Photo: Natalie Cass / Disney
Most of the reality lifestyle shows are stuck with a necessary truth: none of these people would really be friends, and many never even know if they were not all thrown into the same series together. On Housewives Series, there is little decisive cohesion in the group beyond “we live in the same region”. They enter the houses of the other and are amazed at the severity of cheese / wine / decoration / arrangement. These are not women who know each other or belong together. But The secret life of Mormon wivesNow in its second season, has built a very important innovation on the usual formula. It is not that these women all drag together for the good of the show. They all drag together for the good of #Momtok, their collection of Tiktok content, disputed by hashtag.
Except that #Momtok is, well, nothing. Of course, there are videos, and there was the original swing scandal that launched the whole series. There may even have been a period before the start of the show when #Momtok was a significant coalition of these people. But it is not a company or a religion or even a poorly organized club. There is no director body. There are no set of defined rules. There is no formal leader, or even official measures to be taken to obtain members. Its name is so vague that it offers a suspicion of what it means or made for Mormon wives, and Tiktok is many other fully unresolved women who use the hashtag to mean being a mother. At Mormon wives Casting, #momtok is only an idea of ​​something they sometimes do together, but that links them to an imaginary community in which they participate, and a socially constructed self-identification system that exists in alignment, but not enough identical to, reality TV. (Benedict Anderson, I’m so sorry.) #Momtok is not as real as Mormon wives claim it, and that is why it makes such a stupid good television.
They pretend to be #momtok in existence very Hard, of course. Their means of subsistence and their social life and their careful dance of adhesion and independence of Mormonism depend on it. For them, #Momtok is Mormon and yet paradoxically based on feminist empowerment. It is made visible by matching athletics, dance choreography and which is labeled in which videos. And, in one way or another, performing allegiance (or at least a relationship) with #momtok is possible even when you do it from the outside of #Momtok. In October, after the first season of Mormon wives Among the Hulu, Whitney Leavitt, member of the distribution, published a video of a Tiktok dance that she and her colleagues (friends? Mormon wives. The superimposed text on the video itself is “welcome to the updated Mormtok”, but Leavitt’s legend is “can you say who really didn’t want to do this #Mormomtok”. Does Leavitt Jab suggest that a faction of allegiance #Momtok threatens to oust another? Does Leavitt just want to leave? In January, his comrade Mikayla Matthews, a member of the distribution, published a video with the legend on the screen “My friends told me that we meet at 5 years old, I presented myself two hours earlier and I saw this.” The video is transformed from the frontal video of Matthews’s face to the rear camera, of sequences shot through a French window or a door: other members of #momtok half-spare, all in coordination of the beige combination, arranging in front of a ring. Does this mean that it is no longer in #Momtok? Does the execution of your exclusion from #Momtok functionally reaffirm your #MOMTOK subscription only by association?
The ridiculous self-political performance of being in #momtok is not so far from another type of performative demonstrations of group membership, things like the sorority hazing or the aesthetic narrowing of trade (or, you know, Mormonism). But also in the other direction, it is not a distant leap so that there is absolutely no other reason why these women hang out together. They do not use the hashtag in the same way: Taylor Frankie Paul adds it to videos of herself to clean his house, and Matthews adds it to images of her little one falls asleep in a fun place. Jessi Ngatikaura and Layla Taylor mainly use it on sponsored publications. Jen Affleck disappeared from Tiktok for several months after the first season of Mormon wives and returned with a pregnancy ad (not labeled #momtok) and is now just as likely to label the official account of the Hulu program as to use the hashtag #momtok – although it is a Foundation! member! It’s chaos! For some women, #Momtok is part of an apparently sincere performance of maternity. For others, it seems to be a sponsored chore or label that brands can obtain if they pay it. Sometimes it is a group activity; Sometimes it looks very alone. It is not Nothing Really, not in a consistent way.
This is why the best thing about THE Secret life of Mormon wives It is at any time that one of these women looks at the camera and says: “I’m just trying to protect #Momtok.” This happens constantly throughout the show – The trailer for season two is a litany of complaints and concerns of #Momtok – but the thing is … no, you are not! None of you really care about #momtok! It has become a significant source of income thanks to brand sponsorships, yes, but whatever the thin ideology could have been associated with the glorified group project was completely emptied. Now, that’s just one thing that people can say, a shared code of belonging to which no one really believes in any case, except, suddenly, when they care very, a lot.
They care because the imaginary community of #Momtok leaves the Mormon wives ending to be on The secret life of Mormon wives Without breaking the central rule to be on a lifestyle reality TV show, you can’t talk Also Many things about a reality show. The actors can go on vacation in which they would never continue otherwise, but they cannot say: “We are on vacation designed to create sets for this show.” They can organize parties for the show, but they cannot say: “We would never invite this person because we hate them, except that it is obviously our work in this program.” But Mormon wives can look directly in the camera and say: “#momtok turns to the left and right”, when what they mean is: “The casting of this show is fighting.” They can also say: “Whoever comes to this stage is the continuation of influence”, and the text of it is #momtok, but it is really that someone has been added to the distribution. #Momtok may be the code for “we all put this performance of social affinity together”, and it doesn’t matter whether it is for filming to film tiktoks or film the series. Speak endless about #momtok leaves Mormon wives Include a delicious layer of meta discussion that most other series must siphon in social media quarrels and the battles of the Reunion-episodes.
The last one and perhaps the most beautiful thing about #Momtok is that each time someone says words aloud, they seem ridiculous and make everyone listen so ridiculous. Words Secret life of Mormon wives are full of weight and theater and cultural expectations. Talking about feminism or gender roles or religion is instantly convincing. But #Momtok connects everything that is at this spectacle to a fundamental and delicious superficiality. How Can it be so serious? This is something called #momtok! #Momtok. It’s so beautiful. It’s so stupid. It is so perfectly nothing at all.
