Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon by J. Michael Hunter (review)

For more than a decade, interest in Mormonism has increased as Mormons like Harry Reid, Mitt Romney, and Glenn Beck have enjoyed the national spotlight. Television shows like Comedy Central’s South Park and HBO’s Big Love, films including Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (2003) and Christopher Cain’s September Dawn (2007), and the Tony Award–winning musical The Book of Mormon (2011) by Matt Stone and Trey Parker have also contributed to what many have called a “Mormon Moment.” Once, Mormonism was a great mystery to many Americans, but that seems now to be changing. As popular interest (or curiosity) in Mormonism has increased, Mormon studies has doubled its efforts to analyze and explain this American faith.

Among the most unique works of scholarship to emerge from this Mormon studies milieu is the two-volume reference work Mormons and Popular Culture, edited by J. Michael Hunter, the Mormon studies librarian at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. Subtitled “The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon,” this reference work offers an eclectic and often surprising look into the many ways Mormonism has helped to shape American popular culture. Volume one contains chapters on cinema, television, theatre, music, and fashion, while volume two contains chapters on literature, art, media, tourism, and sports. Each chapter was written by an expert in the subject field. The chapter on Mormon theatre, for example, is by Eric Samuelson, one of the most respected Mormon dramatists working today. Other contributors include Michael Austin, Jessie L. Embry, Megan Sanborn Jones, and Robert A. Rees, all of whom have gained recognition in the field of Mormon studies.

The first volume begins strongly with chapters on Mormon cinema and television—including a chapter by Hunter on “The Mormon Influence at Disney”—that surprise readers with the depth of Mormon involvement in the American entertainment industry. For example, we learn that, early in the twentieth century, several enterprising Mormons embraced filmmaking as a way to share the Mormon message, producing silent films that recreated important events from Mormon history and scripture. While none of these films was commercially successful, they all foreshadowed more successful works of a century later, including Richard Dutcher’s God’s Army (2000) and Mitch Davis’s The Other Side of Heaven (2002). We also learn that Mormons have helped to establish Pixar, the successful animation studio; invented the television; produced countless plays in Utah and New York City; designed swimwear for Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield, and Joan Crawford; and been the source of controversy on reality TV.

The slightly longer second volume expands the scope of the project with chapters on such topics as Mormon stereotypes in popular fiction; the Mormon themes in Stephenie Meyer’s hugely successful Twilight franchise; Mormon comics and cartoonists; tourism at Mormon historical sites; and Mormon professional athletes. This volume also contains biographical chapters on influential Mormons like journalist Jack Anderson, who earned the ire of the Nixon administration for his reporting on Watergate; pundit Glenn Beck, whose controversial media empire and bombastic personality have made him one of the most recognizable Mormons today; and racecar driver Ab Jenkins, whose clean living and record-breaking car “Mormon Meteor” brought racing in Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats into the national spotlight. While this volume contains less surprising information than the first—Meyer’s and Beck’s Mormon connections, for example, are already well established—it nevertheless offers a wealth of little-known information about the much less visible Mormon literary and artistic scene. Christopher Kimball Bigelow’s chapter on Mormon fiction, for instance, provides the best and most up-to-date overview of the genre. Theric Jepson’s chapter on the history of Mormon comics and cartoonists is perhaps the only history of its kind.

Overall, Mormons and Popular Culture is an excellent resource for...