“Proud Mormon Polygamist”: Assimilation, Popular Memory, and the Mormon Churches in Big Love

This article explores the tensions between the official Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as popular memory of these subcultures are created through a variety of media representations, including fictional programming like Big Love, media branding campaigns from both secular and religious groups, and reality programming such as Sister Wives and Polygamy USA. Using Hebdige’s concepts of hegemony, subculture, and assimilation, as well as Spivak’s subaltern, this paper analyzes the ongoing discourse of assimilation and rejection of the Mormon Church in American society though the representations of these groups in popular media.