‘Tabloid’: Joyce McKinney and the manacled Mormon

by Troy Williams in Queer Gnosis | 0 comments

I was sitting in my KRCL office when the call first came. An upbeat voice with a charming southern accent filled my ear, “Hi Troy, this is Joyce McKinney! I bet you weren’t expecting to hear from me today!” Joyce McKinney? My brain was racing. I know the name Joyce McKinney. “I’m going to give you the scoop of a lifetime,” she proclaimed. “I’m going to let you tell my story.” Holy heck! I realized quickly that I was talking with THE Joyce McKinney. And suddenly I was transported back to my Mormon mission to England where I first heard her name.

Joyce was the Wyoming beauty queen who, back in 1977, allegedly kidnapped a missionary, Elder Kirk Anderson and held him chained and bound “spread eagle” in a love cottage during a wild-sex weekend in England. On the surface it seemed a lurid tale of forbidden LDS&M. The cottage in question happened to be in Devon where I also served my mission. “Joyce McKinney and the manacled Mormon” was the irresistible pulp tale of sex and salvation – a cautionary tale for young male missionaries.

But what really happened during those missing three days will be forever a mystery. Only Joyce and Kirk know for sure. Joyce claims it was a romantic getaway and that she was only helping Kirk escape the cult of Mormonism. Kirk claimed during the trial that he was abducted, chained and raped. Who is telling the truth? Is it even possible for a woman to rape a man? This unlikely “love story” became one of the world’s first tabloid sensations. Her subsequent arrest and trial were only the beginning.

Talking to Joyce was a delight. I understand how so many people fell wildly in love with her. She is gregarious and outrageous – equally fearless and eccentric. I ultimately decided that my radio show was not the right venue to tell her story. Someone else was interested in bringing her story to the big screen – the incomparable Errol Morris.

Morris is probably the greatest living American documentary filmmaker. His groundbreaking films explore his fascination with “perverse portraiture.” Be they Ray Mendez, the hairless mole rat expert in Fast Cheap and Out of Control, or the Holocaust-denying designer of electric chairs Fred Leuchter in Mr. Death. The subjects of an Errol Morris film are always eccentrics driven by unusual passions. Morris won the Academy Award for his 2003 film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the life of Robert McNamara.

When Morris needed someone to explain Mormon doctrine in his new documentary, Tabloid, I told him that I was called to serve (all these years and still a missionary!). I spent three hours sitting in front of his famous “interrotron” – a unique camera rig that allows the interviewee to peer into the camera lens and see Errol Morris’ face (who is sitting in an adjacent room – literally the man behind the curtain).

What ensued between us was a fierce conversation on the nature of rape, Mormon temple ceremonies and “truth.” For the record, although Morris does not believe a woman can physically rape a man (specifically tiny Joyce raping hefty Kirk) the queer in me argued otherwise. It is possible to begin a sexual adventure consensually and then suddenly want out – too late though when you are quite literally bound by the chains of love.

Tabloid is a story about love, yes – but also obsession – and the thin line that divides them both. We’ve all felt, at one time or another, obsessive-compulsive impulses of romantic love. We’ve all experienced manic desires and strange relationships – but Joyce is obsession on steroids. She constructed a fantasy in her mind that didn’t match reality. We all do that to lesser degrees. We all distort reality – but Joyce’s reality became performance art. Her fantasy exploded in the British tabloids and suddenly, her obsessions became ours. You couldn’t open a British paper in the late ‘70s without reading about Joyce. Her story inspired books, punk bands and now a film – why?

I suspect it’s because we recognize in her suppressed aspects of ourselves. She lived a romantic fantasy-adventure too over-the-top to be believed. She was all id without the moralizing aspect of the super-ego. We rightfully try, and sometimes fail, to regulate these impulses but Joyce did not. We question her mental health at the same time we root for her.

What also intrigues me about Joyce is the idea of Mormon messianic narcissism. There is a tradition within Mormonism (though certainly other faiths share it) for a charismatic to become the center of some epic cosmology. Joseph Smith of course being the first. The charismatic personality has the impulse to “save” society and they will go to extremes to do so. Other Mormon fringe eccentrics include characters like Glenn Beck, Annalee Skarin (excommunicated LDS mystic), Bishop Koyle (The prophet of the Payson Dream Mine) and Warren Jeffs (fallen FLDS leader).

Joyce was also driven by messianic impulses: “I knew the only way to rescue Kirk from Mormonism” she matter-of-factly states, “was to make love to him.” Though she would later denounce it all, Joyce is a product of Mormon exceptionalism – the idea that only we have the truth that will deliver the world from evil. Place that idea within the mind of the religious narcissist and what do you get? On one hand Joyce McKinney on another – the most recent Mormon tabloid sensation – Brian David Mitchell.

Tabloid twists and turns while taking the audience on a wild ride that also includes the fetish of cloned pit bulls and messianic pet-ophilia. Ultimately Joyce’s dogs will provide the undying devotion and family that Kirk denied her.

It’s easy to dismiss Joyce as a nutter. To do so would be to miss the complexity of her humanity. Joyce is us and we are Joyce. She is the product of a narcissistic, romantic culture. She remains to this day a cautionary tale of love run amok and a culture that feeds ravenously on media titillation. Tabloid refuses easy answers. Morris will not tell you how to interpret truth. He leaves us all, like Joyce, to struggle with our own love and obsessions.

Tabloid opens July 15 at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City.