Business and Big Love

Ann Althouse thinks that HBO's polygamy show, Big Love, is "too much about financial problems, which I don't find entertaining. Roman is a great evil character, but he's operating mostly through financial methods, and then we have to watch Bill worry about financial problems." Christine Hurt discusses why the financial problems are interesting, at least for corporate law professors.

In fact, the financial problems aren't just some sort of plot device whose interest depends on what one thinks about business – they're central to the motivating idea of the series.

As many writers have noted, the show is really about gay marriage. Charles Krauthammer says the show should make gay activists "furious" because "they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists." But Stanley Kurtz is much closer to the mark when he says, quoting the show's writers, that "Big Love wants to claim that, so long as people love each other, family structure doesn't matter. So Big Love's lovable polygamists also serve as subtle standard bearers for gay marriage, as the show explicitly notes from time to time." Kurtz notes that one of the show's writers told the Washington Blade that he was attracted to the project by "the subversive nature of how we deal with family values. . . I think what's really exciting about the show is the nonjudgmental look we have on our characters."

And the show is, in fact, truly subversive. We come to see real people having everyday problems in what many of us may have presumed was a bizarre, sort of extra-human relationship. If we can see that in polygamy, a fortiori why not in gay marriage?

So what does business have to do with this? One of the big problems people in gay and polygamous relationships face is the absence of legal rights. So we see Nicki humiliated when she tries to use a family discount card at her "husband's" store, we wonder about health insurance for all the kids and Bill's obligation to pay Nicki's debt, as Christine points out. In general, we see the personal costs people incur when they're in relationships that are not only socially condemned but legally banned – the imposed secrecy and the risk of blackmail and extortion.

(By the way, the improvisation the parties have to do when they're outside the law -- and inferentially the general role of law -- is reminiscent of other HBO shows – Deadwood, The Wire, and of course The Sopranos.)

Since we like these characters, we can't help but feel sympathetic, whatever we might have thought about polygamy. In other words, the show forces us to think about real people and their problems, rather than a theoretical abstraction, and makes sure these are real people we like.  This brings us closer to accepting legal rights that would enable these people to be comfortable with their chosen lifestyle. It's a lesson in the power of film (which this is, even if on the small screen).

As for what we should do about the legality of polygamy, I don't have an answer. But I'm skeptical of a top-down solution imposing a federal constitutional definition of marriage. Better this should be worked out through the process of competitive federalism and alternative "standard forms" as I argue in my article with Frank Buckley, Calling a Truce in the Marriage Wars, 2001 Illinois Law Review 561, and more recently, in A Standard Form Approach to Same Sex Marriage, 38 Creighton Law Review 309 (2005).

Finally, a byproduct of the show's sympathetic treatment of its characters is that this is a very sympathetic treatment of a business. As I discuss in Wall Street & Vine, filmmakers don't much like capitalists, though they do tend to be nicer to small businessmen. We see Bill struggling with the problems faced by all small business people, and we're pulling for him to succeed with his hardware empire. Now what I'd really like to see is a show where he's thinking about going public but decides not to because of SOX. . .

Comments

[Eh Nonymous]

I've come full circle.

And I think you're wrong.

Big Love isn't about gay marriage.

If it were, it would be ignoring its subject matter - polygamy.

These people aren't dealing with everyday problems, just like straight married couples do. (Although they deal with money worries and sex worries, which almost everyone has, so they are in fact people).

They are't gay couples, dealing with the well-known and -publicized problems of being gay, and trying to live the gay version of straight couplehood.

They aren't even merely dealing with swinging, swapping, or polyamory.

The setting matters. The context matters. Just as the Family and the business matter in the Sopranos, as the town matters to Deadwood.

What are we shown?

Child brides. Malevolent charismatic leaders. Manipulation and control. Second-and-subsequent wives without legal standing. Precarious lies. Religion without legal sanction, without a mainstream culture in which to embed. Religion as excuse for violence, for coercive financial exploitation.

This is a show about the reality of polygamy for a fictional family. Key words, reality, and polygamy.

Third Wife's unhappiness, her search for company, her unique situation when a suitor comes calling. She's closeted, sure, but not gay. She's neither single nor monogamously married. It makes a difference.

[Robert Schwartz]

"If we can see that in polygamy, a fortiori why not in gay marriage?"

If Hollywood wants to push gay marriage, they won't do it by making tv shows about polygamy, they will go straight (NPI) for the subject. They only like to pretend to be afraid.

The real problem with legalizing polygamy is the aid and comfort it would give to islamists.

[Marc Hodak]

I don't watch much TV, so I don't know for sure if this is the most subversive show around, but it might be. It goes far deeper than the question of gay marriage. While gay marriage is not legal, at least it's not illegal for gays to set up a home and, unlike most other alternative family structures, the social stigma for gays playing house has largely dissolved. This show strikes a deeper chord. Many people who would watch mobsters murder without guilt can't stomach a man and three women holding hands around a table. I think the whole thing is fascinating, and the show's quality makes it compelling. Tom Hanks knows Big.