.

For example, in my last post, I am making fun of certain beliefs I have had about magical energy coming from heaven and empowering the sacrament bread and water – a magical energy that can be blocked by white eyelet lace and directed where it is supposed to go. This is funny to me, because I recognize how seriously I used to believe that, and I feel superior to that former self now (the superiority theory of humor says that laughter is the sudden expression of a sudden euphoria brought on by a sudden sense of eminence – so the distance here is the distance of superiority).

I haven’t abandoned a belief in the sacredness of sacrament as a ritual, but I no longer view it as a magical mystery. It is much more human to me now – more real, less fantasy-based. But I can see how people without that seperation could look at what I wrote and think I am trivialized sacred things. And they are right. I am. In a way. Or at least I am using a form of humor to force a psychic space where some people don’t want it. Does that make sense? (of course I know some people will debate whether it is really humor or not if they don’t think it’s funny – well, I think it is, so neener neener)

Anyway. I have made some changes over the past few weeks to this blog to make it more transparent that this is meant as a joke – that Stephen is not real. I don’t want to bait people into discussions with a fictional character unless they know exactly what they are getting in to (and those kind of discussions – where both sides understand it is a joke – have been a lot of fun for me).

Is there love behind my satire? Yes. I don’t deny the ridicule and the trivializing that occurs. But to me, it’s like I am stripping away things I don’t like to get a clearer sense of the things I do like — of things that I love. I don’t like certain dissonant things I see around me at church any more than I like certain dissonant things that I see inside myself, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love my church or that I don’t love myself — and before we get any little factory comments, I’ll end it right there.

So that’s about all I want to say now, for the five of you who read this.

But to be completely honest, I mainly just wanted to use the pun “altar ego.” Ain’t I clever?