quote:Originally posted by katharina: If I'm wrong, then it doesn't matter.
If that's true, then why are you so defensive when it's pointed out that your read of it, while possible, isn't necessarily the most likely explanation?
Possibly because you'd hate to think that the inside joke (or, 'shout out', as you referred to it in your OP) you've enjoyed all these years turned out just to be a misunderstanding?
Sometimes people write or say things that have meaning beyond what the writer intended. Sometimes a person can even misunderstand what the writer meant and find meaning there. It doesn't detract from the meaning that the writer didn't intend it.
You like the joke, and there's no way (from where we're sitting) to prove it's about Mormonism one way or another. So you may as well continue to enjoy it.
I just don't think it's appropriate to be short with people who heard it differently than you did.
Edit: Man, another new page post. *sigh*
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It never crossed my mind that it wouldn't be meaning Latter-day Saints, although I have no argument either way. To me there are so many ways it is funnier picturing the relationship than not that I will continue to associate the two.
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JT, seriously, I didn't think or do half the things you accuse me of there, I don't want this thread to be about me, and making it about me is inappropriate. If you have issues with what I said, please e-mail me.
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The only thing I accused you of is being defensive, and that was really more of an observation than an accusation. And I'm not the only one who's asked why you're being that way, so I don't think it's my imagination.
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I know you're not the only one. That's irrelevant.
Let me put it this way: I will not discuss ME in this thread at all. If you honestly wants a discussion about it, you'll have to e-mail me.
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I don't think it was intended to refer to Mormons at all. I could be wrong, but I believe it was a just a Kirk-bluffing-because-he's-really-from-the-future-but-failing thing. He switched the letters, presumably because no on in the his time does LSD any more and for him it's 300 years in the past.
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The first time I've thought of Mormonism and Star Trek at the same time has been in this thread. On top of that, I never knew LDS was an acronym for Mormons until I started posting on this site.
That said, to me it wasn't a Mormon joke. I'd venture to say that to most of the audience, it wasn't a Mormon joke.
If someone made a comment about jello at a social gathering I wouldn't have ever thought it was a Mormon joke either, until I started posting here.
Whether or not the writers intended it to be a Mormon reference is irrelevant, I think. I mean, if someone makes a reference and no one catches it, I don't think it counts.
Whoever made the comment that it speaks more about the mindset of the audience is spot on. Obviously, someone who is familiar with "LDS" meaning "Latter Day Saints" is going to think of the Mormons every time they hear those three letters. Those with no familiarity with that acronym will not think of the Mormons when they hear those letters.
If it was intentional by the writers, it was an "in joke" - in that the vast majority of the audience would have only interpreted it as a foul-up of letters, not as any reference to the Mormon church. Those "in the know" (which, essentially, would be Mormons themselves and those who have frequent dealings with Mormons) would be "in" on the joke.
While that's possible, I really think the humor they were going for was for more mass consumption, making the "he's from the future, so he gets little details wrong and comes off as very weird" angle far more probable.
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Oh, I don't think Kirk was making a Mormon joke, I think he was misremembering/mixing up. I think the writers were making a Mormon joke.
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: While that's possible, I really think the humor they were going for was for more mass consumption, making the "he's from the future, so he gets little details wrong and comes off as very weird" angle far more probable.
This is what I've always thought it was, just a play on getting an acronym he may have heard of back in 'Ancient Earth History' class wrong. Considering how little a part religion played in classic Trek it would never have crossed my mind that it was referring to the Latter Day Saints.
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quote: If someone made a comment about jello at a social gathering I wouldn't have ever thought it was a Mormon joke either, until I started posting here.
Today I will learn something new:
How is jello a Mormon joke? Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: If someone made a comment about jello at a social gathering I wouldn't have ever thought it was a Mormon joke either, until I started posting here.
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Lime green jello is apparently very Mormon. Don't ask me. It's just something I learned on hatrack. Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: When I first saw the movie, the LDS reference went right by me. Maybe it was unintentional, I don't know.
My question is: How do Mormons react to this line?
I saw the movie in a theater in Utah when it originally came out. That line brought the house down with laughter. I suspect people in other states didn't find it quite so funny.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I think that the joke would have been intended to work on multiple levels.
I think you give the writers way to much credit for such an innocuous line in a movie that otherwise ignores any such thing.
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quote:"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will -- and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain." (Gene Roddenberry)
Now, it is known that Roddenberry was largely ignored by the movie makers, but his core ideas were not. Religion had little to no place in Roddenberry's Star Trek universe (though, DS9 improved immensely on the formula by not excluding it). He was still very much alive when The Voyage Home was made and he was still asserting influence on his brain child.
Okay, so you could still make the argument that the writers were trying to inject a little something under the radar. Fine, that seems logical.
However, that particular scene is intended to be comical. Kirk is trying to keep people from recognizing Spock as an alien. He wants him to just seem like a harmless crackpot (he did, after all, just jump into a pool full of whales and stick his hands on them in a weird way).
So, if you were in your 40's during the mid 1980's and were in San Fransisco during that time, would you think that someone was weird because they were Mormon or because maybe, just maybe, during the 60's they did too many drugs and are now a bit of a burnout still driving the V-Dub, listening to Joplin and spending an inordinate amount of time on arts and crafts?
Which is funnier?
Would you want the writers to imply that people who are LDS are crackpots?
quote:So, if you were in your 40's during the mid 1980's and were in San Fransisco during that time, would you think that someone was weird because they were Mormon or because maybe, just maybe, during the 60's they did too many drugs and are now a bit of a burnout still driving the V-Dub, listening to Joplin and spending an inordinate amount of time on arts and crafts?
It is not an either/or proposition. It can be funny on multiple levels without any of the levels cancelling out the others.
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I think that it doesn't really matters what the writers intended -- it has become a line that is read as referencing Mormons and has been recycled numerous times. Or at least it has in California.
And it increases in lameness every time.
Not that I am against Mormon jokes. Quite the contrary. It's just that this one isn't particularly funny or clever.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: It is not an either/or proposition. It can be funny on multiple levels without any of the levels cancelling out the others.
He was not referring to whether it was funny. He was referring to the probability of it being intentional. You are still allowed to think it's funny even if it was unintentional, you know.
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quote:Originally posted by Zalmoxis: I think that it doesn't really matters what the writers intended -- it has become a line that is read as referencing Mormons and has been recycled numerous times. Or at least it has in California.
And it increases in lameness every time.
Not that I am against Mormon jokes. Quite the contrary. It's just that this one isn't particularly funny or clever.
I read the review, and I don't get the link you are trying to convey. Are you saying that the mistaken alliteration of "ell dee ess" instead of "ell ess dee" is something that is simply common due to the common letters the two acronyms share (which I could agree with), or that every case of such a joke in pop culture is intentional? In your link, the joke is appropriate because it's about a Mormon missionary kid. There is zero reference to anything Mormon in the whole rest of that Star Trek movie. How could the two be similar except that the mistaken alliteration is present in both cases?
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I'm beginning to wonder if you are being intentionally obtuse or are just discourse-analysis-/culture-meme- challenged.
But whatever.
What I'm saying is that the Mormon component of the joke may not have been intended by the writers of the Star Trek movie, but that the joke has come to have that meaning in a large part of the Western U.S. (i.e. where there are significant populations of members of the LDS even though the percentage mix varies).
I would even go so far as to claim that the much of the popularity and longevity of the joke is due to the Star Trek movie, although it would be difficult to prove without a rigorously done survey as well as a popular literature review.
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I'm beginning to wonder if you are being intentionally obtuse or are just discourse-analysis-/culture-meme- challenged.
Careful. People jump down my throat around here when I suggest the same of my arguments.
I can see what you're saying about the alliteration-mistake-as-comedy part goes, but I would find it difficult to believe it has much relevance outside of that cultural circle, which is why I and others doubt the connection that is being made. Allow me to explain with an example less controversial in this forum.
A city I travel to often has a couple of billboards that I have noticed from time to time. It is some sort of bank or credit company or something, but that isn't important. The part I notice is that the words on the billboard have intentionally left out all of the vowels in the single sentence on the billboard. I found this amusing because, when reading it, it read to me the same way reading most modern use of Arabic reads to me, because of the very similar habit of leaving out vowels. Still, that is not exactly accurate, since Arabic vowels are totally different from English vowels, but that isn't the point. The point is the association I made respective of my understanding of how language is used, and the juxtaposition I saw between this billboard and the Arabic language. Because the area in which these billboards are placed do not have a noticably large Arabic population, I am certain the goal of the billboard is not to invoke humor by using an otherwise innocuous habit of grammar (if it was, it would incorrect anyway, because that isn't a proper correlation to how Arabic is written). It is more likely intended to reflect something else, but my own personal association made it humorous to me in a manner unrelated to the original intent. It is no less funny to me knowing such a thing, but its funny is no more contingent on that association being intention than the actual transliteration comparison would be technically accurate.
This topic has many of those same elements. Outside of the Mormon in-joke that you (Zalmoxis) have related, there is no other corresponding factor in the dialogue of the movie, so unless that mistake in alliteration was a significant Mormon in-joke prior to that movie, and only if the writers of the movie happened to become privy to such an in-joke before or during the writing process (or if they were Mormons themselves), the likelihood of the two, meaning the movie dialogue and the joke you regularly observe, being related is very, very small. That doesn't make it any less funny to those who may find it funny with that association, it just means that the association is neither required nor necessarily intended in the dialogue and context of that film.
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quote:So, if you were in your 40's during the mid 1980's and were in San Fransisco during that time, would you think that someone was weird because they were Mormon or because maybe, just maybe, during the 60's they did too many drugs and are now a bit of a burnout still driving the V-Dub, listening to Joplin and spending an inordinate amount of time on arts and crafts?
It is not an either/or proposition. It can be funny on multiple levels without any of the levels cancelling out the others.
I'm not saying it is. I'm comparing your most likely scenario to mine and those of most of the people I know who've seen the movie and then applying some logic. I don't know that I'm right, but, when I compare my idea to yours, mine seems most likely and yours seems like wishful thinking. YMMV, of course.
Nimoy also wrote and directed TVH, and he's Jewish. While that doesn't write him off completely, it does make the likelyhood of him tossing in a little Mormon humor for kicks pretty slim.
Here are the list of other authors, though I have little to no knowledge of their religious affiliation.
- Harve Bennett - Steve Meerson - Peter Krikes - Nicholas Meyer
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quote:when I compare my idea to yours, mine seems most likely and yours seems like wishful thinking. YMMV, of course.
Of course you do. That is why they are your ideas. However, no matter how strongly you believe your own assertions, it doesn't make them obvious or establish fact.
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suggests that Nicholas Meyer (or someone with the same name, of course) is Mormon or at least involved in projects (including film and writing projects) related to the LDS church.
For he who doubts, it looks like the LDS joke was fully intentional.
Latter-day Saint (Mormon) References in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
quote:In what has become a famous and favorite line from the movie, Captain James T. Kirk (actor William Shatner, the main character) tells a 20th century zoologist that Spock (Leonard Nimoy) "did a little too much LDS" when he was at Berkeley in the 1960s. Captain Kirk was attempting to claim that Spock had used LSD, which damaged his brain: the cause of his erratic behavior. (LSD is an illegal drug used as a recreational narcotic.) Kirk's misuse of the word "LDS" (a common abbreviation for "Latter-day Saints," i.e., members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) displays his frequently inaccurate familiarity with this period of time. This line is typical of the abundant humor in the movie. These lines elicited enthusiastic laughter from audiences, particularly in Utah and other predominantly Latter-day Saint areas.
One place where this line likely drew a big laugh was Scottsdale, Arizona, which has a large Latter-day Saint population, and is close to Mesa, Arizona, a city founded by Latter-day Saints and the site of the oldest Latter-day Saint temple in Arizona. Actress Catherine Hicks, who plays Dr. Gillian Taylor opposite Kirk in this scene, was born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona. After Captain Kirk claims that Spock did "a little too much LDS," Dr. Taylor realizes even more fully that Kirk and Spock are an unusual pair. She retorts, "LDS?" In the original script, she then asks if Kirk is dyslexic (because he mixed up the characters in this abbreviation). But that line is not in the release version of the film. Dr. Taylor is clearly familiar with Latter-day Saints and the use of "LDS" as an abbreviation for the Church. I do not know whether or not actress Catherine Hicks is a Latter-day Saint or a descendant of the Latter-day Saint pioneers who first settled the part of the country she comes from.
quote:when I compare my idea to yours, mine seems most likely and yours seems like wishful thinking. YMMV, of course.
Of course you do. That is why they are your ideas. However, no matter how strongly you believe your own assertions, it doesn't make them obvious or establish fact.
You seem unwilling to apply this to some of your own comments.
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I was 14 when the movie came out and never got the association that it was a mormon joke. In fact, I never heard the acronym LDS used until I read an OSC book. And for the most part, never heard of the mormon church until I was much older. I always thought the joke was a word play on LSD. Although, it is just as funny, if not funnier, if you think it's a joke on mormons.
For he who doubts, it looks like the LDS joke was fully intentional.
Latter-day Saint (Mormon) References in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
quote:In what has become a famous and favorite line from the movie, Captain James T. Kirk (actor William Shatner, the main character) tells a 20th century zoologist that Spock (Leonard Nimoy) "did a little too much LDS" when he was at Berkeley in the 1960s. Captain Kirk was attempting to claim that Spock had used LSD, which damaged his brain: the cause of his erratic behavior. (LSD is an illegal drug used as a recreational narcotic.) Kirk's misuse of the word "LDS" (a common abbreviation for "Latter-day Saints," i.e., members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) displays his frequently inaccurate familiarity with this period of time. This line is typical of the abundant humor in the movie. These lines elicited enthusiastic laughter from audiences, particularly in Utah and other predominantly Latter-day Saint areas.
One place where this line likely drew a big laugh was Scottsdale, Arizona, which has a large Latter-day Saint population, and is close to Mesa, Arizona, a city founded by Latter-day Saints and the site of the oldest Latter-day Saint temple in Arizona. Actress Catherine Hicks, who plays Dr. Gillian Taylor opposite Kirk in this scene, was born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona. After Captain Kirk claims that Spock did "a little too much LDS," Dr. Taylor realizes even more fully that Kirk and Spock are an unusual pair. She retorts, "LDS?" In the original script, she then asks if Kirk is dyslexic (because he mixed up the characters in this abbreviation). But that line is not in the release version of the film. Dr. Taylor is clearly familiar with Latter-day Saints and the use of "LDS" as an abbreviation for the Church. I do not know whether or not actress Catherine Hicks is a Latter-day Saint or a descendant of the Latter-day Saint pioneers who first settled the part of the country she comes from.
This is the same link that was given before.
*shrug*
Assertions, even repeated assertions, do not equal evidence. Nothing about that paragraph is particularly compelling.
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For he who doubts,it looks like the LDS joke was fully intentional.
Latter-day Saint (Mormon) References in the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
But that write-up makes the same spurious claims as others here. How does there being large concentrations of Mormons in unrelated parts of the country to where the scenes were shot have an impact? I mean, you guys are going as far as using "this person might have grown up in an area with lots of LDS" as evidence to establish intent.
If it is so important to you to have some sort of presence like that, then I don't see the harm. It is still an in-joke the requires foreknowledge, though, to find the humor that has absolutely no relation to anything else whatsoever in the film.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: Pick a fight somewhere else. I'm not interested.
But you're interested in arguing about alleged intentions of writers who may have grown up in an area that might have had an LDS presence?
It's not a "fight," it is a disagreement where you are exhibiting unfair expectations upon those whom you disagree with. You seem to be one of the few "fighting" over it, while the rest of us keep saying, "nope, I still don't see it, unless you are already Mormon." At least some of us have pointed out that we can see how you would get that idea from your perspective. I've not seen you do that except when making a statement like 'that tells us something about ourselves' in some nebulous admittal. Can you simply admit it's just as easy to not see the association as it is for you to see it?
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Katie, I have to admit that I'm not sure this approach of yours is going to be particularly beloved. IMO, it's akin to poking someone with a stick and then dancing away, saying, "Oh, I don't want to play. *poke*"
If it works for you, fine. But my gut feeling is that it's not fair for you to be handing out unsolicited opinions about other posters if you're going to simultaneously refuse to converse with them.
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I have made no claims as to whether it was intentional or not -- I don't think anyone can with any certainty. My guess is that it wouldn't be cleared up even if everyone involved were to be interviewed about it because of the loaded-ness that the Star Trek franchise and Mormonism bring to the current cultural climate.
My only point is that the joke has taken on that extra layer for a somewhat significant part of the population -- both Mormons and non-Mormons. And that, from my observation, it is quite likely that the joke has had the life that it has had in part because of the movie.
All this talk about intention is now irrelevant because functionally, it has become a Mormon joke. Not for everybody to be sure. But it has now for this particular community (Hatrack) -- as well as several others that I am aware of [thus my comments above about the Bay Area, California, Western U.S.].
Intentionality is just not that important for the cultural currency a meme/cultural artefact has.
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Glen's first post asked: "When I first saw the movie, the LDS reference went right by me. Maybe it was unintentional, I don't know. My question is: How do Mormons react to this line?"
It seemed the site quote addressed Glens questions pretty well. Was it intentional? Yes, according to Catherine Hicks. How do Mormans react? Big laughs in Salt Lake and Scottsdale.
If you are talking about fugu's link, I missed it because I was in the process of posting.
"Assertions, even repeated assertions, do not equal evidence. Nothing about that paragraph is particularly compelling." So what's your point?
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