Mormon Stories that Napoleon Dynamite Tells to Me

In director Jared Hess' 2004 film "Napoleon Dynamite," the title character is excruciatingly aware of his body. He endlessly complains about chapped lips and gets smacked over the head by his brother. He attends a martial arts class whose promises to help him master his body are quickly exposed as an impossible swindle, and his uncle's attempts to teach him football are a similar dismal failure. He is good at tetherball and plays it with gusto. He hides his gangly form in ill-fitting suits and clomping moon boots that only serve to emphasize his awkwardness. He savors Tater Tots. Napoleon's grapple with his body is only won when he paradoxically ceases to grapple with it, allows it to be what it is and in so doing finds a transcendent sort of bliss dancing before the student body of his high school.