King's Speech, Taboos and Mormon Culture

When The King's Speech garnered the Best Picture distinction at Sunday night's Academy Awards—and its leading man captured the Best Actor prize—there was surely much rejoicing from LDS women around globe. Mormon women have an obsession with Colin Firth's suave reticence that goes back, as far as I can determine after extensive research, to his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the A&E miniseries Pride and Prejudice. What made Sunday's celebration notable is not the fact that Mr. Firth played an attractive, high-status British man who struggles with just-dangerous-enough inner demons, ultimately triumphing in the company of an attractive, devoted woman—no, that part sounds somewhat familiar. What was different Sunday night is the fact that Colin Firth played this character in an R-rated movie, a movie that many of his LDS fans have seen.