Joseph Smith and the Music Man

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s first feature-length film, Cannibal! The Musical, was a musical. Their third, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, was a musical; it even won an Academy Award nomination for its song “Blame Canada.” For that year’s honors Parker and Stone memorably dressed in drag—specifically in Jennifer Lopez’s green plummeting-neckline number and a satiny pink dress à la Gwyneth Paltrow from the year of her Shakespeare in Love acceptance speech—but they lost to Phil Collins. Their puppet movie, Team America: World Police, featuring the catchy martial pep song “America, Fuck Yeah,” was a musical. And beginning with “Kyle’s Mom Is a Big Fat Bitch,” in episode nine of season one, even South Park, Parker and Stone’s animated serial masterpiece on Comedy Central, has been a musical, for fifteen years running, just about every chance it can get. Notably, a number of these productions had something to do with Mormons. Cannibal was in part about Mormons (and cannibalism). Orgazmo (their second feature) was all about Mormons (and porn). Episode twelve of season seven of South Park bears the title “All About the Mormons.” You needn’t have watched everything Parker and Stone have ever made (as some people have, I hear) to know that the boys (as we still tend to call them) love musicals, and are preoccupied with the Latter-day Saints.