BOOK REVIEW: ‘My Life to Live’

OPINION:

MY LIFE TO LIVE

By Agnes Nixon

Crown Archetype, $26, 266 pages, illustrated

It has long been fashionable in intellectual and academic circles to disdain soap operas, especially in their heyday in the final decades of the 20th century when groups of students would gather round televisions in common areas to watch them. The snobbish horror from professors that students should be “wasting their time” entirely missed the point. Sure, like the culturally respectable grand operas whose name they latched onto, they had their ridiculous sides and ludicrous moments.

But not only were they the American equivalent of Britain’s provincial repertory theaters where you could see Christopher Reeve long before he became Superman, they tackled numerous hot-button social issues and thus were an important cultural force in our society.

That this art form — and I use the phrase quite deliberately — rose to this level is due in no small part to Agnes Nixon, who died last September. After writing for a number of the many television soaps which vied for the huge daytime audience in those halcyon days for the genre, she went on to create two of the most important ones, first “One Life to Live” in 1968 and two years later, “All My Children.”

When, after running for more than 40 years each, they no longer found a place in the networks dwindling appetite for such shows at the beginning of this decade, she turned her formidable writer’s talent to this engaging memoir.

Not only does it provide all manner of detail about characters and incidents over those tumultuous years, but it shows the determination to make a difference which was her abiding motivation. And an afterword by her children Bob and Emily Nixon shows that the power of her grit and determination were with her to the end, allowing her to complete this book despite a stroke which handicapped her physically but thankfully left her “mind and wit razor sharp.”

Ms. Nixon did so much to broaden and deepen the shows she created and wrote. Quite apart from those groundbreaking topics, she created characters who were much more real, just as their situations were more realistic. As a result, it is remarkable how these resonated with an increasingly wide slice of the population. This was helped by her creation of numerous strong, interesting, complex male characters, which were an added magnet for women while attracting more and more male viewers.

What other soap opera writer could have made some lines from William Wordsworth’s great poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” a verbal leitmotiv, as Agnes Nixon did in “All My Children”? She was supple and savvy enough to know that you had to abide by some soap opera features, no matter how ludicrous, as in this wry comment about a Vietnam War-era story line:

“Phil shipped out and was soon reported MIA. Then, as soap operas tend to go, later he was found alive.”

When I said earlier that soap opera’s tackling of controversial issues made it a powerful shaper of social trends, I think it is fair to say that Agnes Nixon probably played a greater part in this process than anyone else. Years before she created her own shows which served as primary vehicles for promoting her views, as a writer on “Guiding Light” she pioneered targeted medical storylines such as one emphasizing the importance of women getting pap smears for early detection of cervical cancer.

If that instance of Ms. Nixon’s activism was unlikely to be found objectionable, the same cannot be said of some others. Few would argue with the notion that her attention to racial prejudice and the introduction of African American characters into her fictional towns of Llanview and Pine Valley was a positive force in smoothing the path of integration nationwide.

But over the years, the two-sided attitude toward opposition to the Vietnam War, which was so apparent early on in “All My Children,” morphed into a more didactic political agenda regarding homosexuality, AIDS and even transgender issues. This clearly reflected her personal views and she would have taken it as a great compliment when I say that she was one of the most powerful forces of liberal values even throughout periods which saw strong political and social pushback.

Those who do not see how pivotal her role was in altering normative values and even of infusing them with countercultural elements seriously underestimate her.

Let me offer a personal anecdote as to just how impressive Agnes Nixon was as a person. An eminent professor, who thought of himself as the last person who would deign to tune in five days a week to a soap opera, was watching the PBS talk show hosted by Dick Cavett — doubly respectable in his circles — when she appeared as a guest. So impressed was he by the qualities of her personality and intellect that he started to watch “All My Children” and became a dedicated fan. When he said how much he had learned from watching it, quite apart from the enjoyment, it was a dual accolade Agnes Nixon would certainly have appreciated.

• Martin Rubin is a writer and critic in Pasadena, California.