Posted in:
October 21, 2008 1:27 PM by Jessica Henderson | COMMENTS
In TiVo-worthy Fringe, Joshua Jackson outgrows the Creek
After six seasons of the overwrought teen soap Dawson's Creek, Joshua Jackson--the cherub-faced underachiever Pacey--was eager to move on. "We can all debate the jump-the-shark moment, but once those kids were out of high school, there was no reason on earth why they'd be so much in each other's lives," says Jackson.
The only problem is, Jackson wasn't the one anyone had pegged as the breakout star. But today, while his prodigiously eyebrowed costar James Van Der Beek scrambles for stints on Ugly Betty and Katie Holmes mostly earns headlines for how she rolls her denim, the dark horse of Dawson's is back--playing Peter Bishop, the half-genius, half-massive-pain-in-the-ass lead on Fox's sci-fi series Fringe.
Jackson was leery of resubmitting to TV's time-sucking demands, but a knockout script and wooing by cult-hit wunderkind JJ Abrams (Lost, Alias) proved hard to resist. "It's an intense, never-ending amount of work--but I haven't had to cry about my lost love Joey Potter yet, so it's been easier," says Jackson, now a scruffy 30 years old. Besides, if, as blogs predict, Fringe is the next X-Files, he could score instant job security, given that Abrams often recycles his favorite actors. "I'm the next Cloverfield monster!" he jokes.
As Jackson jumps into sweeps season, he is bound by Abrams's legendary confidentiality contract. "Other than being threatened with imminent death if you lose a script," says Jackson, "it's all very relaxed." Considering that in real life he never picked up on girlfriend Diane Kruger's plans for his elaborate surprise birthday party last June, those precious plot points are safe. For now, he's just grateful to have sidestepped teen-dream oblivion. "Done right, we could have a great show for a long time," he says proudly. So far, no shark in sight.
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October 21, 2008 1:23 PM by Scott Frampton | COMMENTS
A new Sheryl Crow is rising with a Home for Christmas CD from Hallmark, a jeans line, and a world tour. She spoke to us from her bus, traveling with a guy finally worthy of her: 18-month-old son Wyatt.
MC: Whoa, is that Wyatt yelping?
SC: I take him on tour. I can't leave him home — not that I want to.
MC: He sounds ... excited about it.
SC: My tour manager is playing him Sesame Street episodes I appeared on. It's funny watching him try to figure it out — "You're here, but you're also with Elmo...."
MC: Is he the reason you decided to do Home for Christmas?
SC: Everything I've done since he's come along is influenced by him.
MC: When did you record it?
SC: We did it in June. We put up a Christmas tree with lights in 100-degree L.A. weather and recorded it in my living room.
MC: You're unabashedly political.
SC: Detours is my first record that's been so politically minded, but that's really due to the fact that I'm older now. It's the elephant in the room that artists aren't writing about.
MC: Do you ever read the tabloids?
SC: Out of boredom I've checked them out a couple of times, and it makes me feel like crap. Celebrating other people's embarrassments is just a nasty mind-set to have.
MC: Why the move to Nashville?
SC: It's slow-paced, and a lot of my musical influences are there. I love it. I can raise my son and be close to my family, which makes a huge difference. [Wyatt screams] There he is now.
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October 19, 2008 1:20 PM by Caryn James | COMMENTS
A CHRISTMAS TALE
Ignore the icky-cute title of this wine-fueled, snow-swept, droll family saga. Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) is Henri, a drunken outcast son called home because Maman (Catherine Deneuve) needs a bone-marrow transplant. His feuding siblings and flirting in-laws are touching and wickedly funny (as Henri and his mom have a cigarette, she tells him--imagine the Gallic shrug here--that he's the kid she never loved). Director Arnaud Desplechin (the equally astute Kings & Queen) gives dysfunction a seductive French twist--the perfect escape from your own family's holiday-itis.
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO
The not-so-dirty secret: It's a rom-com--brash, sweet, and very funny. Zack (ubiquitous Seth Rogen) and his BFF, Miri (almost-as-ubiquitous Elizabeth Banks), are so broke, they produce and star in skin flicks (e.g., Star Whores, a hilarious spoof), eventually waking up to mutually hot feelings. Writer/director Kevin Smith brings both his Chasing Amy gushy side and his Clerks-esque flair for crude slacker 'tude. No leers, not much sex, just big, knowing laughs and--helpful in this tanking economy--the idea of porn as an alternate career.
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK
Our favorite brainiac screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation), directs, too. In this dizzying drama, Philip Seymour Hoffman is spot-on as schlubby, soul-tortured Caden, a Schenectady, NY, theater director. His painter wife (the indomitable Catherine Keener) bolts; a meek assistant, Hazel (Samantha Morton), turns siren; and Caden spends 17 years creating a play-within-a-play-within-a-play. The literary term synecdoche (a part represents the whole) only hints at the mind-bending twists ahead. In Kaufman-world, buying a house whose walls are literally in flames seems only natural.
Posted in:
October 18, 2008 9:24 AM by Thelma Adams | COMMENTS
WHY SHE'S ON OUR RADAR: The 23-year-old Israeli supermodel tours
America's quirkiest pop-culture sites in Ironic, Iconic America,
Bravo's travel special, inspired by Tommy Hilfiger's guidebook.
HER SHTICK: The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue show-off makes blonde hair and blue eyes exotic.
LEARNING CURVES: Despite immersing herself in Americana with her cohost
(poet Rives) for the show, there are still gaps in her knowledge. Does
she prefer Elvis or Little Richard? "I don't know who Little Richard
is." OK, then, James Dean or Cary Grant? "I don't know who Cary Grant
is [laughs], but I'm sure I'd prefer James Dean over anyone!"
MOST EMBARRASSING SEGMENT: "Rives and I had to fake a marriage in Las
Vegas. We went up to the point where the priest pronounces us husband
and wife. I had only known him for two days, and I had to stand with
him and say, 'I take you, Rives.'"
PRETTY BABY: Refaeli started in commercials at 8 months old. "As a
little girl, I was always shy, but in front of the camera I wasn't.
Modeling gave me an opportunity to be someone I'm not each day."
DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL: She dates Leonardo DiCaprio--but mention him in
an interview, and the brassy beauty will sink you like the Titanic.
MIND AND BODY: She speaks three languages, but when Arena voted her
Best Body, she was flattered: "It's good, since that's how I make my
money!"
FACE THE NATION: Who's tougher--Israelis or New Yorkers? "Israelis,"
says Refaeli. "They went through the army, you know."
Posted in:
October 14, 2008 1:36 PM by Scott Frampton | COMMENTS
LUCINDA WILLIAMS
Little Honey (Lost Highway) Here, Williams's voice, as cracked and worn as Grandpa's wallet, finds its perfect pairing with bluesy rock. She's a honky-tonk woman co-opting Jagger's swagger on "Honey Bee"; both author and lead subject in the poetic "Knowing." No one choreographs the messy dance of romance better. Download Now: "Tears of Joy"
SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS
Alpinisms (Ghostly International) This debut album is the audio equivalent of lying in a tub of cotton balls--warm, engulfing, a little ticklish. With electronic beats coursing beneath Balkan melodies, it's a folk-urban sound you've never heard before. Go ahead, soak in the soft fuzz. Download Now: "Half Asleep"
THE MIGHTY UNDERDOGS
Droppin' Science Fiction (Def Jux) With an all-star collaboration of rappers, this CD is giddy with its own out-there ideas and rhymes about everything from anime monsters on holiday ("Ill Vacation") to a high-noon fantasy ("Gun Fight"). Backing music veers from hard rock to soul to samba, so buckle up for a loopy ride. Download Now: "Escape"
Q-TIP
The Renaissance (Universal Motown) Q-Tip almost sounds nostalgic for old-school rhymes, in tracks that end with hard DJ scratching. But he also delivers a sexy edge on "I Believe," backed by D'Angelo, who ladles on the romance. In bling-blind hip-hop, Q-Tip's heart is what makes him subversive again. Download Now: "Gettin' Up"
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October 8, 2008 12:00 AM by Unknown | COMMENTS
This month, the book club debates obsessive love and its consequences in Mario Vargas Llosa's The Bad Girl, now out in paperback. Worth the $14? Read on . . .
THE PLOT: Ricardo Somocurcio just can't get over the bad girl. He first fell for her in 1950, when he was a teenager in Peru, and she was pretending to be from a well-to-do family. A decade later, he fell for her again when she was masquerading as a Communist cadet in Paris. Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa's sexed up story--an homage to Flaubert and, arguably, Gabriel García Márquez - follows the long, torturous, on-again/off-again affair through 40 years of social unrest in the world's most fashionable cities.
NING (SENIOR BEAUTY EDITOR): I hated this book. It made me lose faith in men. Ricardo reminded me of all the nice guys who fall for the girl who's totally crazy. Why do they do that?
JULIA (COPY CHIEF): I didn't like the first hundred pages - all those Latin American coups came out of nowhere, read like newspaper clippings, and seemed to have no impact on the story. But later, I enjoyed Ricardo's whirlwind world tour. And I'm a sucker for a hopeless love story.
YAEL (ASSOCIATE EDITOR): But was it really a love story? It's pretty twisted. Did he love her, or was he just infatuated? I don't think he knew her well enough to really be in love. Or maybe he just wasn't that deep.
LAUREN (ARTICLES EDITOR): See, I liked the first hundred pages - the vivid descriptions of his neighborhood in Peru took you right there - but I hated the rest. And I definitely didn't buy that he was in love with her. We have no basis for understanding why he would behave so obsessively, or where he was coming from. The bad girl treated him like absolute shit, and he kept taking it. Why?
YAEL: It was interesting that the sex scenes always went back to him going down on her. She'd cover her eyes and drift off as if he weren't even in the room, then didn't reciprocate. In terms of being a woman of that time, it's great that she asked for what she wanted. But in terms of a relationship, she was just selfish.
JULIA: The one time they do have reciprocal sex it's because she's humiliated him enough that he slaps her around. That turns her on.
NING: It was really an S&M relationship. Emotional S&M.
LAUREN: But there was nothing erotic about the sex scenes. I mean, the language! I'm going to blame the translator, because I can't imagine a writer like Vargas Llosa would call his penis "my sex."
JULIA: And how about the word pubis? But maybe the point of the book is that the relationship is never going to sort itself out. She's going to be wrong for him, he's going to keep going back to her, and in the meantime, he has this amazing life where he's traveling from intellectual Paris to swinging '60s London to disco Japan. He's seen history unfold in spite of himself.
LAUREN: But he never really engaged in any of it. And there was no knowingness in the way Vargas Llosa painted the cities or the scenes. You knew these cultural groundswells were happening, and you were told Ricardo was participating, but you didn't actually see him doing anything.
NING: I just thought the book was repetitive - from country to country, he never changed. I can't imagine living your life and not evolving. Isn't the whole point that you make mistakes and then learn from them? You don't just keep doing them until you die, right?
SHOULD YOU READ IT?
JULIA: yes
YAEL: yes
NING: no
LAUREN: no
"Maybe the point of the book is that the relationship is never going to sort itself out . . . and in the meantime, he has this amazing life." -JULIA
NEXT MONTH: The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff (Voice).
Posted in:
September 29, 2008 2:25 PM by Scott Frampton | COMMENTS
YO MAJESTY
Futuristically Speaking . . . Never Be Afraid (Domino) Thanks to a genius sound that fuses crunk with club, this female pair has earned street cred for rhymes that are both profound and profane. Dropping electro beats, the duo decries homophobia, materialism, and misogyny, hip-hop's most persistent evil. Download Now: "Club Action"
JUANA MOLINA
Un Dia (Domino) Argentine actress-turned-singer Molina makes atmospheric music, earning her comparisons to Björk. On her latest heady effort, captivating Spanish songs are mini symphonies best heard in empty spaces, where they envelop the room. Not bilingual? The emotional narrative says it all. Download Now: "Vive Solo"
LENKA
Lenka (Epic) It's one thing for a song to take up residence in your head; it's another for it to start redecorating. As pop philosophizing goes, Lenka and her breathy voice are like a fresh coat of fuchsia on your walls: bracingly sweet, surprisingly cool, and a sure thing for those of us wanting a change. Download Now: "Wrote Me Out"
KINGS OF LEON
Only by the Night (RCA) Here's an existential crisis you can groove to. The Nashville rockers serve up fractious anthems; "Notion" ripples with soulful guitar jolts. Like a romantic Lou Reed, Caleb Followill's howls make desperation and alienation sexy—he's a junkie only for you, babe. Download Now: "Crawl"
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September 26, 2008 2:23 PM by Unknown | COMMENTS
SEE YOU EVERYWHERE
By Julia Glass (Pantheon) It seems only natural that a pragmatic firstborn like Louisa would resent her promiscuous and free-spirited sister, Clem. Wouldn't you? But when Louisa gets breast cancer, the two risk losing the only thing more reliable than their boy-crazy feuds: each other. With her signature lyricism, Glass, a National Book Award winner, seesaws the narration between the sisters over a 25-year span, spinning a sometimes stinging, always affecting tale of siblings who can't quite make it as friends. —Jihan Thompson
LULU IN MARRAKECH
By Diane Johnson (Dutton) A sultry case of espionage set in the oasis of Marrakech has novice secret agent Lulu Sawyer finding out not whodunit, but who's funding it—namely, who's bankrolling terrorist groups. Embedded in a wealthy expat community, Lulu is tasked with spying on her lover, his shady guests, even the servants. Johnson, known for her clever takedown of French mores in Le Divorce, sets her sights on the primal conflicts that threaten to upset this teetering city, where politics and religion—and women and men—often clash. —Thea Palad
Posted in:
September 24, 2008 2:18 PM by Caryn James | COMMENTS
Brothers Bloom star Adrien Brody--back on our radar
From that smooch he planted on presenter Halle Berry while accepting his 2002 Oscar to his misbegotten dream of recording hip-hop tracks with Diddy, Adrien Brody has at times come across as--how can we put this delicately?--a wee bit full of his insanely talented self. And what to make of the string of baffling film choices following his mesmerizing portrayal of an emaciated Holocaust survivor in The Pianist? Ever see him in The Jacket? The Singing Detective? Didn't think so.
But lately the oddly handsome actor has been wooing us back in little comic gems: the quirkfest The Darjeeling Limited and his latest, The Brothers Bloom, a fairy-tale-tinged caper in which he plays a reluctant con artist who wants out of the big scam, but whose love, an eccentric heiress (Rachel Weisz), wants in. "You don't know where the con lies, who's conning whom. Sometimes life feels like that," he says.
True enough, Brody's image is just as slippery. Regarding Bloom, he rambles into lofty thoughts about world hunger and self-knowledge. Then, hearing himself, he breaks off with a huge laugh. "I am not a heavy person," he insists. "Because I'm serious about what I do, it's often misconstrued."
Next up is Giallo, the movie he and his girlfriend, actress Elsa Pataky, made with Italian horror director Dario Argento. She plays a kidnap victim, and he's the detective hired to find her. Brody says he took the role "to protect her. I was very concerned for her well-being in an Argento movie!"
Recently, the two went to Milan--where he was snapped wearing a lethally bad mesh tank top. Slippery, indeed. And yet, one-on-one, Brody is understated and appreciative of his good fortune. "It's a rare job that can provide enlightenment, a greater sense of self," he says. Take that, Diddy.
Posted in:
September 24, 2008 9:16 AM by Unknown | COMMENTS
We asked unofficial rom-com king Jason Biggs, hot off My Best Friend's Girl, for a real-life mishap worthy of one of his screwball scripts: "It was a perfectly reasonable request: 'Will you come with me to pick out something to wear for our wedding night?' How could I turn down my wife-to-be? A private showing of lingerie given to me by the sexiest woman in the world? I'm in. Having picked out a few choice numbers (God, I love see-through!), a 'friend' of mine rose to the occasion--before we made it into the fitting room. I tried the old hand-in-the-pocket-press-down trick, but to no avail. It was obvious, I thought, to every teddy-seeking woman in the store. I needed to extricate myself. Luckily, a 10-minute browse of Louis Vuitton handbags was enough to subdue my hormonal impulses. No offense, LV--your new line is very sexy."
Posted in:
September 23, 2008 8:15 AM by Caryn James | COMMENTS
HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE
A defanged adaptation of Toby Young's barbed memoir about being fired from Vanity Fair. Simon Pegg's bright-young-thing routine (as celebrity journo Sidney Young) becomes just plain goofy as he grasps for fame, a hot actress, and coworker Alison (Kirsten Dunst). Media types will savor the Devil Wears Prada--ish caricatures of magazine heavyweights--like Jeff Bridges, in a leonine gray wig, as Graydon Carter. But the flick also works as a broader satire, hilariously skewering celeb culture and our slavish fascination with it.
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
Blissful nuptials get messy when the bride's spotlight-whoring, straight-outta-rehab sister shows up. That's the premise of this beautifully observed drama from Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme (no gore, but plenty of family gristle here). A de-glamorized Anne Hathaway, playing the troubled sister, joins a terrific cast that includes Debra Winger as the neglectful mom and Rosemarie DeWitt as the put-upon bride. But the film's real star is the vibrant, emotionally raw screenplay by Jenny Lumet. Its brutal honesty captures the oh-so-competitive kinship of sisters.
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
It's easy to spot wannabe eccentrics: off-kilter wardrobe, unfiltered gabbing, unfounded hope. But as Poppy, an endearing London schoolmarm who learns to drive a car from a man as surly as she is chipper, Sally Hawkins triumphs over cliché. This is decidedly lighter fare than the bleak dramas director Mike Leigh is known for (Vera Drake, Naked). Thankfully, he never strays toward the predictable--not that plot matters for a sunny heroine who figures life is in the here and now, so why trifle with self-pity?
Posted in:
September 23, 2008 1:12 AM by Thelma Adams | COMMENTS
WHY SHE'S ON OUR RADAR: Saturday Night Live's white-hot wiseacre cuts up as Ricky Gervais's inept doctor in the I-see-dead-people comedy Ghost Town. "I play his surgeon," says Wiig. "He dies and then comes back to life. It's pretty much my fault."
HER SHTICK: Dead-on impressions, like the excitable Target clerk and jacket-loving Suze Orman.
ALSO SEEN IN: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Semi-Pro, and Knocked Up.
FUNNY FACES: "Aunt Linda was inspired by a lady I saw on a plane who was confused by the in-flight movie," says Wiig, 35, of her daffy film-critic character on SNL. "She just kept saying, 'What's going on?' So I wrote a sketch about a woman who was watching The Matrix and kept asking, 'What are they doing? Why are they flying?'"
MONKEY BUSINESS: "It's the little things that aren't meant to be funny that make me laugh most, like bad fight scenes in old movies with dummies thrown around that we're supposed to think are people, or a gorilla that's clearly a man in a suit. I think every old TV show borrowed that same suit."
TINY DANCER: "I was always a closet performer," says Wiig. "If we had a babysitter, I'd sing and dance for her. I was also a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, but I broke character to wave to my mom."
HELL ON WHEELS: Up next, Wiig skates opposite Ellen Page in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It!, about Roller Derby dolls. "I can definitely skate," she says. "I spent hours of my childhood at Overlook Roller Rink." --Thelma Adams
UNDER THE KNIFE: "I'd make a terrible surgeon. The fear of blood? Very high on my list."
Posted in:
September 19, 2008 4:32 PM by Jihan Thompson | COMMENTS
Last night, I attended the premiere for Forever Strong, the archetypal coming-of-age tale wrapped up in the hard-hitting sport of high-school rugby, that opens nationwide next Friday. I got the chance to sidle up next to two of Hollywood's hottest up-and-comers and even snapped a few shots.
Sean Faris, Gary Cole (of Office Space fame who plays the coach), and Penn Badgley at the premiere
Penn Badgley-best known for his role as Dan on Gossip Girl-plays Lars,
the arrogant and manipulative sidekick to the lead rugby star, Rick
Penning (played by a very chiseled Sean Faris). Escaping his good guy
image, Badgley shows some cinematic versatility in this film. On his
role, this is what he had to say: "I got to play a prick. I let myself
be as cocky as possible, it's very fun and for me it's very easy to
slip into that role. A lot of people might be shocked because I play
such a good guy on Gossip Girl."
Penn Badgley and I at the after party
Blake Lively, hit up the after party too at the penthouse suite of the SoHo Grand Hotel in Tribeca, to support her fellow co-star and BF, but she largely hung back while her man had his moment in the spotlight.
Posted in:
September 9, 2008 12:00 AM by Unknown | COMMENTS
THE PLOT: Remember that guy in high school--the chubby sci-fi lover who couldn't get a date? That's Junot Díaz's mega-geek, Oscar. All the poor guy wants is to get laid. When he doesn't, he resolves to break the family curse he believes is responsible. Told in street Spanglish, this Pulitzer winner takes us from Dominican beaches to Jersey barrios and back, offering one view of the developing nation's troubled history, through the eyes of a very unlucky family.
JIHAN (EDITORIAL ASSISTANT): I loved this book. When I wasn't reading it, I wanted to be reading it.
ABIGAIL (DEPUTY EDITOR): There was so much hype about this book--I expected to be swept away by a magical, hip, gritty story from the first sentence. But it took me a while to get into it; it felt disjointed at first with all the footnotes. I say, either weave them into the story or skip 'em.
JIHAN: Oh, really? I liked them. At first I was a little put off--is this going to be a history lesson? Then again, I wasn't exactly up on my history of the Dominican Republic, so it was helpful.
SARAH (EDITORIAL ASSISTANT): I didn't like all the sci-fi and comic-book references. There were so many, and I felt like if you didn't get them, he wasn't going to connect it for you. It was the same with the Spanglish--they were switching between English and Spanish all the time. It made me feel like, Wow, I'm missing a lot of the story.
JIHAN: See, I thought the Spanglish really set the tone. Like when Oscar gets into that fight with his mother about girls, Díaz writes that his mom "hauled Oscar to his feet by his ear. Mami stop it, his sister cried . . . Dale un galletazo, she panted, then see if the little puta respects you." How great was that? Can't you just picture it?
LAUREN (ARTICLES EDITOR): God, his mom was so awful to him and his sister. Every hope, every dream they had in their Jersey ghetto was quashed. But later--when you learn she was tortured, had her heart crushed, and was then nearly beaten to death by gangsters--you kinda get it.
ABIGAIL: I like how you get that sense of this family with a foot in two worlds. It gives good insight into the immigrant experience. But I didn't love the main character.
LAUREN: Oh, I adored Oscar. He was so sad. That scene where he tries to start the sci-fi book club and two Thursdays in a row he waits alone in the classroom and no one shows up . . . The whole book is about the desire to belong. He strives for it his whole life, so I was rooting for him.
ABIGAIL: And it was a complete send-up of the macho stereotype.
SARAH: Ugh, the most I could rally for Oscar was pity. And I feel like the foreshadowing--that you know from the very beginning that he's going to die--just killed any suspense for me. You're just waiting for this curse that you keep hearing about on every page to be realized and kill him.
JIHAN: Well, the curse, which is called fukú, is really "fuck you," isn't it? If you read it like that from the start, it's pretty funny.
LAUREN: Yeah, because it's like his life has been one big Fuck You.
Posted in:
August 22, 2008 12:00 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
A woman who had read a book about the FLDS emailed me to ask why my attitude toward polygamy seemed so different. It's not that I'm "soft on polygamy" in the sense that I'm blind to its inherent problems. As a monogamist of forty years, I obviously chose not to live that way. Besides the fact that polygamy is against the law-the biggest strike against it, in my view-plural marriage is a difficult way to live. Lots of women and children vying for the attention and affection of one man play all sorts of games with each other, replete with winners and losers and cheaters. The polygamous patriarch-even if he's a humble man-can't help but get all puffed up with his own power and importance.
But there are compensations, too. As I watch people struggle to live monogamously, I can see the advantages of the way I was raised: In this day of escalating divorce, it's significant that people have a harder time breaking marriage vows when they've made them with more than one person. My father's sixth wife was Rulon Jeffs' sister, therefore Warren Jeffs' aunt. When she decided to leave my father and his religious group to become her brother's keeper in the FLDS, she had as much difficulty separating herself from her six sister-wives as she did in divorcing my father. Maybe the more people committed to one marriage, the greater the commitment that is forged among them. Sometimes polygamy can be an economic boon, if family members employ division of labor. In our family, one wife would work and another would keep house and raise the children. The working mother felt good about being gone all day, knowing that her children were being cared for and nurtured by someone who shared her values.
Children who grow up in the care of many loving adults thrive. In my own case, this love counterbalanced the uncertainties of our way of life--of knowing that we could be "raided" at any moment; of fearing that in the sea of children we did not matter; of wishing that we were like our "normal" neighbors.
One key to successful plural life seems to be the willingness of the patriarch to be fair. When my father bought a vacuum cleaner for one wife, he bought one for all the others, too. According to Carolyn's account, Merrill Jessop didn't even try to be fair. He allowed himself to be manipulated by one wife while all the others suffered. And suffer they did.
Which brings me to the biggest reason I can indulge in a kind and tolerant perspective on plural marriage: I grew up in polygamy, but I have never been a plural wife. I suspect I'd make life hell for another woman-and she for me. I'd like to believe I could be as charitable and generous-spirited as my mother was, but I suspect I'd fail miserably. To live plural marriage successfully takes a refined spirit and a willingness to place the good of the family far above your own personal wants and needs. I'm not a big enough person to even think about it.
Posted in:
August 19, 2008 10:58 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
Sometimes as I write these blog posts, I fear that I'm losing my sense of humor. But it's really hard to find much that's funny about fundamentalism once you get past the jeans and tennis shoes under prairie dresses, and the stiff, sugar-watered hair, and the long underwear and tight stockings worn in summer desert heat. The costumes do make one think of Shakespeare's Malvolio overdressed in yellow tights, attempting to convince his intended of his nobility.
But so much about the FLDS situation is desperate and dismal and perverse. When I try to find fun, I feel cynical and cavalier. To be satirical is to heap further mortification on people whose dignity has become threadbare.
I long to r
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