In response to no particular demand, here’s a round-up of some of the entertainment of which I’ve been availing myself lately:

Thank You for Smoking It’s an uplifting, feel-good picture about a courageous…tobacco lobbyist? This was the best film I’ve seen in months, although in retrospect I can’t believe the movie had me rooting for this guy. (One great touch: no one smoked in the film.) I thought there was really something to his answer to the question, “Why do you do it?” which was, “Because I’m good at it.” Once upon a time, I left a do-good type job (high school teacher of disadvantaged students) for position at little company that had been bought by a large corporation, and some of my friends thought the conglomerate was evil incarnate. (OK, so one part of it invented Agent Orange, but not the part I worked for. I swear.) The thing was, I was happier and more fulfilled in that job than I had been as a teacher, and a part of me really identified with this guy.

Big Love I caught two episodes of this new HBO drama about a polygamous family while I was on the road, and now I’m hooked. Of course, we don’t get HBO at home, so I have to follow its progress via Television Without Pity. (Husband often asks, “How can you read a TV show?” but the recaps are quite skilful and there’s some good discussion on the boards, including comments from a number of Mormon posters who explain some of the finer points of doctrine.)

The show is interesting because of some well-drawn characters, the drama inherent in the situation, and the exotic Mormon fundamentalist elements. I don’t know that it really contributes to a dialogue about polygamy, though. The polygynous family at the center of the show has rejected fundamentalism; the mainstream Mormon church has rejected them; and they are not even particularly religious. Since they are pretty mainstream it’s hard to see what they get out of the polygynous lifestyle.

I’m disturbed at how people are always dragging polygamy into the question of gay marriage. Theoretically, if you don’t care what two consenting people do in their bedrooms, and support their right to form a contractual tie, you shouldn’t care what three or four or eight people do in their conjoined homes, and support their rights to form contractual ties. In practice, though, polygamy represses women and puts children in danger of abuse. Even if you could somehow ensure that women practicing polygyny were exercising their own free will, and then protect female children from being sold as wives and male children from being exiled from their communities, there would still be the odd question of legal protection. How would our legal system go about the business of administering multiple conjugal and paternal relationships? Imagine your typical death, divorce, or custody battle, now with seven more wives or twenty more children involved.

Muslim countries, like the LDS in Utah, have mostly outlawed polygyny, but need to reconcile its supposed religious legitimacy with their current rejection of it. When I lived in Tunisia, people justified it by saying, “The Quran says that a man can have up to four wives, if he treats them equally, but it’s impossible to treat four women equally so we’re really following the Quran by outlawing polygamy.” I always felt this was a cop-out, but now I’m beginning to see a solid legal argument for rejecting polygamy in this sophistry. People who feel called to more than one simultaneous intimate relationship will have to be contented with doing it the old-fashioned way: co-habitation, without benefit of more than one marriage. (This is technically what polygamists are currently doing, since they are not able to marry more than once legally.)

There was a rather pathetic article about Hugh Hefner’s 80th birthday bash in this weekend’s New York Times Style section. Hugh has three live-in paramours, scaled down from his previous seven, because “‘They got so jealous and competitive,’ he said sadly. ‘There was a lot of fighting, so I had to downsize.’” Even with three, all is not bliss. Hugh said, “I’m intimate with all of the girls, but Holly is my priority, and the other girls understand that,” but the article reports that one of his girlfriends looked “a bit jealous” when he got attention from another one.

I mean, if Hugh can’t keep harmony among his harem, what chance do the rest of us have?

The Bostonians I have a love-hate relationship with Henry James. I adored Portrait of a Lady and Washington Square, but The Wings of a Dove made me physically ill, and halfway through The Golden Bowl I found myself yearning for the sweet, sweet release of death (mine, or all the characters’; if the latter, preferably in a plot twist reminiscent of a good slasher flick).

The Bostonians, though, looked like it was closer to Portrait than Bowl so I picked it up and haven’t regretted it since, even though James is even more misogynist and patriarchal than the head of the Juniper Creek compound. He paints a rather savage picture of “women’s emancipation” reformers in the late eighteenth century, singling out some of his acquaintances for rather unflattering treatment. The main character, Olive Chancellor, is likely Susan B. Anthony. One of the minor characters, Miss Birdseye, is allegedly based on Eliza Peabody , and another woman, Mrs. Farrinder, is supposedly a portrait of Margaret Fuller. Since Margaret Fuller was also the model for Zenobia of A Blithedale Romance, I’m now motivated to re-read that and do a bit more research on her. I’m fascinated by any woman who can inspire two literary characters.

That would be a good trivia question: Which real-life personage is the basis for the greatest number of literary portrayals? If I can add any more to Margaret Fuller’s list, or find anyone who has inspired more than two characters, I’ll let you know.