BIBLIOFILES

[August 6th, 2003] under the banner of heaven
by Jon Krakauer
(Doubleday, 400 pages, $26)

Listening to God can get you in trouble. For evidence of this, look no further than Jon Krakauer's latest book, a story woven around two fundamentalist Mormon polygamists who believed God directed them to kill their sister-in-law and her infant daughter.

Some understanding of Mormon history is necessary to comprehend the events that led to this double-homicide. Joseph Smith, the religious genius who founded Mormonism, believed procreating with scores of women was the only way to ensure heavenly repose. Five decades after his murder, the Mormon Church reversed its stand on polygamy, and a goodly number of saints believed their leaders had erred on the side of Satan. Breakaway saints called themselves fundamentalist Mormons because they followed the literal word of God's prophet, Smith.

God's listeners seem to wreak havoc wherever they hail from. Pope John Paul II speaks to God, and his prohibition of birth control causes inestimable suffering. Taliban leaders, whose directives have killed and maimed thousands, talk to God and are told that America is the Great Satan. Attorney General John Ashcroft talks to God on the taxpayers' dime and has been told that homosexuals, among others, are not making God happy. Fundamentalist Mormons speak directly to God and are sure they'll sit on the right hand of Christ, though many of their wives and daughters suffer endless degradation.

Listening to inner voices (to be more precise), Krakauer demonstrates, may lead to unbridled obsession. Obsession can conquer mountains, for instance, as the author showed in Into Thin Air, but it can also conquer sanity. Still, acting upon personal passions does not always lead to insane pursuits, and Under the Banner of Heaven grants us pause to examine the difference between healthy direction and crazy talk. Steven Fidel

shooting people: adventures in reality tv
by Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen
(Verso, 184 pages, $21)

Though lush with choppy gossip about the life, times and evolution of reality TV, this rather aloof analysis is more a haughty condemnation than an informative tribute. Sam Brenton and Reuben Cohen clearly despise their subject, but as they bemoan reality-TV programs for usurping the once noble goals of the documentary, we can't help but feel a strange fascination with the genre. Specifically, when the authors discuss the harrowing social experiments of the 1970s in which scientists created false social scenarios and watched human test subjects self-destruct within them, we cringe to realize that reality-TV producers have essentially rehashed the same abusive formula.

Despite the authors' consistently condescending commentary, Shooting People delivers the goods. For the reality-TV fanatic, Brenton and Cohen give a complete deconstruction of the peeping-tom technologies, the cagey casting techniques, the artful marketing and the voyeuristic stratagem of reality programs. Though their pedantic language often feels like a cranky senior thesis aided by too much caffeine and a thick thesaurus, the programs they examine have enough spunk of their own to intrigue anyone with a vested interest.

In the captivating final chapter, Brenton and Cohen make a convincing attack on reality TV as pure propaganda, specifically in light of the post-9/11 military reality programs. As the authors identify these biased tele-bites as contrived, aggrandizing falsehoods meant solely for the sake of "recruitment" and mass hypnosis, I couldn't help but glance nervously up at my old, dark idiot box and shudder. In the end, the small screen seems a lot less trustworthy, but damn it, we're still intrigued. Nate Berne