| Mad about mormons | |
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By LINDA STASI TV New York Post | |
Calico is the new black. If you aren’t in a plural marriage, don’t have your own sister wives, don’t go in for prairie frocks, and haven’t revived those giant bangs that you wore in the 1980s, well, you may as well be on Mars. Or maybe in NY. For one thing, you’re not in Utah; for another, you ain’t going to TV heaven anytime soon. I’m talking about how fundamentalist Mormon sects have become as hot as vampires; maybe even more so because polygamy is more shocking than having sex with the undead. The first really big show about polygamy, "Big Love," premiered in 2006 on HBO. The first time I saw it, I thought, "What the hell is that?" My second thought was, "Give me more!" "Big Love" wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen. It wasn’t possible that Mormons in Utah were regular suburbanites who practiced polygamy — was it? We quickly learned through the antics of the Henricksons of "Big Love" however, that these sects are not like other religions and are not even like traditional Mormons. In fact there are huge differences between Mormons (Latter Day Saints, or LDS) and the fundamentalist sects which are not even recognized by the LDS. For one thing, the Mormons have outlawed polygamy, but the fundamentalists still practice it. However not all polygamists live in weirdo compounds. Turns out many plural families live in suburbia. Geez! "Pligs" (slang the folks in Utah use for 'polygamists'), could live right next to vampires for all we know! What we do believe from watching TV, at least, is that fundamentalists, like vampires, have more sex than porn stars. Yes, TV is an educational medium, no matter what anyone tells you. Anyway, in the world of TV, if one show about something is good, 10 shows on the same theme will be 10 times as good — right? Last season brought us National Geographic’s excellent, "Inside Polygamy," which documented the lives of fundamentalist Mormon polygamist leader, Winston Blackmore, and his 20-something wives and more than 100 children. Then last month, Lifetime premiered its terrific movie "The 19th Wife" from a best-selling book of by David Ebershoff. Then, in the same way that ABC’s "Desperate Housewives" inspired Bravo’s reality franchise "The Real Housewives of…" so "Big Love" inspired "Sister Wives," the new TLC reality show about the family of Kody Brown which includes his four wives, and their 16 (yes) children. I’m just floored at how much the Browns look like the Henricksons. They even have the newest, young hottie wife, just like Margene. Of course Kody Brown has four wives and Bill Henriksen only has three. However, polygamy is not the liberating experience it’s portrayed to be on TV. You’d never know it from talking to the "Sister Wives" though. When they recently came to the office they actually made a good argument for plural marriage. For one thing, they said, you can work late because there’s always someone to watch your 12 to 16 children, and for another, you get — depending on the number of wives around — several nights off a week from sharing a bed with the lug. "Nonsense, it’s almost comical," says Elissa Wall, an escapee from a polygamist sect, who helped bring down the notorious Warren Jeffs, and then detailed her nightmare in the stirring book, "Stolen Innocence." "I worry that some of these [TV] misrepresentations [of polygamy] will make it appealing instead of what it really is," she said. "The fact that it’s taboo adds a luster that isn’t there in reality." You mean they don’t show the truth on TV? Who knew! "Polygamy can be a breeding ground for abuse in my experience," Wall said. Maybe we should all start looking for a good vampire instead. Better to be undead than live in hell. Sister wives Today, 10 p.m., TLC | |
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NYPost.com Originally published October 9, 2010 | |
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