Zarf!

I like Zarf. Or should I say I love actor Jeffrey Carlson. What an authentic star! From the minute the future gender-bending rock star opened his mouth in the Fusion office on All My Children, I ran around my duplex screaming, "Listen to his diction! Listen to his glorious diction!" (Yes, I know the English accent is a put-on. But diction isn't about sounding British. It's all about how precisely and correctly one pronounces words.)

Diction is the one thing most new, young soap actors haven't mastered, or even been taught! Yet, on a soap filled with hunky actors "trained" only as models or music video dancers, arrives a young performer trained at Juilliard, America's pre-eminent theater school (alumni: Kevin Kline, Robin Williams, Laura Linney, the late Benjamin Hendrickson, Hal on As the World Turns).

And truthfully, there's nothing more exciting to moi, Marlena, as when a really promising new performer makes his debut on soaps. Now, I'm doubly excited because Carlson is already playing against another young artist trained in the theater, Emmy-winning actress Eden Reigel. The characters are a refreshing match because their personalities are so different: New Age celebrant Zarf is mighty flighty, while Bianca has always been very down to earth. After all, she grew up with Erica Kane, the queen of flighty, as her Mommie Dearest.

This unlikely couple is placed in a bizarrely daring storyline: a lesbian, Bianca, falls in love with a man, Zarf, who wants to make the transgender crossing into being a woman, and therefore become another lesbian. Will this work out on AMC?

It's too early to tell. But I already have my fears.

The story of a transgender person is inherently delicate and complex to tell. It requires storytelling that is full of intelligence and that emphasizes the common bonds of humanity. In the 70s, 80s and early 90s, Agnes Nixon's AMC was well known for its Emmy-winning social issue stories. But the show's sharp turn towards the gimmicky and superficial plots under headwriter Megan McTavish turned off many (especially moi!). Will the show's current writing regime, which after all had the courage to create Zarf, exploit him as just another storyline gimmick?

Already they have used him to titillate. Well, kind of. In Zarf's first week in Pine Valley, we were witness to the fact that he was the last to see Simone alive immediately before the town's new serial killer made his first strike. Is Zarf a serial killer? Oh no, remember Buffalo Bill, the transvestite serial killer in Silence of the Lambs? It's got to be a red herring. Not even ABC Daytime has become that tacky. Or has it?

If AMC is going to borrow from pop culture in its portrayal of Zarf, let it be in a kinder, gentler manner. Isn't it interesting how Zarf first appeared on AMC at the Fusion office in the nude, mouthing New Age psychobabble? That's exactly how androgynous character David Bowie made his entrance as a humanoid alien who comes here in search for water in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Speaking of Bowie, the first time many of us even saw a transvestite was back in the 1972 when Bowie introduced his cross-dressing space age rock star Ziggy Stardust in an album of the same name, and in a series of concerts. Rock star Zarf seems a bit Ziggy-like to me.

Perhaps the best and most sensitive portrayal of a transgender person was in the road picture, Transamerica (2005), in which Bree, a pre-op transsexual man just about to take the final step, crosses the country with his son. It helped audiences enormously that he/she was played by Felicity Huffman, a brilliant actress who invested the character with rich humanity, and at the same time was someone we already liked from her role as Lynette on Desperate Housewives. She was nominated for an Oscar for this landmark performance.

Zarf is starting out entirely on his own here in Pine Valley. As he is played by Jeffrey Carlson, I'm rooting for him to follow in Ms. Huffman's footsteps.

Tune in Thursday for another edition of Marlena's "Savoring Soaps."