Exoticized Voices, Racialized Bodies

Just as Mormons used musical theater to purchase whiteness in the early twentieth century, so too do Mormons begin in the 1960s to use musical theater to associate other racial minorities with white American values. By allowing certain groups the opportunity to voice whiteness through the conventions of musical theater, Mormons reimagined the genre as a tool to transform some minority members into exemplars of whiteness. This chapter first details the history of Mormonism in Hawaii and the musical theater productions at the Mormon-owned Polynesian Cultural Center that began there in 1963. Importantly, Mormons have long understood dark-skinned Polynesians, like themselves, to be a chosen people, rather than cursed--displaced Jews, in fact, whose origins are explained in The Book of Mormon. The chapter then analyzes the Mormon musical Life . . . More Sweet than Bitter, billed as a sequel to Fiddler on the Roof, for its narrative explicitly connecting Mormons to Judaism. The musical stage thus becomes for modern Mormons a reckoning device to demonstrate belonging and acceptance in exotic terms--“whitening” the dark-skinned Polynesians and demonstrating fluidity between Mormonism and Judaism.