Review: Brenda R. Weber. Latter-day Screens: Genre, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.

Authors

Andrew Patrick Nelson

Keywords

Latter-day Saints, media, popular culture, representation, Mormonism

Abstract

For a religion whose adherents make up only 2 percent of the nation’s population, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has occupied an outsized place in the American media landscape of the new millennium. Highly publicized events like the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, the kidnapping of fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the arrest and trial of fugitive polygamist child rapist Warren Jeffs, and the presidential campaigns of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney have repeatedly thrust the Latter-day Saint faith into the national media spotlight. So have a variety of popular entertainments with Mormons as their subject, including the hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon (2011), the acclaimed HBO series Big Love (2006−2011), and the long-running reality television series Sister Wives (2010−). Today, the average person is just as likely to encounter a Latter-day Saint on television as at the front door. More likely, even. Yet, in contrast to the growing coverage of Mormon contributions to American culture, the representation of Mormons
in popular culture, and especially contemporary popular culture, has received less attention. Enter Brenda R. Weber’s Latter-day Screens: Gender, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Nelson, Andrew Patrick (2021) "Review: Brenda R. Weber. Latter-day Screens: Genre, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 8: No. 1, Article 16.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol8/iss1/16