LDS Church slams Netflix American Primeval as dangerously misleading in portrayal of Brigham Young
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has criticized a recently released Netflix series, calling it 'dangerously misleading' and claiming it misrepresents LDS prophet Brigham Young.
The series *American Primeval*, which premiered on Netflix earlier this month, portrays a group of LDS pioneers struggling to survive on the American frontier during the 1857 Utah War.
One of the key events depicted in the show is the 'Mountain Meadows Massacre,' where Latter-day Saint militiamen, along with American Indian allies, killed around 120 emigrants traveling by wagon to California.
'While historical fiction can be illuminating, this drama is dangerously misleading. Brigham Young, a revered prophet and courageous pioneer, is, by any historical standard, egregiously mischaracterized as a villainous, violent fanatic. Other individuals and groups are also depicted in ways that reinforce stereotypes that are both inaccurate and harmful,' a statement from the Church read, in part.
The Church emphasized that it has long acknowledged and condemned the massacre, working to promote healing and uncover the truth surrounding the event. They also criticized the use of 'deceptive, graphic and sensationalized' storytelling, which they believe obscures reality and hinders understanding, while potentially fostering hatred and violence.
Director Peter Berg responded to criticism in an interview with *The Hollywood Reporter*, clarifying that the show's depiction of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is not a literal one. He explained that while the real-life event occurred over three days, the show condenses it for dramatic purposes.
'I've heard some of the pushback, but I haven't heard anyone from the Mormon side deny that the Meadows Massacre happened and that Mormons did it. I have had them express concerns that we do take other liberties,' he said.
ABC4 reached out to the team behind *American Primeval* but has not received a response as of now.
This is not the first time the Church has responded to its portrayal in media. Before the release of the A24 film *Heretic*, which depicts two missionaries subjected to trials by the character Mr. Reed, the Church issued a statement addressing its representation.
Without naming specific films or shows, the Church has acknowledged that while some portrayals are 'fair and accurate,' others rely on stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that can have real-world consequences.
'We understand the fascination some in the media have with the Church, but regret that portrayals often rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and fully reflect the lives of our Church members or the sacred beliefs that they hold dear,' the Church said in a statement.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
7 hours ago
- Express Tribune
David Beckham's garden carrot leaves Victoria ‘embarrassed' in funny home video
Sir David Beckham left his wife Victoria in fits of laughter after sharing a light-hearted video from their Cotswolds garden. The 50-year-old former England captain filmed himself harvesting a carrot from his home vegetable patch while being filmed by Victoria. 'I really hope it's good,' David said as he crouched beside the garden bed, clearing away soil with anticipation. But the excitement quickly turned to humour as he pulled up a small carrot with twisted roots. Victoria, filming the moment, burst into laughter, exclaiming, 'That's so disappointing,' and added, 'Omg that's embarrassing.' Posting the moment on Instagram, David captioned the video: 'Exciting day today in my veggie garden, CARROTS, but not exactly what I expected.' Fans reacted warmly in the comments. The Beckhams have gradually transformed their £12 million Cotswolds estate into a rural retreat, featuring a lake, bee hives, a greenhouse, an outdoor sauna, and multiple garden patches. David's passion for outdoor living was also noted in his Netflix documentary, where he shared his love for his 'country get-up.'
Express Tribune
9 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Review: The Stationery Shop of Tehran
Marjan Kamali is an award-winning, Iranian-American novelist and author, whose books have received both national and international acclaim and have been translated and published in more than 25 languages. Born in Turkey to Iranian parents, she spent her childhood in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and Kenya, before settling in the US. Her debut novel, Together Tea, was published in 2013 and the third and till now the last, The Lion Women of Tehran, was published in 2024. The Stationery Shop under review here is her second book, published in 2019. Her second book, The Stationery Shop of Tehran is a bittersweet love story that is easy to read but full of intense feelings of love, betrayal, and longing. Seventeen-year-old Roya is a dreamy, idealistic schoolgirl living amid the political upheaval of 1950s in Tehran. Her favourite pastime is visiting the stationery shop owned by Mr Fakhri, who has stocked it well with shelves and shelves full of beautiful stationery items—fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick pads of writing paper—but also carries translations of literature from all over the world as well as books of Rumi's love poetry. It is here in this shop that she meets 17-year-old Bahman, who is not only handsome but has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi's poetry and who, Mr Fakhri tells Roya, is 'the boy who wants to change the world'. Their romance, along with their mutual love of books and Rumi's poetry, blossoms, and the stationery shop remains their favourite place in all of Tehran. Her parents are forward-looking with liberal views and have ambitions for their daughters, with the father encouraging them to study well and become the likes of Marie Curie and Hellen Keller. They meet Braham and he is accepted not just because he is their daughter's choice but also because he holds similar political views as them—both are pro-democracy and support the then prime minister Mossadegh, who they believed was the only one who could stand up to the foreign powers. After the engagement, she feels more comfortable meeting him in public. She meets him for dates at café Ghanadi where he introduces her to pastries and coffee, as against Roya's normal drink—tea—and takes her to parties where she sees boys and girls mingling freely and learns to dance the tango. Everything in her life was changing and her thinking opened politically since she fell in love with Bahman, an activist. Those were the times when the country was in turmoil and then Bahman suddenly disappears, leaving Roya searching for him. She learns from Mr Fakhri that being an activist he had to go in hiding and the only way to contact him was through letters through Mr Fakhri. She revels this little contact and cherishes his letters. A few weeks before their planned marriage, for reasons unknown, they decide to secretly marry at the office of Marriage and Divorce, and he asks her to meet at one of the town squares. On the decided day—August 19, 1953, a day marked with violence in Iran's history—Roya alone waited for her fiancé at the town square, but Bahman never showed up. As violence erupts, she returns home dejected and later in the day learns of the coup d'état that changed their country's future (and theirs too). Roya tries desperately to contact Bahman but her efforts remained fruitless. It was as if he had disappeared from the face of the earth. Heartbroken Roya had to piece her life together for her parents' sake who, wanting her to be happy and safe, enrolled her and her younger sister Zari in Mills College in California. Both the sisters moved to California, on international scholarships, where they try to fulfil their father's dreams of scientific and literary careers for them. Moving from a sheltered family life into a new country they try to get used to the new ways of life (shaking hands, wearing shoes inside the house), new food (burgers and fries), and together learnt how to practice the nuances of a new language. Zari, whom back in Tehran, Roya often thought of vain and self-absorbed, 'absorbed this new American culture as though she were inhaling the air that would keep her from drowning', while Roya took her time. However, as time passed Roya too moved on, met and married Walter, and rebuilt her life. She is apparently happy with him and her life, though there had been difficult times such as the loss of her daughter. Yet such was her love for Bahman that no matter how many years went by, whenever Roya was alone in her thoughts, it was Bahman she reflected on. Though the readers' direct contact with Bahman was lost, we learn that four and a half years after the coup, or to say four and a half years since Roya and Bahman were to marry, Bahman married another woman. Bahman's friend Jahangir would sometimes pass on some news to Roya. It was from him that she learnt that Bahman was (ironically) 'working in the oil industry. Just as his mother wanted. Roya imagined him … going to work to learn how to maximise the profits of oil.' Through flashback, the reader learns about Bahman's past and his connection with Mr Fakhri. The story about the young lovers is pieced together through letters, that Bahman wrote to Roya but never sent. And then, sixty years after being separated and leading separate lives fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that haunted her for more than half a century: Why didn't you come? Why and where did you disappear? How is it that you were able to forget me? Not only Roya but Bahman too wanted to know what happened and why Roya didn't come to meet him at the town square sixty years ago on that fateful day. Bahman had lost not only Roya but all the work he had done to bring about political change in his country. It is almost till the very end that the readers remain guessing what happened to Bahman and why he didn't come to the town square where he had promised to meet Roya and didn't even try to contact her later. One feels sad when one learns who manipulated and played with the fates of the young lovers, but I will leave it to the readers to discover it for themselves as writing any further would spoil the suspense that one carries till the end. The book is set in the Iran of 1950s (at least the first half of the book) when the country was in grips of political upheaval. During this devastating political havoc of 1953, that disrupted Roya and Bahman's lives, Mohammad Mossadegh was the prime minister of Iran. Many people in Iran loved him and believed that he was their democratic leader who had the courage to stand up to foreign powers who wanted their oil. He was 'hope' for the many people who felt he was the right man to achieve democracy. On the other hand, the anti-Mosaddegh people and the supporters of the Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) were not happy; they believed that Mosaddegh was a communist and not only wanted to replace him but wanted him dead. It was also believed that the anti-Mossadegh people had the support of Western powers as Mossadegh wanted control over Iran's oil. Demonstrations had been taking place and were getting ugly and frightening. Protesters were shouting 'Marg Bar Tudeh; Death to the Communists'. (Tudeh is Iranian communist party, formed in 1941) 'Murg Bar Mossadegh' (death to Mossadegh). After a failed coup attempt earlier, on August 19, 1953, (the day when Roya was waiting for Bahman at the town square), the protesters 'attacked the prime minister's house, looted some of its contents, ran off with the rest. Destroyed it.' Though Mossadegh managed to escape, the coup had succeeded. The world had changed forever. It is an eye opener how foreign powers support people with vested interests to prevent others from bringing a change in the national interest. Along with the history, the readers get a glimpse of life and culture of Iran in the 1950. The country was much liberal under the Shah, 'who continued the advocacy for the rights of women that his father Reza Shah had begun.' Roya's mother had 'dropped the hijab as soon as Reza Shah enforced a no-veil policy for women back in the 1930s. She welcomed reforms for the emancipation of women even as her more religious relatives cringed at farangi foreign-embracing ways.' There is also an interesting account of Roya visiting a local bath (hammam) where attendants give her a bath and pamper her; though there still are hammams in Iran, most people have baths in their homes. We note that even at that time political awareness was such that even the attending girls at the hammam openly expressed their views. There are multiple references to Nowruz—the Persian New Year—and detailed descriptions of recipes using saffron and rose water which fit seamlessly into the narrative, first in Tehran where we learn of the various Persian dishes that the girls' mother prepares and later they become Roya's connection to her past. She introduces Walter to Persian cuisine and often cooks them for him. Along with the love story of the two teenagers and life in Iran in the 1950, the book exposes the complexities of relationships and how they influence the lives of the loved ones, as well as issues of immigration and cultural assimilation, aging, regrets, sorrows, and quirks of fate. The fact that the book brings to life the political history of Iran makes it worth reading by those who love political fiction as well as those who want to familiarise themselves with the political history and culture of Iran. Rizwana Naqvi is a freelance journalist and tweets @naqviriz; she can be reached at naqvi59rizwana@ All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer
Express Tribune
9 hours ago
- Express Tribune
The Titan, the Max, and the cult of the visionary
In June 2023, the world momentarily paused to follow the fate of five men trapped inside a small carbon fibre tube descending into the depths of the Atlantic. Aboard the OceanGate submersible named Titan, their mission was to witness the graveyard of another failed engineering marvel — the Titanic. However, it was barely 90 minutes into their descent that the Titan lost contact with the surface ship. A multinational search effort was launched and for days, headlines speculated the possibility of survival and the fate that met the adventurers on board the submersible. TV new channels ran live updates on the oxygen levels inside the sub. On the surface, this was a story of risk, exploration, and tragedy. But as the dust settled — or rather, as the implosion was confirmed — what emerged was not a simple tale of unfortunate loss but a parable of 21st-century hubris. Just like another disaster that came before it — the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircrafts in 2018 and 2019, which claimed 346 lives — the Titan sub tragedy was not an accident. It was the vision of a billionaire who placed profit, reputation, and ego above human life. Netflix's twin documentaries, The Titan: The OceanGate Disaster and Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, are in many ways cinematic mirror images of one another. One probes an elite venture's audacious flirtation with death, and the other, a once-revered aerospace titan's calculated betrayal of its founding values. Together, they offer a chilling study of how capitalist incentives and delusional self-belief have hollowed out the core of safety, accountability, and engineering integrity. What the documentary reveals is that The Titan sub was no sleek marvel of deep-sea engineering. It was a patchwork of consumer-grade parts, including a video game controller used to steer it and experimental carbon fibre technology deemed unsuitable by deep-sea experts. Stockton Rush, OceanGate's founder, persisted in cutting corners and dismissing warnings. He had fired employees who raised safety concerns and sidestepped regulatory classification by labeling his vessel as an "experimental" craft. The Titan: The OceanGate Disaster doesn't just document a submersible's final voyage. It examines the psychology of its maker. Rush was a man who saw regulation as an 'obstacle to innovation' and believed himself uniquely capable of rewriting the rules. His hubris wasn't just personal; it was ideological. He believed in the mythology of the visionary entrepreneur, the kind Silicon Valley hails as disruptive geniuses, too bold for bureaucracies and too fast for rules. This myth, dangerously incubated in the echo chambers of modern capitalism, is what ultimately doomed the Titan. What makes Titan particularly unsettling is its cultural context. As the documentary smartly illustrates, the media spectacle that followed the incident became its own capitalist sideshow — clickbait headlines, Twitter jokes, and livestreamed oxygen countdowns. The actual engineering failure became less important than the cultural symbolism: rich men paying $250,000 to tour the ruins of a sunken ship, only to die en route in an imploding capsule. It was sadder than Daedalus' own son flying too close to the sun on the wings he created. The film subtly points out that the real problem is not that the story distracted us from "more important" news. The tragedy is that our social media-fueled discourse couldn't rise above simplistic binaries: Either mourn the deaths or mock them; there was no nuance to the discussion on wealth inequality and scientific exploration. A corporation falls If Titan is a story of libertarian arrogance run amok, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing is the quiet, damning chronicle of institutional rot. Directed by Rory Kennedy, Downfall traces the corporate unravelling of Boeing from a beacon of engineering excellence to a cautionary tale of financialised capitalism. When Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in October 2018, and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 fell out of the sky five months later, the world wanted to blame pilot error or poor training. After all, it was unthinkable that Boeing — with its sterling legacy and global dominance — had built a flawed aircraft. 'If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going' was the tagline bandied about, such was the faith in this aerospace engineering marvel. However, Downfall strips away that illusion with surgical precision. It reveals how the 737 Max, Boeing's bestselling plane, had been designed with a secret: a deadly anti-stall system (MCAS) that pilots weren't told about, not even in manuals or simulators. The documentary makes it clear that the crashes weren't engineering mistakes — they were business decisions. Boeing had faced stiff competition from Airbus, which launched a more fuel-efficient model. Instead of designing a new aircraft from scratch, Boeing retooled the ageing 737 to save billions and rushed the Max to market. The company lobbied the FAA to forgo extensive pilot retraining, fearing it would cost sales. They won. The regulators rolled over. And 346 people died. The most powerful aspect of Downfall is its use of voices we rarely hear — the families of victims, the disillusioned engineers, the whistleblowers. One bereaved father becomes a searing voice of grief-fueled advocacy, and a former Boeing employee recalls the moment he realised the company had 'lost its soul.' These testimonies, paired with internal Boeing emails mocking regulators and boasting about 'Jedi mind tricks,' expose not just negligence but cruelty. When safety became optional at Boeing, accountability became negotiable. Capitalism with a death wish While the disasters chronicled in Titan and Downfall seem wildly different — one a private undersea expedition, the other a mass-market airliner — they are united by a deeper critique. Both documentaries argue that today's capitalism is no longer about innovation or production. It's about optics, speed, and shareholder value. Rush brashly ignored deep-sea experts because he needed hype. Boeing callously sidelined engineers because Wall Street needed dividends. In both cases, the system rewarded shortcuts and punished caution. Rush was a media darling until his hubris killed him. Boeing's CEO was paid $23 million in 2018, even as the company laid off thousands and falsified safety data. The firm spent $43 billion on stock buybacks while its planes were crashing. And when finally fined, Boeing paid $2.5 billion — less than 4% of its 2021 revenue. The pattern is unmistakable: destruction follows when corporations prioritise speed, cost-cutting, and PR over design, safety, and truth. This is not just unfair. As one analyst in Downfall puts it, 'It's not that capitalism isn't working. It's that it's no longer capable of delivering products that work.' Both films are also meditations on distraction — how capitalism commodifies even its failures. Titan became a Twitter meme faster than it became a tragedy. Downfall shows how Boeing's PR machine spun its way out of accountability, while most media outlets dropped the story once the planes were grounded. The documentaries themselves stand almost as acts of resistance: attempts to force attention back onto the lives lost, the systems failed, and the accountability evaded. The deeper tragedy is not just that people died, but that we may already be forgetting why. In our hyper-speed information In Titan, we witness the literal implosion of a vessel designed with fatal flaws by a man who believed he could bend physics to his will. In Downfall, we watch a metaphorical implosion — a company once synonymous with trust and safety reduced to an emblem of regulatory capture and corporate decay. What kind of society rewards recklessness with wealth? How did we allow institutions meant to protect us to become tools of political influence and market domination? Both are American stories. Both are capitalist stories. And both leave us with the same message: when profit becomes the only metric of success, we all become collateral damage. These documentaries are not just post-mortems; they are warnings. The sea and sky are unforgiving environments. So is reality. No matter how much money you throw at it, how many rules you bypass, or how compelling your origin myth is, eventually, the truth will catch up — with a stall, a crash, or an implosion. And when it does, it won't care how good your stock looked.
