“Faith comes from love not the other way around”
What kind of show is big love?
HBO’s show Big Love ran from 2006-2011 during the Bush era where he raised issues of ‘family values’ repeatedly throughout his campaign. Writers Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer crafted the series to promote the right of polygamists to live their beliefs without persecution. “The message of Big Love is that difference in form doesn’t mean difference in content; the fictional Henrikson family provides affirmation, stability and affection for its children.” (Bennion, J, p.167)
This message resonates with many alternative families today, whether it is a family of one man and three wives, two women and a child or two men and their children. “Big Love is thus a vehicle for exploring all alternative forms of marriage and a political platform for decriminalizing plural marriage.” (Bennion, p. 167) The show is an example of popular cultural form raising interest in mormonism and the way people and institutions relate to them.
The complex relationships, sex schedules and rosters of this polygamous family are at the heart of Big Love. Polygamist families often live their lives shrouded in secrecy. Ideas of an alternative lifestyle and a strong focus on the connection to religion in everyday life also resonates strongly throughout the series.
“While love, like all emotions may not be directly observable, it can be analysed through the way in which it is talked about and through the institutions that support it.” (Johnston, p.54)
How do you please three wives? What constitutes a family?
Narrative complexity does not always make ‘good TV.’ This week we discussed the relationship between soap operas and quality TV, screening Big Love as an example of ‘bad TV,’ which relies on melodramatic lowbrow conventions. As Big Love is screened on HBO it does fall under the umbrella of ‘quality TV.’ The genre is difficult to pin point as the show blends soap opera elements of relationships and family with melodramatic emotional moments, tragedy and relationships with God. Jason Mittel’s interpretation of genre is, “a cultural category bearing assumptions and associations-and probably no television genre is a laded with assumptions as a soap opera.”
Furthermore, Michael Kackman argues the concept of melodrama as a crucial player in the development of television shows now considered ‘good’ such as Lost. Kackman loosely describes narrative complex programs as, “those that blend episodic and serial narrative techniques, build upon extended backstories of both plot and character, are often self consciously aesthetically experimental, and which promote a particular kind of spectatorial pleasure in the mechanisms of the narration itself.”
Kackman would therefore argue that Big Love is a narrative complex program. It is both serial and episodic in structure, although the show has many soap opera elements that reminded me of Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful (which are characteristics of a serial) I did find I could tune in at episode 3, 7 and the finale and feel like I have not missed anything, which is a characteristic of an episodic show.
From the pilot episode of the first season to the series finale, I could notice the definite change of tone and narrative. I was however, able to understand what was happening from just seeing those two clips even though there would have been many complex story lines in between. In the final episode, as the tragedy of pride comes between the relationships of the wives followed by a narrative resolution, we can witness how much love is shared between them and how they have grown as a family. It is true that the viewers of Big Love are rewarded with ‘long term accrual of character knowledge.’ In the final scenes when Bill is shot I certainly felt saddened by his death especially under the circumstances.
References:
Bennion, J (2012) Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism. Brandies Univeristy Press.
Johnston, L, Longhurst, R (2010) Space, Place, and Sex: Geographies of Sexuality. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Kackman, M (2010) Flow Favourites: Quality Television, Melodrama and Cultural Complexity, University of Texas, Austin.
Mittel, J (2009) More thoughts on Soap Operas and Television Seriality.