posted
I remember when I first heard it. First, I was delighted to be name-checked. It was like a shoutout. This was before Mitt Romney, before the 60 Minutes special, and before Mormon cinema. I was just delighted to have someone outside my world aknowledge the existence of my world.
Secondly, I had to ask why it was funny, because I'd never heard of LSD.
Third, when I found out, I thought it was funny. The fish out of water element, the clueless bluffer element, mistakenly replacing the name of a drug with the name of a church known for being clean - it's a funny joke.
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posted
I'd be surprised if the writers even realized that "LDS" was an acronym for a church. My guess is that they thought it was an amusing way to screw up the term.
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posted
I think it's unlikely no one on the writing staff knew that "LDS" is an acronym for a church, but it's very possible no one on the writing staff connected that line with that acronym before the movie came out.
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posted
There must be somewhere a record of someone asking that question of someone who knows. At this point we are merely guessing, and our guesses reveal more about ourselves than about the movie or the writers.
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posted
If it was an accident, it requires the writers to be a little clueless but still stumble onto an appropriate joke. I suppose that's possible, although implausible.
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posted
I don't think the joke had anything to do with the LDS Church, though. I never connected it with the church until much later, and it was funny even absent the connection, based solely on switching the letters.
It'd be like Picard telling someone in the 80s that Worf used to play in the NLF - funny even though NLF doesn't mean anything.
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quote:If it was an accident, it requires the writers to be a little clueless but still stumble onto an appropriate joke.
No, see, the core of the joke is that Kirk doesn't really know what LSD is, but he's trying to use the lingo and is getting it slightly wrong.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: If it was an accident, it requires the writers to be a little clueless but still stumble onto an appropriate joke. I suppose that's possible, although implausible.
Why? Just how mainstream is "LDS"?
Because in part of where I lived all my life, I never even heard of Mormons, Latter-Day Saints or LDS until I read OSC for the first time.
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While many people may know that Latter Day Saints refers to Mormons, I very much doubt that anyone other than Mormons would associate LDS with Mormons, and some folks after they've joined this forum. Other than on the Web, I've never even heard a Mormon refer to Latter Day Saints as LDS.
"Imperfect memory of history" joke made obvious by the all-too-well-known LSD<->Berkeley connection. And nothing else.
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posted
It's a sort of funny joke without the reference because it has two of the three elements I mentioned above. It's a funnier joke with the reference.
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posted
I was a teenager when it came out. The line caught me by surprise, and I thought it was funny.
Probably a lot of people not familiar with the Church just thought of it as a mildly amusing mix-up of letters ... to me it was funnier, though, just hearing our name "accidentally". As if Spock did "too much Church".
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posted
All I've got is anecdotal. But bear in mind that non-Mormons who're familiar with the term "LDS" as an alternative term for "Mormon church" are few and far between; I'd imagine that more of them are familiar with the term "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," thanks to the commercials, but wouldn't associate that name with the "LDS" acronym or the term "Mormon."
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posted
Bear in mind that Mormons are not as rare in California as they are in the rest of the country. There are more Mormons in California and Arizona than in Utah and Idaho combined. It is certainly possible the writers ran into it before. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:A novelization of "Star Trek IV" was published at the time the movie was released: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, written by Vonda N. McIntyre (New York: Pocket Books, 1986). On page 109 in this book, the scene with Latter-day Saint references is described as follows:
"There's no point in my trying to explain what I was doing. You wouldn't believe me anyway."
"I'll buy that," Gillian said. She nodded toward Spock. "And what about what he was trying to do."
"He's harmless!" Kirk said. "He had a good reason--" He cut himself off. "Look, back in the sixties he was in Berkeley. The free speech movement and all that. I think . . . well, he did too much LDS."
"LDS? Are you dyslexic, on top of everything else?" She sighed.
Note how the lines are slightly different in the novel from the way they are heard in the feature film. These lines are different because the novel was written from the shooting script, not from the release version of the film. This is standard practice. Novelizations are normally written this way so that there is time for the novelization to be written, printed and distributed to stores to coincide with the theatrical release of the film.
posted
I read it the same way Tom did. I'd never heard LDS as an acronym for Latter Day Saints at the time. I believe most Americans would not immediately recognize LDS as an acronym for Latter Day Saints. (FWIW, Firefox's spellchecker has heard of LSD but not LDS.)
I am also unconvinced by Mucus's link. The author makes assertions, but provides no evidence. The assertion that something is clear is not evidence.
FWIW, Wikipedia's article on San Francisco makes no reference to its being founded by Mormons, to Elder Sam Brannan, or to the Brooklyn.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I can believe all of that, Icky, but none of it answered the central question of what the writers meant when they wrote it. At this point, unless someone has access to an interview or something, EVERYONE is just guessing.
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posted
Yeah, kat, but I think Mucus' link would tend to influence us in the direction of 'Not referring to the religion.'
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posted
I don't really like the page or the source so I don't find it convincing either way.
That's a thought, though - what it if was dyslexic joke to start with, but someone in the editing room recognized the acronym and cut it so it would look like a church reference? That brings it back to the collaborative nature of filmmaking.
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posted
kat, I think your side is arguable, but I have to say that the other arguments are more convincing to me. I think it's more of a stretch for you to be right, than for there to be a happy coincidence.
I also think you're being overly defensive, and have so since the first opinion contrary of yours in this thread.
quote:our guesses reveal more about ourselves than about the movie or the writers."
I still think this true. It also cuts both ways...I mean, that I instantly thought at eight-years-old that it was referring to the church certainly tells you something, doesn't it?
I know we disagree as to the text. I think everyone in here is guessing as to what it means.
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posted
If LDS means Latter-Day Saints, the joke is no longer funny but confusing. I think Paramount's writers were trying to be funny.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: It's actually funnier if the writers intended it to refer to Mormonism; funnier to me, anyway.
I'd explain why, but explanation takes the delight out of humor.
Are you Mormon? Because then it would make sense. It seems to hold the same amount of funny to me either way, but I am ambivalent regarding Mormonism.
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posted
It might be interesting to consider it this way, if it was a dyslexic joke, then we have 6 combinations for the letters, LSD, LDS, DLS, DSL, SDL, and SLD
However, we can also notice that LSD permutes to LDS by only switching two consecutive letters. The only other combination with this property is SLD.
The other thing is that all five combinations match acronyms for various companies, institutes, and technologies.
It just doesn't seem very compelling that it is a Mormon reference.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: That's a thought, though - what it if was dyslexic joke to start with, but someone in the editing room recognized the acronym and cut it so it would look like a church reference?
I doubt it, I do not think it cuts away from her after she responds "LDS?"
posted
Whether intentional or not, the LDS/LSD joke has become a fairly pervasive part of California youth culture (or at least it has in the Bay Area) -- I've seen it crop in writing in addition to experiencing it so I don't think it can just be chalked up to it seeming to be everywhere because I'm LDS.
For awhile there active members of the LDS Church stressed LDS over Mormon. I don't know when that awareness would have become widespread though -- my guess is after that film was made because most Californians associate LDS with the commercials (which ran in regular rotation in this part of the county during the late '70s and '80s) and most of those commercials branded with the LDS Church's full name followed by "the Mormons."
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