More boutique HBO! Big Love is a show about Bill Henderson, a business man in Utah with three wives. The strength of the show lies in its negotiation of the main characters' polygamy. Or to be more precise, the reason I watch Big Love is for the compelling female line up. There's Jeanne Tripplehorn (Barb), Chloe Sevigny (Nicki), Ginnifer Goodwin (Margene), Amanda Seyfried (Sarah), Daveigh Chase (Rhonda), and Tina Marjorino (Heather). HBO, and cable in general, seems to be a space where women can have more complex and interesting roles (I'm thinking Sex and the City, The L Word, all for starters). And just more roles in general!
One thing I do that would probably drive the entire production team crazy is I fast forward through all the boring scenes with Bill and Roman, the two male head honchos. Hey, pissing contests are so over and done, trite trite. Big Love is interesting because of the way it treads between vulnerability and danger and focuses this through family relations (aka melodrama, yay!). Rhonda and Alby are perfect examples. These "compound" folks, or conservative Mormons, certainly have a scary tinge of fanaticism and power hunger. But they also come across as questioners, searching for a balance they sense is missing.
Why else would I watch a show where the characters pray and talk about following the faith? It sounds like an immediate turn off. But part of the attraction is hinted at in the title: Love. And its not surprising that the first show is about the sexual relationship between Bill and his wives. When you introduce characters who are flawed, lusty, vulnerable, and insecure- you create real people that are easy to care about. They have everyday problems just like the sitcom couples, except it happens to be tripled. The fact that they have to hide who they are also creates an instant tension that sucked me in. In a way, they appeal to the liberal ideal of "who the hell cares who you go to bed with" be it men, women, both or plural. Of course, the show carefully delineates the "good" polygamists from the "bad" ones- read the crazy, compound dwelling, marriage forcing and child marriage fanatics. But by the end of the first season these lines are already blurring.
"Why else would I watch a show where the characters pray and talk about following the faith?" Seems to me that there are zillions of us out here in the good ole' US of A who are interested in prayer and faith and don't any clue at all about how to let these things have a place in our lives. We don't know what to believe, so it can be incredibly compelling to peek into the lives of the true believers. Polygamy seems almost as good as the cult of True Womanhood in terms of reading the culture from the (slightly fascist) Right wing inside. I get it completely. And, there's the whole thing about having been brought up without any religious training by parents who were too wounded (and messed up) to point you in a direction without trembling. Oh well, more money in the therapy fund.
ReplyDeletei guess faith is one of those human mysteries which is always compelling. like love, its something undefinable and provable. and Big Love approaches these questions from a feminine point of view, so i feel invited to join in the questioning
ReplyDeleteI think one of the reasons that it's so popular is that faith and love do go hand in hand to a certain extent. Willa's comment about the questioning being done from a woman's point of view is also a really good one.
ReplyDeleteAnother good point of view is that of the child, and I found that in reading Susanna Barlow's memoir What Peace There May Be. She is the 23rd child of 46, and her book focuses on the human condition and the questioning of faith from the child's perspective.