It has been 25 years since the single season of “My So Called Life” premiered on TV. I’m old enough to have had teenagers at home that watched it. It was the first teen series that didn’t have all the kids living in Beverly Hills, or the girls looking like Kelly Kapowski.
What was so different about the show? From a CNN article about the show, it ” portrayed confused — and smart — teenagers searching for love and acceptance while working through family troubles, substance abuse, homophobia, unrequited love and dealing with school violence. “
I wonder if the internet has been our “So called religion”. Before the internet, all Mormon’s lived in (or strove to live in) a “Father Knows Best” family, and look the part of Robert Young and Jane Wyatt . All problems where solved in a half hour show by praying and reading the scriptures.
Boom, then came the internet, and then we had Mormons searching for love and acceptance while working through family troubles, substance abuse, homophobia, racism and history. Of course this had always been the case, but now Mormons could interact with other Mormons going through the same issues.
Many shows have followed in the footsteps of that ground breaking show, and sometimes we long for the simpler days of Father Knows Best type shows. I’m sure there are some Mormons that long for the days before the internet, before the church essays were published. Things were easier back then if you were a white male, not so much if you were female, black or LGBTQ. We’ve come a long way since then, to the point that recently the church has indicated it has no position on the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) , a big change from back in the day!
Are there any readers out there that watched My So Called Life? Did it change you in any way? Has the internet forced a similar cultural change in the church?
Wheat & Tares 
I actually didn’t watch “My So Called Life” (maybe 1 or 2 episodes when my little sister had it on). But I think you are spot on with how many wish for “the good old days” when Mormonism’s reputation and numbers were all rising (at least in the US). I remember the ERA and how much the church was involved and just how much preaching against it went on. I have heard about the church’s current stance on the ERA and I realize that I am seeing the MO of the church where “just let history fade” and hoping everyone just forgets what the church used to do. My kids don’t really get just how adamant the church was about how the ERA would ruin society. Even though the amendment didn’t (yet?) pass, most of it has come to pass anyway in smaller steps.
Sorry, never saw So Called, but I’ll certainly agree that the Church, or at least its senior leadership, pines for the good ‘ole days of the 1950s, that Era of Success and Prosperity for white American males when jobs were plentiful, wages were good, and women and non-whites all knew their place. Then the Sixties happened and the leadership has been complaining about things ever since. But that shtick is getting old. It resonates with fewer and fewer listeners. General Conference seems less and less relevant for most people. That’s the bottom line: the leadership seems stuck in the past and the Church is becoming less and less relevant for most people.
When I watched a video of RMN’s interview with the Pope’s biographer, I was struck by how set in the past he is. He spoke of (unnamed) nations with “big skyscrapers and fine highways” that are asking for spiritual help and guidance from church leaders.
These would be wondrous and awe inspiring for someone born in the 1920’s, long before the interstate highway system here in the U.S.
The present worldview of the leaders is informed by their parents and grandparents (as are we all). We’re constantly “guided” with modern revelation that comes though the lens of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Guidance for the modern day indeed.
Here is a link to the interview on the Church Newsroom YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/nKMZhiQh08Q
The internet has definitely leveled out the playing field for serious truth seekers. I appreciate the transparency that technology has forced on the church. The leaders in Salt Lake can no longer lock away the past and ‘re-invent’ the plot line they think is ‘faith promoting.’ There is nothing quite like the truth! On a personal note….I am particular grateful for the internet and the forums like this that are available to those of us experiencing a wide range of challenges as we make our way through our own faith journey. Speaking of ‘My So Called Life’…imagine being a young, gay returned missionary in 1984! In the midst of “McConkie Mormonism,’ the feelings of isolation, loneliness, and despair were REAL! I completely understand how so many were caught in the dark vortex of depression and killed themselves. I consider myself one of the lucky gay Mormons who dodged that bullet more than once. I wanted to thank everyone who contributes to the discussion topics on this site. Whether you are TBM or otherwise, I benefit immensely from the articles and commentary presented here. It genuinely helps me.
I’m with Dave B on this one. The so-called “nostalgia” that older church members/leadership feel for the “good old days” is really just a yearning for being able to say things without being fact-checked, holding on to racist/bigoted views without being called out about them and keeping women “in their place.” I think Dave B’s link to conference talks is an important point as well. I glean almost no new information from them at all. Same talking points, same subjects, slightly different format. I did think that Elder Holland’s talk about depression was solid and I always enjoy Uchtdorf’s talks, but it mostly feels like indoctrination and making sure everyone is in line. And I’m middle-aged, so I can’t imagine how irrelevant the talks must feel to someone thirty years my junior. The other parallel to “My So Called Life” is that I think it showed the importance of abolishing the myth of exceptionalism. All the kids had issues and were working through them and I think the culture of pretending/piety theater that I often see at church, especially in testimony meeting, is counterproductive and we could learn a lot about kindness, charity and forgiveness if we were really willing to be open and honest with each other about where we are with our beliefs, struggles, etc. It’s kind of bizarre how we talk so much about truth (tell the truth, the only true church, etc.) but we’re so unwilling to risk telling our own personal truths to our church community. I think the fact that we generally tend not to do that also contributes to the idea of church being irrelevant.
Let me try a second and more upbeat or at least hopeful comment. I think the LDS themes of Revelation (God’s direct word, can’t be changed) and The Eternal Gospel (the doctrines are eternal, can’t be changed) and the Mormon Way of Doing Things in Church (they change, but only once in a while) means there is a lot of momentum in favor of the status quo on any given issue or practice. Turning the ship takes a lot of effort.
It wouldn’t be hard, for example, to energize General Conference. Invite some notable Mormons like Romney or Harry Reid to give a talk. Invite a friendly official or theologian from another denomination to give a talk about Jesus Christ or grace or the Bible. Profile LDS in the military or sports or publishing in a 10-minute video as part of the program, like Meet the Mormons. Get an LDS historian to give a 15-minute talk with some substance. It would be SO EASY to make the set of Conference meetings more interesting, more relevant, and more effective. It’s like they have to give every Seventy a talk every few years or else they would feel offended or something. I wish they’d think less about giving every GA their 15 minutes of fame and more about making it work better for the audience and viewers.
Dave B. Great suggestions, but they will never, ever happen. They won’t even loosen their grip on those speaking slots to allow more than a couple of women to speak, let alone someone from outside their hallowed echelons.
@Dave B, I love the idea of having another religious leader speak on a topic such as grace. I’ve listened to a Christian podcast has been amazing at helping me really understand some of these terms and it’ would be great to let the body of the church hear how other faiths have interpreted passages of scriptures.
I love this quote from Joseph Smith “…the first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same…”
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-isaac-galland-22-march-1839/4
Good post. I think it’s a great comparison. I spent the weekend with my dad and his cousin going to the place of their youth in Idaho. I am younger Gen Z and they are both older Boomers who grew up in Idaho. Their experience growing up was both in families who were semi-active in the Church (were lax on WOW and occasionally went to Church, but would not consider themselves inactive) and transitioning to more of a McConkie Mormonism in the 60s getting more and more devout and then seeing the changes in the Church the last few years. My dad is more progressive and sees most of the changes as positive, my dad’s cousin is more conservative (who we always treated as an uncle) did not know what to make of the changes and longs for the good old days, but did admit people were not as devout in his youth.