The map that puzzled me was \u201cLa La Land.\u201d It\u2019s big in LA, of course (like \u201cFences\u201d in Pittsburgh). But its other strongholds are counties with a high proportion of Mormons: Utah plus Mormonic counties in neighboring states \u2013 Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada.<\/p>\n How to explain the \u201cLa La Land\u201d – Latter Day Saints connection? The movie is rated PG-13, but so are \u201cFences,\u201d \u201cArrival,\u201d and \u201cLion.\u201d And \u201cHidden Figures\u201d is PG. But then, the cast of \u201cLa La Land\u201d has very few non-Whites and zero aliens. That might have something to do with it.<\/p>\n Or maybe it\u2019s just because Ryan Gosling grew up with seriously Mormon parents. He is no longer a Mormon and says he never really identified as one. He has long since left the church. He is neither a singer nor a dancer but has to sing and dance in this film. His character is supposed to be a jazz purist, but the music he plays is what you might call Utah jazz (one of the great oxymorons of our time). But those minor quibbles mean little compared with the fact the for the first years of his life, he was raised as a Mormon.<\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why is \u201cLa La Land\u201d so popular among Mormons? The New York Times (here) has maps (chloropleths, if you want to show off your vocabulary) showing the popularity of the nominees for best picture. The maps look like different countries. \u201cFences,\u201d for example, did best in the Southern swath from Louisiana to North Carolina but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":69943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,129,42],"class_list":["post-69941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-media","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/02\/LaLa.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69947,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69941\/revisions\/69947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/02\/FencesArrivalvert.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/02\/LaLa.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2017\/02\/Mormons.jpg\")
<\/a>The maps match even for distant counties in Missouri and Virginia, where those dark spots on the map might indicate only 5-10% of the population. Most counties in the US are below 3%.<\/p>\n