Johnny Lingo (GAM043B)

Noah Lugeons

Eli Bosnick

***Johnny Lingo*** is the third most racist thing ever to happen—first if you count "not murders." It's one of two educational videos produced by Brigham Young University in a desperate and misguided attempt to project normalcy from the LDS.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, because it's the only way to make Eli stop watching porn.

### **How Bad Was It?**

It is *so* close to a good message. Like, you can tell—this is like the telephone game of good messages in educational films—it's like "Treat women well", but they got funneled straight through the cheesecloth of crazy and this is what came out the other side. It's like being told to wash your hands by a Grand Wizard of the KKK.

### **Best Worst**

* Eli: …most racist Christian movie we've watched. [Or at least the most sexist.]
* Bryce: ...ugly duckling story. [They made no effort to make Mohana ugly.]
* Noah: ... consistent accents. [Yes, worse than *If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?*

### **Notes**

* Check out Bryce on *Naked Mormonism*, *Glass Box*, and *My Book of Mormon*.
* The second part (mostly beginning at 52:22) of a Mormon Movie Month episode reviewing two short films rather than the usual feature-length.
* Based on "Johnny Lingo's Eight-Cow Wife" by Patricia McGerr, originally published in Woman's Day (November 1965), and reprinted in *Readers Digest (February 1988). , v132, no. 790, pages 138-141).*
* Filmed on location in Hawaii in November 1968 using local Mormon church members, except for Francis Urry who plays "Harris, the white trader" (answering Eli's in-episode question). Lamar Williams (head of the Missionary Department's AV section) said "The Church is only mentioned in the production credits so it is a film that could be put on coast to coast television."

### **Jokes**

* [Noah: But the fucked up thing though, is that they're all freaking out, but *not* because a human being was just sold for cows!] [Eli: Not because a human being is being sold, just how many cows she was being sold for. These people are having a "black people who have seen a magic trick" reaction to the fact that someone is being sold for *eight* cows.] [Bryce: And I have to say… okay, I'm a car nerd—I love cars, right? And it's always been my dream to just walk into a super sweet car dealership and just drop a briefcase full of cash on it and just say "Hey. No paperwork: gimme the keys to that one, I'm driving it off the lot right now." That's my dream, and that's what Johnny Lingo just did with a *wife*. With a woman! He just bought a *human* that way.] [Eli: It's funny, I have also had that dream, but it's *been* with a human, so this movie was very cathartic for me. I was just gonna walk in with a briefcase full of cows and just be like "Boom! Eight cows in that briefcase."] [Noah: See, I was the other way around: I had that fantasy about trading a certain number of women for a cow, but we've all more or less been there.] (1:10:21)
* [Eli: And Johnny Lingo says such—again it's *so* close to a nice message—he says "I have loved her ever since we were children. She has always been beautiful." And I was just like "That's a lovely thing to say about someone you haven't *bought*—someone who you haven't purchased. What a lovely thing to say about someone who's not in essence a slave who you raped."] [Noah: Right. Okay, first of all this "Oh wow, now she's gorgeous!" thing is that's because she's not hiding behind a tree, but the other thing is that the message he's trying to send here is "Just think about how much self esteem you give a person when you say their value is equivalent to *some number of cows*. How did this not get nixed at the fucking meeting?] (1:21:24)

### **Interstitials**

* None. [See *Cipher in the Snow*, the first part of the episode.]

### **Tropes**

* Looks Like...
* SEXISM!
* Christians Don't Know How the World Works
* Crazy Billionaire Money
* Make Me a Sammich!
* Name That Movie!
* RACISM!
* Reprehensible Moral Message

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom [Begins ]
* Episode on YouTube
* Film on YouTube
* IMDb