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1321;? LIBRARY j
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This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

Multiple Wives, Multiple Voices, Multiple Publics:

Polyvocality in Big Love

presented by

Kyra Glass von der Osten

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Multiple Wives, Multiple Voices, Multiple Publics: Polyvocality in Big Love

by

Kyra Glass von der Osten

ATHESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTERS OF ARTS
American Studies

2009

 

t“.

Abstract

MULTIPLE WIVES, MULTIPLE VOICES, MULTIPLE PUBLICS: POLYVOCALITY
IN BIG LOVE

by
Kyra Glass von der Osten

The one-hour HBO drama Big Love explores the lives of an independent
polygamist family in contemporary Utah. This thesis looks at Big Love and the way it
employs a variety of interrelated discourses that draw upon theological and historical
facts and queer codings consistent with Bakhtin's notions of polyvocality in order to
address a variety of publics and counterpublics as described by Michael Warner. This
approach allows Big Love to address a major cultural issue, what makes a family and
what are the issues confronting families that are not "counted" in mainstream society, in a
way that opens up a different perspective and can reach a different audience then
explicitly queer texts. This thesis looks at how Big Love negotiates and addresses this
question in relation to the texts various discourses and the conflicts between them. It
looks at how Big Love's affective use of multiple discourses that complement and create
productive tension with each other demonstrates the potential of television texts to
demonstrate a complexity that encourages attentive and active viewership and shows that
television can reach a mass audience through varying levels of heterogenous legibility
rather than the oversimplification and facile pluralism that it is sometimes accused of

relying upon.

Copyright By
Kyra Glass von der Osten
2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Gary Hoppenstand and Amy DeRogatis for their guidance and
help in the research and writing ofthis thesis. Special thanks to Joseph Darowski for his

time discussing LDS doctrine with me.

Table of Contents

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter I - Nicki: Theological and Historical Discourses ................................................ 12
Chapter 2 - Margie: Queer Discourses .............................................................................. 39
Chapter 3 - Barb: Interaction Between the Text’s Discourses .......................................... 69
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 102
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... I IS

Introduction

Big Love made big news when it chose to portray a temple endowment ceremony
in the episode “Outer Darkness” of its third season over strong objections from the
Mormon Church that the ceremony is intended to be private and solely for church
members. In the extensive controversy about this relatively short scene, it was not
uncommon for this scene to be referred to as Prop 8 payback (Banack l) or for people to
say that “the Proposition 8 controversy makes them” (the LDS Church) “a more likely
target” (Holder 1). Those who condemned the showing of the ceremony and saw it as
some kind of vengeance for proposition 8 most likely unwittingly drew attention to one
of the most fundamental aspects of Big Love, its incorporation of Momion religious and
queer discourses into the same narrative. Bakhtin in The Dialogic Imagii-iation writes that

finally, the intentional double-voiced and internally dialogized hybrid possesses a

syntactic strucmre utterly specific to it; in it within the boundaries of a single

utterance, two potential utterances are fused, two responses are, as it were

harnessed in a potential dialogue (Bakhtin and Holquist 361).
I will argue that Big Love is intentionally double-voiced and internally dialogized and
throughout its narrative includes utterances and events that fuse together meanings from
both Mormon fundamentalist polygamist religious and historical discourses and queer
discourses, particularly those regarding kinship. I will be looking at how the polyvocality
of Big Love as a text plays a role in making multiple public and counterpublics as
described by Michael Warner. While Bakthin’s specific interest in The Dialogic

Imagination in terms of heteroglossia and the internal dialogic is in terms ofthe novel, I

 

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will be arguing that Bakthin and Wamer’s ideas of multiple interacting discourses and
their related publics can and should also be applied to television texts and work
particularly well for analyzing Big Love.

I am responding in part to writing on television that tends to treat it as simplistic
and prone to oversimplifying even the more complicated issues it addresses. John Comer
writes that “narrative, particularly when applied to non—fictional material, has the effect
of oversimplifying what is properly regarded as diverse elements of an issue” (Corner
5 I ). Big Love through the use of referentiality, coding, and diverse interacting discourses
routinely complicates rather than simplifies the issues they tackle. The way in which
many of the biggest names in television studies, such as Stuart Hall, have been used often
contributes to this impression of television as simplistic. In his famous article “Encoding/
Decoding,” Stuart Hall frequently refers to “the message” of a text as if the message is a
singular thing, and it is often treated that way by other scholars. Yet Stuart Hall himself
does not make claims about television quite so simplistically. He notes that “the televisual
sign is a complex one. It is itself constituted by the combination of two types of
discourse, visual and aural” (S. Hall 121). I will be arguing that television texts in fact
include many kinds of discourses many of which present, sometimes conflicting,
“meanings” ofthe text. Hall recognizes the mutability oftelevision signs by noting that
“its connotative level, though also bounded, is more open, subject to more active
transformations, which exploit its polysemie values” (S. Hall 123). In this way Hall is in
accordance with Bakhtin by drawing attention to the multiple meanings of any given

word, phrase, or textual element. Hall nonetheless speaks of “dominant or pre erred

 

-.m. .m-

 

meanings” but that they say “dominant, not ‘determincd’, because it is always possible to
order, classify, assign and decode an event within more than one ‘mapping’” (S. Hall
123). Where I must part ways with Hall is regarding his assumption that the dominant
reading, which he terms as decoding from the “dominant-hegemonic position” (S. Hall
125), will be a reading that decodes the text’s message(s) in a way that reaffirms the
dominant ideology of a culture. Hall lays out three positions from which viewers could
hypothetically decode television texts: I) the dominant-hegemonic position that “decodes
the message in terms of the reference code it has encoded” (S. Hall 125), generally in
ways consistent with the dominant ideology ofthe culture, 2) negotiated readings which
includes contradictions but “acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic

definitions” (S. Hall 127) and 3) oppositional readings which “decode the message in a
globally contrary way” (S. Hall 127). Using this framework it is not unusual for critics of
television to argue that it portrays and enforces dominant ideological culture viewpoints.
Indeed Hall says of the hegemonic viewpoint, which he links to dominant readings of a
text, “that it carries with it the stamp of legitimacy- it appears coterrninous with what is
‘natural’, ‘inevitable’” (S. Hall 127). However Big Love and many other television
programs, particularly on cable, do not take as its subject what society has already ratified
as legitimate, such as the heteronormative monogamous marriage, but rather takes up the
lives of marginalized groups and the issues that concern them. By asking questions about
what defines a family and what issues a family and marriage not recognized by society
must deal with, Big Love significantly problematizes Stuart Hall’s formulation. Here the

“dominant” reading, meaning the reading encoded into the text, is a reading sympathetic

to and privileging a family that is not only religiously nonnorrnative but in many ways is
coded as, and functions as a stand in for, a queer family. An oppositional reading of Big
Love as a text might come instead from a conservative Evangelical Christian viewer who
may be opposed to Mormon theology, polygamy and same-sex marriage/queer kinship,
all central sources of meaning in the text who resists the texts own terms of framing and
reads it instead as a morality tale about what calamitous things happen when one does not
follow normative marriage and family patterns. One cannot then argue that reading the
text as it is encoded is reading it in terms of the dominant cultures “hegemonic” ideology.
For the majority of members ofcontemporary American society queer kinship groups and
same-sex marriage are not “normal” or “inevitable,” and even fewer approach polygamy
in this way. Television texts that are produced by members of marginal groups or take up
marginal groups as their subjects fundamentally confound the assumptions of Hall’s
categories of decoding positions. Furthermore I will be arguing here that texts can be,
and are, encoded specifically to most often produce negotiated readings. Big Love by
incorporating both religious and queer discourses in its text builds contradictions into its
narrative. By addressing multiple publics Big Love includes attributes that will inevitably
make more sense or be more comfortable to some of its publics then others, requiring its
publics to negotiate their readings to some extent.

Michael Warner speaks of three uses of the temi public: the people generally, a
specific audience such as spectators at a sporting event or play, and his own sense of the
term “the kind of public that comes into being only in relation to texts and their

circulation” (Warner 66). I will be using the term public, and its related concept ofa

 

 

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counterpublic, in the way Warner frames it as in relation to a text and in some ways
created by the text, but not in a way that the creators of the text controls. Warner observes
that “people often speaks these days not just of the public but of multiple publics. And
not without reason, since the publics among which we steer, or surf, are potentially
infinite in number” (Warner 9). While Warner speaks of multiple publics and the potential
of a single individual belonging to multiple publics, he rarely speaks of multiple publics
created by a single text. However in this thesis I am deeply concerned with the ability of
a text to address and create multiple publics as a result of its polyvocality. This is
consistent with Warner’s claim that “I urge an understanding of the phenomenon of
publics that is historical in orientation and always alert to the dynamics of
textuality” (Warner 15). As Bakhtin has found the dynamics of textuality is a multi-
voiced and messaged dynamic, his discussion of the novelistic hybrid and the internally
dialogized text brings out the importances of multiple languages, language not used in the
sense of foreign languages, the novel as a text. He explains that “the novelistic hybrid is
an artistically organized system for bringing different languages in contact with one
another, a system having as its goal the illumination of one language by means of
another, the carving-out of a living image of another language” (Bakhtin and Holquist
361) and differentiates it from the internally dialogized by saying that

there is no direct mixing of two languages within the boundaries of a single

utterance - rather, only one language is actually present in the utterance, but it is

rendered in the light of another language. This second language is not, however

aetualized and remains outside the utterance” (Bakhtin and Holquist 362).

 

 

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dig.

Big Love demonstrates aspects of both the novelistic hybrid and the internally dialogic
throughout the series. In some cases this is focused on the utterance and the word such as
when one of the Henrickson’s plural wives, Margie, tells the rest of the family that
another wife, Barb, “outed us to the neighbors” (Oh Pioneers). At one level the term
“outed” refers to the revelation of a marital relationship and religious orientation,
indicating a membership in a stigmatized group. However the term “outed” also has a
very explicit meaning in “coming out” as part of an LGBT discourse practice. Here the
word “outed” quite literally mixes two languages, I will be using the term discourses, in a
single utterance. In other cases the second discourse, usually a queer discourse, sheds
light upon the specific utterance and remains outside of explicit representation. Examples
of this might be Barb’s trouble with her family rejecting her after she becomes
polygamous, something that is not explicitly part of queer discourse but is understood in
the text in light of queer discourse. I will be using the term discourse as an effective way
to address the practices surrounding the issues explored in Big Love and because of the
term discourse practices association with particular groups and histories that provide the
context to Big Love as a text. Bakhtin says that “each word tastes of the context and
contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life; all words and forms are populated
by intentions” (Bakhtin and Holquist 293). The theology and history of Mormonism and
fundamentalist Mormon polygamous groups and the issues of queer kinship that I will be
discussing in the first and second chapters are the contexts by which the words and

discourses in Big Love are structured.

 

In this thesis I will be looking at the way in which Big Love employs a variety of
interrelated discourses that draw upon theological and historical facts and queer codings
consistent with Bakhtin's notions of polyvocality in order to address a variety of publics
and counterpublics as described by Michael Warner. This approach allows Big Love to
address a major cultural issue, what makes a family and what are the issues confronting
families that are not "counted" in mainstream society, in a way that opens up a different
perspective and can reach a different audience then explicitly queer texts. Big Love's
effective use of multiple discourses that complement and create productive tension with
each other demonstrates the potential of television texts to demonstrate a complexity that
encourages attentive and active viewership and shows that television can reach a mass
audience through varying levels of heterogenous legibility rather than the
oversimplification and facile pluralism upon which it is sometimes accused of relying.
Big Love demonstrates both the levels of complexity that television is capable of and the
possibilities of addressing complex political discourses through multi—voiced texts.

In chapter one I will be looking at the role of religious and historical discourse in
Big Love and the important role referentiality to theological and historical knowledge
play in the show’s narrative. Big Love embeds historical and theological references into
its narrative that, for publics who have the knowledge to recognize these references, shed
light on the motivations and behaviors of the show’s characters in profound ways while
lending the show some sense of historical position and authenticity. The show’s
characters demonstrate various values and motivations that are shaped by their

relationship to Mormon theology. Chapter one is named after Nicki, Bill’s first wife, who

 

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was raised on a fimdamentalist compound and who is radically different then his other
two wives because of how heavily influenced she is by polygamous Mormon theology.
The theological veracity of Big Love is important as a structuring motivation for many of
the characters in the show and plays an essential role in keeping the show from becoming
too much about its more salacious aspects and significantly complicating the texts
relationship to issues like marriage and sex. I will be looking at the show’s accuracy in
relationship to historical polygamy, contemporary polygamy, and some of the
contemporary fundamentalist compound in part to address criticisms that claim the show
is unrealistic and portray a fairy-tale version of polygamy. This is particularly crucial
because in later seasons Big Love significantly troubles the role of authenticity in its text
through plot twists and the controversy regarding the endowment ceremony. I will be
discussing the ways in which this discourse addresses a particular public formed based on
access to knowledge about Mormon and fundamentalist theology and history and how the
ability to follows the show’s references to theology and history significantly may affect
the way those publics sensitive to this discourse may view and interpret aspects of Big
Love as a narrative.

In chapter two I will be examining Big Love Is queer discourse. This discourse
functions in ways consistent with the long-recognized tradition of queer counterpublics
looking for coded narratives in media texts. The queer narrative in Big Love brings out
questions about what makes a marriage or a family legitimate and the challenges that
these unacceptcd kinship groups may face when dealing with a society that does not

recognize and/or stigmatizes their families. This queer discourse also brings attention to

 

 

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the queer aspects of polygamy itself as it is practiced in Big Love. Chapter two is named
after Margie, Bill’s third wife, because she is the wife most likely to get deeply emotional
involved with other women in ways that come close to being romantic. I will be
examining queer discourse in Big Love in three ways. I will be looking at the way Big
Love functions as queer analogy looking at issues such as closeting and passing. I will
also be discussing how Big Love as a text posits polygamy itself as practiced by the
Henricksons as queer in a variety of ways including the wives profession of love for one
another and their conception of having marriages to one another that goes beyond their
man’iage to Bill. Finally I will be looking at explicit references to or depictions of
homosexuality and other queer subject positions in Big Love and demonstrating that
although these representations are usually negative they play an important role in creating
a queer mise en scene for the show. In the case of queer discourses I will be considering
two groups: a queer aware public who could include anyone familiar enough with the
discourses discussed to recognize them and a specifically queer counterpublic whose
subject position is in some ways defined by their relationship to society at large. The
queer discourse in Big Love is essential to exploring the way that the show interrogates
issues of marriage and family that have become contested in our society and that are
central to the program’s narrative.

Chapter three looks at the way in which Big Love puts religious and queer
discourses into conversation with one another. Although many perceive religious and
queer discourses as often oppositional, Big Love brings these two discourses into

communication with one another in ways that enhance each discourse. These two

discourses in Big Love relate to one another in varied ways. The discourses can interact in
the text by putting them in productive tension with each other; in these cases queer and
religious discourses may conflict with each other regarding issues like patriarchy or
procreation. The discourses can also interact in a supportive way when representing
issues, like stigmatization, that both groups, fundamentalist polygamists and queer
individuals deal with. Chapter three is named after Barb because, being from an LDS
background with LDS family members, she confronts the most conflicts between
traditional religious and moral values as held by the LDS and her devotion and allegiance
to her family, husband and sisterwives whose marriage and family form violates these
values. In this chapter I will not be focusing on publics or counterpublics as in the other
chapters but will instead be addressing the way the discourses that l have previously
associated with certain publics interact. In the interaction of these discourses we can see
that the text is constructed in a way that involves not maintaining discrete discourses and
publics but in combining these discourses in a way that requires the overlapping of
publics in order to engage with the full complexity of the text. While a viewer may be a
part of a queer counterpublic, they can also be, to varying degrees, part of a public that is
knowledgable about Mormon religious values. Being part of both publics, to one degree
or another is potentially the richest position from which to interpret the text. Indeed the
text appears to “make‘” not only multiple publics but multiple overlapping publics.
While my focus throughout this thesis is on the specificity of Big Love as a text, I

hope that it can also be looked at as an example of the complex cultural discourses

 

‘ Michael Warner talks about the way texts do the work of making publics (Wamer 12).

10

 

television texts are capable of addressing. Bakhtin writes that “the importance of
struggling with anothcr’s discourses, its influence in the history of an individual’s coming
to ideological consciousness, is enomious” (Bakhtin and Holquist 348). Indeed the
representation of and interaction between discourses in culture is of enormous
importance. The role of television programs in representing and interrogating cultural
discourses is important. Judith Butler draws attention to the role of the symbolic structure
in legitimating the social arrangement (Butler 120). Big Love deploys a different
symbolic vocabulary and set of discourses that interrogates the dominant social
arrangement rather than legitimizing it. This thesis examines Big Love’s symbolic
vocabulary and complex discourses and also demonstrates the potential of television texts
to employ complex and socially relevant discourses in ways consistent with Bakthin and

Wamer’s observations about more traditional texts.

11

Chapter 1 - Nicki: Theological and Historical Discourses

When planning a new campaign for the Henrickson’s business Home Plus the
companies marketing people suggest that Home Plus’ new advertisements use visual
“code” to suggest that Home Plus represents local Utah, specifically Mormon, values
(Eviction). In one example they show Bill a woman whose line of her garments is visible
beneath her clothes. In another example they give him an advertisement where photos of
the temple and a stuffed cougar for BYU are in the background. They argue that these ads
are subliminal, that people to whom these images would be meaningful would register
them and identify with them even if they were not explicitly aware of it. (Eviction). To
some extent the narrative in Big Love functions the same way. In his book Publics and
Counterpublics Michael Warner uses the term “functional intelligibility” to describe how
the form of a “public” is comprehensible “across a wide range of contexts” (Warner 9). A
similar concept can be used to describe Big Love; as a television text it requires a degree
of widespread functional intelligibility in order to be interesting to the wide ranging
audience a mass media text requires. We can also think of the this text, like all texts, as
having multiple publics for which different areas of the text have different levels of
legibility to its various publics. In this chapter I will be examining the text in terms of its
legibility in the Mormon theological and historical meaning registers embedded in Big
Love. Big Love is one of the most exceptionally well-researched television programs I
have ever encountered. A vast number of the program’s moments and exchanges contain

details that are theologically or historically consistent with the realities of Fundamentalist

12

 

and Mormon faiths and what is known about the functioning of Fundamentalist
Polygamist sects and the history of 19th century Mormonism.

This meticulousness, it must be acknowledged, will only be appreciated by a
certain, limited, segment of the program’s audience that is, for whatever reason, familiar
with the theology and history it draws upon. For other audience members what is in fact a
result of a specific behavior or belief in Fundamentalist Polygamist scctsz, such as Nicki’s
feelings about love or appropriate forms of sex, can be read by audiences unaware of the
beliefs of such groups as a particular personality quirk. Many comments and references
will simply go unnoticed by audiences not sensitized to them, as Bill’s advertising
consultant suggests, while others might simply be understood as a personal belief or
habit. When Michael Warner suggests that he wants an “understanding of the
phenomenon of publics” that is “always alert to the dynamics of textuality” (Warner 15)
might he also be suggesting the reverse? That in some cases in order to understand the
dynamics of textuality, or in this case a particular text, we need to think about it in
relationship to its multiple, and overlapping publics.

A perfect example of this is Big Love’s introductory credit sequence, a scene that
I had to watch several times before it became legible to me in terms of Mormon theology

and not merely as a depiction of love, dispersal and reunification. The sequence goes as

 

2 I am choosing to use the word sect here to describe Fundamentalist polygamist groups like the F LDS,
Kingston Clan and AUB despite the fact that many observers have described these groups as cults because
of their focus on and obedience to an often charismatic leader and their tendency to isolation. Jan Shipps in
her book Mormonism The Story of a New Religious Tradition says: “it is important to remember that a sect
grows out of disagreement over how a tradition’s story ought to be understood, i.e. over interpretation,
while a cult’s antagonistic stance rests on acceptance of a story changed in essentials,”(Shipps 49). Since
most of the theology of these groups comes from Doctrines & Covenants, even if differently interpreted,
and the early days of Mormonism under Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, one could potentially perceive
these groups as restorationist in themselves and not truly antagonistic to the story at large, particularly prior
to the Woodruff Manifesto.

13

follows: as the song “God Only Knows” play in the background Bill, ice skating,
approaches and skates with Barb, Nicki, and Margene each in turn and then the four join
hands and skate, smiling, in a circle, until a spreading crack in the ice separates them in
four different directions. Bill begins to wander through a maze of slightly transparent
white sheets, the women are also wandering here, until he locates each of his wives. Then
we see the four of them sitting down together to eat at a picnic table, which as the camera
pulls back we see is sitting on top of an otherwise barren planet, other planets hang in the
background. For the average viewer this can be understood as a straightforward, albeit
odd, love narrative of coming together, breaking apart, searching, and eventually
reconciling. Its stranger features, like the planets in the background, can be dismissed as
quirky features of what seems very much like a dream sequence. However this
introductory sequence can also be read very explicitly in a theological framework
drawing on Mormon beliefs. If one takes the breaking apart of the ice as separation not
through discord but through death, Bill’s wandering through the white maze can be
understood as his locating his wives after death and bringing them to him. Both

F undamentalists and LDS believe in eternal marriage that lasts after death (Arrington and
Bitton 185). At Bill’s fathers funeral for one of his wives, Roberta, his father references
the important role a husband has in his wives salvation in the afterlife. He says to his
deceased wife “I shall call you wife through the veil in the celestial kingdom by the name
known only to me, and I’ll pull you through to be reunited with me for all

eternity” (Roberta’s Funeral). Clearly the veil is well known Mormon parlance for the

space between this world and the afterlife as Joseph Smith has also been known to use the

14

 

 

 

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term in this way (Givens 30). In this reading the dreamy wandering sequence in which
Bill searches for each of his wives, takes on specific theological meaning in which he is
searching them out to “pull them through the veil” to be with him in “eternal marriage” in
the after life. Indeed when we see them next they are all united at a picnic table together.
The seemingly strange realization that this picnic table is atop a planet is also
theologically legible in the Mormon context. Along with etemal marriage, there is a
belief in eternal progression, where one continues self-improvement towards salvation
after death with the theoretically possibility of becoming as a God, after which he will
father spirits and grow his family further. According to Apostle Orson Pratt, recorded in
The Seer, when “his Heavenly inheritance becomes too small to accomodate his great
family, he...organizes a new world....forms a world” (Lindbloom). While the possibility
of any individual reaching such an exalted state may be somewhat disagreed upon, the
idea of a families eternal life continuing and the formation of a planet for a man’s spirit
children is certainly theologically consistent with some major Mormon figures such as
Pratt.

The layers of legibility of this opening sequence, in addition to illustrating an
approach to the text that looks at ways various publics may understand the same facet of
the text, also allude to some of the essential theological aspects of Fundamentalist
Mormonism, and in some cases mainstream Mormonism, that factor most significantly
into understanding Big Love, eternal marriage and family, pre-existing spirits of children,
and the role of husbands in their wives salvation. Other essential theological factors that I

will be considering is the essential role continuing revelation and personal testimony

15

 

 

 

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and

plays in Mormonism, both mainstream and Fundamentalist and the role of the husband/
father as the family priesthood holder. Beyond the theological framework at play in Big
Love, the rules and traditions of Fundamentalist Polygamist sects and the historical
aspects of 19th century Mormon polygamy also provide an essential frame to
understanding the text. One way of understanding Big Love is through the tension
between Nicki and Bill’s families on the Compound, whose beliefs and practices are
more consistent with Fundamentalist Polygamist groups, and the polygamous life that
Bill, Barb, Nicki and Margie are forming in the suburbs, that has much more in common
not only with what are called Independent Polygamists today but also with the way that
polygamy was practiced in the 19th century-1

The coding of historical and theoretical content into Big Love is not an occasional
feature of the show, a sporadic insider reference, but consistently is embedded in the
shows narrative, both implicitly and explicitly. It provides not only context but explicit
challenges and motivations for the characters in Big Love. Some former and current
members of polygamist groups (including Carolyn Jessop and people from the Centennial
Park group) have questioned the validity of Big Love as a program based on its
consistency with their perception of the facts of polygamy. While including theological
and historical information in ways perhaps not explicit enough for some Big Love is
concerned with lending itself something of the veracity of truth through its incorporation

of elements intimately related to theology and historical or current facts about Mormon

 

3 While little academic work has been done studying the marriage and family patterns of independent
polygamists, Jessie Embry has done detailed research in Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the
Principle on the way 19th century polygamy has been practice the Henrickson’s lifestyle is consistent with
the results of her research.

16

 

 

 

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polygamy. In the third season the question of the role “authenticity” plays in the text
becomes complex and imperative. For those viewers familiar with the history of
polygamous groups the purported appearance of a letter from Wilford Woodruff
indicating the church never intended to give up polygamy in “Fight or Flight” will appear
anachronistic. The closest thing recorded is a report by Loorin Wooley that the Taylor
Manifesto was intended to assure the continuance of polygamy as God’s will (Bistline
19). As Bill pursues this letter, sold to the church by Alby, it may strike those more
familiar with Mormon and polygamous history as exceedingly odd that Big Love was
suddenly including seemingly fictional history. When in the final episode of season three
it is revealed that this letter is in fact a fake, this revelation to some is a shocking plot
twist but to others it resolves a conflict in the show presented by this sudden depiction of
history that is inconsistent with fact. Although even those who were puzzled by this
introduction of history not based in fact may still be surprised with the way Big Love
resolves this contradiction by working the inauthentieness of the letter into the diagetic
narrative, and may still experience the plot twist, their ability to recognize this as
uniquely ahistorical for the program changes their relationship to this revelation. This
question of accuracy and authenticity also became central in the episode “Outer
Darkness” when the program depicts a temple endowment ceremony. Some Mormon
groups strongly objected to the depiction of a temple ceremony, which is supposed to be
kept private among Mormons, the program’s producers provided assurances that it would
be shown accurately, as if this removed all concerns (Horiuchi 1). However for those who

are familiar with the faith they know that showing a ceremony accurately is still deeply

17

 

 

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offensive from an LDS framework, perhaps more offensive. The insertion of this
controversial scene into the program and the question of accuracy surrounding it in the
responses of the program’s producers to LDS critics demonstrate the importance of
accurate theological and historical facets of the program. While a book could easily be
written on the various ways these theological and historical frameworks impact the
understanding of Big Love, I will only be very briefly examining how these frameworks
impact the understanding of five aspects of the Henrickson’s life: marriage, kids, love,
sex, and the business and politics of the compound in order to demonstrate the different
textual meanings for the publics of the program that are appropriately sensitive to these
frameworks.
Marriage

As I have already mentioned eternal marriage, is a fundamental belief for both
mainstream Mormons and Fundamentalists, the idea that all marriages that are sealed in
the temple, or by a priesthood holder with the authority to do so, are for both “time and
eternity” and will continue into the afterlife. After the 1890 Woodruff Manifesto the
mainstream LDS Mormons rejected polygamy and in some periods of history were
“encouraging the prosecution of cohabs” polygamists (Krakauer 244). Fundamentalists
believe that not only eternal marriage but also polygamy, referred to more often as “plural
marriage” or “celestial marriage” is necessary to reach “the highest degree of the celestial
kingdom” (Llewellyn 20). They base this on Doctrine & Covenants 76 and 131
(Llewellyn 14). More specifically some sects, such as the FLDS in Colorado City and

Yearning for Zion, believe that “a man must have at least three wives to reach the highest

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degree of heaven” (Bistline 92). While it is never specifically referenced in the text, it is
unlikely a coincidence that both Bill and his business partner Don, an independent
polygamist, have precisely three wives each at the beginning of the series. It is also
notable that Barb objects much more strongly to getting a fourth wife than she does to a
third one. The notion of three wives being the amount required to reach the highest level
of the celestial kingdom, and that this is the number of wives Bill has, is a reminder that
ultimately polygamy/celestial marriage is about faith and, perhaps with the exception of
Margene, the characters of Big Love pursue this form of marriage motivated at least in
part by faith.

In Big Love Bill and Barb Henrickson are monogamously married, in fact as a
former resident of the compound Bill had spoken against polygamy in the past. But when
Barb becomes very ill with cancer, and has to have a hysterectomy, Bill begins to believe
in “the principle” of plural marriage and convinces Barb to practice it with him by
marrying Nicki, who had helped with Barb when she was ill. Bill grew up on a
polygamous compound, very closely modeled on the F LDS currently led by Warren Jeffs,
in which having a number of wives was not only a sign of cultural status but also a sign
of blessedness in the eyes of God. Many from the compound and similar groups could
interpret Barb’s illness and hysterectomy as punishment for their rejection of the
principle. Rhonda, a young girl from the compound, described Barb’s situation to
someone as follows: “They used to be regular married but didn’t live the principle so god
wouldn’t bless her with anymore babies. They took her to the hospital but they still

couldn’t fix her, I’m never gonna get cancer” (Pilot). Rhonda believes that since she is

19

 

 

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going to live the principle by marrying the prophet, a man well past middle age, that she
would be protected from such misfortune as cancer. This is not simply a narrative device;
in her memoir Escaped Carolyn Jessop speaks of her own dangerous pregnancies,
explaining that: “My hysterectomy and near-death experience were further proof to
Merril’s other wives that God was still condemning me for my rebellious ways” (Jessop
and Palmer 311).

While this may be the perception of members of the compound of Barb’s
misfortune, it is unlikely Barb and Bill would describe their situation similarly. While
based on many of the same theological foundations as the compound, the Henrickson’s
practice of plural marriage is drastically different from that of the compound, and similar
to real world Fundamentalist groups. To begin with, although Roman, the “prophet” of
Juniper Creek and Nicki’s father, had some influence over Bill’s decision to take Nicki
as a second wife, by and large Bill, his colleague Don, and to some extent their wives
make their own decisions about when to take another wife into the family and who that
wife should be. At Juniper Creek new wives are assigned to families by the prophet, who
can also re-assign them as punishment to men who are “out of harmony” with him. This
is consistent with certain fundamentalist groups, particularly the FLDS“, where according
to John Llewellyn “all marriages are controlled by the priesthood, neither the boy nor the
girl has a choice. When a girl in the F LDS is biologically mature enough to bear children,

she is married off" (Llewellyn 18). This is an essential difference that impacts

 

4 The term FLDS here refers not to Fundamentalist Mormon groups at large, but specifically to the group
headed currently by Warren Jeffs, concentrated in Colorado City, Hildale, and the Yearning for Zion ranch
in Texas. This is the largest fundamentalist group and many of the other groups, such as Centennial Park
splintered off from the F LDS.

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relationships between each other and their compound family. After seeing how young and
pretty Bill’s third wife, Margene, was Bill’s mother is furious at him. She admonishes
him, “plural marriage is a religious calling not a license to coerce young girls.” It is very
difficult for him to convince her of the truth, that Margie “chose us not me her or we her,
she us...Wc all debated it. We all considered it and we all agreed” (Home Invasion). This
would be unheard of on a compound, where women have no choice at all over whom
they married, but it is not so unusual for 19th century polygamy in which new wives were
selected in a wide variety of ways5.

Many observers have noted that since polygamy was practiced openly amongst
LDS Mormons for a relatively short period of time, no single formal arrangement was
established for the practice of plural marriage. In his history of plural marriage Richard S.
Van Wagoner observes that “the rules of wooing depended on the individual involved:
interest could be initiated by the man, the prospective wife, or even the first wife who felt
it was her religious duty to do 30” (Van Wagoner 90). We see all three of these
occurrences, to some extent in Big Love, Bill initiates an interest in Anna as a possible
fourth wife, that is maintained when their relationship encounters difficulties, first by the
third wife, Margie, and later, reluctantly, by the first wife, Barb, when a health scare
makes her worry about her family’s future and their religious obligations. Margie initiated
her relationship with Bill as a prospective wife, she selected the family rather than being

chosen by Bill or Barb.

 

5 In the nineteenth century sometimes polygamous wives sometimes selected the new wives that would join
the family.

21

In their day to day lifestyle, The Henrickson family’s closely followed many
patterns of 19th century polygamy. Jessie Embry, a major Mormon oral historian,
discovered that “often the wives shared a home just after the second marriage, but as soon
as it was financially possible, the husband provided a separate one for each wife” (Embry
73). While Bill and his wives did all live in one home for a little while after he married
Nicki and Margie by the time in their marriage the show is set each wife has her own
home, with linking backyards for dinners and events. This particular living arrangement,
more than simply paralleling common 19th century patterns, also serves as a good
metaphor for the Henrickson’s relationship to the world. Their public face, the houses
facing the street, shows three separate family and lives. Their private, protected, space,
the large fenced-in backyard allows them to be what they truly are, one family with a
shared life. Bill’s pattern of changing homes nightly, seeing each wife once every three
nights, was narrowly the most common in the the 19th century. In 19th century Utah “27
percent of the husbands changed homes nightly” (Embry 80). While more husbands
divided the goods and made the schedule in the 19th century, the Henrickson’s solution,
giving these responsibilities to the first wife, was the second most common
approach(Embry 123-24). Other facets of the family’s organization, from the giving of
allowances (Embry 126) to the prevalence of “family home evenings” (Embry 119) are
consistent with 19th century polygamous practice. The preponderance of occasions when
the wives, Barb, Nicki, and Margene, work together to make a meal, an event, etc. might
seem unlikely to the average viewer, it was reasonably common in 19th century

polygamous families (Embry 98).

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That Big Love so closely mirrors 19th century Mormon polygamous family
patterns is, in and of itself, of limited interest. However in context of the tension the show
develops between “exploitive” plural marriage on the compound with the Henrickson’s
very different marriage, it is easy to dismiss Big Love’s depiction of the Henrickson’s
complicated, challenging but ultimately loving polygamous family as
“unrealistic” (Marshall I) or “a bunch of nonsense” (Adams 1), both claims of famous
ex-polygamist Carolyn Jessop 6. However closer inspection allows for an argument that
Big Love in fact provides a quite realistic alternative in line not only with contemporary
independent polygamists, although there is great variation in this group7 , but also on the
patterns of polygamy prior to its prohibition in the LDS and its relegation to the
compounds. This temporal quirk of Big Love, in which elements of the Henrickson’s
marriage that are unusual for much of today’s Mormon polygamist practice but extremely
common in 19th century polygamy adds an interesting twist to the reading of marriage
behaviors in this program, it presents polygamy not necessarily as it is but as it could be,
how it might have been had polygamy continued in mainstream culture rather than on
compounds and in isolated groups.

. Theology is a structuring concept for the Henrickson’s when considering their
marriage. When Bill encounters frustrations with his wife his friend Don tells him to

“you’ve always gotta keep reminding them of the big picture” (Viagra Blue). In this case

 

6 Carolyn Jessop is the author of the memoir Escaped about her escape from the FLDS and Colorado City.
She has made costumes for Big Love but has also frequently criticized the show for being unrealistic in her
eyes.

7 Some independent polygamists like Tom Green have young wives others marry only adult women
(Bistline, I91). Pro-polygamy activist and a wife in an independent plural family, Anne Wilde, has taken
some criticism for being affluent, having a lot of freedom, and not suffering the abuse common in the
FLDS (Llewellyn 130-131) and therefore not understanding the reality of polygamy.

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the big picture means, as Bill explains to Margie that they “are links to eternity. Ahead of
us, family yet to come, souls to be born. Behind us, ancestors -ancestors who sacrificed.
We are making those sacrifices to live the principle, to keep faith” although Margie’s
response “but I still need a car” (Viagra Blue) brings their relationship back to earth,
Bill’s explanation of what they are doing contextualizes their marriage both in their
theology and in Mormon past, in which many men were jailed or had to go underground
in their defense of Polygamy (Arrington and Bitton I82).
Childbearing

When Bill explains to Margie the theological motive behind their marriage, he
refers “to souls to be born”. Both fundamentalist polygamist groups and the mainstream
LDS have a concept of pre-existent spirits that are born of Heavenly Parents, taught by
them before “coming here to mortality for further advancement” where parents on earth
must help them progress towards salvation. Some believe that “being parents in mortality
is an opportunity to share in God’s divine, creative work” (Arrington and Bitton 186).
According to Arrington and Bitton parenthood “was regarded as both an obligation and a
blessing” to Mormon families (Arrington and Bitton 190). Children were a gift God
“sent” a family but also a duty of that family because a child pre-existed conception as a
spirit who was “thought to be waiting eagerly” to come to earth. Special pressure was put
on faithful families because a spirit’s time on earth was in part an opportunity to
spiritually progress. Arrington and Bitton note that while these spirits “would all be born

sooner or later, but how much better for them to be born of believing parents, Latter-day

24

Saints who understand God’s plan. It would be deliberately selfish to have no children or
an unseemly few” (Arrington and Bitton 190).

This relationship to childbearing puts particular pressure on a wide range of
characters in Big Love and tremendous strains on marital relationships for both
polygamous and LDS characters. Although, by and large, Rhonda is not a reliable
character, her association between Bill and Barb accepting plural marriage and the
hysterectomy that renders her barren is quite strong. Barb’s inability to have children
becomes a source of personal disappointment; she tells Margie that “losing the ability to
give that to Bill was quite a blow” (Empire). She and Bill find something of a solution to
the inability to continue to grow their family in plural marriage. For mainstream LDS
who would never consider that an option in this show, the inability to produce children
can be devastating. When Margene lies to their neighbor Pam and tells her she is a
surrogate in order to cover up their polygamous lifestyle without getting a bad reputation
for being single and pregnant, Pam becomes desperate for Margene to be a surrogate for
her. She tells Barb that she desperately wants a baby and is even worried her husband will
leave her if they do not. She says “Carl is concerned if I can’t have his children, where
will his spirits go, to an atheist or a meth addict?” (Take Me As IA‘m). For Pam being
unable to have children is more than just the inability to be a mother and have a family,
her husband’s understanding of theology leads him to fear that spirits that would
otherwise be raised by Mormon parents that would help them progress spiritually would

instead end up in destructive situations that would impede this progress. It seems it is this

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theological progress that makes an atheist as dangerous as a meth-addict in Carl and
Pam’s eyes.

For those who can have children, the pressure of these beliefs can create their own
problems. Barb and Nicki tell Margie that she cannot be a surrogate for Pam because,
according to Nicki “our purpose is to bring superior souls into this family, not give them
away.” Margie retorts that she has “been a baby factory” for Barb (Take Me As I Am), a
position with which she clearly is not entirely comfortable with. Preganancy can become
political in families; as Carolyn Jessop observed in some families “pregnancy is also a
status symbol” (Jessop and Palmer I48). Nicki in season one announces that she wants to
have another baby, although at the time she is secretly on birth-control, not an option in
traditional polygamous families, in an attempt to get more time and intimacy with Bill.
When Margie actually gets pregnant, the dynamic in the family shifts again. Margie’s
desire to not have to have another baby right away, brings Nicki’s four years without a
pregnancy into issue in season 3. Rather than telling the others she is on birth control, she
repeats the ideology she has been taught. When Margie asks her honestly if she wants to
have another baby, she curtly replies “it is my wifely duty to bear as many children as I
can to bless this family and bring glory to my husband in the afterlife” (Empire). While
Margie is annoyed because she thinks Nicki is not being serious with her, a conversation
with her mother about her options, demonstrate that clearly this is the framework in
which she was raised. Adalecn tells Nicki that the more children she had for her Roman
“the higher I rose in his estimation. Honey our real power as women is our ability to bear

our husbands large and robust broods” (Empire). When she tells the doctor that she

26

 

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“never had a choice” she believes it as she does when she says that she wants children
because “I’m not a monster” (Empire). Although she chooses to continue to take the birth
control pills, this disconnect between her personal desires and her upbringing remains
unresolvedg.

Many of the issues women confront dealing with childbirth, as well as marriage,
are compounded by the importance groups like the F LDS put on obedience. Despite
Rhonda’s subsequent rebellious behavior when she tells Sarah about her pro-marital
placement with the prophet that “the greatest freedom we have is obedience” (Home
Invasion), it is clear that at the very least she is repeating a prevalent belief in her
community. This is consistent with the F LDS in which John Krakauer reports that Rulon
Jeffs has preached that “perfect obedience produces perfect faith” (Krakauer 12).

Love

The dynamic of marriage and childrearing is complicated further by differing
relationships to the idea of romantic love. One of the reasons Nicki is uncertain about
continuing to have children is that she is concerned that having too many children and
being seen more as a mother and less of a wife will hurt her relationship with Bill. Her
mother is horrified at such a notion. She tells her that: “if you are letting a desire to have
a relationship with your husband stand between you and your duty you’re on the path to
ruin” (Empire). Yet even admitting such a concern is quite a step out of line for Nicki.
While Barb and Margie, not coming out of Fundamentalist Polygamous communities, put

romantic love, at least for Bill, at the center of their relationships. Nicki has much more

 

8 This narrative regarding Nicki’s feeling that she has no choice but to have children has powerful and
troubling implications from a feminist perspective however these concems are beyond the purview of this
thesis.

27

 

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trouble with an idea of marriage based on love, even if that love is for one’s sister-wives
as well their husband, because of her compound background.

Part of this is because in compounds like the FLDS, unlike independent
polygamists, often one has little to no say over who your spouse will be. It is religious
faith, duty, and obedience to the prophet that form the basis in at least some compound
marriages as they are framed in the program and described in Ben Bistline and John
Llewellyn’s work. An exchange between Barb and Nicki on their anniversary lays out
some of the essential differences between a viewpoint that is centered on the
contemporary notion of romantic love and one for which religious duty is the more
central feature. Nicki explains to Barb that “I didn’t marry for love. I married for the
principle.” Barb replies that “I didn’t. I tried. I don’t know that I have a testimony for the
principle. But I love you. I love our family more and more.” For Nicki she is commited to
her marriage because of the principle, if she loves her husband and sister-wives, which
she clearly does, that is incidental. On the other hand Barb expresses her commitment to
the marriage through her feelings of love for Nicki and their family; for her this makes up
for her uncertainty regarding the principle. For Nicki this is an unstable basis for a
marriage. She tells Barb that “I don’t know that a marriage based on love can go the
distance. The sacred holiness of the institution, the sanctity of marriage, without it, it’s
just random couplings with no purpose or stick-to-itivness. I mean, how will we survive
the bad times on just love.” (The Writing on the Wall). For the viewer familiar with
groups like the FLDS, this belief can be understood as a reflection of Nicki’s compound

background. In Polygamy Under Attack John Llewellyn explains that “love among many

28

of today’s polygamist families is not a factor” but rather that “the binding component that
welds the marriage, the bonding agent that ties the woman to her husband, is not love, but
the sealing authority- in other words, the Fundamentalist priesthood” (Llewellyn 104)
The extent to which romantic love played into 19th century polygamous marriage
is something of some debate. While certainly many married for love, Joseph Smith
apparently married Emma for love, love was not a necessary prerequisite for marriage.
One of Brigham Young’s wives, Zina, once said “a successful polygamous wife must
regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for
love we regard as a false sentiment” (Van Wagoner 101). Many take such statements to
mean that polygamous marriages in this era were not about love. Jesse Embry paints a
much more complex picture of love in this period. She notes that the fact that “romantic
love was not the prime reason for marriage,” in many cases romantic love as inessential
for marriage is consistent with 19th century courtships of all kinds (Embry 71). She
explains that marriage manuals of the era more generally depicted love as something that
“grows out of the relationship rather than being the cause of it” (Embry 66). In response
to those who depict polygamous marriages as loveless she emphatically argues that her
oral history sources “do not support such a conclusion. There was intense love between
husbands and wives; while the love had to be shared, plural husbands, and wives did have
romantic attachments” (Embry 51). This aspect of love that had to be shared that was not
“something held exclusively for one person” (Embry 66) represents the essential
difference in polygamy and in Big Love. The complex entanglement of romantic love,

attachment, and attraction that is held in varying degrees for several people at once forms

29

a particularly strong aspect of Big Love is narrative and contributes significantly to a very
different discourse in Big Love, its queer potential which will be discussed in the next
chapter.
Sex

Like in any marriage, sex is an important, if controversial, aspect of Big Love.
NPR’s program Day to Day watched the first episode of Big Love with a group of
polygamists from Centennial Park". They severely objected to the fact that the very first
scene of the first episode is 3 sex scene; they feel that“ “it’s all about the bedroom” is one
of the biggest stereotypes polygamists have to deal with” (Real Life Polygamists React).
One woman complains about its depiction at all explaining that “we look upon such
things as sacred to us and these types of things cheapen it,” while another is concerned
that it is perceived not only as a joke but also “the motive” for polygamy (Real Life
Polygamists React). I’ve already argued that Big Love embeds theological content to
paint a picture of a motive with theological and historical roots that transcends simple
desire for sex. However sex plays an important role in this theological and historical
framework as well in the dynamics of the Henrickson’s family.

What the group of polygamists who saw only the first episode didn’t realize was
that by the second episode, sex would look less like a motive for or perk of polygamy and

more like a reasponsibility and challenge“). In the first few episodes of the first season

Bill finds himself unable to keep up sexually with his “duties” as a husband and has to

 

9 Centennial Park is a splinter group off of the FLDS. They are generally perceived as much more open and
modern then the FLDS (Llewellyn 19).

‘0 Indeed although the first episode begins with a sex act, sex is depicted less and less frequently as the

show wears on, although references to Viagra return. By its second or third season any kind ofsex scene
has become rare enough to be considered exceptional.

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turn to Viagra for help. In this family sex also has rules and having sex with another wife
on a certain wife’s designated day can become a volatile source of conflict. When Bill
begins wanting more time to be intimate with just Barb, they sneak off at lunch hours to
hotels and Bill finds himself having an affair with his own wife. In many ways the
Henrickson’s feelings about sex are quite traditional. When their teenage son Ben begins
having pre-marital sex with his girlfriend, he struggles with it horribly, praying for God to
restore his virginity (The Baptism). Having dreams about sex, he asks his father if it is
possible to get testimony from dreams (Eclipse). Later, after his parents found out about
his sexual experience and tell him that “its the most unholy thing you can do with your
body,” he goes to his mother to tell her “I’m not ruined inside” (Kingdom Come). It is
clear that while sex may be an important part of their marriage, conservative mores about
pre-marital sex dominate in this family. This too comes from a theological background.
Ben’s sister Sarah, after finding out he is sexually active reminds him of their time in
LDS Sunday School. She asks him to remember “when they said it was better to see your
sons and daughters come home in wooden boxes than to have them give up their
chastity” (Reunion). Clearly the stakes for chastity are very high.

In marriage childbearing is important and while sex in Big Love is clearly not
solely for procreation, Bill continues to be intimate with Barb after she becomes barren
and engages in oral sex with Margene, Nicki uses this typical conservative adage
“physical intimacy is for procreation not recreation” (Kingdom Come) to chastise Margie

for not taking pre-marital sex seriously enough as a problem. This adage was also found

31

in Embry’s research that “sexual intercourse was practiced only for procreation”
according to some Mormons (Embry 50).

However within the marital relationship, sex is not deviant, nor a shameful
necessity for procreation; it is, as the Centennial Park woman noted in the NPR segment
“sacred.” Despite the strong prohibition on extramarital and premarital sex, Arrington and
Bitton in The Mormon Experience argue that these “very proscriptions stem from
recognition of the positive place sexuality plays in human happiness, self-fulfillment, and
progress toward godhood” (Arrington and Bitton 186-87). Terryl Givens in People in
Paradox noted that because of Morrnonism’s embrace of a corporeal deity, and “its
association of sexuality with eternal states and relationship” (Givens 45), this theological
approach allows sex within the marital relationship to become a positive part of the
practice of the principle of plural marriage and the progression of the self. Even within
this relationship, however, sex can be fraught with anxiety, Nicki’s discomfort with a man
performing oral sex, Bill’s inability to always perform, and Margie’s fear that her
relationship with Bill is too much about sex, but ultimately it is something that cannot be
ignored or glossed over and is not merely salacious but an essential part of celestial
marriage.

The Compound

In this analysis of Big Love I have been focusing on aspects of theology and
history that impact the depiction of the family in the program. The discourses that
surrounds the issue of family specifically are the focus of this thesis; nonetheless I’d like

to make a quick comment about the ways in which the show is faithful to its non-fictional

32

 

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context in other aspects. Much of the conflict generated in Big Love is produced through
tensions between the Henrickson’s independent life in the suburbs and Roman Grant’s
authority on the compound, an authority that he attempts to wield outside of it for
personal and financial gain through Bill’s businesses and position.

It is tempting to see some of the dirty—dealing and mafioso meets corporate
espionage tactics depicted on the compound as completely a television conceit. Certainly
the frequency and intensity of the scheming and manipulation that takes place between
Roman Grant and Bill Henrickson in their power struggle is an extreme exaggeration for
the sake of the show. However even many of these scenarios have at least some basis in
the reality of the various Fundamentalist groups. In season two Bill’s pursuit of a video
gambling business, Weber gaming, finds him tangling with the Greens, a small secretive
polygamous group based on a single family, that can be particularly violent, employs
shadowy tactics, and asserts their right to Weber gaming. The Greens hold more than a
passing resemblance to the real world Kingston Clan. The Kingston Clan’s “heirarchy
consists exclusively of Kingston progeny” (Llewellyn 27). Rumors indicate that they can
be quite unpredictable and violent, certainly consistent with the Greens who forcibly
brand a businessman who crosses them (Llewellyn 30). They have gotten attention for
their “coin-operated amusement machine” business, reminiscent of Weber gaming
(Llewellyn 29).

This is not to say that Big Love does not employ its own artistic license with such
facts. Big Love depicts a prolonged and elaborate turf war between the Greens and

Roman Grant, intentionally instigated by Bill in pursuit of a personal desire for

33

vengeance against Roman. No such conflict occurred between the Kingston Clan and the
FLDS to my knowledge. Similarly Roman Grant is shown having trouble with strikes in
his businesses when in fact it was the Kingston Clan that encountered such
demonstrations at one of their mines (Llewellyn 29). Rather than simply showing a
fictionalized version of true stories, Big Love adapts actual occurrences in fundamentalist
compounds, such as politically and strategically motivated evictions (Bistline 119), the
reassignment or threat of reassignment of wives (Bistline 14), the kicking out of teenage
boys from the compound (Jessop and Palmer 324) and the misuse of police officers
controlled by the religion (Bistline 148) to build tensions specific to the dynamics of the
Henrickson’s family and the compound.

The history of this particular conflict has two major parts. Prior to Roman Grant
coming to power Bill’s grandfather was the prophet; he died mysteriously when alone
with Roman (The Baptism). Roman also ordered Bill’s father to throw him out of the
compound when he was only fourteen (Viagra Blue). While this story too draws some
aspects from fact, Roman was Bill’s grandfather’s, the previous prophet, accountant
before becoming prophet (Eclipse) and Rulon Jeffs was Leroy Johnson’s CPA before
following him as prophet, although under less suspicious circumstances (Bistline 133), it
is a fictional innovation that places Bill in constant opposition to Roman Grant in the
compound in more than just lifestyle choices. The touches that are added to this depiction
of the compound that are drawn from fact lend authenticity for those publics with some
knowledge of the Fundamentalist Polygamist compounds depicted by Benjamin Bistline

and John Llewellyn, to scenarios that might otherwise seem too extreme to be believable.

34

Conclusion

Big love’s use of theological and historical fact and information does something
radically different from a straightforward attempt at reality. Often translated through
fiction Big Love mixes historical contexts, takes aspects of real individuals and combines
them in a single fictional character like Roman Grant, and mixes theological aspects of
both LDS and Mormon Fundamentalist polygamist faiths. Rather than simply using fact
and questions of authenticity to give the audience a feeling that the show is realistic, Big
Love uses theological and historical facts to create a complex context for the program
based on referentiality and the decoding of religious references and symbolism. For
viewers who have the informational knowledge to catch and decode these references, the
factual context that the show provides adds significant registers of meaning to the
behaviors and motivations of the characters in the show and their interactions with one
another.

In its representation of fact, in Big Love the program troubles the divide between
the past and present. Bakthin comments that “characteristic for the historical novel is a
positively weighted and modernizing, an erasing of temporal boundaries, the recognition
of an eternal present in the past” (Bakhtin and Holquist 365-66). Big Love puts something
of a twist on this idea and in its depiction recognizes the past in the present, collapsing
strict boundaries between the two. After Anna divorces the family in “Come Ye Saints”,
Bill takes them on a trip to the holy, and historical, sites of Mormonism a sort of reverse
journey of the pioneers. The trip is framed as both an attempt to reunite and solidify the
family and for Bill to pursue his personal search for God (Come Ye, Saints). While both

goals are not met, Bill’s choice to look for family unity and faith in the very concrete

35

elements of Mormon history speaks powerfully about the role of the past in their present
life. In many ways the past is structuring in Big Love. Roman’s presumed murder of Bill’s
grandfather in order to usurp him on the compound motivates many of Bill’s actions
interfering with the compound. Bill’s personal and familial history with Roman and the
compound is vital to the story. History is something, with which he and his family must
always contend In some ways this mirrors the way that the LDS church sometimes is
asked to confront or respond to its polygamous history, something that is brought up in
Big Love when Barb argues with her mother about polygamy (Take Me As I Am) and
when Ted and his associates in the LDS arrange to buy supposed church documents sold
by Alby on the compound that speak to the issue of polygamy and claim its legitimacy.
Temporal boundaries are more subtly collapsed in the various ways I have demonstrated
that the Henricksons in Big Love organize their family life in many ways most consistent
with 19th century polygamous marriage as described by Jessie Embry.

The troubling of temporal boundaries and the incorporation of theological and
historical references and frameworks into Big Love prove to play a crucial role in
illuminating the inner lives and motivations of the character. I have demonstrated that
theological beliefs impact how various characters deal with marriage, kids, love, and sex
leading to differences among how Barb, Nicki, and Bill think about these issues based on
their very different religious backgrounds. The added information about the characters
and plot lines plays several important roles in Big Love. The most straightforward is that
it provides vital context that allows a deeper understanding of the program’s narrative.
Having a deeper understanding of the text allows viewers to combat those who

mischaracterize it by focusing solely on its more salacious aspects. While it would be

36

easy for casual viewers to conclude that the show is too much about sex, as do the
viewers in centennial park interviewed for NPR, an understanding of the text’s religious
discourse allows viewers to understand the important role theology plays in motivating
decisions regarding sex, procreation and marriage. Big Love uses a significant and
consistent religious and historical discourse to make certain that ultimately sex is not
portrayed as “the motive” as the centennial park viewers fear. It is also important when
addressing concerns that the show misrepresents the practice, as Carolyn Jessop has
claimed. Instead of misrepresenting polygamy or representing it in a way that is accurate
in the sense of documentary representation, Big Love posits a different kind of accurate
representation, one that does not rely on mirroring something that is but that is based on
the incorporation of accurate historical and theological frameworks, combining contexts
and disturbing temporal boundaries to create a representation that is based on factual
referentiality but is not in any exact sense “realistic.”

Finally the religious and historical discourse in Big Love plays an important role
in the context of the text’s other discourses. In this thesis the other discourse that I will be
talking about is a queer discourse. By paying close attention to theological and historical
references, Big Love enriches its specific narrative about polygamy as a practice and
makes this narrative well rounded and independent as a narrative. This prevents
polygamy in Big Love from becoming simplistically a queer analogy or stand/in.
Polygamy in the show has a specific character and evokes questions regarding its practice
in its own right while also serving as a queer analogy. This allows for a much more rich
and complex internal dialogic in the text. The interaction between the religious and queer

discourses in the text become crucial in later chapters. Because of the various conflicts

37

and similarities between the religious and queer discourses about the text the interaction
between theses discourses allows each discourse “to shed light on,” to use Bakthin’s
terminology, the other discourse. In later chapters I will look at how the interaction
between these discourses create productive tension with one another or enhance one

another’s argument.

38

Chapter 2 - Margie: Queer Discourses

In the previous chapter I noted that it was not unheard of for wives to participate
in the courting of a new sisterwife; it is likely unique to Big Love for a wife to see a
potential sisterwife behind her husband’s back. Margie continues to see Anna, the
women Bill is dating, even after he dumps her. Tearfully she begs him to begin to see
Anna again. She tells him that “I love her, I do, I can’t help it,” but Bill replies that “I
can’t marry her for you, Margene”. He goes on to tell her that he thinks it might not be
a celestial calling, that it could just be “lust” (Dating Game). This exchange can be read
in a variety of ways by different publics. If it were possible for a bourgeois 19th century
audience to watch it today, they would probably interpret this exchange as related to a
particularly passionate same-sex romantic friendship, a reasonably common and accepted
relationship in the nineteenth century (Jenkins 126). For many queer oriented or queer
aware viewers“ this profession of intense, heart-breaking love (or maybe just lust) by one
woman for another has clear queer overtones, an effect heightened by the fact that for
much of film and television history queer discourses were routinely coded, and queer
reading practices have often been built on the interpretation of subtexts, counter readings
and in some cases simply gossip (Becker 30). For the supposedly “average” white,
middle-class, heterosexual, suburban Neilson family watching the program, the scene
could have a variety interpretations, ranging from understanding Margie and Anna as
having an intense friendship, a non-sexual romantic relationship, or a relationship with

erotic undertones. Because this is a 2 1 st century viewer, not a nineteenth century one,

 

‘1 Here I use the term queer oriented or queer aware not to refer to those with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual
sexual orientation but those who, for varied reasons personal, political, or academic, are particularly
sensitives to narratives that are open to queer readings.

39

watching in a period when homosexuality is in fact visible, Big Love itself is sometimes
programmed opposite from The L- Word on Showtime, the potential queer character of
this scene would be legible to many of these viewers as well. The extent to which this
queer tone shapes this scene varies for the programs multiple publics. The queer tone of
polygamy in Big Love, the marriage of one woman to other women as well as her
husband, also varies slightly from character to character. Yet the centrality of this queer
tone to the depiction of many characters plays an important role in making questions
about queer marriage and queer families central to the text.

Margie, who is not from an LDS or Fundamentalist background, is the most
removed from the theological and historical context that informs Barb (who was raised
LDS) and Nicki’s relationship to polygamy. For her, polygamy is intensely about love
and family; she perceives her marriage to Barb and Nicki as an important part of her
marriage to Bill and not primarily a religious or personal obligation. In fact when Barb is
thinking of leaving the family Margie tells her “I don’t know if I can be married to Nicki
and. Bill, if I’m not married to you” (Damage Control). Her relationship to polygamy for
the first two seasons is by far the most queered. As the show progresses the relationship
between the sister wives becomes more intense and this queer potentiality begins to be
more strongly evidenced in other characters behavior.

The term queer in academic usage is an often troubled one; exactly what or who is
included in the temi “queer” is often disagreed upon. Several scholars, particularly Calvin

Thomas, have recently begun to deploy queer theory to interrogate heterosexual or

40

“straight” subjects ‘2. I will be drawing upon this research but also interrogating what
makes a subject queer, particularly how central sex and sexual desire has to be to a
relationship in order to make it queer. Is marriage, love, and co-parenting between
women without erotic acts or attraction queer? It is certainly not homosexual; you can
describe the individuals involved as heterosexuals, but it is just as certainly homosocial.
At stake in this complicated term “queer” is whether or not a relationship that can be
considered queer must also be a relationship that includes same-sex erotic acts or desires.
Big Love demonstrates that a queer sensibility can be present in relationships that are
clearly homomarital and homoromantic but not homoerotic.

I will be engaging with Big Love as a queer text on three levels. First I will be
looking at Big Love as an analogy for queer relationships and issues of what constitutes a
family from a queer perspective. Then I will be examining Big Love for the ways in
which polygamy itself in the text can be understood as a queer positionality because of
the complex set of affections, allegiances, and desires between sisterwives and potential
sisterwives. Although depictions of gays, lesbians, or transgendered people are relatively
few in Big Love, and generally negative, the role of these problematic portrayals in
creating a queer-conscious mise en scene for the program is important. I will be exploring
these depictions, as well as a handful of other non-normative family portrayals, in the last
part of this chapter. These different readings of Big Love as a queer text are not exclusive;
rather the queer potential of polygamy reinforces the way that the program works as

queer analogy.

 

‘2 See Straight Writ Queer and Straight With a Twist.

41

At stake here is not the queer individual or subject but rather the “queer”
relationship, specifically in relation to the “queer” family. Kath Weston”, Judith Stacey '4,
and many others have indicated how central the question of the queer family is to a queer
politics. For Kath Weston the recognition of families we choose and gays and lesbians as
parts of kinship is essentially to the recognition for them “as fully social
persons” (Weston 205). For Stacey what is at stake is not only the queer family or the gay
and lesbian family but the way they are representative of the potential for the
“postmodern” family that takes a variety of familial forms both tied to and untied from
procreation (Stacey 7). Big Love puts both the queer and postmodern family at stake
while complicating rather than eliminating the role of procreation in family life. While
depicting what is in many ways a conservative family, one that believes in chastity
before marriage, is deeply religious, patriarchal, and focused on procreation, it also puts
the very queer question, what exactly “counts” as a family in this society, front and
center.

Big Love as Queer Analogy

A variety of different publics may recognize the queer analogy in Big Love, from
explicitly queer viewers to those aware of queer social and political issues, even if this
awareness takes the form of opposition. Not all of these qualify as what Michael Warner
calls counterpublics. However a queer public, capable of being a counterpublic, is
particularly likely to see the program as an analogy due to the specifics of the history of

this counterpublic and its tradition of media texts that are “coded” to discuss queer issues.

 

‘3 In her work Families We Choose.

‘4 In her work In the Name ofthe F anti/y.

42

A counterpublic is “defined by their tension with a larger public” and “discussion within
such a public is understood to contravene the rules of obtaining in the world at

large” (Warner 56). What makes queer public, rather than simply a queer aware or
symphatizing public, a counterpublic is Wamer’s claim that “a counterpublic maintains at
some level, conscious or not, an awareness of subordinate status. The cultural horizon
against which it marks itself off is not just a general or wider public but a dominant

one” (Warner 119). The queer counterpublic approaches a text like Big Love with the
awareness that they, like the family it depicts, are often placed as “other” than the
dominant public, as violating their rules, and, crucially of having their voices suppressed
over history. The shape of this suppression has made queer counterpublics particularly
receptive to a text that deals with the question of queer families through analogy or
allegory. In his article “The Great Escape” Al LaValley explains that in the formation of
gay film history, “in the many years of absence of any real representation of themselves
on screen, gays created this history out of straight or nominally straight films. They found
what could be called a gay sensibility” (LaValley 60). In “Responsibilities of a Gay Film
Critic” Robin Wood observes that sometimes texts that are not explicitly about
homosexuals serve the gay liberation movement more effectively than those with more
explicit themes (Wood 13). Films and television programs that take up larger questions,
like the association between gender and sex or, in this case, what qualifies as a legitimate
family, that are important to queer groups without explicitly depicting gays, lesbians, or
transgendered individuals would be a familiar mode of address to a queer counterpublic.

So would linguistic or visual coding. While Big Love as a queer analogy is

43

comprehensible to many kinds of viewers and some queer viewers may not read the text
that way, this form of address would be particularly familiar to a queer counterpublic.

In Big Love the Henrickson’s polygamous family serves as an analogy for the
queer family in multiple ways addressing the generalized question of what makes a
legitimate family. The legal vulnerability, in fact potential criminality of their family, is
one way that the program addresses this question. Extremely relevant to the queer family
are issues of being closeted and coming out, particularly of interest to Kath Weston in her
work on queer families, as well as depictions of motherhood not based on bio-genetic
connection, estrangement from biological kinship, and the conception of the Henrickson
family by others as immoral or perverted. There are many other aspects, large and small
that contribute to programs function as queer analogy but by looking at three categories
of depiction: closeting and coming out, multiple motherhood, parental recognition and
the lack of biological connection and the adversarial relationship of others to their type of
family. We can begin to see how such a queer analogy might function.
C loseting and Coming Out

Because of the social and legal admonitions against polygamy, much of the
tension in Big Love comes from the threat of the Henricksons being outed as polygamists,
and they go to great lengths to avoid others finding out their secret. This need to be in the
“closet” about who their family really consists of structures much of their lives. At work
Bill is only able to have photos of Barb and his kids with her. Barb is the only one able to
stand with him at events for his large business, a family-friendly home store called Home

Plus, or to even shop at a discount at the store. The neighbors are told that Nicki and

44

Margie are single mothers who rent houses from the Henricksons. Perpetuating this lie
puts great stress on the family. Barb and Nicki chastise Margie for becoming friends with
the neighbor across the street because she could discover their secret. Margie for her part
is distressed that they tell people she is a single mother because she doesn’t want to be
judged for this differently “deviant” behavior that is not truly hers. When the family takes
on a new business with Weber Gaming her desire to be a “public wife” becomes clear
when she makes a bid to be the public wife for this business as Barb is for HomePlus. But
even here things go awry when Bill runs into a couple from his and Barb’s former life as
monogamists (The Happiest Girl). However the greatest cost to everyone involved is the
psychic cost of being closeted demonstrated by Nicki’s panic when she thinks they’ve
been widely exposed as she runs through the house screaming to Bill “They could come
for us! They could burn us down! You could be arrested! You could be taken!” (The
Ceremony) and Sarah, the oldest daughter’s confession to an ex-mormon groups that “I
just feel like I’m living the most dishonest life of anybody in Sandy, Utah” (Damage
Control). It is not just the fear of being revealed that has a psychic cost for Sarah, it is the
attempt to conceal their life itself; while the most opposed to polygamy in her entire
family, she most frequently objects to the deception her family must employ. She tells her
father that “it hurts to see you lie, dad. I hate that about this life, watching you and mom
hide, all of us having to hide.”

For many queer scholars of the family, the closet is a particularly troubling
construction. Kath Weston explains that “the closet symbolizes isolation, the individual

without society, a stranger even to self” (Weston 50). Indeed the families discouraging

45

Margie making new friends outside the family, the extremely small circles of any of the
family members friends outside of other polygamists, reflect such isolation. Margie’s
withholding the truth about her marriage even from her mother depicts the fear of
rejection that necessitates such closets (Good Guys and Bad Guys). Some researchers
have come to the conclusion that the closet itself causes much of the psychological
damage to gays and lesbians (and in this case polygamists) rather than the fear or
rejection that necessitate it. Judith Stacey refers to literature that “suggests that parents
and children alike who live in 'firlly closeted lesbian and gay families tend to suffer more
than members of “out” gay families who contend with stigma directly” (Stacey 136).
These and many other reasons are why the act of coming out has been so important to
gay and lesbian individuals and families and incomplete moments of coming out, or
coming out to only a small number of people, becomes pivotal in Big Love. In the season
finale of Season Two things reach a crisis point for the family. Margie tells elaborate lies
to the neighbors to explain her most recent pregnancy by denying that the child is “hers”
and claiming to be a surrogate. When the neighbor wants her to serve as a surrogate for
her and Margie tells the family she’d like to do so, conflict erupts when Barb and Nicki
forbid her to do so. When a distressed Margie finally goes to tell her friend she can’t be a
surrogate for her, for fictive reasons, Barb joins Margie and claims her as her wife in
front of Margie’s friend, Pam. When Margie tells the others that “Boss lady outed us to
the neighbors” Bill is overjoyed. This moment is shown as a major step for Barb in

coming to terms with their marriage (Oh Pioneers) and a major step for their family.

46

Parenting

The subject of motherhood and parenting is a particularly troubled site in which to
discuss Big Love as a queer analogy. Discussion of homosexuality often focuses on its
non-reproductive nature, or the not solely biological nature of many homosexual’s efforts
to obtain children. Some scholars associate gay liberation with the rise in the availability
of birth control (Wood 14) because of the divorce of sex from procreation and visa versa.
The Henriekson family is an intensely procreative environment. Nicki’s secret birth
control use is portrayed as a massive betrayal of not only her faith but also her family
(Come Ye Saints). Many characters recount the importance of having as many children as
possible to both LDS and fundamentalist faiths. Building a family for the Henrieksons is
an entirely heterosexual procreative and spiritual experience.

Despite a failure to completely separate procreation and biology from parenthood,
Big Love nonetheless complicates these relationships in queer ways. It is important to
remember that Barb and Bill began to consider polygamy when Barb became unable to
continue to naturally bear children. As Margie reminds Barb, she and Nicki have
essentially been “surrogates” for her, or “a baby factory” (Take Me As I Am). Although
all of the children do have two biological parents, the series frequently reminds us that
they have two non-biological parents as well. While forming a true mother—child
relationship is harder with the older children,15 the program emphasizes that most of the
children consider Barb, Nicki and Margie all their mothers. Nicki’s young sons refer to

Barb as “Mother Barbara”, consistent with Kath Weston’s finding that many lesbian

 

‘5 Barb and Bill’s oldest boy Ben becomes attract to Margie and does not see her as a mother, although
Margie has always seen Ben as a son (Come All Ye Saints).

47

mothers have children who refer to the biological parent solely as “Mama” and the other
mother as “Mama...So-and-so” (Weston 173). While this nomenclature still gives the
biological mother some priority, it nonetheless designates all three as legitimate co-
mothers. Additionally this language would be familiar to the program’s queer
counterpublics as a normal way of dealing with having multiple legitimate mothers. Yet
outside the family to outsiders the non-biological mothers in the Henriekson family are

invisible as mothers, in fact often they have to explicitly pose as the babysitter. Unlike the

 

co-mothers Cheshire Calhoun analyzes in Feminism, The Family, and the Politics of the
Closet, they cannot afford to try and “pass” as the biological mother in case someone
knows or meets the biological mother and the family’s illegal polygamy will be found
out, because of the illegality of their family arrangement, the danger is too high. For the
same reason, they do not have the option of educating strangers about their situation that

Calhoun indicates is a common strategy of lesbian co-mothers (Calhoun 233). Instead

Nicki and Margie often have to pass as “babysitters” or “sisters” rather than claiming
kinship. Calhoun discusses the importance of truth-telling by co-mothers because “it is

not simply one’s own sexual identity at stake but also a complex of kin relations that must

be socially recognized as such if these families are to fiJnction in the world” (Calhoun
251).

This claim ignores the fact that queer families continue to be vulnerable to

violence, custody battles, and homophobic laws. Similarly as polygamists, the

Henrieksons are vulnerable as a family not recognized by the law and society. As parents

they have to behave differently to their non—biological children in public not due to any

48

lack of parental feeling but because of the dangers associate with claiming them as their
children in public. Bill insists that Nicki’s oldest son, Wayne, continue to attend the

Roman Catholic school Nicki dislikes because its far enough away that Bill can publicly
be his father there (Vision Thing). He can claim his son almost nowhere else. When
Wayne calls out to his father at Home Plus and tries to go to him, Bill must ignore him
and Margie has to physically stop Wayne from going to him (Damage Control). Here we
see the complex dynamic of public and private in play in the text. While the show’s
depictions of family home evenings and meals and the stated ideology of the family
project an image of a seamlessly united family in the private sphere, due to the need to be
closeted, in the public sphere co-mothers have to pass as something other than mothers
and Bill sometimes has to pretend not to be involved with some of his children at all in
public. He cannot even have a photo of his entire family on his desk. Big Love as a queer

analogy shows a variety of complications, social and psychological, from being parents

that are not recognized by society.

Adversarial Relationship with the Outside World

That children would suffer as a result of societal recognition of their family is
consistent with Judith Stacey’s research on the gay family. She observes that

children of gay parents are vicarious victims of rampant homophobia and

institutionalized heterosexism....Living in families that are culturally invisible or

despised, the children suffer ostracism by proxy, forced to negotiate conflicts

between loyalty to home, mainstream authority and peers (Stacey I35).

49

The potential of ostracism by proxy looms large for the Henrieksons. When Teenie is no
longer allowed to go over to a certain friend’s house, the whole family assumes she is
being excluded because the friend’s parents must have found out about their polygamy.
They are shocked when they find out that her exclusion is instead because she’d been
showing her friends dirty magazines (Block Party). Sarah is teased by her friends at work,

although not excluded and is called “plygie” or taunted that “Sarah has three

mommies ‘6” (Pilot).

Like queer families, the Henrieksons face not only potential ostracism but are
legally vulnerable. The episode “Where There’s A Will” traverses the complex legal
wrangling the family undergoes to try to keep the kids together if any of the parents die.
Of the three wives only Nicki wants her children to go to her mother, in part because
Barb, like many gays and lesbians has been ostracized by her family as a result of her
choosing to be in polygamy. Although Margie’s mother eventually comes around, initially
she declares Margie’s beliefs “perverted” (Good Guys and Bad Guys). This situation with
biological kin can escalate easily. One of Barb’s friends, another independent polygamist,
tells her that “my own mother tried to grab my kids. She followed Ruby around in her
Lexus for weeks” (Reunion). Family members who do not come from recent polygamy
so disapprove of their lifestyle that they cut their children off, refuse to speak to them,
and even threaten to take their children. Because polygamist families are also legally
vulnerable, the loss of custody over one’s children is a real concern in the series. When

Don, Bill’s best friend and business partner, consults a lawyer when two of his wives run

 

‘6 This is an allusion to the childrens book [leather IIas Two Mommies by Leslca Newman and Diana
Souza.

50

off with his kids, he tells Don that he can’t fight for them. Don tells Bill that “if I fight
they’ll say we’re a cult. That we brainwashed and abused them. I can’t even claim my

own children without fear of arrest” (Empire). In the show these fears are heightened

since Don’s wives left shortly after a nationally publicized raid on a compound in
Kansas.'7 Gay and lesbian parents have frequently had trouble with the family legal
system, losing custody battles to straight exes or biological grandparents and being

denied the right to be foster or adoptive parents in some states. Beyond solely being
unable to publicly claim all their children in some public situations polygamist families in

Big Love (like many queer families) are legally vulnerable as well as socially

marginalized.

Several of these issues, ostracism, rejection by biological families and legal
vulnerablity would be familiar to queer counterpublics and other publics aware of queer
and LGBT social and political issues. It is important that we are careful not to essentialize
any “type” of viewer. Alcxandery Doty reminds us that

queer positions are not the only ones from which queers read and produce mass

culture. As with nonquecrs, factors such as class, ethnicity, gender, occupation,

education, and religious, national and regional allegiances influences our identity
construction, and therefore are important to the position we take as cultural

producers and readers-consumers (Doty 74).

Clearly not all queer individual viewers will read Big Love Is approach to these issues as

an analogy for the queer family. I hope, however, to have adequately demonstrated that

 

‘7 Based on the 2008 raid on the FLDS Yeaming For Zion ranch in Texas.

51

Big Loves approach to issues that face the marginalized family can be connected to

issues that face queer (LGBT) families.

In Feminism, the Family and the Politics ofthe Closet Cheshire Calhoun notes
that
specifically, lesbians and gay men are displaced from the public sphere, from the
private sphere, and from our social future. Given this, three liberties are
particularly crucial: l) the liberty to represent one’s identity publicly 2) the liberty
to have a protected private sphere, and 3) the liberty to equal opportunity to
influence future generations (Calhoun 159).
We have seen that the Henrieksons face obstacles to at least two of these liberties: they
cannot be open about their family in public are forced into facing the challenges of the
closet and rather than having a protected family sphere they are vulnerable to the law,
discovery by neighbors, even threats brought by members of their own biological
families. While they can biologically procreate without aid and can therefore influence
future generations, the other two necessary liberties enumerated by Calhoun are denied
both to many gays and lesbians and the Henrieksons. As an analogy for the queer family

Big Love functions effectively to represent some of the challenges such families face.

Polygamy As Queer
Reading the family in Big Love as queer on its own terms brings up two crucial
questions: what exactly makes a family or a couple queer and how important is sex in this

equation? In some ways the Henriekson family reinforces aspects of heteronormative

families, like procreation and patriarchy, that many scholars describe queer theory as

52

working against (Monson-Rosen 233). On the other hand, the Henriekson’s marital
arrangement challenges normative couple-based-monogamy and the presumption of a

family organized by blood and traditional marriage. Big Love simultaneously presents
viewers with a family form that is both deeply historically based and a representation of
what Judith Stacey calls “the postmodern family.” Judith Stacey says that she studies gay
and lesbian families not because they are “marginal nor exceptional, but rather to

represent a paradigmatic illustration of the “queer” postmodern condition of kinship that
we all now inhabit” (Stacey 15). She uses the phrase postmodern family “to signal the
contested, ambivalent, and undecided character of our contemporary family

cultures” (Stacey 7). The Henriekson family which can be read as simultaneously “queer”

and “not queer” fit this description beautifirlly since their status as a family is contested

and defining the family as traditional, queer, etc. is ambivalent.

In “Queer Families and the Politics of Visbility” Mary Bernstein and Renate
Reimann asks “what is a queer family?” and explains that they use the “the term “queer”
families here to signify the diverse family structures formed by those with nonnormative
gender behaviors or sexual orientations” (Bernstein 3). The problem with this definition
is determining what constitutes “nonnormative gender behaviors”. In many ways Barb,
Nicki and Margene have exceptionally normative gender behaviors: they are housewives
and mothers, do the grocery shopping, the cleaning and the cooking. In other ways their
gender behavior is complicated. Is it nonnormative gender behavior for a woman to
marry another woman even if they are also married to a man? Is it nonnormative gender

behavior to love another woman? To court her? Even if the women involved have only a

53

 

non-sexual love for one another. These questions complicate Mary Bernstein and Renate
Reimann’s attempt at a clean definition of the queer family.
Despite the Fundamentalist polygamist groups general emphasis on patriarchal
priesthood authority, it is when Bill is pursuing a fourth wife, Anna, that his authority is
most undermined. Bill attempts to break things off with Anna multiple times, the first
time Margie intervenes to get them back together (and continues to see Anna behind
Bill’s back). Later, after Anna cheats on him it is Barb who insists Bill take her back. She
tells him that whether or not to date her isn’t only his choice anymore and that since she
likes Anna, Bill should go to her and take her back (Prom Queen). The bringing on of a
new wife in this case does not give Bill more patriarchal power, rather the emotional
attachment of his other wives to Anna significantly complicate his attempts to “date” her
in the heteronormative way.‘8 Eventually Barb insists that all four of them, Bill and the
wives, date Anna circumventing the traditional heteronormative dating ritual. In this very
postmodern (and traditional) family, an attempt to bring on a new wife produces a
storyline in which we see the “queer” and “not queer” collide. A very not queer aspect of
the family, Bill’s patriarchal authority, is undermined by a very queer one, the feelings of
desire, love or affection of his current wives for a potential new wife.
If we accept the possibility of a queer family or relationship in which same-sex
sex does not take place, the proposition of the “straight queer” subject, then their is clear
queer potential in the Henriekson’s particular brand of polygamy. I will be focusing on

how their polygamist family can be queer in terms of how it challenges the couple norm

 

‘3 Earlier in the series Don has a similar problem when all of his wives vote out the woman they were
considering for a new wife (A Barbecue for Betty).

54

of marriage and relationship and the depiction of non-sexual love, commitment and

courting amongst women.

Straight Queer
In the last few years Calvin Thomas, Richard F antina, and others have proposed

that queer theory can be applied to heterosexual subjects. This dc-coupling of queer
subjectivity from queer (or at least same-sex) sex is both tantalizing and potentially
problematic. In “From Here to Queer: Radical Feminism, Postmodernism, and the
Lesbian Menace” Suzanne Danuta Walters worries that reduction of “queemess” to
nonnormative sexuality is so broad that it include “hetero S/Mers, dissatisfied straights,
and so forth?” will dilute queer politics that it “reduces queer politics to a banal (and
potentially dangerous) politics of simple opposition” (Walters 8). Other scholars are
fearful that including heterosexuals as potentially queer subjects will be a problematically
“normalizing” force, the appropriation of a marginalized groups discourse and politics by
a dominant one.

Even scholars who apply queer theory to heterosexual subjects are concerned

about the consequences of such a project but conclude that the benefits outweigh the

risks. Deborah Kaplan and Rebecca Rabinowitz argue that

while it is important to identify and minimize the potential pitfalls of applying
queer theory to heterosexuality, such application can free heterosexuality from its

traditional state of mythic non-complexity, preventing what Anna Marie Jagose

calls the inappropriate maintenance “of heterosexuality and homosexuality” as

radically and demonstrably distinct from each other (Kaplan 197).

55

 

Many scholars ofqueer theory distinguish between heteronormativity and heterosexuality
in the introduction to Queer Studies: An Indisciplinary Reader Robert J. Corber and
Stephen Valocchi observe that “although they overlap, hetereonorrnativity and
heterosexuality are not co-extcnsive and cannot be reduced to each other. Thus there may
be modes of organizing sexual relations between straights that are not
heteronormative” (Corber 4).
Calvin Thomas refers to non heteronormative heterosexuality as “straightness
with a twist.” He claims that “straightness with a twist would, rather, work to mitigate, or
militate against, those institutional, compulsory ideals, those compulsory
performances” (Thomas 31). As we have seen by the way that Big Love functions as
queer analogy, the performance of family life in the Henriekson’s polygamous family
undermines the compulsive performance of heteronormativity as it applies to rigid
definitions of normative nuclear family life. In so doing it creates a “queer space” which
recognizes the possibility that various and fluctuating queer positions might be
occupied whenever anyone produces or responds to culture. In this sense, the use
of the term queer to discuss reception takes up the standard binary opposition of
queer and nonqueer (or straight) while questioning its viability, at least in cultural
studies, because, as noted earlier, the queer often operates within the nonqueer, as
the nonqueer does with the queer (Doty 73).
_M y previous discussion of the show’s storyline about courting Anna as a new wife has
already demonstrated that Big Love is capable of simultaneously deploying queer and

nonqucer elements and allowing them to interact together in productive ways.

56

 

Thinking Beyond the Couple
One of the hallmarks of many scholars definitions of heteronormativity is the
prioritization of monogamy and the “couple” form for marriage and parenthood. As we
have seen, thinking beyond the couple in relation to both these categories is central to Big
Love. In Robin Wood’s analysis of Jean Renoir’s work in the context of gay liberation he
discusses “our entrapment in ideological notions of love and sexuality, with their
emphasis on pairing, choice, and exclusivity; and the continuously repressed but insistent
vision of the potential loveliness of genuinely shared relationships” (Wood 16). In Big
Love 3' portrayal of love and sexuality pairing and exclusivity are not required; in fact
exclusivity is denied as a possibility for the Henrieksons. Barb tells Bill, during an
argument about their abandoning monogamy, that “I sacrificed our love” (meaning
exclusive love) “for the love I have for this family” (Damage Control). She recognizes
that she had to give up one kind of love in order to be part of a family where exclusive
love is sacrificed for the love of several. Bill’s attempts to date Anna alone fails, so often
does his frequent attempts to go to one wife when another is angry. Barb chastises Margie
for allowing Bill to have sex with her on a night that Barb had denied him sex.
Attempts at reproducing simple exclusive relationships, even in parenting, often
fail. When Ben, who has decided he wants to be a polygamist, is arguing with Nicki, he
tells her “you ’re not my mother.” She dismisses this telling him “you don’t selectively
choose which parts of the principle you like young man. It’s a package deal. It’s plural
wives and plural mommies” (The Happiest Girl). This issues goes to the core of

heterononnativity. Donald E. Hall in “A Brief, Slanted History of ‘Homosexual’ Activity”

57

 

cites “a still expanding, reproduction-dependent economy organized through a
monogamous (emphasis mine), patriarchally controlled domestic unit” (D. E. Hall 104).

A lack of monogamy is not to be confused with an anything-goes attitude about sex;
thinking beyond the couple does not make infidelity impossible. While dating Anna is not

considered cheating, when Barb and Bill start sneaking off to have sex together on other

 

than Barb’s designated nights with Bill, it is framed as an affair. Barb’s friend Peg warns
her “he’s not going to leave his wives” (Roberta’s Funeral). While Barb’s desire to

continue sneaking around clearly evidences her desire to have exclusivity with Bill, she
stops because although Bill and Barb are married, what they are doing can hurt their other
wives. When Sarah, who is completely against polygamy, finds out about her parents’
affair she is happy, yet Barb is horrified that she knows because, having chosen
polygamy, Barb realizes what she is doing is essentially cheating on Nicki and Margie

and that she has to give up exclusivity in order to get something else and to be faithful to

her sisterwives.

According to Maureen Sullivan,

the heterosexual nuclear family is our guiding image of what “real families” look

like; it constitutes a kind of truth regime in that its power guarantees that human

beings will not only strive to conform to this image but will also recognize as

families only those social relationships that do so. Those who do not conform, for
example lesbian co-parent families, are not socially intelligible within this truth

regime. M other-mother-child families are literally inconceivable (Sullivan 231).

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Faced with the literal inability to conceive, the Henrieksons conceived of a mother-
mother-mother—father child family that, as Nicki insists, refuses to elevate only

biologically paired parents to the status of “real parents.” While it may initially be

tempting to see Bill and his wives as three parallel couples, indeed the show at first teases
us with this possibility“), the programs depictions of the family’s operation rejects this
possibility by showing the importance of thinking “of the needs of our family as a
whole” (Block Party). Understanding of this dynamic comes to various characters as a
process. Nicki comes from a polygamist background and immediately understand that
marrying Bill also means marrying Barb, and eventually Margie. For Margie this
realization comes later, but she embraces its implications wholeheartedly when she tells
Bill she wants to be baptized to ensure that she will be with the entire family in the
afterlife. She tells him “when l married into the family I guess I must have thought that l
was just marrying you and now I realize I was marrying all of you. I was marrying
sisters...my sisters. That was my choice and I would make that choice all over

again” (The Baptism). It is not enough that Margie affinn her understanding of her
marriage as more that about the couple; she also has to identify and reconfirm this as her

conscious choice. Soon after she is telling Barb that she does not believe she can not be

married to Nicki and Bill if she isn’t also married to Barb (Damage Control).

Love

Rather than simply being the consequence or condition of marrying Bill, the love

and marriages between the women, despite often being conflicted, are depicted as

 

‘9 The first scenes show Bill in bed with Nicki and him sneaking out of her house the next day while his
daughter watches from the window ofthe house next door.

59

 

valuable and unique in their own right. When Barb and Bill are fighting, Nicki tells him
that “Margie and I know her in way that you will never know her” (Damage Control),
reminding him that their marriages to Barb are different and as important as his marriage
to her.

While the language of sisters emphasizes the platonic nature of the love Barb,
Nicki, and Margie profess for each other frequently, other language and coding in the
program emphasizes a more romantic tinge to some of their relationships. Margie, shortly
after meeting Anna, tells her that she is a polygamist. When Anna asks her about her
wives, Margie tells her that her “sisterwives, they’re amazing. You know how they say
everyone has a soulmate? Well so far I’ve found three” (Dating Game). This “so far”
leaves space for finding another soulmate in Anna. Indeed the program codes their
relationship as romantic; “This Magic Moment” is played on the soundtrack when Marge
and Anna first meet (Vision Thing). When Anna later finds out that Bill, who she’d been
dating, and Margie, who she befriends, are married she is hurt and thinks that she’s been
manipulated. Margie explains to Anna that this wasn’t planned with the language of a
romantic comedy telling her, “we just both fell for you” (Oh, Pioneers). This romantic
attachment worries Nicki who says it is too much in character for Margie who she thinks
“forms these inappropriate attachments to other women.” Interestingly Bill reinscribes
N icki’s objections in somewhat romantic terms saying “you sound a little jealous.”
Ultimately it does appear that Nicki feels betrayed when she tells Bill “it’s dangerous

when a sisterwife strays” (Dating Game).

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While Nicki and Barb often use less romantic language than Margie, they
nonetheless claim to love their sisterwives and behave accordingly. Even in anger loving
or intimate relationships can be demonstrated. When it is revealed that Nicki has secretly
been taking birth control Barb goes to her feeling betrayed that Nicki no longer seems to
want what she said she wanted at the time of their marriage, to expand their family (Fight
or Flight). Although anger seems a strange place to locate love, it is Barb’s feelings of
betrayal that alludes to the intimacy of their marital relationship. As Nicki reminds Bill at
the beginning of season two, “there are four of us in this marriage...you can’t
compartmentalize a separate thing with one of us when there are four of us. This is my
marriage and Margie’s too” (Damage Control). No part of the marriage, in Nicki’s
formulation, can be separated from the other parts. All three wives lives are meaningfully
interconnected and interdependent.

Kath Weston identifies love as the crucial component of queer kinship; she finds
that “grounding kinship in love deepmhasized distinctions between erotic and nonerotic
relations...as such, love offered a symbol well suited to carry the nuances of identity and
unity so central to kinship in the United States, yet circumvent the procreative assumption
embedded in symbols like heterosexual intercourse and blood ties” (Weston 107). This
can be seen in Nicki’s insistence on her full status as Ben’s mother and on the
homomarital and sometimes homoromantic20 but never homoerotic relationship between
the wives. Weston’s rubric of the queer family makes space for the possibility of non-

erotic familial couples or relationships. She reports that “when I asked interview

 

2° Homoromantic and homomarital are used by D. Michael Quinn in Satire-Sex Dynamics Among
N ineleenth-C entwjv Americans.

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participants if they were currently involved in a relationship, a few were uncertain how to
answer. Of those who hesitated the women wondered whether they should count primary
emotional bonds as relationships in the absence of sexual involvement” (Weston 140).
Big Love as queer text brings this question center stage. The women in Big Love clearly
share deep emotional bonds that are central to their lives (the plurality of the marriage
makes primacy a problem), but there is no sexual involvement. If sex and sexual, rather
than romantic or emotional, desire is backgrounded, there is a clear case for seeing the
Henriekson’s version of polygamy as queer.
Explicit Queer Representations

Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner in “Sex in Public” refers to the need “to
construct the architecture of queer space in a homophobic environment” (Berlant 172).
While some of the explicit representations of queer subjects in Big Love can be described
as homophobic, which is unquestionably problematic; they still contribute to creating a
“queer space” or queer mise en scene in which a queered depiction of the Henriekson
family can take place.

The darkest depiction of a queer subject involves Roman’s son, Nicki’s brother,
Alby who is an extremely closeted homosexual. We are privy to only two of Alby’s
disasterous attempts at cruising. The first time he goes to a motel with a man he picked
up but as things begin to get sexual he cracks, he starts shaking, banging his head against
the wall, and shrieking until the other man runs off (Eviction). The second time he
attempts to have sex in a public bathroom and is assaulted by a man his mother hired to

attack him as vengeance for Alby trying to usurp Roman (Block Party). More generally

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Alby is portrayed as an extremely negative character; immoral, conniving and brutal, he
is by no means a sympathetic portrayal of a homosexual.

A similarly occasional brutal character is the gender queer Selma Green, who
once tries brand Bill. When Selma is initially introduced, she appears to be an extremely
butch woman in a suit but could also easily be a man. In later episodes Hollis Greene
refers to Selma as his “brother” to Bill (Kingdom Come). In season three it is revealed
that Selma, is in fact biologically female and is Roman’s sister and Hollis’ wife. Roman
bullies her into not only allowing Hollis to take another wife but humiliates her by
forcing her to wear a dress for the wedding. Previously we have only seen her in suits and
she looks miserable and awkward in the pink dress (Fight or Flight). The gender
difference in presentation is clear. While clad in a dress she is silent, awkward, passive,
and endlessly harassed by a pig snuffling at her legs and back, equally menacing and
violating; (Fight or Flight) in the very next episode, back in a suit, she speaks for Hollis,
is commanding and aggressive, coming after Bill violently with a stapler (Rough Edges).
Despite clearly being a stable character Selma behaves radically differently in the two
episodes; here the clothes, or really the gender presentation, really do make the person.
Interestingly Roman instructs her to “perform her marital duty unambiguous y”
(emphasis mine) (Fight or Flight). Ambiguity can be understood as a key feature of the
postmodern or queer family as Stacey defines it.

It is important in this context to remember that the LDS church, like many
religious institutions, has a reputation for being homophobic. Big Love reflects this in

subtle ways. Heather tells Sarah that she volunteered at a shelter for gay, lesbian and

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transgendered homeless teens to prove that she’s not “too Mormon” and that she is “open
minded” (Viagra Blue). Rhonda blackmails Heather by saying she’ll tell people that she
has sexual feelings for Sarah; she tells her that she “knew women like you from the
compound” (The Happiest Girl). A particularly interesting example is a couple Sarah
interviews as prospective adoptive parents to her baby. The husband tells her that he
struggles with same-sex attraction but that “through'thc lord’s help I’ve been able to
develop a lot of masculine qualities; some day I believe I will no longer have homosexual
attraction. It might not be until I’m resurrected from the dead” (On Trial). Sarah does not
want this couple to adopt her child because their relationship has “no true intimacy.” She
believes that the church shouldn’t counsel gay men to marry women and straight women
to marry gay men. She says “I don’t know what the solution is to the gay thing but this
isn’t it” (On Trial). Surprisingly it is her LDS friend Heather who suggests that “they
seem to really care about each other” (On Trial) implying that their marriage could be
good without sexual desire. Generally encouraging gay men to marry woman is a strategy
opposed by LGBT groups and their supporters, and is an effect of religious homophobia.
In the specific context of Big Love it again beg the question of a marriage; it appears a
loving marriage, not based on sexual desire such as the marriages between the
Henriekson wives. It would be problematic to conflate these two marriage types,
particularly since the former is based on repression and homophobia, but they inform one
another in meaningful ways. The representation of negative explicitly gay and lesbian
characters and homophobic religious structures in Big Love does not impede the texts

ability to deal positively with queer issues, instead these problematic depictions of

64

homosexuals contribute to the tension between discourses inherent in the show. Big Love
shows that non-normative families and marriages can be potentially viable and still have
not only negative queer characters but also characters oppressed by homophobic
institutions.

Despite Rhonda’s comment that she knew lesbians on the compound, we see no
clear explicit lesbians living polygamy in Big Love. There is, however, an extremely
subtle moment with two of Don’s wives, Vemie and 1010, that allows queer
counterpublics and queer aware publics to read in lesbian desire in a polygamist context.
There is a very brief moment in the show’s second episode in which, while playing
bridge, Vemie and Jolo are seen playing footsie beneath the table (Viagra Blue). It is an
extremely brief and subtle scene but for a counterpublic or public used to looking for
coded cues it is enough to allow viewers to question Bill’s adding “together” when Peg
tells him “Vernie and .loJo ran off” (Empire). How viewers will read this “together,”
whether they ran off together or ran off together, depends on their position as viewers and
how they read such incredibly ambiguous and subtle cues as those described above. In
later episodes when Don attempts to convince them to come back to him with proof that
polygamy was never intended to be abandoned by the church and they tell him “that they
only loved each other and their children” not Peg or Don, this potential reading is
strengthened (Rough Edges). The extent to which this is surprising, or even understood as
queer, is greatly influenced by the ability of audiences to notice and recall the first subtle

moment of intimacy in “Viagra Blue.”

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Conclusion

In many ways the development of queer discourse in Big Love is radically
different from the way the series’ religious and historical discourse is constructed. While
the development of religious and historical discourse in Big Love is based more on
specific referentiality, the queer discourse practice is based primarily on coding. In many
ways this is consistent with an historically situated queer reading practice that involves
looking for subtextual cues in texts rather than specific references to queer issues. This
reading practice has historically been very important for the application of queer theory
to media since only recently have gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people begun
to be portrayed explicitly frequently in film and television. Because Big Love is made in a
very different historical context, contemporaneous with many explicitly gay and lesbian
themed shows, the role of its queer subtext needs to be looked at very differently. The
portrayal of queer subtext and queer-related questions of marriage and family in an
explicitly heterosexual context brings up some important issues. Here I have used some
of the scholarship surrounding a relatively new field of inquiry into “straight queer” to
address the ways that heterosexual practices can be looked at as queer and as pertaining
to queer questions.

I have examined three different ways in which the text approaches queer
discourse: Big Love as queer analogy, the Henriekson family as queer in and of itself, and
the portrayal of explicitly queer characters in the text. Big Love as queer analogy
addresses issues confronting queer families like closeting and coming out, dealing with

being a non-biological second (or third) mother, and having to confront a frequently

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adversarial or hostile outside world. Functioning as a queer analogy the family, in Big
Love plays out issues confronting queer families in a significantly different context. As I
will discuss in the next chapter, the religious discourse in the text significantly
complicates the way the text can be approached as a queer analogy. However the ability
of the text to employ a queer discourse and address queer issues without relying on
explicit representations of LGBT individuals is very important in terms of the potential
for texts that employ this strategy for getting questions about the position of non-
normative marriages and families in this society in front of audiences who may not watch
explicitly queer texts. Michael Warner has observed that “any number of factors make for
a pool of queer sentiment in persons otherwise distant or phobic about queerness” and
that “queer sentiment can be largely independent of queer sexual practice and therefore
an opporttmity for translation work” (Warner 222). The queer discourse in Big Love can
be looked at as doing this kind of translation work.

Queer sentiment is also fundamental to Big Love’s portrayal of polygamy itself as
in many ways queer. This is related to the recent scholarship on “straight queer” but also
brings up some fundamental questions about thinking beyond the couple and love
between women that are relevant to more traditional queer theory frameworks.
Fundamental to this question is how essential sex is made to issues of love, including
romantic love, and marriage. Big Love recognizes the inherent q'ucemess in love, fidelity,
romantic desire, and co-parenting between two women, even when sex is not present.
How this relationship between two wives can become more explicitly queer is indicated

in the extremely subtle narrative are of Don’s wives Vemie and Jojo who eventually

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decide to run away together. Although the majority of representations of explicitly LGBT
individuals in Big Love are problematic at best and blatantly negative much of the time,
the presence of explicitly queer character in Big Love does work to help create a queer
mise en scene for the text in which the more positive and complex work on queer issues
can be done through queer analogy and the portrayal of polygamy as queer. In the next
chapter I will look at how queer discourse is further complicated by the religious

discourses in Big Love that is an important part of its context.

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Chapter 3 - Barb: Interaction Between the Text’s Discourses

Although thus far I have been looking at Big Love is queer discourses and faith
related discourses in terms of their cogency to separate (but potentially overlapping
publics), in reality these two discourses frequently come into conversation in fascinating
and productive ways. The last moments of the third season of Big Love beautifully
illustrates the possible meetings of these discourses. Like so many narrative arcs in Big
Love, the end of season three entangles traditionally theological and queer family
discourses. After discovering that Nicki has been using birth control (undermining the
families theologically based goal of growing the family), briefly dating her boss (cheating
on both Bill and her sisterwives), and has been a spy for her parents at the DA’s office
(endangering her entire family who are illegal in the eyes of the state), Bill decides that
he wants to be unsealed from her. Margie’s resoundingly negative response to not being
consulted in the decision to separate from Nicki, let alone to become unsealed from her,
has both a theological and homomarital basis. From a theological perspective Margie’s
baptism in the faith and scaling to Bill and her sisterwives assures that they will be
together in eternity; to unseal from Nicki is to open up the possibility that not only will
they not be with her in the after life but also that potentially either Margie or Nicki may
not be with the children Nicki gave birth to in the after life. When Barb, who is being ex-
communicated by the LDS, and Nicki speak of being cast into outer darkness this has two
dimensions: the theological casting out from the kingdom of heaven and being cast out,
sent away, from ones community and/or family. From a queer discourse perspective

Margie’s marriage to Nicki is being ended against her will. The social and emotional

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components of the relationship that Margie has with Nicki are important to Margie and its
dissolution has consequences beyond its religious implications for her. The threat to
kinship relationships that Bill getting unsealed from Nicki embodies is severe on many
levels. This is an example of how queer and religious discourses in Big Love function in
relation to each other and cannot be looked at as unrelated and discrete discourses. In the
example described above we can see how in many parts of the narrative elements fi‘om
both the show’s theological and queer discourses inform important moments in the show.
Here a publics awareness of both queer and religious elements of the narrative can
provide a better sense of the full extent of what is at stake in Bill’s threat of unsealing
himself (and therefore the family) from Nicki.

The reincorporation of Nicki into the family also takes place, with very little
discussion, on both religious and queer levels. Bill has decided to claim the keys of the
priesthood and is in the backyard with Barb, Margie and the children giving Sacrament to
his family. Nicki comes in with her estranged daughter from a previous marriage. Her
acceptance back in the family is not indicated verbally but by two crucial visually coded
moments, one queer and one religious. When Barb goes over to Nicki and takes her hand,
this gesture can be read as Barb’s accepting her back, affirming Barb’s marriage to Nicki
although she cannot affirm Nicki’s marriage to Bill. On a queer discourse level, the
wives marriage to one another and not merely to Bill once again becomes central. Bill
does not welcome Nicki back on a romantic level but rather on a theological one as he
offers her and her daughter the Sacrament. When Nicki accepts it, she accepts Bill as the

holder of the keys, as well as her own personal priesthood holder. Bill’s offering of the

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Sacrament, after declaring his family its own church, to both her and her daughter returns
Nicki to the family while incorporating her daughter wordlessly into their complex
network of kinship relationships. It would be a grievous error to imply that these
discourses, theological/historical and queer can only be read separately; in fact in the
scene I have described above these discourses are more effective when read together.
While Margic’s concern about Bill unsealing form Nicki is to a great extent for her
current, worldly marriage to Nicki, her homomarital desire for Nicki impacts upon fears
that they may not be together in the afterlife as well, something Margie was baptized to
insure. The offering and acceptance of Sacrament is on the surface a purely religious act
but in the scene described it is used in part symbolically to reinstate and cement
relationships. Thus far we have discussed how different publics have varying levels of
access to specific references and discourses in this chapter I will be looking at how the
fullest reading of this text puts these discourses in conversation with each other and
depends on viewers from various publics recognizing and considering elements that may
be most cogent for other publics.

Judith Butler in Undoing Gender writes about her concerns regarding the pursuit
of gay and lesbian marriage rites and focus on kinship and this searching for legitimacy
through the state. She observes that

the state can become the site for the recirculation of religious desires, for

redemption, for belonging, for eternity. And we might ask what happens to

sexuality when it runs through this particular circuit of fantasy: Is it alleviated of

its guilt, its deviance, its discontinuity, its asociality, its spectrality? (Butler 1 ll).

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Reading religious and queer discourses in tandem with each other and against each other
in Big Love does precisely this, without the aid of the state, it inserts sexuality into a
framework of religious desire that is deeply invested in redemption and particularly
eternity; a religious desire that posits sexuality extending into eternity. Because of the
particular historical stigmatization and state criminalization and pathologization of
polygamy, this sexuality is able to, for better or worse, preserve sexuality’s deviance and
discontinuity, in a way that is linked both to queer desire and a specific history of
religious persecution. Butler cites Sylvian Agacinksi as claiming “that it goes against the
“symbolic order” to let homosexuals form families” (Butler 112). William R. Handley
joins gay marriage and plural marriage together as examples of violations of the “good
order” in society, a subversive force in the eyes of much of society (Handley 91). Publics
and counterpublics are not discrete entities they often overlap in significant ways.
Extremely few viewers will view Big Love solely through its religious or queer discourse
registers. While some publics will pay more attention to one discourse than another and
may have an easier time decoding particularly references and subtexts associated with
one discourse more than another, very few members of any given public will be entirely
unaware of the discourses more associated with other publics. In many cases viewers may
belong to more than one public, such as queer, or queer aware, individuals who are or
were Mormon; in almost all cases they will share some of the knowledge basis of another
public These discourses are most vital when they are commenting on one another, I will
be examining how Big Love places these two discourses in productive tension with each

other, how these discourses support one another in depicting issues that both discourses

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share (such as questions of stigmatization), and why the use of these two, sometimes
conflicting, discourses in Big Love, rather than simply producing for example a
straightforwardly “queer” or “gay” show, is an important technique or strategy for Big
Love particularly and for creating highly complex television shows more generally.
Productive Tension

The use of productive tension in Big Love is an important part of the narrative, it
demonstrates how a show can depict discourses that have some conflicting and
contradictory elements without either glossing over these elements or making them
purely oppositional. In Big Love we see discourses with opposing elements put in
conversation with each other in a way that preserves the tension between the two
discourses but problematizes and complicates the discourses and these tensions in a
productive way. It is not uncommon for scholarship reflecting on queer subject positions
to set up traditional and religious discourses as oppositional to queer subjectivities.
Indeed this is often the case in religious organizations; todays LDS Mormonism has taken
an oppositional position regarding not only gay marriage (Krakauer 339) but also
polygamy, working actively at different times against both forms of marriage in order to
defend “moral values.” In some cases there may be a part of the program’s Mormonism
informed public that is also part of its queer aware public that is particularly engaged
with the shows queer discourses because of conservative beliefs that actually oppose
queer kinship or same-sex marraige while also being engaged with the Henriekson
family’s traditional beliefs about pre-marital sex. In the previous chapter I focused

primarily on queer counterpublics, but another public who may by hyper-aware of queer

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subtexts are those who are passionately opposed to homosexuality and fear its influence
in public life such as “fundamentalists” who “offer a different critique of children’s
television and consumer culture based on....taboos on sexuality - especially queer
sexualities-and nudity” (Seitcr 91). Because publics have access to varied discourses in a
single text, to varying degrees the tensions between these discourses can be an important
part of their experience of the text, and an important tool for incorporating complexity
into the text. In many ways this tension between conservative religious values and non-
normative family formations is central to Big Love; but rather then being placed in
opposition to each other these two elements are put in productive tension with one
another in regards to patriarchy, procreativity and non-marital sex, and traditional
religious values. The intersection of these discourses and the examination of the tensions
they create can in some instances demonstrate instabilities and problematics present in
the issues around which tensions take form.
Patriarchy

A particularly productive tension can be seen surrounding the issue of patriarchy
in Big Love, patriarchy is a traditionally and theologically significant part of Mormon
fundamentalist polyga but is particularly problematic for the show’s queer narrative
because traditionally queer theory has positioned itself in opposition to patriarchy.
However throughout the show patriarcy is shown not to be secure and the tension
becomes productive when the queer connections between the women problematize Bill’s
patriarchal control. William R. Handley in “Belongings: Plural Marriage, Gay Marriage

and the Subversion of “Good Order”” writes that

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what marital forms could be farther apart socially or religiously than a marriage

between two women, on the one hand, and between eight women and one man, on

the other? Whether or not the former involves children, it has no foundation in

patriarchy, polygamy, on the other hand, is profoundly patriarchal and most often

theocratic in its practice (Handley 90).
In Big Love polygamy clearly has a theocratic motivation, one that has a particularly
strong relationship to patriarchy, given the status of the priesthood, reserved solely for
men, in Mormon society and the role of the father as the receiver of revelation for his
family. Bill clearly attempts to exert this authority frequently throughout the series,
making decisions behind his wives’ backs that affect the entire family, attempting to
dictate to this wives how they should behave and secretly involving himself in compound
drama despite risks to his family. Nicki sometimes gives lip service to Bill’s right to exert
his patriarchal authority over the family. Nicki tells Barb that “the men on Mount
Rushmore are patriarehs. I want Bill to be Godly....Look, I know how to submit and that’s
why I’m happy” (Circle the Wagons). Such a statement would make the Henriekson
family irredeemably patriarchal if it were true, but consistently Bill’s wives undermine
his attempts to exert control. Despite Nicki’s speech to Barb, she regularly subverts Bill;
running up credit card debt, secretly taking birth control, and scheming to aid compound
friends and relatives.

Barb and Margie more straightforwardly undermine him. Barb class him a
“caveman” and tells him, “remember Bill, there’s a patriarch above you he’s called our

Heavenly Father” (Circle The Wagons). Barb’s statement indicates how this particular

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tension over patriarchy can be a productive one. By reminding Bill of his own
subordination to their Heavenly Father, Barb uses a specifically theological and
patriarchal framework to undermine Bill in his attempt to exert patriarchal control over
his family. A similar framework to the loss of control Bill experiences in his
consideration of Anna as a fourth wife. Bill has next to no control over this narrative are.
First Margie then Barb develop their own intimate relationship with Anna and later each
insist that Bill continue t_he_ir (not solely his) relationship with her when he is ready to
give up on it. Although Bill does get to initiate the proposal of marriage, Barb and Margie
propose moments later (On Trial). Barb also insists that all four of the spouses date her
(Block Party) removing a traditionally patriarchally based institution from Bill’s
exclusive control. In the end of this narrative arc, Ana’s getting divorced from the family
is her decision and is based on the wives’ relationships and the family eco-system, not her
specific relationship with Bill (For Better or For Worse). Here the theological framework
of Mormon fundamentalist polygamy can both preserve male authority through
patriarchy and undermine it by establishing complex relationships between women. in
Straight Writ Queer Richard F antina explains of the anthology an interrogation of some
straight sexual practices demonstrate that many of these can be as subversive to
patriarchal values and institution as same-sex practices. By focusing on some of these
transgressive acts and counter hegemonic gender positions, this collection seeks to blur
the divide between homo- and heterosexuality, while deconstructing heteronormativity
(F antina 14-15). Although F antina’s anthology focuses on examples that more directly

attack patriarchy and do not preserve it to the extent that Big Love’s narrative does, I still

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believe Big Love also has this kind of transgressive potential. The productive tension
incorporated into Big Love Is portrayal of patriarchal polygamy allows the text to explore
the instability of patriarchal control in a generally patriarchal institution. Rather than
solely presenting patriarchy is inherently and incscapably part of polygamy or as clearly
subverted as it is in some queer theory by the use of productive tension that demonstrates
patriarchy as strong and problematic but that can be potentially undermined in surprising
ways that incorporate elements of both of the show’s major discourses.
Procreation and Non-Marital Sex

The Henriekson family’s relationship to sex presents a similar problem to that of
patriarchy discussed above. While traditional religious sexual mores and polygamy make
procreation central, queer theory is often about non-procreativity and chosen
procreativity in Big Love these discourses are put into productive tension with each other
by being shown as both proscribed and problematic, both a biological goal of sex and
related to childrearing by non-biological parents. Procreation is a significant part of the
motivation for the Henriekson family. It is vitally important in Mormon theology to bring
children into the world and to raise them in the Mormon faith in order to allow them to
progress spiritually. Barb’s inability to have more children after her hysterectomy is
variously perceived as a punishment for her and Bill’s initially not living the principle of
plural marriage but also as a motivation for their beginning to live it. More than simply
being a spiritual duty Mormonism, like many faiths, discourages non-procreative, pre-
marital and non-marital sex. When Bill realizes that Nicki has not been having children

for some time, he reminds her “growing the family is why we’re here. Matthew 18:5

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whosoever shall receive one child in my name receiveth me” (Prom Queen). Later Nicki
repeats this similar sentiment when she replies to Margie’s questions about whether she
wants another baby with the ideology she’s been taught at the compound. Nicki tells
Margie: “it is my wifely duty to bear as many children as I can to bless this family and
bring glory to my husband in the afterlife” Margie replies that “I thought we could have a
serious conversation about this” (Prom Queen). Margie’s reply, acknowledging the
unsatisfactoriness of regurgitated ideology, and Nicki’s use of birth control at the time of
this statement both complicate the portrayal of procreation centered marriage in Big Love,
again producing a kind of production tension between the shows conservative and queer
discourses. Robin Wood writes in Out In Culture that that “the present status of

both” (women’s and gay liberation) “has been made possible by the increasing public
acceptance of birth control, with its implicit acknowledgment that the aim of sex is not
necessarily procreation, and its consequent undermining of the tyrannical and repressive
norm of monogamy and family” (Wood 14). Because the Henrieksons’ marriage
nominally does have procreation as a primary motivation for sex, it appears to be in
conflict with this facet of queer kinship as challenge to the centrality of procreation
(Weston 34); however the distance between rhetoric and behavior again puts these
tensions in productive conversation. Nicki’s use of birth control is, of course, one
manifestation of this tension; but this tension can also be seen in the other non-
procreative relationships in Big Love. Barb and Bill continue to have sex as a part of their
marriage, although she can no longer become pregnant, Nicki is shocked when she finds

out that Bill perfomis oral sex on Margie (Kingdom Come), and Bill and Barb joke

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earlier that when Bill talks to Ben about not going to far with his girlfriend that he can
say “save yourself but oral is moral” (Viagra Blue). Although this is clearly a joke, the
specter of non-procreative sex is always present in this otherwise traditionally procreation
centered family. It is also present in the non-sexual spousal kinship that the wives have
with one another whose commitment to one another includes the goal of childrearing but
not procreation which, despite Barb referring to Wayne as “her son by Nicki,” is
impossible without the male spouse or other intervention.

Traditional religiously based sexual mores in Big Love also prohibits pre-marital
or ex-marital sex, but yet both teenagers and adults en gage in this prohibited behavior in
the text. When Sarah discovers her brother Ben is having sex with his girlfriend, she
reminds him of the religious admonition they both were raised with; she reminds him that
their Sunday school taught them it was better to see their children dead then unchaste
(Reunion). Ben’s former bishop tells him about God, “we’re fortunate because he’s given
us the path to eternal marriage and eternal family. But sexual morality is at the heart of
that plan” (Dating Game) and his father tells him that “it’s not an unnatural desire but its
the most unholy thing you can do with your body. That’s your temple, son” (Kingdom
Come). Despite this clear awareness of religious expectation, Sarah herself eventually
has pre-marital sex and becomes pregnant, and it is revealed that Bill had sex with both
Margie and Anna prior to marrying them. The narrative relationship to breaches of
proscribed sexual morality is much more complex then simply the lapses of characters
unable to uphold sexual purity mores. Ben not only breaks these expectation of chastity

but this failure to remain chaste ends up causing a re-dedication of himself to not only

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Mormonism but committing to the idea of polygamy. After this sexual lapse, he attempts
to marry the girl he lost his virginity to; and when this fails to occur, he begins dating
twin girls from the firndamentalist compound. Bill condemns Nicki and Sarah’s sexual
transgressions, the use of birth control and pre-marital sex, shortly after he himself has
sex with Anna prior to their marriage. Although Sarah has much more serious
consequences to her engagement in pre-marital sex then Ben, in fact she becomes
pregnant and subsequently has a traumatic miscarriage, she does not experience a
religious awakening; her reunion with her boyfriend in fact takes the form of sex in
Nicki’s bed. However Bill’s decision to sanction Sarah’s engagement to her boyfriend,
against Barb’s wishes, is motivated by his feeling that getting married somehow “makes
right” their transgression of pre-marital sex (Sacrament). Rather than simply showing
personal lapses what these examples evidence is a complex interaction between desire,
religious conviction, and traditional values in the text. A lapse can cause religious
conversion or lead to desire for queer kinship as when Sarah and Heather vow to raise her
unborn child themselves. The relationship to these events and lapses are structured by the
differing backgrounds and perspectives of the characters leading to different outcomes
from the interaction between discourses.

These apparent conflicts and complexities deepen Big Love is relationship to this
subject. In part the relationship between conservative sexual mores, polygamy, and queer
subjectivities is already present in many outside discussions of polygamous and gay
marriage. Handley write that the language of “promiscuity” is, of course, one of the chief

conservative charges against gay people in defense of heterosexual monogamous

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marriage, as indeed it was against Mormon polygamy in the nineteenth century, which
was seen as a sanctified form of licentiousness (Handley 94).

This reminder of the position of Mormon polygamy in many people’s eyes as
“perverse” in its own way troubles the more general valorization of conservative sexual
mores in the Henriekson family household. The complications multiple mothers add to
otherwise simple heterosexual biological regulation also upsets the “good order” of the
culture Butler observes in Undoing Gender that “the belief is that culture itself requires
that a man and a woman produce a child, and that the child have this dual point of
reference, for its own initiation into the symbolic order” (Butler 118). Butler is not
addressing situations like that of the Henrieksons who arguably maintain the symbolic
order by providing children with the point of reference of biological father and mother in
some ways that are quite traditional. However, the distractions to this dual point of
reference, the extension of kinship inherent in the non-biological mothers’ major role in
the children’s lives, can violate the symbolic order by countering the limited nuclear
family as the paradigmatic family form. Like in the previous examples we see tension
between proscribed and voluntary (or non existent) procreativity and that through the
elaborate combination of religious and queer discourses this seemingly simple opposition
can be destabilized and complicated.

Conservative Religious Groups and “Family Values ”

Implicit in the discussion of patriarchy and procreative/marital sex thus far is the

structuring role conservative religious values play in the structuring role conservative

religious values play in the Henrieksons’ lives, despite the fact that most conservative

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religious groups, including the mainstream LDS, oppose polygamy and often rhetorically

associate it with an opposition to same—sex marriage. Handley argues that
Mormon polygamy and same-sex marriage may seem to make strange political
bedfellow, and yet a familiar conservative argument against same-sex marriage is
that it would lead inexorably to the legal sanctioning of group marriage and
polygamy. The (il)-logic of “if gay marriage, then polygamy”...has become so
routine in the last decade among such conservative writers as William Bennett,
Stanley Kurz and others that it seems to have acquired the paranoid quality of a
self-fulfilling prophecy (Handley 89-90).

Roman Grant in Big Love tries to deploy this logic in reverse for public relation
purposes. While taking a reporter on a tour of the compound Roman tells her, “If the
supreme court says, yes to the privacy rights of homosexual persons, surely it’s time to
recognize our rights to live in peace too” (Home Invasion). This is a calculated use of
same-sex marriage by Roman for political reasons; in no way does it indicate a genuine
political alliance or acceptance of homosexuals as Adaleen and Roman’s disparaging
comments about Alby’s secret homosexuality show. This is consistent with D. Michael
Quinn’s observation that there has been a “rise of homophobia within the Mormon
hierarchy since the early 19505” (Quinn 375). Handley in fact associates the church’s
opposition to same-sex marriage to its history of moving away from polygamy, saying
that “as if having internalized the marital and economic ideology behind its coerced
transformation after 1890 (when it gave up polygamy), the church is also one of the

leading political forces behind the effort to draw a new line between civilized marriage

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and its latest threat, same-sex marriage” (Handley 89). Beyond particular sexual or
religious motives for individual actions the decision to represent queer kinship question
in the context of frequently homophobic faiths in itself produces tension.

This intricate matrix of traditional religious norms, consistent with the LDS,
fimdamentalist polygamous groups values and queer kinship produces a tension that
interrogates the question of what defines “family values.” Mark Simpson in It s A Queer
World speaks of those who panic about a loss of “family values” and believe the family is
in crisis from whom “the solution to this crisis is to close down the altematives...The
“family values” or Retrosexuality Movements is deeply unhappy with the separation of
sex from reproduction that contraception and late consumer capitalism has brought
about” (Simpson 8). In this respect the Henrieksons, at least on the surface, meet this
“family values” expectation by putting reproduction center in the family, although in a
clearly problematized way. Robin Wood looks at conservative ideology from a very
different perspective; noting that “when dealing with ideology, it is always necessary to
ask not only what it expresses but what it represses. The opposed, largely contradictory,
ideological positives our culture offers (monogamy and family, romantic love) have one
obvious feature in common: the insistence on exclusivity and mutual possession with
“fidelity” thought of basically in sexual terms and sexuality mystified as “sacred””
(Wood 15). Here fundamentalist polygamy as practiced by the Henrieksons defies the
traditional ideology by centering on what this ideology represses, particularly the
rejection of exclusivity. Although in some ways mutual possession is still present in Big

Love, one must share those they possess with other spouses, complicating the relationship

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to possession. Despite rejecting a focus on exclusivity, Big Love retains and even
heightens the sense of “sexuality mystified as “sacred”” evident in the language used by
Bill and his bishop when admonishing Ben for having pre-marital sex. Even while
destabilizing some elements, although by no means all, of dominant “family values”
ideology, potentially the focus of Big Love on marriage complicates its radical potential.
Butler observes about the fight for gay marriage that “for a progressive sexual movement,
even one that may want to produce marriage as an option for non-heterosexuals, the
proposition that marriage should become the only way to sanction or legitimate sexuality
is unacceptably conservative (Butler 109). Yet it is this looming conservativeness that co-
exists with the Henriekson family’s subversive and scandalous elements that creates the
conflicts and tensions that complicate Big Love as a text and illustrate that conflict over
what constitutes family values is more nuanced then conservative versus radical
positions.
Parallel Themes

Publics who interact with the multiple discourses present in any given text do not
interact solely with the ways that these discourses conflict with and contradict each other.
In many cases different discourses in a text interact by highlighting the similarities
between seemingly disparate discourses and subject positions. Big Love illustrates the
ways in which the seemingly radically different positions of religious polygamous
marriage and queer kinship face similar challenges in a culture that perceives them as
threats to the symbolic order. Although the discourse of theologically motivated

polygamy is explicit in the text and the queer discourse is much more implicit and sub-

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textual, both are at stake in a variety of issues explored in Big Love including the affect of
stigma, including passing, the importance of ritual, and the importance of legitimacy. For
example I’ve already discussed how queer discourses complicate traditional religious
values discourses in Big Love; but the relationship between these two discourses can also
be looked at in terms of how they support one another, and not how they conflict, by
using the queer discourse to bring out the queer potential in traditional religious
frameworks that religious faiths usually deny.
Queer Theology

The intersection of religious and queer discourse in Big Love as discourses that
can enhance and support each other when addressing issues that both discourses have a
similar perspective. Uniquely the intersection between these discourses can evoke the
fascinating work on queer theology. Scholars who have considered the question of queer
theology have drawn attention to the ways that Christianity can be thought of as
symbolically queer. Similarly to Big Love these scholars interrogate the ways in which
theological frameworks that are often deployed as arguments against same-sex marriage
and queer kinship have aspects that contradict the standards that are the basis of their
opposition to same-sex marriage and families. Gerard Loughlin in Queer Theology
addresses the opposition to same-sex marriage on the basis of the inability to procreate by
point out “the threat posed by gays and lesbians to family and society is often proclaimed
by men - named “fathers” - who have vowed never to beget children. The pope lives in a
household of such men...that reproduces itself by persuading other not to procreate. Why

is this refusal of fecundity -the celibate lifestyle- not also a threat to family and

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society?” (Loughlin 5). Although celibacy is not an issue in Big Love, the show deploys a
similar technique, asking why segments of society will not recognize m the non-
biological mothers prescribed by religiously motivated polygamy or the second mother
(or father) in lesbian and gay families, while valorizing non-biological mothers who
adopt in a heterosexual marriage, such as Barb’s LDS intensely anti-polygamy sister. This
comparison comes out strongly when Sarah’s workmates joke “Sarah has three
mommies” (Pilot) a play on the title of a children’s book about lesbian parents, tying
together in the very first episode of Big Love polygamy and queer kinship. In
“Subjectivity and Belief” Kathy Rudy considers the role of community in faith and
argues for its acceptance in terms of kinship when she claims “that progressive Christians
should stop encouraging gays and lesbians to take up monogamous relationships and try
instead to understand and the value of a lifestyle built on community” (Rudy 37). A
community of faith is central to fundamentalist Mormon polygamy, particularly on the
compound, and although their family expands beyond the nuclear, the Henrieksons’ exile
from community is always a strain on them and their faith; Nicki laments “I’ve given up
hundreds to live in the suburbs with ten” (Reunion).

Scholars and Big Love both explore how aspects of theology can be inherently
queer Loughlin explains in Queer Theology that “as we have seen, the Christian tradition
has always imagined same-sex marriage -at least for men. Men have always been able -if
not required- to play the bride to Christ’s groom” (Loughlin 5). Here the dictates of faith
encourage a queer orientation, men being Christ’s bride, as does polygamy when it seals a

new wife not solely to a man but to his other wives. They also place desire in the context

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of faith. Rudy in “Subjectivity and Belief” says that celibacy testifies to the truth “that all
desire is ultimately oriented towards God. Our desire for the other is ultimately desire for
the Other and will not be satisfied until it reaches its telos, its end in God” (Rudy 68). The
Henrieksons are similarly oriented in the kingdom yet to come, building their family for
the afterlife. Even when speaking of worldly business interests Bill orients his decisions
towards both his worldly and eternal life. When Don finds himself unexpectedly
monogamous, Bill asks him to use this newfound legitimacy to obtain a bank loan for
their casino project; he assures Don “this is the solid foundation we’ve been looking for
to build our earthly and celestial kingdom” (Empire). In Bill’s worldview the earthly
kingdom is a preparation for the celestial one, as is their earthly marriage also celestial;
therefore if their earthly marriage has queer attributes so will their celestial marriage be
queer. Religious and queer discourses interact with one another in the text in a way that
brings out the relationships between the worldly and earthly marriages and the possibility
of theological frameworks having implicitly queer elements, something crucial to Big
Love.
Stigma

Both polygamous and queer families must confront the issue of stigma as defined
by Erving Goffman. Stigma is one of the areas in which queer and religious discourses
are not in conflict but rather Mormon fundamentalist polygamists and queer kinship
groups both routinely have to deal with stigma. The parallels between the discourses
demonstrate how marginal groups confront similar problems and go to the question of

dealing with difference generally rather than solely specifically. Religious and queer

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discourses also put their own distinct, but not conflicting spin on the question of stigma,
such as religious motivations for the embrace of stigma symbols They both belong
specifically to the discreditable stigmatized and those who have a “tribal stigma
of...religion, these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally
contaminate all members of the family” (Goffman 4). Stacey has observed that children
of gay parents become “vicarious victims” of homophobia (Stacey 135); those who carry
a “tribal stigma” such as children of parents who are fundamentalist polygamous
Mormons similarly become “vicarious victims.” Concerns for the victims of the children
of the religiously marginalized are shown to be also relevent to children in queer kinship
groups, and visa versa through the interaction of the show’s two discourses. The
Henrieksons’ oldest daughter Sarah particularly struggles with this tribal stigma,
struggling with the extent she can separate herself from her family’s stigma. Despite
Sarah’s clear objection to her family’s polygamous lifestyle, she is consistently unable to
separate herself from them and their stigma. When Margie asks Sarah if she thinks of
herself as a polygamist Sarah replies, “No. Well, kind of. For the longest time I thought I
wasn’t. I mean my family may be and my parents may but I’m not. but then I was like,
well I mean, I’m living here, so whether or like it or not I kind of am” (The Baptism).
Here stigma by association becomes inescapable for Sarah. Sarah also strongly opposes
the deceit that her family must engage in in order to remain discreditable rather than
discredited by their secret stigma; this secrecy puts a strain on most of the family but
Sarah objects particularly strongly to it. Goffman observes of the discreditable person that

“when his differentness is not immediately apparent, and is not known beforehand (or at

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least known by him to be known to the others), when in fact his is a discreditable, not a
discredited person, then the second main possibility in his life is to be found” (Goffman
42).

To avoid being found out the Henriekson’s engage in passing in various forms.
Bill and Barb pass as a monogamous couple, Nicki and Margie have to pass as single
mothers. In some cases the children have to pass as not Bill’s children. It is interesting to
note that the form of passing expected of Nicki and Margie affixes to them a different
stigma, that of the unwed mother, that is also vulnerable to conservative religious
reprobation. Unhappy with his particular stigma as well Margie eventually makes up a
story about being a surrogate mother in order to pass in a different way (Rock and a Hard
Place), because in the eyes of the law Nicki and Margie are in reality single mothers this
can be thought of a double passing on Margie’s part. Passing has been a traditionally
challenging and important part of the queer experience for many, it can be seen as
explicitly functioning this way as Alby passes for straight and Selma passes for male. The
motivations for passing are many but rather motivated to high religious, familial, or queer
stigmas passing is shown as universally problematic.

In the family’s attempts to pass, Nicki routinely becomes a liability because she
alone in the family is the bearer of stigma symbols. Goffman describes stigma symbols as
“signs which are especially effective in drawing attention to a debasing identity
discrepancy” (Goffman 43-44). Nicki does not cut her hair, usually wearing it in a long
braid, and dresses very conservatively; her clothes and hair style are a toned down

version of what is worn on the compound. Her bearing of these stigma symbols makes

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her discredited in the eyes of many people; the Henrieksons’ neighbor Pam, who calls
Nicki “the braid,” suspects her of being a fundamentalist without even considering that
Margie or Barb could be polygamous. Motivated by this suspicion she sends missionaries
to Nicki’s house who confirm her suspicion. Because of her stigma symbol, Nicki quickly
moves from discreditable to discredited. Pam tells Margie about Nicki that “she’s
fundamentalist, polygamist. Right on our street. Isn’t that terrible? They’re like
cockroaches. No, I don’t mean that in a harsh way I mean that they come in and try to
hide. They’re secretive probably because of the shame of it all” (The Baptism). Pam not
only responds negatively to Nicki’s stigma but tells Margie, who is passing herself, that
she objects to Nicki’s attempts to “hide” to pass. Although she claims to object to Nicki’s
attempts to remain discreditable rather than discredited, it is invariably Nicki’s bearing of
stigma symbols, what makes her disredited, to which Pam responds. She much more
readily accepts Barb and Margie, who are more successfirl passers, when they come out
to her. For Nicki it is religious status that makes her discreditable in the first place but
also that motivates her bearing of stigma symbols. Goffman observes that “it is possible
for signs which mean one thing to one group to mean something else to another

group” (Goffman 46). Nicki ’5 dress and hairstyle are negative stigma symbols in the
eyes of the neighbors, but for her they are a link to her family and community; they mark
her as normative and keeping to her faith on her returns to the compound. Just as Nicki
has to dress in ways she is uncomfortable with to attend Barb’s awards ceremony (The
Ceremony) or to work at a job outside the home (Block Party), Margie has to cover up to

go to the compound (The Writing on the Wall). Big Love Is depiction of stigma symbols

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that are voluntarily worn is very important it shows how something that is a status

symbol, or basic expectation, in one context becomes a stigma symbol in another. What
makes Margie a good passer in their neighborhood makes her offensive on the
compound. This is a challenge faced by gays or lesbians who may wish to wear certain
symbols at a club or event with other gays and lesbians but that may become stigma
symbols if they run into their boss at the gas station on the way home. They, like Nicki,

have to choose or reject symbols that may make them feel connected to one community

 

while isolating them from another.

Passing and closeting is a significant part of independent polygamists experience,
part of living in mainstream culture rather than on a compound; it is also an important
part of the experience of many gays and lesbians, particularly older gays and lesbians. In
Big Love the process of moving from discreditable to discredit individuals incorporates
both religious and queer discourses. Nicki ’3 bearing of stigma symbols has a foundation
in her religious belief and involuntarily “outs” her. Barb and Margie on the other hand
intentionally become discredited. Goffman claims that an individual “can voluntarily
disclose himself, thereby radically transforming his situation....from that of a
discreditable person to that of a discredited one” (Goffman 100). Margie and Barb both
voluntarily “out” themselves at least once, Margie to Anna and Barb to Pam; in both
cases this outing takes on a queer tone. Barb tells Pam when she comes out to her that
“Margie is my sister-wife and I love her dearly” (Oh Pioneers). Margie also emphasizes
her love for her sister-wives when disclosing herself to Anna whose first response is to

note that she doesn‘t bear the stigma symbols of polygamy saying “you don’t look like

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the women I see on television” (Dating Game). This emphasis on love for ones sister-
wives as a part of disclosure indicates that while religion may be the motivation behind
polygamy, creating the need for passing and the motivation for the bearing of stigma
symbols, choosing to become discredited as opposed to discreditable is associated with
relationships including the queered relationship of sister wives to one another. The shows
treatment of stigma deploys both queer and religious discourses in deeply interrelated
ways that enrich the portrayal of stigma and the practices of passing and coming out.
Importance of Ritual

In some ways we can think of this disclosure process as a kind of ritual. Ritual is
an essential site in which queer and religious discourse comes together. Religion
consistently puts a high value on ritual and it has been noted as an important part of queer
kinship practices. In the case of Big Love rituals with religious motivations such as family
home evening or baptisms ofien simultaneously serve to solidify Big Love '5 queer
inflected relationships such as the marriages between the women in the family. Butler
writes about the “thesis that kinship is itself a kind of doing, a practice that enacts that
assemblage of significations as it takes place” (Butler 126) In Big Love kinship as doing
often takes the form of ritual. Kath Weston also locates the importance of ritual to kinship
when she observes of her own experience that “the centrality of the meal-sharing food on
a regular basis in a domestic setting- certainly contributed to our growing sense of
relatedness” (Weston 104). Meal sharing is an extremely important ritual in Big Love; its
incorporated into the program’s opening as part of their experience in the afterlife. Meal

times and meal preparation are the times that the whole family is most frequently shown

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together. The viewer first realizes that Bill is not cheating on his wife but is married to
three women when he comes in and they are all cooking dinner together (Pilot). Later in
the episode the picture of a united family brought together by a form of marriage built on
religious faith is solidified when they all share a meal together at a large picnic table in
the three houses open backyard and Bill leads them in prayer. A relatively long sequence
takes place just of them eating together (Pilot). From the very first episode shared meals
become a ritual in which both kinship and religious work takes place. The religiously
motivated practice of family home evening, framed by prayer, becomes, consistent with
Kath Westion, an occasion for the solidification of queer kinship relationships.

The final season of season three, discussed above, transforms this ritual of
communal eating into one with more explicit meaning when Bill offers his family the
sacrament as part of his laying claim to the keys and greater religious authority
(Sacrament). I have already discussed this scenes complex relationship to both religious
ritual meaning and queer kinship, and a similar set of symbolic meaning making can be
seen in the baptism rituals shown on the program. Margie’s choice to become baptized
represents her acceptance of the full implications of a polygamous life, that she is not
solely married to Bill but to Nicki and Barb as well, and the queer kinship that is part of
this proposition. It also indicates her full realization of the religious implication of this
life that marriage is to be eternal and that this eternal marriage can only be obtained
through fundamentalist Mormon religious faith. When she asks to be baptized, she tells
them she now understands that she was marrying sisters and that “I wanna be with you

guys forever too ‘cause I love you guys and I need you guys and I never ever wanted to

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not be in this family here or in heaven.” She tells them, “I’m ready” (The Baptism).
Margie’s baptism symbolizes her acceptance of both the queer and religious aspects of
her marriage. Nicki and Barb’s smiles and hand-holding as they watch Margie be
baptized further extends the experience to include Barb and Nicki, solidifying the queer
marital relationship between the women as part of the baptism experience. Baptism again
complicates queer kinship relationships when Barb stands in for Margie’s mother in a
baptism for the dead (Come Ye Saints), allowing her to be with them and to have
salvation in the afterlife. The exception to this relationship to ritual is Barb’s participation
in a temple endowment ceremony; this unites her with her LDS mother and sister for a
final time before Barb is excommunicated for being in a polygamous relationship (Outer
Darkness). However because she is excommunicated rather than leaving her family later
in the same episode, in some ways this endowment ceremony can be read against its
typical intention as a “last dance,” a ritualized experience of LDS Mormon faith before
leaving it permanently for her polygamist family. Consistently ritual is important for both
religious and queer discourses in the text and religious ritual routinely plays an important
role in queer kinship maintenance simultaneously.
Importance of Legitimacy

Butler speaks of marriage in terms of “a kind of legitimated public sex” and
explains that “marriage compels, at least logically, universal recognition: everyone must
let you into the door of the hospital: everyone must honor your claim to grief; everyone
will assume your natural rights to a child; everyone will regard your relationship as

elevated into eternity” (Butler 111). Butler, who is generally quite wary of the quest for

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legitimacy, here indicates the very practical benefits of being perceived as legitimate. As
family’s that are not recognized by the legal system and much of the culture as legitimate
Mormon fundamentalist polygamist and queer families both must face similar problems
brought on by lack of legitimacy that are explored in Big Love. While the Henrieksons’
marriage is elevated into eternity in the eyes of other polygamists for mainstream LDS it
is not. Because their marriage is not recognized by Barb’s family members, neighbors,
co-workers and the laws the Henrieksons, like those in queer relationships, are denied
many of the recognitions Butler discusses. A desire for legitimacy and recognition is
crucial in Big Love at both the corporate religious and personal level. Don and Bill’s
pursuit of a letter supposedly proving that Wilford Woodruff never intended the church to
give up polygamy is clearly a pursuit of legitimacy for their faith and marriages (Rough
Edges). On a personal level the women who are not first-wives seek recognition and
legitimacy. Lois despite her personal dislike and conflict with her husband Frank seeks to
become his legal wife when his first wife dies. Although she claims to be concerned with
making her children legitimate, she admits that ultimately she wants the legal protection
that legitimacy affords her, although emotional reasons seem to also be in play (Roberta’s
Funeral). Handley has noted the importance in the past of making children in polygamous
families legitimate, so Lois’ claims can also be seen in historical context (Handley 104).
Lois is by no means alone in her desire. Margie is eager to become the public wife in
their second business when Bill buys Weber (Damage Control). She wants to have an
environment where she can be the recognized wife. Bill expresses a similar desire when

he becomes very invested in Wayne, attending a particular Catholic school in a different

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part of town so he can be publicly recognized as Wayne’s father in at least one place
outside their home (Vision Thing).

The denial of legitimacy for Handley has particular social and political
motivations. Because of the tension between status and contract “status became unfixed”
and so

granting legitimacy to polygamy and gay marriage is in this sense unthinkable:

it would disinvest property (the material sign of status) of those amorphous values

that status is made to represent and that require (often shaming) exclusions for

their maintenance, which is why even just the existence of gay people or
polygamists is enough to be an “affront” to other people’s relationships, beliefs

and fellow, if unequal, rights (Handley 107).

Handley’s analysis ties together polygamists and gays and lesbians as groups for whom
society has perceived the legitimation as a threat as well as groups for whom legitimation
is extremely important. Handley notes “whether gay marriage, polygamy or pornography,
the potential of the threat is rhetorically the same: the subversion of good

order” (Handley 92). Butler has her own concern about the primacy of legitimation as a
goal. She observes that

this crisis of legitimation can be considered from a number of perspectives, but let

us consider for the moment the ambivalent gift that legitimation can become. To

be legitimated by the state is to enter into the terms of legitimation offered there,
and to find that one’s public and recognizable sense of personhood is

fundamentally dependent on the lexicon of that legitimation (Butler 105).

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By looking at polygamy, rather than a straightforward gay or lesbian marriage, Big Love
shows the inability to achieve legitimation from the current lexicon of the culture in a
different light. Not only does it draw upon discourses of love between women, not part of
our current lexicon, it rejects exclusivity and monogamy, and upsets the presumption of
biology in parenthood as well as the presumption that children will have only one mother.
Big Love violates the lexicon of legitimacy in ways both similar and different to
depictions that show monogamous gay or lesbian relationships and parenthood like The
L- Word or Noah s A re.
Conclusion

Ultimately although the text concerns itself with many issues that are a part of
explicitly queer television series, this chapter has sought to demonstrate why the fact that
Big Love is not an explicitly queer text is crucial to its importance as a show. Bakhtin
writes that “along with the internal contradictions inside the object that the prose writer
witnesses as well the unfolding of social heteroglossia surrounding the object...the
dialectics of the object are interwoven with the social dialogue surrounding it” (Bakhtin
and Holquist 278). What Big Love does is to take a cultural question about non-normative
marriage and family from the social context that it contemporarily most frequently comes
up, same-sex couples, and into an extremely different social context with its own history
of controversy. As an internally dialogic text, both contexts and their associated
discourses remain present in Big Love. This results in a text with two prominent, related,
but in many ways different discourses that the text skillfully integrates and puts into

conversation with each other. This enriches and complicates the core questions about the

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non-normative families that the text addresses by incorporating a variety of perspectives,
including religiously motivated perspectives on the question.

The introduction of religious belief as an argument for non-normative marriage
and family forms is rarely part of contemporary discussions on the issue. Generally,
although by no means exclusively, rcligion’s role in this debate has been most
prominently to be an argument against non-normative marriage and family forms as they
take form in same-sex relationships. In fact some of these religious groups have deployed
polygamy as part of a “slippery-slope” argument against gay marriage, ignoring the
traditionally specifically faith-based motivation for polygamy. Big Love brings this faith-
based motivation back into the equation while skillfully retaining the role of religious
groups in opposing non-normative sexualities and family forms. This can be seen in
explicit reference to polygamy in Barb’s LDS families staunch opposition to her choice
of polygamy and their estrangement from her as a result; in this as in most discourses in
Big Love there an implied narrative of queer individuals who become estranged from
their family after coming out. The issue of opposition from traditional religious group to
non-normative family forms and sexuality can also be seen explicitly targeted at gays and
lesbians in the text through the portrayal of the rejection and repression of queer subjects
in the text; this includes the potential adoptive father of Sarah’s baby who is gay and
encouraged by the LDS church to marry a woman, the disparaging comments of Adaleen
and other compound individuals about Alby, and Roman’s bullying of Selma into

presenting as female in a way that clearly is uncomfortable for her.

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Rather than undermining Big Love’s narrative, I have argued in this chapter that in
addition to the ways in which the two discourses I have focused on, religious/historical
and queer, run parallel to and support one another in the depiction of certain issues, the
ways in which these discourses come into conflict also enhance the narrative by the
creations of productive tension. Here I use the term productive tension to indicate the
way that conflicts between the two discourses in the text when addressing certain issues
complicate the topics that they discuss. For instance, traditionally the positions of
Mormon Fundamentalist religion and queer theory on issues of procreation and
patriarchy have been deeply in opposition to each other. However we have seen that the
way these conflicts actually play out deeply trouble the positions of both discourses. In
Nicki’s professed faith in the centrality of her life’s role as a mother and bearer of
children but behavioral avoidance of procreativity we can see a deep and complex
conflict. The show does not depict her as rejecting her faiths belief in her responsibility to
have children, but rather she is depicted as being frightened about the impact on her
marriage of constant childbearing and is shown to be genuinely reluctant to continue to
have children, something that in the past has shown to be emotionally difficult for her.
Nicki’s character struggles with both religious discourse and the potential for self-
determination birth control provides (as discussed in queer theory); for her these
discourses are not in simple opposition but struggle with each other in the very real
conditions of her character’s life. Other subjects dealt with in the text, such as the issue of
legitimacy, find the text’s two major discourses not in opposition but rather in

conversation with one another in ways that support each other. In depictions of

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stigmatization faced by the Henriekson family, the kinds of stigmatization confronted by
queer individuals in various ways are re-contextualized as issues confronted by
polygamous families. This functions in a variety of ways; it posits that those stigmatized
by society, for any reasons, confront at least some similar challenges, that families that
are in some ways like yours (the Henrieksons are religious, heterosexual, and procreative)
can still be stigmatized as “not counting” as families, and most interestingly discourses
can introduce elements that do not conflict with, but are different from, the traditional
elements ofthis discourse. An example ofthis can be seen in Nicki’s bearing of stigma
symbols as part of her religious belief. Stigma symbols are also present in the queer
community, often ones that, like Nicki’s, are voluntarily worn, but Big Love’s
introduction of religion as a motivation significantly deepens and complicates the issue of
stigma symbols in the text. Although revealing to others you are polygamous is certainly
an issue for those few polygamists who live out in general society rather than on
compounds or in closed societies, generally work on polygamy does not discuss a coming
out process as it is known in queer communities. The addition of the “coming out” ritual
to Big Love as part of its queer discourse significantly complicates the relationship of the
show’s characters to being discovered or revealing themselves by incorporating questions
of pride, self-realization and the claiming of a partner in the public sphere into the show.
When Barb tells neighbors that she is married to Margie all of these issues in queer
discourse come into play.

This chapter shows that differing discourses in television texts can not only co-

exist harmoniously in a text and address multiple publics but that they can, and should,

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also interact with each other in ways that deepen and enrich the text. This is contrary to
work on television that has tended to take it as a simplistic and simplifying media form
and, to use Bakthin’s phrasing, take its viewers as passive. Rather the interaction of
discourses in Big Love demonstrate televisions ability to support the kinds of complexity
that Bakthin recognizes in the novel. In the case of Big Love this complexity is used to
address questions about non-normative marriage and family forms that are very relevant

to our culture from a new perspective and context.

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CW

1 have spent a good deal of time discussing the queer coding and subtext of Big
Love as well as the way it addresses a core question “what makes a family” and what
happens to families that are not recognized which is in many ways a question of concern
to queer counterpublics and communities. Some may wonder why, if these are my
interests, that I did not write on many of the excellent television shows that are
specifically and explicitly about gays and lesbians and their kinship formations. There are
a variety of answers to this question. I have addressed this question in part in this chapter
by looking at how the religious discourses in the text complicate and inform the queer
discourse in the text, and visa versa, in ways that would not be possible in a text solely
about queer questions. It is also important to examine television texts that exhibit the
complexity to employ diverse discourses in the ways I have looked at here particularly in
light of the tendency of some commentators to assume that television simplifies and
dumbs down discourse. I think it is also important that Big Love is a text that can address
issues in a sometimes indirect way, allowing it to shed new perspective on the given issue
and perhaps to engage a somewhat different audience. While a specific audience
reception study would be required to make a empirical claim about Big Love’s audience it
is reasonable to posit that there are some viewers of the show who would have access to
its interrogation of questions of family who would be unlikely to watch an explicitly
queer show whether out of prejudice, discomfort or simple disinterest. Finally, the
novelty of polygamy as a topic, and its recent appearances in the news, may generate

interest for the show that another topic may not provide, further expanding to a different

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kind of audience then an explicitly queer show might reach in its interrogation of issues
confronting the non—normative family and non-normative marriage structures.

It is important that topics like queer kinship and family issues be approached by
television programs that reach different audiences and take different perspectives because
television plays an important role in social and political discourses. Jennifer Reed in
“The Three Phases of Ellen” explains that “in fact, the teaching that happens on television
is the most influential teaching that allows us to cohere as a society...It is the primary way
we understand the differences between us. And more importantly, it is the place we learn
how to behave toward each other as fellow citizens” and elaborates that “the point here is
that the actual differences that are represented are less important than learning to deal
with difference “respectfully and equitably”” (Reed 11). While I may not make this
statement quite as strongly, certainly there is no way to claim that it is the most influential
teaching, what goes on on television is clearly an important source of societal discourses.
In Prime- Time Families Ella Taylor observes that “like all our storytelling, television
speaks to our collective worries and to our yearning to improve, redeem, or repair our
individual or collective lives, to complete what is incomplete, as well as to our desire to

9”,

know what is going on out there in that elusive “reality (Taylor 3). William Douglas in
Television Families similarly concludes that many consider television portrayals realistic
(Douglas 10) and that viewers seek out families on television that look like their own
(Douglas 14). Big Love defies these assumptions about how families are portrayed on

television. While as a program it certainly addresses our concerns about contemporary

families, it is not intended to represent families that look like yours in a straightforward

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way. Although the Henrieksons’ have factual religious and historical roots, they are not
positioned as representing “reality”. Instead they represent, and must represent, a
situation radically different from most viewers in order to interrogate questions that may
be unfamiliar to them. In order for Big Love to interrogate questions of difference and
stigma, it must represent something that is different itself. Ellen Seiter in Television and
New Media Audiences observes that “often, conversation about the media is used as a
pretense to talk about interpersonal relationships, longings, and desires, or ‘taboo’ topics
such as sexual violence, gay and lesbian sexuality, racial tensions” (Seiter 2-3). Big Love
is a show that provides pretense, an opportunity to talk about sexuality, religion and queer
kinship without having to talk about examples that may hit to close to home. By
incorporating religion into the text, it can frame the question radically differently, adding
questions about faith, rather than biology or choice, as a motivator, and considering the
role of religious freedom, and how we approach non-normative family forms that may
also uphold certain traditional values more faithfully then many citizens and viewers.
Because of the viewer’s potential emotional engagement with the characters and
their lives they may feel differently about these questions over time. This is related to
television’s rather unique ability to interrogate issues and discourses over a quite
significant period of time, the multi—voiced discourses in the text are able to interact or
interchange over time. The text and the issues explored in it have time to change, mature,
and the opinion and position of the audience may also change overtime. In the first few
episodes the Henrieksons’ polygamy may seem exploitive, patriarchal and motivated by

sex lon er viewin ma chan eaviewer’so inion and the ma feel com assion for
3

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Bill, seeing him as a man whose taken on too much to handle, or begin to see the
companionship the wives provide each other as appealing, and may begin to recognize
the religious motivation that accompanies the sex. John Comer writes that “the
involvement with narrative is often a para-social one, in which engagement with
portrayed characters leads to an imaginative investment in their actions and

situations” (Comer 49). He goes on to say that these narratives can often perform an
informational function. I would argue that narrative’s para-social and informational
functions inform one another. Because some viewers may be invested in Nicki as a
character, they may be more likely to pay attention in away that helps them engage with
the informational component of her story line about fundamentalist theology and history.
The co-existence of these and other functions only increase televisions functionality as
what Corner calls “a system of public symbolism” (Corner 10).

I have been using a lot of modifying language in my discussion of television
commenting on what viewers might do or could perceive but this should not be mistaken
for a lack of confidence in my argument. Rather it is to avoid the trap that too ofien
television scholars fall into when they make claims that are problematically unverifiable.
Douglas in Television Families takes research that indicates some viewers associate
television with a perception of family decline and elaborates it to imply this impacts the
perception of contemporary families as “distressed” in reality and even implies that they
may impact on or reflect the actual decline of families (Douglas 170). Such a claim is

simply not verified in his work and I believe unverifiable using his methods. Janet Steiger

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in Media Reception Studies has been relatively critical of the kind of work I have done
here. She points out that
certainly one of the earliest and still the most prevalent method for finding
evidence about the reception of media texts is scholarly analysis of written and
oral texts from which the critics then make claims about what readers do.
(Readers always make the meaning that the critics want the to turn out!)

(Staiger 8).

 

Aware of these critiques I have tried to qualify my claims and focus on available readings
in the texts rather than definitive readings.

I believe in the importance and validity of this kind of reading as a different
approach to interrogate publics and the possible discourses in a given text than reception
studies can provide. Ellen Seiter notes ways that reception studies itself has limitations.
She notes that

what people say when talking about the media cannot be taken at face value. We

cannot assume that what subjects say in an interview, reflects individual,

idiosyncratic views, or that what is spoken is all that is to be said on the subject.

First, our subjects may not have access to all that might be going on with their

media consumption, because of the role of the unconscious (Seiter 29)
and that “at its best, this research accepts that the audience is ultimately unknowable in
some totalizing way” (Seiter 29). Studies of actual audiences may be a valuable next step
to this research, but the kind of textual analysis done here is also vital. My analysis has

paid more attention to subtexts, coding, and conflicting discourses than is usual pursued

106

in reception studies and depends on the subtler and more complex elements of the show
that may not be the first things audiences would articulate. Accepting that audiences are
ultimately unknowable, this text seeks to provide another way of approaching them and
obtaining an incomplete kind of knowing. A text like Big Love requires this kind of
approach drawing on rather than rejecting complexity. in Publics and Counterpublics
Warner observes that “multileveled analysis.., I think, is always demanded by public
texts” (Warner 15). Wamer’s call for multiveled analysis is one that suggests that texts
need to be looked at as complex, and investigated for complexity, particularly given the
multiple, and overlapping, publics that are engaged with any text. Unfortunately many
persist in seeing television as a simplistic and simplifying medium.

Ella Taylor claims that “the heterogeneity of viewers must be simultaneously
catered to with pluralistic images and glossed over with a more universal language in
order to create a mass audience” (Taylor 166). Big Love finds a radically different way to
address the same goal; rather than simplifying and limiting “ambiguity, uncertainty and
the dissident voice” (Taylor 167) as Taylor claims the industry often does, it instead
creates a text that functions on many different levels of legibility. Rather than attempting
to create a text that is the same for all viewers, something that is never really true of a
text, it draws on various discourses, information sources and coding to provide a text that
has varied pleasures for varied publics, that serves a mass public through diversity not
simplification. This approach also indicates an active and intelligent form of viewing.

John Comer argues that

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narrative organization in television frequently seduces the viewer into aesthetic
relations with what is on screen...in a manner which reduces critical distance and
inhibits proper engagements with issues. It promotes a form of lazy viewing in
contrast to the thoughtful and intensive attention required by many literary,
theatrical, and even filmic models (Comer 51).
I would argue that Big Love as a text discourages lazy viewing and rewards active
viewing by its incorporation of obscure historical and theological fact, extensive coding
and subtext, and complex and conflicting discourse. In some ways Big Love encourages
its audience to work for its pleasures. l have mentioned cases such as JoJo and Vernie’s
romance and the Wilford Woodruff missing word where extremely close attention on the
part of the audience is rewarded as narratives unfold by giving those audiences who have
noticed subtle detail added insight into what is going on that helps them make sense of
sudden plot twists. Looking at television programs like Big Love that defy these, often
negative, assumptions about television as simple and television viewers as passive,
should be an important task to any television scholar in order to begin to think of
television as complex and capable of politically varied and complicated discourses in the

way literature, theater and film have been approached.

While Big Love is unusual in its approach, 1 do not mean to imply that it is unusual
in its incorporation of complex and diverse discourses. In some ways television is
particularly well suited to Bakthin’s notion of polyvocality. Unlike the novels Bakhtin
looks at, television texts have many authors who participate in their creation and

influence the final product; their narratives take place over many hours, months, and

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often years, and often include a wide variety of characters frequently with differing points
of view. This makes television texts particularly able to incorporate different voices into a

single narrative. Bakhtin observed that

linguists have by and large gotten no further than the compositional forms by
which the listener is taken into account, they have not sought influence springing
from more profound meaning and style. They have taken into‘ consideration only
those aspects of style determined by demands for comprehensibility and clarity -
that is, precisely those aspects that are deprived of any internal dialogism, that take
the listener for a person who passively understands but not for one who actively

answers and reacts (Bakhtin and Holquist 280).

Bakthin’s work in The Dialogic Imagination seeks to redress this, to take the listener for
one who is active by focusing on the internal dialogism of not solely the text as a whole
but internal dialogism down to the level of the word. In his definition of dialogism
Michael Holquist explains that “everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater
whole - there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential
of conditioning other” (Bakhtin and Holquist 426). In Big Love we can see crucial
interactions between meanings. In chapter three I have looked at how these discourses
and meanings do in fact condition each other. My focus on religious and queer
discourses locates my interest specifically towards social speech types (Bakhtin and
Holquist 262). In chapter one and chapter two I have tried to interrogate the culture and
discursive frameworks from which these social speech types come from. Bakhtin writes

about various forms of stratification of language such as generic stratification and

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professional stratification (Bakhtin and Holquist 288-89) and the role that their specific
vocabularies play in the dialogic interactions of the discourses in the text. In chapter one
and chapter two 1 have looked at the visual, verbal and narrative vocabulary of Big Love

in terms of its theological/historical and queer discourses.

The specific vocabularies present in Big Love play a crucial role in structuring the
series’ publics. Michael Warner claims that “the making of publics is the metapragrnatic

work newly taken up by every text in every reading” (Warner 12). Part of the way the text

 

performs that work is through the vocabulary that makes up the discourses I have spoke
of here. Reception theory often discusses the personal life experiences, demographic
characteristics, and emotional orientation of viewers in relation to the texts that they
view. While the publics and counterpublics I have spoken of may overlap in many ways
of the ways looked at by reception theory, I have tried to focus on the knowledge basis
and orientation towards information de-coding as the central aspect of the publics I have
discussed here. This is in part because the study of publics and counterpublics I perceive
as more about how texts address and “make” publics and counterpublics, making it very
different from reception scholarship which is focused on how groups “receive” a text. In
the case of the texts theological and historical discourse it is certainly more likely that a
Mormon individual would have more of the knowledge necessary to recognize the
information and vocabulary coded into the text than would any random viewer. However
it is also likely that a scholar of Mormonism, from any individual faith or from no faith,
would also have access to the knowledge necessary to interperet these aspects of the

show. It is also likely that there are many Mormon individuals who are not particularly

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well aware of much of their faith’s theology or history and are certainly not aware of
history or theology behind the practice of polygamy before or after its prohibition by the
church. A similar claim can be made about the queer aspects of the texts I have discussed.
Gays and lesbians and their friends and family may be more aware of certain of these
issues but so may be those who actively oppose gay marriage and queer kinship.
However 1 have treated queer discourses somewhat differently, and spoken of specifically
queer counterpublics for two reasons. One reason is I have not been addressing solely
informational references and facts in terms of Big Love Is queer discourse but a specific
process of reading texts that involves decoding and resistent reading. This process is
historically situated and is a common part of queer communities viewing practices. When
I speak of the relationship of specifically queer viewers of Big Love, I am less interested
in their personal social experiences in queer life than I am their experience with a
particularly viewing practice that is part of knowledge making in the queer community.
The other reason that I have treated queer discourses differently is because Michael
Warner makes an important distinction between publics and counterpublics. He explains
that “counterpublics are, by definition, formed by their conflict with the norms and
contexts of their cultural environment” (Warner 63) and that “a counterpublic maintains
at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. The cultural
horizon against which it marks itself off is not just a general or wide public but a
dominant one” (Warner 119). These definitions could certainly fit a specifically
polygamous counterpublic but is much less likely in contemporary times to fit a LDS

Mormon public living in Utah. Due to this definition, a queer counterpublic and a queer

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aware public are significantly different things. Although some individuals may be
members of both not all members of the queer aware public, whether sympathetic to
queer issues or not, will be members of a queer counterpublic. Nonetheless all of the
queer discourse I discussed in chapter two and three would be available and interpretable
to a queer aware public whether or not they are part of the counterpublic I have

discussed.

Ultimately Big Love depends on this fact. It draws not solely on the idea of multiple
publics but multiple publics with intersecting knowledge basises in order to put these
discourses in constructive conversation with one another. While in some ways I have
examined the discourses in Big Love as discrete, they cannot remain that way in order for
the series’ narrative to fully function. For Warner “counterpublics face another obstacle as
well. One of the most striking features of publics, in the modern public sphere, is that
they can in some contexts acquire agency” (Warner 122-23). Big Love potentially gives
voice and agency to the queer counterpublic. The program achieves this through a
double-voicedness portrayed not with characters that would be part of a mainstream
public but with those associated with a radically different counterpublic of fundamentalist
religious polygamy. Big Love uses this double-voicedness not to erase difference to
obtain legitimacy by playing on the dominant society’s terms, as Butler fears, but rather
to interrogate our culture’s relationship to difference as it relates to marriage and family.
It addresses Jennifer Reed’s potential goal for television of teaching audiences to think
about conditions of difference and potentially to learn to deal with difference rather than

solely addressing one specific kind of difference (Reed 11).

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Mark Warner writes that “any number of factors make for a pool of queer sentiment
in persons otherwise distant or phobic about queerness” and that “queer sentiment can be
largely independent of queer sexual practice therefore an opportunity for translation
work” (Warner 222). It is important that media scholars look at television texts like Big
Love in terms of doing this translation work and other kinds of socially and politically
relevant work. It is important both because television media has become an increasingly
influential form of discourse in our culture but also to combat writing about television
that presumes its influence being primarily or exclusively harmful or merely being a
dangerous distraction as John Comer draws attention to when he writes that in some
models of viewing pleasure “television...acts within the terms of the classic ‘bread and
circuscs’ formula, keeping the populace happily uncritical” (Corner 103). Like Bakthin’s

linguists, I believe that those who follow this model are assuming the audience is passive.

Looking at the discursively rich internally dialogic of narrative in Big Love I have
argued for a text whose publics must be active if they are to have access to a significant
part of the meanings of the text. Warner introduces the phrase functional intelligibility to
indicate the viability of the concept of a public, I would like to put this phrase to different
use to address levels of intelligibility of a multiple-voiced mass media text. In order to
function as a mass media text, Big Love must have a level of functional intelligibility to a
general public regarding some of its emotional and plot register. However as a multiple-
voiced and internally dialogic text, Big Love also has many other levels ofintelligibility
that we have looked at here: its legibility in terms of religious and historical discourses,

its legibility in terms of queer discourses, and its legibility at the many levels that these

113

discourses speak to each other. There is other work left to be done on Big Love including
work on the show’s other areas of legibility, such as the business and political practices,
on the compound, or its questions about childhood and abuse. There is also potentially
reader response work that could be done to look at not the potential publics constructed
by Big Love but at the actual responses of viewers of varying kinds. What I have tried to
do, however, is the necessary first steps to think of Big Love, and other television shows,
as not having a message in the singular way Stuart Hall sometimes uses the term (S. Hall
129), but as having complex interrelated discourses. Taking this as our first premise, the
complexity of the narrative can be brought out, as well as some of the narrative’s
potential social or political implications. Whether it is Margene first realizing that Teenie
can think of her as a mother but Ben cannot, Sarah’s resistance to the family’s passing, or
the impact of deep religious faith on the decisions the family makes for the future, Big
Love demonstrates the complexity to do the metapragmatic work of making multiple

publics that have the potential to be active and aware readers.

114

 

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