If you’re Mormon, you’ve seen the 1970's quality short film many times. If you’re not, here’s a brief synopsis. There’s an island. In their marital traditions, a man will give X amount of cows to a woman’s father as a kind of reverse dowry (I’m sure there is a word for it…). Three cows are pretty standard. Four to five cows are a little more impressive. There is a scene in the short film where women are bragging about how many cows their husbands gave for them. There is this girl called Mahana, and she is “ugly.” The island people make fun of her, and joke that maybe she’ll get one cow for her hand in marriage. Well this good-looking guy called Johnny Lingo comes to the island to get married, and he happens to choose Mahana--to everyone's shock. The next day he brings an astronomical 8 COWS! All the island people don’t understand, but her father obviously accepts. Later down the road, we see Mahana and Johnny Lingo in their married life, and gasp! Mahana has shed her ugly duckling looks. Johnny Lingo gives some bogus moral of the story that once Mahana saw she was worth 8 cows, she had inner confidence…blah blah blah.
Well, Johnny Lingo was wrong! Mahana needed to feel that her self-worth was infinite and absolute before she got material wealth. Her newfound self confidence was rooted in something fickle and conditional. Mahana essentially became one of those silly women at the beginning of the film who felt oh-so-important because of the number of cows that were paid for them. This does not show much self-improvement.
Kids, moral of the story: If you buy what everyone else has and keep up with society's materialism, you will feel profound self-love and inner confidence.
2 comments:
So I've been thinking about this one. I think that the real moral of the story they wanted to portray is that someone helped Mahana see she is worth something...not 8 cows, per se, but because a man could love her for her. She had forgotten that, and you can't blame her. When you are put down so long, even by the people who are supposed to love you (aka the dad), you just don't treat yourself the way you should. Thus the poor self-hygiene and general unkemptness of Mahana. She needed someone to just come in and make her realize "YOU ARE WORTH THE WORLD TO ME." And that helped her see herself in the light she always should have seen herself in.
On a side note, I see how the "you're only worth so many cows" is a pretty obvious social taboo. However, as dad says, "we have to respect every culture." (fill in the sarcasm there)
This movie should not be shown to boys between the ages of 12 and 18. We watched it for mutual once and all they could do was yell "Mahana you ugly" at all the girls. Not good times. But still worth watching for old church movie cheesiness times.
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