Big Love: Polygamy in Prime Time

The HBO-produced tv drama series Big Love is currently screening here and I've been watching it over the last few weeks. It's popular in the US and a second series is planned to air in 2007. I wanted to see if my initial impressions from the first episode would be confirmed, so I've watched some more episodes to see how it develops. There are some things I enjoy watching on tv, (see Why I Like Television), but Big Love has given me cognitive dissonance in more ways than one.

I suppose it could be categorised as a drama series about a polygamous family, although the overlay of humour causes it to be short on realism in many ways. The family consists of polygamist Bill Henrickson, his three wives, and their children who live in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah. The Henricksons are not Mormons (the LDS church officially ended polygamy as a practice in the 1890s), but are placed in between Mormonism and the polygamous splinter group Bill grew up in, led by the "prophet" Roman at his compound outside the city. The splinter group is based on the real life Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints group (FLDS), whose leader Warren Jeffs is wanted in the USA on various criminal charges. (Note 28-Aug: Jeffs has been arrested).

Roman is easily recognised as creepy, controlling, and abusive. Teenage boys are exiled because they will be competition for the older men who want more wives. Marriages of older men to underage teenage girls take place, and the general pyschological manipulation and coercion would be anyones worst nightmare. By contrast, Bill is portrayed as a regular guy who strongly dislikes the cult norms but is forced to interact with the group because of family ties (his father, mother, and brother live there). In other words, Roman's polygamy is unacceptable because Roman is a creep. The message on Bill's polygamy is that it's ok because he's a nice guy running two hardware stores and just trying to do the best for his family. His first wife had cancer and consequently can't have more children. This is when Bill conveniently decided he believed in "The Principle", and wives two and three were added.

That's one of the problematic aspects of Big Love - what was really a decision based on personal convenience is spun out as having a deep spiritual motivation. The Beach Boys singing "God only knows how I feel about you" in the theme song at the beginning of each episode adds to the spiritual emphasis. In fact, having been cast out of Roman's compound as a teenager, and turning his back on the cult's practices, Bill is now picking and choosing which cult practices he can make use of. In other words, Bill is what Roman could be if he cleaned up, and that's one of the underlying messages in Big Love that is discordant - that polygamy can be ok if you aren't like Roman. While the viewer is continually reminded of how Bill and his first wife abhor Roman's abuses, so far it hasn't occurred to Bill or his wives that they could inform the police about the abuse of young girls taking place. It's an appearance of conscience but without action, and the show doesn't bring that out.

Then there are the wives, who live in three houses all in a row and have scheduled days when it's their turn to have Bill. These "days" start at 9.30 am. There are some tensions, and some scenes are funny, but others are jarring rather than amusing for me. Although the roles are well acted, the wives have a gloss about them that doesn't come across as real. There are elements of a Desperate Housewives type of comedy of errors running through the show, although the comic situations are not as extreme as Desperate Housewives, and these ladies all have the same husband. The humour is sometimes used in ways that deny the real impact of the lifestyle. In one episode Bill's first wife Barb has been spending time with him when it hasn't been her scheduled "days". She confides to an older friend, who is like a mother figure, "I'm having an affair". Then she adds, "with my husband". Her friend looks disapproving and replies, "He won't leave his wives". It's delivered in an amusing way that undermines the psychological processes involved for a woman who now feels she must compete for her own husband. From reading I have done I've learned that the real life impacts of polygamy are not humourous. Women in polygamous relationships often feel restricted and oppressed. Many feel a loss of personal dignity when there is a hierarchical system of "First Wife", "Second Wife" and so on. Older wives can feel they have been pushed aside by their husband for younger alternatives and lose a sense of worth and identity in the family. Barb's use of the word "affair" is true, and polygamy is really an attempt to normalise extra-marital affairs as being what "family" includes.

The bedroom scenes in Big Love are not explicit, but they are unnecessary and seem to be more about titillating viewer voyeurism than adding anything substantial to the storyline. Apart from his "affair" with his own wife, Bill is put across as loving them all equally, and resorts to taking viagra as an aid. It's hard to believe that a man wouldn't favour one over another, and that wives wouldn't have jealousy over this aspect of their lives. Bill is so evenly spead emotionally that it is implausible.

Big Love takes pains to show that these people have their own faults too. One wife is a compulsive spender, another is flighty and gets disorganised. They have squabbles sometimes about how they organise things and fit in with each other. Watching these flaws and tensions one immediately thinks that they are a family pretty much like many other peoples families. What is absent is the deeper connection between denial, complicity, and psychological dysfunction in polygamous relationships. In other words, Big Love doesn't pretend there are no problems, it just doesn't add up all the dots in doing so. There is marginal dissent from Bill's teenage daughter who reveals to a friend she disagrees with polygamy, but this is offset by his teenage son expressing a desire to live by "The Principle" himself when he is older. "Ah - different teenage responses to parental norms" the viewer may think.

The secrecy involved in maintaining this situation is a prominent theme in the show. There's an underlying, cumulative message which comes across - it must be hard keeping secrecy, and why shouldn't they live that way if they are happy with it? They aren't like awful Roman after all. It's a skewed message because the real implications of polygamy are not examined, and it's as if it's somehow our fault in society for not being accepting. I liken this to suggesting we should be accepting of adultery, and not only accept spouses having affairs with some-one else, but then go as far as to say it shouldn't be secret but could be conducted openly as if normal. At heart that kind of artificial acceptance is what Big Love requests. It isn't saying everyone should be polygamous, but it is asking us to disconnect our own deep values in how we view relationships.

It's pretty hard to find a story that doesn't have an agenda of some kind, since storytellers want to convey a message. The issue is how upfront the agenda is and what the agenda is designed to achieve. Big Love attempts to add polygamy to our understanding of what a family may be by using a fictional situation. The message is upfront in some ways, and subtextual in others. I don't find it entertaining for the most part because although it's a drama series it requires me to be amused by certain situations that really aren't funny in terms of values and impact. Having watched and critiqued it, I don't accept the underlying message in its challenge.