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The , by , , and . Premiered New York, 2011, and London, 2013, directed by and Trey Parker Reviewed by Candis Cousins Trey Parker and Matt Stone, co-writers of the TV show and of the musical The Book of Mormon, are in a long line of generative American male couples in film and theatre—Laurel and Hardy, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Carl Reiner and , George and Ira Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe, Martin and Lewis, just to name a few. The Book of Mormon itself is in a long tradition of Broadway musicals centred upon two people overcoming obstacles to becoming a couple. Couples on the musical stage have struggled against prejudice (Tony and Maria in West Side Story), against self-destructiveness (Billy and Julie in Carousel), against social class (Professor Higgins and Liza Doolittle in My Fair Lady), and against psycho- logical ambivalence (Adelaide and Nathan in Guys and Dolls). The Book of Mormon is the story of two young men, newly trained mis- sionaries, who are assigned to work and live together as a proselytising team in Uganda. Elder Arnold Cunningham—short, insecure, and socially inept—idolises his partner Elder Kevin Price who is tall, attractive, success- ful, and self-obsessed. Kevin sings “You and me (but mostly me)”, laying out his fantasy of doing “something incredible / That will blow God’s freaking mind” while Arnold pipes in with his promise to come along and watch. In Uganda, they find impoverished villagers, struggling with famine, AIDS and the rule of a psychopathic, homicidal warlord. The greatest problem facing the evangelists would seem to be convincing the villagers that the Mormon scripture holds the secret to their happiness and salva- tion, but we soon find out that their mission cannot be fulfilled given the nature of their relationship to each other. They are caught in a sort of arranged marriage. In the two-dimensional world of Arnold’s idolatry and submission and Kevin’s grandiosity, there is little possibility of authentic human connection—between the two of them or with the Ugandans whose souls they are supposed to save. Although co-writer Matt Stone describes the musical as “an atheist’s love letter to religion”, it is clear that a serious impediment to converting the Ugandans is orthodoxy itself—specifically, the action of orthodoxy upon the mind. Kevin and Arnold’s rigid adherence to customs and fundamental beliefs of the Mormons leaves no mental room for the suffering of others, their own suffering, world history: “I believe that ancient built boats

Couple and Family Psychoanalysis 4(2) 221–225 (2014) 9-ArtReviews_OPUS_7_1.qxp copy.qxp 31/07/2014 09:59 Page 222

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and sailed to America”, or rational thinking: “I believe (God’s) plan involves me getting my own planet”. In the song “Turn it off”, Elder McKinley, the district leader, instructs Kevin and Arnold in a “nifty little Mormon trick” for ditching painful feelings: . . . I’d start thinking How am I gonna keep my mom from getting abused? I’d see her all scared and my soul was dying. My dad would say to me, Now don’t you dare start crying.

Turn it off. (Like a light switch. Just go click!) (It’s our nifty little Mormon trick) Turn it off! If the young men believe that the solution to having painful feelings is to turn them off, their ability to join together to deal with the terrifying reality that surrounds them is greatly minimised. After Kevin’s failed attempt to inspire the villagers with a pompous and boring tribute to Mormon founder Joseph Smith, the warlord enters the village, announcing that all the women will be circumcised within the week. A villager dares to protest and is shot in the face by the warlord, his blood splashing upon Kevin’s black slacks and white oxford shirt. Feeling alone and overwhelmed by the murder he has witnessed at such close range, Kevin decides to leave Africa and abandon Arnold who now has no choice, but to depend upon himself. Because he has never read The Book of Mormon, Arnold cannot draw upon Mormon orthodoxy. He uses his imagination instead, inventing a new story of creation with characters and language from science fiction and popular culture. His stories reflect the agonising experience of living in Uganda and the villagers respond with interest. Kevin decides to return to the mission. To prove himself, he confronts the warlord, armed with nothing but his copy of The Book of Mormon and God’s protection. In a state of messianic ecstasy, he dances into the war- lord’s camp, belting out “I believe”—the kind of irresistible anthem partic- ular to American musicals that provides a brief but rapturous escape from reality for the audience as well as Kevin. The warlord is enraged for not being recognised for who he is—a murderous hulk with armed guards to his left and right. Kevin is seized and The Book of Mormon is forced up his rectum—the Holy Scripture used as an instrument of rape. Kevin, broken, anguished, and embittered, can no longer turn off his painful experience. Meanwhile, Arnold has successfully converted the village. Kevin somehow comes to appreciate that Arnold has found a way to help people with religion without strictly cleaving to the Mormon orthodoxy. Arnold and Kevin re-unite for the first time as a collaborative, 9-ArtReviews_OPUS_7_1.qxp copy.qxp 31/07/2014 09:59 Page 223

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interdependent couple, chasing away the warlord and eventually convert- ing him. Together they have moved away from the strict adherence to doctrine toward belief and the use of their imaginative powers. The warlord’s enraged response to the intolerable experience of not being taken into account could have been Arnold’s and Kevin’s experience as well. In response to similar neglect, a guy like Arnold might have developed the belief—his own unconscious orthodoxy—that to survive, his life must be one of unending acquiescence and submission. A guy like Kevin might have developed the belief that to survive the torment of not being responded to and loved for who he was, he had to be someone great, someone who did not need anyone else—in his words, the “all-American prophet”. We are familiar with such strategies for turning off painful experience. We see it in our work with couples and in our own lives. Also familiar is the knowledge that we all live by unconscious orthodoxies, shaping our treatment of ourselves and others. To the extent that we attempt to recog- nise the effect of these orthodoxies, we have a greater chance of finding another who can be good as we face what we must, in ourselves and in the world.

What Maisie Knew, directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee, 2013. Reviewed by Suzanna Mackenzie How prophetic was Henry James’s 1897 novel What Maisie Knew? Themes of a child as flotsam amid the chop and change of an acrimonious divorce, multiple partnering, extended step-parenting families, and the ephemeral nature of their defined roles are now common-place. The film version transposes the novel’s nineteenth century London to contemporary Manhattan and takes up the same thread of family breakdown, centring around two extremely self-centred people, Maisie’s parents, who are in the bitter throes of separation and divorce, creating a sadly familiar, and at times uncomfortably galling, film to sit through. The novel has Maisie as a young child who develops to the age of thir- teen. Her feelings and inner processing are intrinsic and available to us in this medium, whereas the film stays with five-year-old Maisie for only a few months. Instead of Maisie’s explicit thoughts, we have the language of images. Directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee exchanged the involved detail of James’s prose with imagery as a metaphor to try and depict Maisie’s 9-ArtReviews_OPUS_7_1.qxp copy.qxp 31/07/2014 09:59 Page 224

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experiences. Insights into Maisie’s inner world are shown in her wide-eyed observations where she watches from the edges of the action, at doorways and through windows. She scampers around the peripheries of her warring parents to happily run for money for the pizza delivery. She keeps her dis- tance in doorways taking in rancorous meltdowns. This peripheral posi- tioning places Maisie as a passive witness to the fractious main players and invites us alongside in the process, as substitute for James’s prose. She is a “good girl”, seemingly inured to the parental rancour and finds private delight where she can, in visions of beauty; a kite stuck in wires, a golden domed ceiling as she is dragged into court by her mother. The directors have other children as barometers for normality; a sleep- over friend cries at the lack of containment, a school friend suggests the of a dog as a reason why Maisie’s father would turn up unexpect- edly. Maisie is in a different zone. After the battle over custody, each par- ent increasingly forgets Maisie, until she is neglected to the point of reckless abandonment. It is only at this point, in a stranger’s bed in an unsafe place, that it becomes too much and she silently cries a single tear. Maisie’s mother, Susanna, an aging rock singer, played with dislikeable edge by Julianne Moore, at first seems a loving parent, but it soon dawns that Maisie is Susanna’s delicious extension of herself, an object to own and cosset, then abandon and pick back up, repeatedly. Susanna’s own music backdrops her scenes by way of letting us know which “hymn book” she sings from! Initially Maisie’s faintly charming father, played with believable superficiality by , is possibly the more reasonable, but reveals himself as being also incapable of meaningful love for his daughter. Maisie is a child habituated to parents who fail her and her unconscious task is to find substitutes that come in the form of young Margo, who was Maisie’s au pair, but was taken up and used by Maisie’s father to be his wife and continued baby sitter, and Lincoln, whom Susanna marries and tells Maisie that “I did it for you”, and that only works for Susanna if there is no love between himself and Maisie. One delicately powerful metaphor is the turtle. When Maisie’s life is about to change forever, she is peacefully asleep; behind her a turtle swims on television. She is woken by her father’s attempts to get in, but her mother has changed the front door lock. Later, after her parents have divorced, remarried, and have each discarded their young new partners, Lincoln and Margo evolve into Maisies’ surrogate parents. The turtle returns as a symbolic shared experience between the three, perhaps denot- ing “belonging”, leading Maisie to want one for herself. Her new turtle becomes a mini mirror of her own life; a life at the whim of others, a portable living toy. The last we see of the turtle is on a monopoly board, walking between Margo, Lincoln, and Maisie, as they play a happy game of make-believe-families. 9-ArtReviews_OPUS_7_1.qxp copy.qxp 31/07/2014 09:59 Page 225

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Sensing fragility in the altered family structure, Maisie sporadically ques- tions Margo, “Is (your marriage) pretend?” or “What if they want (the house they’re borrowing) back?” Behind these questions, I think, is a terrible anx- iety of what is real and unreal, what can last or fall away. Having good, nurturing substitute, parents is reparation of sorts. Something new can be grown, a new kind of love. But there is the underlying reality of the faulty parent. Near the end of the film there is a terrible hug between Susanna and Maisie. After Maisie has made a big choice, Susanna says, “You know who your mother is, right?” Maisie says, “You” and consolingly touches her mother. They hug hard, as if sealing a deal, as if for Maisie, there is no getting away; no matter what, there is no replacing of the real thing. As a title, What Maisie Knew provokes questions. Both film and novel conclude with Maisie having to make a choice. While James’s own ending was ambivalent with Maisie’s choice being thwarted and final interpreta- tions are ambiguous, the film points to notions of agency, with the right to freedom to choose as Maisie’s destination, and it has an up-beat optimistic ending. But is it in a child’s best interest to champion such freedom? Siegal and McGehee have reduced and streamlined James’s dense psychological, social study on “moral sense” into a beautifully crafted film that holds an unappealing mirror up to contemporary society; appalling but true.