Why don't Mormons like "The Book of Mormon Musical"?

[Disclaimer: Like many if not most Mormons, I haven't seen The Book of Mormon Musical, so I'm depending  on here-say to form an opinion. Very unfair, I know.  But all will be explained.]

The simple answer: I think Mormons dislike the Book of Mormon Musical because it makes fun of us.  No one likes being made fun of.

Are we uptight?  Perhaps. Or perhaps not.  As a culture, Mormons have had plenty of self-deprecating humor. I've seen little skits at activities at church, comics drawn by members (some of the tamer ones even published in our own magazines), and in the last fifteen or so years an entire genre of Mormon humor flicks has developed in the film-making world, all poking fun at our culture. The only reason that you haven't heard of movies like the "Singles Ward" or "Church Ball" or "The RM" is that the humor is largely lost on people outside the culture. (The movie names themselves are the first indicator that cultural understanding is prerequisite to enjoying the humor).

Is it the vulgarity and the profanity? Many articles have pointed that out.  Lacing a show about Mormons with profanity and grotesque or sexual humor is like filling an Amish show with references to technology and automobiles.  It just doesn't fit.  In fact, its presence in the musical is why we won't go see it.  Despite being a very musical-friendly culture, we don't even get to laugh along at ourselves with our friends in the arts, while they make fun of us, because the language is so bad.

For me there's something even more personally offensive than the vulgarity.  It is the stereotyping of Mormons as naive.  But perhaps I shouldn't be offended by that; in its own subtle way it may actually be the funniest thing in the whole Book of Mormon Musical.

Perhaps, to some degree, many missionaries start out with a certain naivete; most are unscarred by addictions or extramarital intimacy and too young to have seen much of death or illness. But that criticism evaporates rapidly as Mormon missionaries live among the people in nearly every country in the world, speaking their language, wrestling with not only religious questions but unimaginable social and economic and familial problems.

I and my companions come home at 21 years old knowing more about the world than most Americans will know in a life time.  In my small congregation there are fluent speakers of Korean, Japanese, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Croatian.  And among my closest friends are fluent speakers of Russian, Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Arabic, Chinese, and Mongolian.

In the 24 months that straddled my exit from teenager to full adulthood, I saw it all.  I counseled with families who had seen their own children and brothers murdered in a popular uprising, with the victims of rape, with children who had become addicted to crack cocaine by the age of 8, Dads who lost their jobs or struggled with alcoholism, moms struggling with the emotional aftermath of an abortion, families wrestling with revelations of an adulterous affair or a teenage pregnancy, with victims of sexual abuse and incest, with the loved ones coping with a suicide, a miscarriage, death from accidents or incident to old age. I have helped bail people out of jail. I have seen down the wrong end of the barrel of a gun and felt one pressed at the back of my head on more than one occasion. I have been explicitly propositioned (by both genders, by the way), I know what a crack pipe, cocaine, marijuana, and acid look like, and I can tell when someone is on one of them (and probably even distinguish which one). I can pick out a glue huffer from a mile away. I know what anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders look like when there's no medicine to treat them. I know what dying from cancer and AIDS look like too.

By the way, it's not all bad: I have also played chess with professors, engaged diplomats in conversation on history and world affairs.  I have trained teachers, taught English, represented my church in an appearance before a world religion class at a catholic seminary. I have played soccer in the streets with children and in formal games against Chilean men (including a police precinct. We won.) I have climbed a small mountain, eaten foods that we don't have time to describe here, washed clothes on a board and showered in cold water (many times), and knelt in prayer with many, many people of varying ranks in Chilean society.

And I have done all of that in a second language. Before the age of 21.

I would love to know this: How many languages do the writers and producers of The Book of Mormon Musical speak?  How many years have they spent fully devoted to helping others? Are any of them qualified to counsel people struggling with addictions and relationship struggles? Or do they perhaps belong on the other side of the table?  By the way, a couple of years of high school language classes and camps does not make you a linguist or even count as "speaking a language", despite what you have posted on the "Info" section of your Facebook Page. Nor does "having a friend who comes to you for help and has lots of problems" make you a counselor.  Only naivete could produce such a delusion.

The rest of the world (outside the U.S.) laughs not at Mormon naivete but at American naivete; at best a nation of tourists, and at worst viewed as a very sheltered and arrogant people. Mormon Missionaries are the only demographic in American society that are a meaningful exception to that rule. We Mormon Missionaries are in many ways the cultured, the cosmopolitan. (That's why Salt Lake City was so ideal for hosting a Winter Olympics, by the way.)

Fortunately for you, Mormon Missionaries aren't the types of people to make a whole production of mocking the rest of you for your naivete.