So many of the news articles and posts  in the blogosphere since ABC’s decision to cancel All My Children and One Life to Live have referenced the O.J. Simpson trial as signaling the end of the era of the soap opera that I feel compelled to comment -- from the perspective of someone who has both worked in soap operas (One Life to Live, Edge of Night, Guiding Light and Sunset Beach) and  worked with O.J. Simpson…playing his wife for three seasons on the HBO series, First & 10.

Four months (134 days, to be exact) of televised testimony of “the crime of the century,” gave us more plot twists than Erica Kane has had husbands, and so desensitized us to the crassness of voyeuristic titillation that we’ve come to relish watching people engage in shouting matches, fist fights and drunken rages.  After all, if real murder is acceptable as entertainment, then what’s wrong with a little real (albeit, staged) mayhem?

As anyone familiar with Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth or Milton Erickson and his teaching tales…or Aesop…or The Brothers Grimm…or Ernest Hemingway…or Lorraine Hansberry… or Confucius… or Buddha…or Br’er Rabbit…or the Apostles…or Danielle Steele…or Dora the Explorer will tell you – JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING!

A lot of bloggers have attempted to chasten soap opera fans stricken with a foreboding fear of the inevitability of the demise of all daytime dramas with comments like:  “Boo-hoo, the end is near…try reading a book!”

As someone who’s never far from her Kindle, let me tell you Oh-Great-Smug-Ones, it’s just not the same.  I’m not a scientist, but I do have training (and have worked with clients) as a hypnotherapist, and I know that it has something to do with the way we’re wired and why different parts of our brain “light up” in response to different types of stimuli.   

We relate to characters we read about when we can identify with them as being similar to ourselves, but  we’re a lot more likely to empathize with a character who’s  “different”  from us when we can see them behaving in ways we can imagine ourselves behaving in similar situations.

That’s the value of storytelling.  It’s a right-brain activity.  It changes who we are.  It changes who we think we can be.  It changes how we view our neighbors:  the lady next door with the funny last name and thick accent; the guy down the street who wears that “thing” on his head (fedora, yarmulke, keffiyeh, beret, do-rag or cowboy hat), or the family around the corner with two moms.

Soaps have their fair share of clashes, car chases and courtroom dramas, but they also teach us how to “rise above,” how to get along and show us the dire consequences of  villainy and deceit …which, to my mind, is much more valuable than learning how to cook yet another meal in twenty minutes (I can get that on the Internet) or which shoes to pair with which purse (which is why I read Vogue…and by the way, “matching” accessories is OUT! At least for this season).  

Growing up, I didn’t see too many people who looked like me on daytime television except for the occasional black/colored/Negro (not sure what we were called back then, but it wasn’t African-American) contestant on Jeopardy or The Price Is Right. 

My mom would call me inside the house to watch if I was outside playing and then she and my sister and I would sit there and root for “our” contestant to win…or at least put in a good enough showing so as not to  embarrass “our people.”

But it was watching John Danelle and Lisa Wilkerson as “Frank and Nancy Grant” on All My Children and Al Freeman, Jr. and Ellen Holly as “Ed and Carla Hall” on One Life To Live that changed my life.

The complexity, humanity and dignity of the storylines that Agnes Nixon wrote for those characters inspired me to want to tell stories, too…and gave me the courage to rebel against my parents’ wishes of going to college and becoming a schoolteacher.  I did respect them by graduating from college …and then scared the crap out of them by becoming an actress.

“How are you going to make a living?...That’s a pipedream…You’re wasting your education!” 

But what the mind can conceive can be achieved.  Seeing John, Lisa, Ed and Ellen on television convinced me of the possibility…and if there was even a glimmer of hope I had to go for it.

As luck would have it, my first major soap opera role was opposite Al Freeman, Jr.  as Ed Hall’s love interest right after his divorce from Carla. It didn't last, but  less than a year later I signed a contract to play “DiDi Bannister” on the ABC soap opera Edge of Night.

DiDi was a smart and spunky young criminal defense attorney who fell in love with Calvin Stoner, a police detective married to a singer who always seemed to be on tour...which  (in soap opera-ese) allowed for “sparks to fly and flames of love to smolder.”  Eventually Calvin and DiDi did get together …but only after Calvin found out that the baby his wife was carrying wasn’t his but the seed of her tour manager!

 _{Click  on Photo for to see the flames begin to smolder :-)}

DiDi was also held captive in her office at knifepoint by a disgruntled client (rescued by Calvin, of course);  was carted off to a mental institution in a strait-jacket after trying to warn the citizens of Monticello about Louis Van Dine’s attempts to take mind-control over the town (and eventually the world) via subliminal messaging in the cable TV system and monitors installed in the offices of the Isis Building…and basically led the typical life of a full-blown soap opera heroine.

As a result, I was honored and celebrated as a media role model for young African-American (that’s what we were called by then) women.  I like to fantasize that one of them was a young Michelle Robinson (now, Obama) who, because of DiDi Bannister, was able to conceive of going to law school and becoming a successful attorney.  That’s the power of storytelling.

In aother twist of fate, my first big gig after Edge of Night was cancelled was playing Ellen Parker, the cheated-on wife of the adulterous football coach, T.D. Parker, played by O.J. Simpson on First & 10.  It turned out that O.J.’s mom was a soap opera fan and he asked me for an autographed picture for her.

Although I went on to play “Dr. Grace Battles,” Johnny Bauer’s oncologist on Guiding Light and “the tragically disfigured Lena Hart” on Sunset Beach, most of my career was spent doing sitcoms.  When sitcoms fell out of fashion as reality TV started to take hold in prime-time, I returned to doing live theater and even started doing stand-up. 

Inevitably, there are always people in the audience who still remember me as DiDi…and somewhere in the back of my mind, I always saw myself doing a soap opera, again…telling hopeful stories about a smart and spunky middle-aged woman-of-color (the current “all-inclusive” term for non-Caucasians).  

When SOAP OPERA 451 asked me, as an homage to Edge of Night loyalists, to write a blog in the voice of a middle-aged  DiDi Bannister and update her to present time, I thought that might pave the way for my taking up residency in Llanview or Pine Valley.  Alas, that now seems unlikely.

But maybe soap operas will someday rebound in the way that sitcoms seem to have done…instead of riding off into the eternal sunset like prime-time Westerns of yore. 

As long as there are stories with a need to be told, there’s a glimmer of hope.  

Because to be fully human means more than being a stimulus-reactor or information-consumer.  We need our stories. That’s how we connect with our dreams.  That’s how we connect with ourselves. That’s how we learn to connect with each other.     

For a fuller appreciation of the powerful impact the "integration" of soap operas had on our collective consciousness 30 years ago, click on the Edge of Night cast photo above to read an archived Ebony magazine article and on the link below to watch a 1982 PBS profile.  

Tony Brown's Journal: Blacks in White TV