Comments on: Perspective

By: mormonmagmeister

mormonmagmeister — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:51:10 +0000

Sometimes this sort of thing cuts both ways. There was recently an article in the Liahona that depicted an Armenian as looking like an African. The poor illustrator thought he would add some ethnic diversity but just ended up making the magazine look foolish and ignorant. (Armenians are white and the country is not ethnically diverse.) The story also appeared in the New Era, and oddly enough, someone from Ohio sent a letter to the magazine pointing out the blunder, and the New Era printed it. Unfortunately, I understand that the magazines are often at the mercy of these illustrators, who work on contract and sometimes don't deliver their artwork until right before the print deadline. Now, I hope everyone can look past this faux pas and enjoy what is simply a marvelous issue of the Ensign.

By: jjohnsen

jjohnsen — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:24:15 +0000

This is a magazine that has portrayed Adam and Eve as blond, fair-skinned, looks like they just stepped out of a BYU dorm. Can you believe any of the stock photography they use?

I remember giving an Ensign to a Chinese investigator that thought it was strange that they’d use pictures of Japanese people to illustrate a story of a Chinese member. Especially with the history between the two cultures.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:20:54 +0000

On the other hand, the man who abused my wife when she was a child is pictured in an Ensign article about emotional abuse. She freaked out when she saw his picture in the Ensign, and it didn’t help her when I pointed out that he wasn’t illustrating an ideal man. The Church won’t take action against him on a “he said, she said” accusation, but they can make the subtle implication.

By: Left Field

Left Field — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:24:10 +0000

Here's some lovely views of Sardis Lake showing Mississippi's famous stark red cliffs along the shoreline. Rotating photographs of the lake, marina, and ospreys. Southern Romantic Nights

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:02:24 +0000

#9 – The minister didn’t believe in a literal, physical resurrection, so a “resting place (of the body)” did not fit his theology – since the body merely would be decomposing rather than “resting” for an eventual rise according to his beliefs.

By: Jo Beth

Jo Beth — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:51:49 +0000

Does anyone know what’s going on with the gravestone controversy on page 37: “Anticipating the Resurrection”? I like the story but can’t imagine why the supervising minister would object to the words “resting place” on a headstone.

By: Ray

Ray — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:08:13 +0000

Mark, very good. The last paragraph especially was profound.

By: Ivan Wolfe

Ivan Wolfe — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:46:25 +0000

We were mostly amused, but it still bothered me that an article about a family that wasn’t “perfect” in our conventional ways ended up being portrayed in such a bland way.

This reminds me of the story Orson Scott Card tells of the time he worked for the Ensign. As he tells it (this can be found in his book A Storyteller in Zion), they wanted to show, in a picture, that the person being portrayed was inactive. So they showed the man with a pipe. He wasn’t actually smoking the pipe, but it was clearly his.

As Card tells it, they recieved several angry letters along the lines of “how dare the Ensign show a pipe! I thought the Ensign was a clean magazine! Are you trying to encourage sin by making it look like pipe smoking is okay?”

They way Card related it, it was clear he felt like this deluge of letter was from a vocal minority, but I’m just wondering if perhaps the editors of that particular issue thought “hmm – guy in polo shirt looking grumpy or tatooed biker? Which will get us more angry letters? Okay, guy in polo shirt it is” or something like that.

By: JA Benson

JA Benson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:27:18 +0000

I have an African AMerican friend who had an article published in the Ensign 16 or so years ago. The story was about her conversion story. The artist mistakenly portrayed her as white.

I have noticed that the Ensign has improved in the last five years or so in representing a more multi ethnic mix of people. I think that they have made improvments, but more certainly needs to be done.

By: Kristine

Kristine — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:26:10 +0000

Mark, I had the reaction you describe to that scene in the Whitney film, but then got a chance to talk to Margaret and Paul, who said that the disciplinary council was not handled according to the protocol in the CHI (or GHI, I think it was then), and that, in fact, the setup of the chairs was roughly accurate. (The background of the room, however, was still much more elegant than anything in a Mormon building!).*

And, ultimately, from the perspective of one being disciplined, of course it feels lonely and intimidating–the question of physical vs. spiritual reality adds still another dimension to the problem of perspective you describe.

*let me try to avert a threadjack by acknowledging that we only have one side of the story, that all of the church disciplinary councils the priesthood holders reading this blog have ever been in were undoubtedly full of love and handled precisely according to all the rules, blah, blah, blah. That may be perfectly true, but it still tells us nothing about the particular case Whitney heard about and tried to portray. We weren’t there, so our perspective is inevitably imperfect–we can’t know.