Diane Winston

Whether or not pop culture can sanitize or whitewash religion depends a lot on what kind of pop culture you're talking about and who has control of it.

So influencers on social media, and I'm thinking of Ballerina Farm in particular, is a good example of someone who is great at whitewashing her religion.

We all know she's Mormon.

There are certain trappings of Mormonism that run through her clips.

But we mostly think of her as a beautiful woman with a lovely family who sells wonderful products.

That's a very different view of the religion than the recent movie Heretic with Hugh Grant, where he was out to entrap two young Mormon missionaries.

And the difference there is a studio is making the heretic, and so they can do whatever they want.

And I don't think most studios...

want to whitewash religion necessarily because that could bring up a lot of angry protests.

But neither do they want to really crucify it, to use another religious term, because that would make people pissed off also.

So I think people on social media are much more apt to whitewash a religion than people...

who are working under a corporate system.

Basically, religion is all about what am I doing here?

What's the purpose of my life?

Who are my people?

And these are the questions that make up the best stories in the world.

That's why the Quran and the Bible and the Indian epics have been around for thousands of years, because they're stories about people and how they decide to live their lives and how they confront all the things that happen and how they choose to be moral or not.

And since that is so fundamental to the human experience, almost every show has some aspect of religion or spirituality in it.

I'm trying to convert people.

Have I converted you?