September Dawn, a film about the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre, is coming out this week and certain agents in Utah and other institutions close to the church have already began an attack on the film.  When I say church, I mean the LDS church. According to numerous sources, Brigham Young ordered a militia to kill emigrants passing through the Utah Territory. It is also claimed that the Mormons framed local Indian tribes for this attack. Of course, several church officials deny this and have argued that such arguments are wrong and historically inaccurate.
From the Spectrum, a news source from southern Utah, published an article about the film, Massacre Remembered.

The cruel and severe persecution of LDS settlements in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, and the certainty of an attack by the U.S. Army, is largely minimized in the film. Such pressures, however, proved to be the catalyst of one of the largest migrations in U.S. history and would provide a solid motive for the hardened and defensive dispositions of those early 19th century members of the LDS church….

Why Hollywood chose to embellish the sad tale with dark innuendo is obvious: profit. Exploiting the Mountain Meadow Massacre for any type of gain is reprehensible and does a disservice to the lives lost that day.

Clearly, this denunciation of the film is rooted in more than anti-materialism.  The author comes across as having a lot at stake in both the religious persecution that Mormons struggled with AND the weight of atrocities that occurred during the massacre.

This article from Clarksville, TN offers a less defensive tone about the massacre.

The film has sparked rebuttal from Latter Day Saints, and controversy as the horrors of another time and place spill into today’s headlines, rekindling debate and triggering strong statements from Mormon leaders decrying the murderous attribution and citing the honor and atonements offered to the dead over the ensuing one and a half centuries. In 1999, The LDS dedicated a memorial on the massacre site.

By acknowledging some culpability in the form of a memorial, the Mormon Church is attempting to move on or at least put up the perception of moving on.  But Americans haven’t even had the chance to digest the Mountain Meadows Massacre, as Mormons and Mormon history has not really found its place in the popular culture imagination until recently.  So the rest of non-Mormon Americans have to digest everything Mormon good and bad.  While the Mormon Church will claim the massacre is not them (represtative or responsibility), as soon as hollywood puts it out there…there ain’t no going back.

I’m ready to see it.  But I have to see Super Bad first.  Long story.