The Truth in the Fun House Mirror

A Film Review of Java Jive

I am about to tell you a true story that is going to sound made up. I totally understand if you don’t believe me. After all, I make a lot of things up. My interview with Jeevan Sidhu, the Bollywood playback singer turned Mormon mystic? Pure imagination. My review of the Church History Museum’s avant-garde wing? Wishful thinking. I’m sorry if you ran across those things and wanted them to be real. But not very sorry, because I wanted them to be real, too. I want to live in the world where something stunningly surreal is always waiting around the corner, where the Mormon collective subconscious is constantly boiling with lucid dreams.

So—take it with a grain of salt when I tell you about something that happened to me in June.

I was at the Mormon History Association conference. In the morning, I listened to a presentation about an early 20^th century Latter-day Saint jazz musician once played in a biopic by Danny Kaye. During a lunchtime plenary about Carry On, I made a very funny joke about Cedar City in the 1870s. After lunch, I sat by the University of Illinois Press table and got lost in a forthcoming epic poem about Joseph Smith.

At some point, I looked over the upcoming presentations—and hesitated. There are so many interesting things from our past that people talk about. And there are also so many weird and uncomfortable things. When you walk into a history panel, you never know quite what you’re going to feel and what you’re going to need to process. In that way, history is uncomfortably like life, and I’m not always sure I’m up to either. So I stalled. I got up and talked to some friends. And then, at the end of the exhibition hall, tucked into a corner that almost didn’t look like it should be a vendor space, I caught sight of flickering lights shining out from inside a big black tent.

And yes, I know this all sounds like I’m making things up again. Normal people don’t laugh at jokes about the 1870s. University Presses don’t publish epic poems about Joseph Smith. Black tents don’t appear out of nowhere at academic conferences, and they certainly don’t beckon to you like the Zoltar machine in Big.

But J Celene Anderson, the independent film producer, was there. I’m pretty sure she’s real, because we’ve talked about poetry before. Barrett Burgin was also there. I can’t remember if I’ve actually shaken his hand to confirm that he’s not some malign spirit. But I saw him, for whatever that’s worth.

Anyway, Celene and Barrett said they had something to show me, if I was interested. They were currently showing a short horror film based on Doctrine and Covenants 129, but once it was through, they would love to show me a 15-minute comedy called Java Jive.

Well, what could I do? When I wonder if I’m at the edge of a tear in reality, I step through.

I think there was another viewer beside me as I ducked through the curtain and into the tent. Barrett gave me headphones. He pressed play. And then, for fifteen minutes, I was more or less lost to the world.

How can I describe this movie to you? It’s so close to realism. And it’s so far away.

I could try to explain what I saw moment by moment. How the film opens with a luxurious swirl of coffee beans giving way to the white cover of a Holy Bible. How a young man goes out on splits with two missionaries, biking iconically through the rain. How if you blink you’ll miss that the missionaries’ nametags say Elder Stoner and Elder Bundy, and that all the literature they hand out seems to be exclusively about the Word of Wisdom.

I could tell you about the incense burning. About the awkward opening discussion where the elders try to explain what counts as “hot drinks” to a little person while he piles up a lot of meat to eat. I would try to get quickly to the part where the camera slows and the audio slows and the little person’s already-low voice goes down another octave as he says, “So you’ll never…have coffee…in your life?” and the missionaries abruptly start staring at the teenaged priest until he blurts out, “Never. I’d rather die than make God ashamed.”

Even Elder Stoner seems to notice that this is an inappropriately extreme reaction. But it fits just fine into the world of the film. Java Jive is completely insane. Larger than life. It’s in the same funhouse-mirror style as the story of the Rameumptom. It’s a camel dancing through a needle’s eye. And yet, those opening sequences somehow also bring back memories. I remember being a missionary, trying desperately to get a message across while also hearing how strange it must have sounded in someone else’s ears. I remember being a teenager, torn between boundless zeal about my faith and crippling self-consciousness. I remember growing into what W. E. B. called double consciousness, the phenomenon where someone from a minority culture can’t help but see themselves through the imagined eyes of the majority.

Java Jive is clearly set in a parallel reality. It’s also set somewhere inside my mind.

There is too much in this short movie to explain. Let me sum up. The main character in Java Jive is the teenaged priest. His name is Ben. He has a date tonight. Her name is Mary. They’ve been together for a while and he really likes her. Enough, apparently, to withhold information; she doesn’t know that he’s a Latter-day Saint.

She takes him to a coffee shop. Its menu has tiny icons to mark everything that is dairy-free, gluten-free, kosher, halal, sattvic. There is no trumpeting angel or miniature temple to mark the items without coffee beans. And anyway, Mary has already chosen the most delicious, sensually rich coffee money can buy to share with Ben. “I have wanted to do this for so long,” she says. She is holding the cup the way the heroine might in an old Bollywood movie, back when censors didn’t allow kissing and every gesture dripped with sexual tension instead.

Remember that I am watching this in a tent tucked in the corner of the Mormon History Association’s annual conference. Participants here go through my people’s past with fine-toothed combs. They study. They scrutinize. Some criticize. There are plenty of moments to cringe.

And I’m cringing now on behalf of my dear, fictional teenaged friend Ben and his escalating predicament—while also laughing so hard I almost fall out of my chair. Nate Morley, who plays Ben, squirms around confrontation with an energy that is captivating. I feel completely wrapped up in the knots in his guts. Ryann Bailey, who plays Mary, lets anticipation crest into frustration and then a desperate confusion that lays its own claim on my sympathies. Bridger Nebeker’s sound design is, at turns, both hypnotic and hilarious. Barrett Burgin’s direction is visually rich, as studded with evocative detail as an artwork by Megan Knoblauch Geilman.

It is so good to be here, in this dark tent, the colors of Barrett’s film flashing across my face before I head back out into history. The awkwardness I’m feeling here isn’t going to end out there. When people pull frustrating moments out of the vast pool of our history for examination, when I hear the occasional judgment in a presenter’s voice, I will be back in the world of Java Jive. In theory, I’m supposed to learn lessons from the failures of the past. But in practice, I’ll probably also feel a lot of embarrassment. I’m at risk of resenting historical figures for making us look bad while other people are watching.

There’s a phrase in Yiddish for this. A shanda fur di goyim! (a shame before the Gentiles!) is used to scold someone for acting awkward, reinforcing stereotypes, or airing dirty laundry while the world is watching. The trouble with being part of a stigmatized minority group is that Ben isn’t just flailing for Ben. My self-perception is tied up in his embarrassment. Joseph Smith and Martin Harris aren’t just two guys trying to figure things out. They’re my two guys and people are gonna look at me funny if they land us on South Park.

Double-consciousness is not a game we’re set up to win. Judging our conduct by a dominant culture’s standards, we’re bound to come up short. But we can’t seem to help but play. We’re all Ben, out on a cultural limb to begin with and then getting into awkward situations partly of our own making. We can beat ourselves up about that. Or maybe we can listen to Barrett and laugh.

How do I feel about my people? How do I feel about all the strange things we do? How do I feel about all the things we can’t quite bring ourselves to say?

I’m probably like you. As I’m trying to process the world around me through the warped lenses I’ve been given, I still occasionally swing from hot to cold, zealous to self-conscious. Some things about us light my imagination on fire. Some things about us freeze my heart to a stop.

So it’s cathartic to laugh my guts out in the dark tent that somehow appeared at the end of the exhibitors’ hall at the Mormon History Association conference. Good to reflect that at least I’m not lukewarm.

Editor’s note: We checked, and James is really and truly not making this one up. Burgindie Pictures has graciously agreed to share a link to prove it. We promise it doesn’t lead to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” To see Java Jive for yourself, click here. Better yet, join us at the Wayfare Film Festival to see it on the big screen and discuss it with James Goldberg, Barrett Burgin, Josh Sabey, Sarah Perkins and Theric Jepson.

James Goldberg is a poet, novelist, and champion of Mormon literature. His works include The Five Books of Jesus and A Book of Lamentations.

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