Ummm, New York Times, When Did All My Children's Erica Kane Have Dissociative Identity Disorder???
Okay, so after I salivated over the premiere of Showtime's amazing new Dissociative Identity Disorder dramedy The United States of Tara (More on the show and its surprising soapy connection later), I decided to Google Diablo Cody—for me, the writer is always the star—and I came across a New York Times article that talked about the history of DID in film and television. Of course, the snobby reporter used this an opportunity to slam daytime:
“Sensitive” is not exactly a prescription for great comedy. Humorous takes on subjects like split personality are few and far between, and when they show up — for example, in the Farrelly brothers’ Me, Myself & Irene, starring Jim Carrey — they tend toward outrageous antics. Typically dissociative identity disorder is given a more sober treatment, as in the 1976 television movie Sybil starring Sally Field or the 1957 melodrama The Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward. Or it just veers into the land of the ludicrous, like soap operas. (Susan Lucci, playing the diva Erica Kane on All My Children, wrestled with a bout of multiple personality disorder in the 1980s.)"
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Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) ever battled DID? I didn't start watching AMC until 1990, but I'm fairly certain Snooty-vicious, in her rush to diss an industry that basically taught primetime and film how character-driven stories should be told, mixed up Erica Kane with Erika Slezak, and her One Life to Live character Viki Lord. Yeah... Slezak's portrayal of Viki and her alters during numerous groundbreaking storylines on OLTL has been so "ludicrous" it has netted the actress half a dozen Daytime Emmy awards. Wouldn't it be revolutionary if soaps made the pages of the mainstream press other times than when the idiots who run them are firing their top stars, or when a less-than-creative journo needs to come up with a seemingly witty barb to add to his or her word count?
