BYU-Hawaii Associate Professor Mason Kamana Allred held a book signing for his new book “Seeing Things: Technologies of Visions and the Making of Mormonism” on Friday, April 28. The book examines how developments in media technology contributed to the shaping of Latter-day Saint culture.
In room 155 of the Aloha Center, Allred sat at a table covered in hardcover and paperback editions of his book, published by the University of North Carolina Press, greeting attendees and signing copies for them. The book, with artwork by local artist Jack Soren, depicts the prophet Joseph Smith using his seer stone within his hat to translate the Book of Mormon.
Dr. Patricia Patrick, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Letters, said, “The book connects new media with old, [and] even dead media, to broaden communication history and theory, inspire creative media production and better equip us to engage the present world with critical thought and attentive care.” She told those who managed to buy a copy of the book that they were in for a treat.
The first part of the book was published in an academic journal several years before, and Allred said he continued working on it, determined to create what was, in his words “almost a media history of Mormonism. A history of how Latter-day Saints have used media technologies in their past to do certain things.”
Using German media theory, which he studied during his time as a Fulbright Scholar to analyze media history in the Church, Allred said he was able to look at the ways humans use media as creationary acts. He extended this viewpoint to look at the ways members of the Church have used print, panoramic paintings, typewriters, photography, film, microfilm and broadcast television. Through these different technologies, Allred said Latter–day Saints were creating themselves anew as they figured out what it meant to be a member of the Church and it has been reshaped over and over throughout history.
One example Allred shared was the Church’s use of film in the early 20th century, as well as the ways others used film to depict its members. The first feature-length film backed by the Church was called “100 Years of Mormonism,” of which little footage presently remains known. Using the effect of double exposure, Allred explained the filmmakers were able to depict the Angel Moroni materializing out of thin air in Joseph Smith’s staged bedroom.
“My analysis is about assimilation and even race. It’s a film that supports Latter–day Saints as good, white Americans and presents them that way. … The overarching story here is not really a new one. It’s about these kinds of outcast scoundrels using technologies to eventually then become super-patriots, like very American.” He continued, “We know that kind of happened, but I think it’s fascinating once you see the way it happened through the use of media recreating what it means to be a Latter–day Saint.”
Stephen English, a junior from Florida majoring in communications, explained, “Dr. Allred is my favorite professor because [everything] he shared about today is what I learned from his class last semester. He would share with you all the important facts about media and the new development from televisions to plenty of movies in the cinema today.”
English added, “I highly recommend his classes if you are a communications major or minor. Although I'm not a big nonfiction fan, this looks like it'd be really good to read and explore.”
Emilio Barkett, a junior studying communications from California, said, “The book launch presentation was awesome because you could tell the amount of research he's put into it … [and] how it's really become a passion project for him over the past 15 years. … I can tell that he has connected film with Mormon history and [can see] the development of both of them together.”
He concluded, “We can take some of [his] ideas such as dressing, grooming, cinema, television and our use of the internet to change our perspective as we move forward so we can be more informed of how we use these technologies to have a greater impact in our lives personally, physically, spiritually, [in] everything that we are.”
Allred revealed how the catalyst for the book came from a time when he was thinking about the First Vision while working at the Joseph Smith Papers. During his own personal research, Allred became very interested in the First Vision and the context in which it happened.
One of his inspirations, he said, was a line from a book by literary historian Stephen Greenblatt, which said, “I began with the desire to speak with the dead.” Allred said he read this while taking a literature class at BYUH during his undergraduate studies.
The book by Greenblatt, entitled “Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England,” explores how the plays of William Shakespeare were influenced by and affected the culture during the time they were written and performed.
According to Allred, Greenblatt’s desire is that of a historian, who seeks to understand people who lived long before he did. “But I thought to myself, the more I was working on Latter–day Saint history, getting closer to that past through its sources, it’s such a strong impulse within Latter–day Saint culture to desire to speak with, to communicate with and to even save the dead.”
Above: A baptismal font in one of the temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A central part of Latter-day Saint theology is performing proxy ordinances for those who have died without knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Photo credits: Book of Mormon Central.
The line from Greenblatt stuck with Allred throughout his research and composition of his book, which he said inspired the first line of the first chapter, “Joseph Smith led a haunted life.”
In his connection of Church history to the media, he also went back to the different First Vision accounts. The 1838 version, well–known to Church members because it is in the Pearl of Great Price, features insistence and testimony by Joseph Smith that he actually had seen a vision. “It’s fascinating,” Allred said, “because the closer I got to this moment I started considering the media environment this was happening in.”
During Joseph Smith’s time, more and more devices were being invented that tricked the human eye, he said. “I started to realize that Joseph Smith, the way he led his life, was in this context of deception of the eyes. Trying to figure out ‘how can I trust my eyes and not be deceived?’”
He explained developing technologies in the 19th and 20th centuries were partially attempts by members of the Church to better understand their beliefs, as well as strengthen their connection to the dead through family history work. The arrival of microfilm allowed for genealogy work to be done at a faster rate, helping to bring people on both sides of the veil to the knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he said.
Taylor McKendrick, a junior from California studying computer science, said of Allred’s book launch, “Being one of Dr. Allred’s students, I was caught up with the responses of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through new forms of media and seeing it through a typewriter to television to movies and cinema.
McKendrick said during his time here on campus, "I have witnessed time after time how media and mediums of the past change the Church now and how future media might greatly improve the Church in the future.”
Camila Aguado, a junior majoring in biology from Arizona, said, “[Dr. Allred] delivered his message in a clear and understandable way that anyone could understand.”
“I think it was a great sneak peek to what the book will be about, which kind of intrigues me more than anything,” Aguado said. She included a well-organized set-up with appetizing refreshments making the event more professional. Aguado continued, “This book launch has opened my mind to what else I can read.”