Watch the United States of Tara premiere now, for free!
December 29, 2008 by Jillian Cohan
Subscribers to Showtime’s VIP Insider newsletter got a nice little surprise today: Advance access to the premiere of the new series United States of Tara.
Curious about the show? Bounce on over to the screening site and enter “Tara” as the password.
The show, which stars Toni Collette as a mom with dissociative identity disorder and John Corbett as her husband and father to their two teenagers, airs on Showtime starting Jan. 18.
Photo: Nigel Parry/Showtime
As a multiple (slang for someone suffering from DID), I watched this preview eagerly but within only a few minutes felt disgust and anger over how we multiples are being represented by Showtime.
What a total piece of trash!
DID is a disorder caused by severe, life-threatening childhood trauma. It is not a topic for a comedy. I experienced horrific trauma and I do not appreciate you making a symbolic farce of my life.
Benjamin
Absolutely appalling, and incrediably misinformative.
I’m a multiple, and know many who also had to go through the trauma it takes to cause the disorder to develop. The creators of this waste should have done their homework first. DID has enough stigmas without adding to it.
This sets back knowledge and acceptence of the DX in my eyes.
San.
I watched the preview for this show on Youtube. I think its appalling and adds insult to injury for all those who suffer from this devistating illness. Personallly, I don’t own a t.v., everthing on it is crap to begin with, but this show goes beyond the pale. For those of you who suffer from this illness, I suggest you contact the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and find out what kind of action you can take to have this show removed from the air. You might also want to contact the ADL and inquire about filing a class action law siut for emotional damages, they help every other disenfrachised group so why not you to. Its not enough to just frett and wine about the problem, DO something!
I’ve sent an email to NAMI, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, in an attempt to stifle this entire production. I’d like to see “The United States of Tara” fall still-born.
Those of you with similar concerns about this appalling production, please contact NAMI and add your name to our numbers. Let’s be heard!
Apparently Showtime doesn’t want to know the REAL facts about DID, and what a person who has DID struggles with on an hourly basis. I feel insulted to have received an obvious “form email letter” in response to my heartfelt email to Showtime. What I saw in the first episode, is that Mr. Spielberg is using “sex, sex, and more sex”, to sell a series.
At least with the massive number of anti-Tara emails that Showtime obviously has received from DID sufferers, they have included an “informative” video from Dr. Kluft; however, even in his short documentary, he did not address the magnitude of the horrific childhood sexual abuse that causes Dissociative Identity Disorder. The so called “consultant” that the writer, Diablo Cody is conferring with, had DDNOS, not DID. Apples and oranges… sigh.
Imagine for a moment, if you can: A new Showtime series called, “The Deformed State of Tara” – a COMEDY about a girl who confronts comedic situations in her every day life revolving around her dealing with her inability to climb stairs, her sexual encounters, and her comedic experiences with people staring at her scarred and deformed face and arms. (As a child, her parents had physically abused her so intensely, that her repeatedly broken bones resulted in a leg amputation, and the repeated burns the parents inflicted on her arms and face resulted in grotesque scarring which made her face appear as almost inhuman.)
This scenario is NO DIFFERENT than creating a “COMEDY” about a person who suffers from a disorder caused by repeated, early childhood RAPE AND INCEST. One might say that the results of childhood physical abuse are apparent to outsiders, but the results of childhood sexual abuse resulting in Dissociative Identity Disorder are also readily apparent to others in public. Raping young children is NOT comedic.
Does this life seem like a comedy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JZcEsOQFXc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5DEV6OqPJk
Its a show people, there are many shows that use information that may not be relevant to illness, or formations, or military standards. Trust me I know, every time I see shows reference the military my boyfriend informs me that they don’t do things like that or that it isn’t proper technique. It’s the same damn thing as putting wrong information about DID. Get over it, its a funny show with drama, they don’t put a big sign up in the beginning stating that this is all factual that is deals around an actual persons life. Its fiction and fiction is made up, deal with it.