September 21, 2023 • 44 mins
What did a generation of young women—and men—learn about sex and relationships when the most iconic romance on TV’s most popular soap opera “General Hospital” began with a rape? Susie and Jess unravel the story of Luke and Laura, the beloved couple from the longest running soap of all time, whose wedding was such a huge cultural moment that it drew more viewers than an actual royal wedding (twice). CW: This episode contains discussion of sexual violence.
Guests:
-
- Cindi Leive, co-founder of The Meteor, former editor-in-chief of Glamour and “General Hospital” superfan
- Danielle Thompson, our soap opera-obsessed pal who knows A LOT about the history of soaps
FOR MORE:
- Why Are College Kids in a Lather Over TV Soap Operas? (NYTimes)
- The Complex, Contradictory History of the American Soap Opera (Jezebel)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Before we start, just a note that we discuss sexual
assault and violence in this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I Laura wear a Baldwin. Hi, Lucas, Lorenzo Spencer take
thee to be my wedded wife, to be my lawful
wedded husband. Hoop better poor worse so Richard for poor.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The voices you're hearing are Luke and Laura, two beloved
characters from one of the most popular soap operas of
all time, General Hospital.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
This is their wedding, which took place in nineteen eighty one,
Hunt Be I Pledge my trust.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It may have been fictional, but this wedding, a two
day television event, was celebrated by fans as the wedding
of the decade. More people watched it than the real
wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, which happened that
same year. But what is often forgotten about this iconic
soap opera couple is that just a few years before this,
(00:56):
Luke sexually assaulted Laura. I'm Susie Bannaker.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
And I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a
cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Today, we're talking about how one of TV's most famous
and beloved relationships started with a rape, but we're also
talking about the incredible power soap operas once had and
shaping public perception for better and for worse.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
So, Susie, I know nothing about soap operas except that
there is one starring a woman named Jessica Bennett who
shares money.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
It's called Passion Passions.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
That was a short lived but very wild soap opera.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
She remains on Wikipedia. Anyway, were you a huge General
hospital fan? Like what led you to this moment?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
So?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I wasn't a General hospital fan specifically, I did occasionally
watch it, but I was a huge soap opera fan.
I would come home in middle school and watch soap
operas every afternoon.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I was a Days of Our Life girl.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
One Life to Live girl, which was kind of unusual
because it was split.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Days of Our Lives was on RBC.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Do you remember the tagline for Days of Our Lives
like sand to the hour live zero?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
So are the Days of our Lives?
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Of our lives?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I would come home from school and I would watch
with the snack every afternoon and then eventually I went
to boarding school for high school, but when I came home,
it was like something I looked forward to, like a
summer or winter break indulgence.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And I think that's kind of why I.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Wanted to focus on this subject, this relationship, because soap
operas were just so influential for generations of American girls
and women. I mean, also some boys obviously, but they
really were geared towards women, and this particular plotline really
came at the peak of their popularity, and so it
(02:58):
seems worth exploring this really relationship that was seen as
so romantic but started with an assault.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
As you say that, I'm remembering that I mentioned this
to my mother in law recently, and she revealed that
actually my husband, like the first three years of his life,
she would constantly have this show on in the background
while they were just I don't know, hanging out doing
baby stuff or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
And you know, guess what.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
She remembers this relationship between Luke and Laura as completely romantic.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I think that's what most people thought.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yeah, and they'd go on to have this decades long relationship,
So that makes a lot of sense. I mean, Laura
is still actually a character on the show. But for
those who didn't grow up on General Hospital, can you
give us a little primer on what the show was.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, it was a soap robera that started in nineteen
sixty three and had its heyday in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
It was just hugely popular.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It was about two families living in the fictional town
of Port Charles, New York, and there are various trials
and tribulations, and not surprisingly, it was centered in a hospital.
You might say it was the original Gray's Anatomy and
what went on there. Sometimes it would go off in
weird adventures, but that's really been the core of the
show for the last sixty years.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Okay, So, Luke and Lear are characters who do not
work in that hospital.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, they don't work in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Not literally, everyone on the show works in the hospital,
got it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
They just live in Port Charles.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Okay, And where should we begin in terms of their
Can we call it a relationship?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, I mean it's not a relationship in the beginning,
right because of the way it starts. But I actually
want to begin with the wedding because I think that
that's the moment that becomes such a cultural phenomenon. Right,
It was a two day event, so it's two hours long.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
There's like really long stretches of them just like driving
up in cars, like the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and then
there's this really long stretch of them just like literally
greeting the guests.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's like an actual wedding, which is why.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It's fascinating that it was the most watched soap opera
episode of all time. When people loved it, they wanted
to feel like they were there at this wedding because
they were obsessed with this couple.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Wow, why were people so obsessed with this couple? Like
what was the appeal?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So, I mean it's hard to say. To some degree,
you don't ever know why people become really attached to
certain characters on television or certain storylines. But Lauria is
actually kind of an interesting character because she's already become
a pretty central character to General Hospital when Luke is introduced, okay,
and that's because they're trying to push towards younger audiences.
So she's a teenager, and I think one of the
(05:32):
quotes I read from a fan was like, we love
her because she's sixteen like us, but she lives the
life of a twenty eight year old. Okay, that's partially
why I wanted to start with the wedding, because you
kind of need to understand that this wasn't just like
a popular episode of television.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
It was literally the closest thing American tat to her
royal wedding.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And just to prove that I'm not exaggerating, more people
tuned in to watch this fake wedding than tuned in
when Megan Markle and Prince Harry had their actual wedding
in twenty eighty wild yeah, and like local news sent
correspondence to viewing parties like all across Manhattan, from an
office in Madison Avenue to a dorm at NYU, fans all.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Across the country watched for the big moment.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
To them, it was their wedding. Of course, we're excited
about a dry eye on the house. Doesn't they get
married with them?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I love what thing.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
We're confident they get to Gema just between you know,
they're very much in love and it's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was just this wildly popular thing, even among celebrities
like Elizabeth Taylor was such a fan of the show
that she requested to be on it and made a
guest appearance, and you can kind of see her in
the background of these shots. She's playing a villain who
is cursing them on their wedding day. And also this
(06:53):
is the year where Diana and Charles get married, okay,
and they have a real wedding, right, but then this
is such a big and that Diana sends champagne for
this fake way. She sends the actors champagne to congratulate
them on their fake oh wow, oh my god, which
like an amazing little detail here is that Genie Francis
is underage when this wedding.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Jennie Francis who plays Laurae.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Francis, who plays Laura Spencer, is twenty and so they
don't give it her champagne.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So they don't even give it, or she doesn't know
about the champagne until years later when they're doing an
in thin. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I don't know what kind of champagne it was, but
I think Luke said he like kept the box. I mean,
it's imagine getting a bottle of champagne from what was
like the most famous woman in the.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
World at that time.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Okay, so the culture of the world is kind of
treating this fake wedding like a real wedding.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
People took the day off work, and there's like a
note in the research that someone was like, Hey, I
told my boss I was going to a wedding because
I was you know, like bars played it like people
gathered around in bars at lunchtime end quotes to watch
this wedding. And I mean a thing that I think
people sort of forget. It's hard now to remember what
(08:03):
a stranglehold soap operas had on the culture in the eighties.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Or even television.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, on television, I mean they also made the most money.
Like I think part of the thing is, yes, a
lot of people watch them, but more than that for
the networks. At ABC, for example, they made up fifty
percent of revenue, so they had an enormous amount of power.
And that's why suddenly you see all these actors, these
famous actors who got their start on soap operas. It's
because soap operas had money to pay actors, and primetime,
(08:31):
you know, it had money, but not the way soap
operas did, and that wasn't always the case, right, Soap
opera's initially were kind of seen as this thing for women,
made by women, this sort of.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Silly, ridiculous thing.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
And you know, it could be silly and ridiculous, and
we can talk about that, but daytime was an enormously
powerful arena at this point.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I don't think I fully appreciated that that soap operas
had huge power to shape culture, and also that it
was women both making and watching them.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, initially, soap operas were really watched by stay at
home moms, and that's kind of why initially they're dismissed.
But then this thing happens at the end of the
seventies where a lot of women enter the workforce and
there's a dip in viewership. Okay, but then the women
who are staying at home start to allow their children
to watch TV with them.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
That's kind of like a shift.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And so a lot of girls and boys who are
home with their moms become addicted to these shows. And
then it becomes common to be a college student who
gathers around, right.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
This is why there's viewing parties in these dorm roo.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yes, you know, a common thing that was talked about
among soap fans is that they would schedule their classes
around their sobb.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Wow, it's such a different time.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
But it's like worth noting that even though soap operas
aren't that popular now, General Hospital is still on the air.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Oh right, I mean people forget that, but it.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Is the longest running scripted drama and the longest running
American soap opera. How do you started airing in nineteen
sixty three. You can watch it on television. What do
you mean you watch it on E you do? Yeah,
you can watch it in the afternoon on ABC. And
by the way, two million people still do Okay, I mean,
I think the thing that's different.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Is there's like a lot of options now.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, so it doesn't seem as popular, but two million
people is not a paltry number.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's way more than most cable shows get.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
But we don't think about it as a cultural phenomenon
because it seems so low in comparison to the fact
that in their heyday, one in fifteen Americans watched General Hospital.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
So we're talking about a storyline on General Hospital involving
the two most popular characters, Luke and Laura. These are
characters America obsessed over in the nineteen eighties. Thirty million
people tune in to watch their wedding. But when you
say out loud how that relationship began, which is with
Luke assaulting Laura, it almost feels like it can't be true.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, it is hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And we're about to walk you through the assault scene,
which will make it feel unfortunately very real. But first
I want to give you some background on how we
get to that scene. And I'm going to actually blow
your mind with so many things here, because to begin with,
Luke is Laura's boss.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Oh okay, where do they work at a disco?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Laura is seventeen. Luckily for Laura, she's already married. She's
seventeen and married, Oh okay, a crime. So Laura and
Scotty were actually like a pretty popular soap opera couple
in their own right. But you know, the whole thing
on soap operas is if there's a happy couple, they
must face like an extraordinary number of obstacles, like they
must get.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Kidnapped, they must get cloned.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So the obstacle that's thrown in Laura's and Scotty's relationship
is Luke. There is a nurse at the hospital that's
upse Sess with Scottie, so she asks her brother Luke
to come to town and try and seduce Laura. Okay,
and Luke wasn't even really supposed to be a major
character on the show. He was just brought in as
(12:12):
a temporary character who was going to be a bad boy,
an obstacle in Laura's relationship with her husband Scottie. But
the writers had planned from the beginning that he was
going to rape her because they wanted that storyline for ratings.
Wild Wild, The ratings have started to wane. You know,
they're making an effort to bring in younger viewers. It's
(12:33):
working a little bit with Laura, but this is the
last rated TV show.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Oh so it's not doing good at this time.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
At this time, I'm talking to me, and it's the
lowest rated soap opera on TV. It's like number twelve
or something. I mean, there's so many soap operas on
TV at this time. And that's actually what makes it
so remarkable that within three years it's literally the number
one show.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Can you imagine being like, our show is doing really bad.
What can we do to get better ratings? I know,
let's say to rape.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I mean, it is wild, but it does work.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And I think one of the things that's interesting is
the executive producer that was brought in at that time
came from TV movies where rape was a much more
common topic, but it was presented more from like the
crime aspect. So I think that's not a lot starrying,
not a love story, and I think that's why she
has this idea to introduce this rape and knows that
(13:25):
that is like popular with viewers. That must be kind
of what she's thinking when she introduces this character.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Okay, so this new thirty two year old character, Luke,
ends up hiring seventeen year old Laura at his nightclib.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, so Laura has gone to Luke, who runs the
big disco in town, to ask for a job and
he hires her. And meanwhile, he has some shady backdoor
dealings with the mob. That's why he's like such a
bad boy, and that's his backstory. So the context of
this scene is that Luke has gotten mixed up with
(13:57):
these mobsters who are forcing him to kill a local
politician and he feels like if he kills this other person,
he will also be killed.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay, And so this scene picks.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Up where she has seen him crying because he is like,
I'm a dead man walking, Okay, we come you cry.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
I wasn't crying.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
You were, and you didn't know that I was here.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
First.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
I was like, Oh, that's kind of progressive of them,
Like he's shedding cheers.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I'm sure it's not gonna be so progressive, is it?
Can it worked out in time? Time is what I've known.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
He's sort of setting it up that like, if you
don't have time, then you must have the woman you love.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And that's definitely how the story plays that he knows
he's running out of time. He's so in love with
her that he must have her this one time.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
He might he has to act on this love lust.
I said I was going to be dead killed little lady.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Can't you get that through your head?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Now get out here?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So he's pushing her away because essentially the messages he
can't control himself, and then he professes his love.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Damn it, Laura, I'm with you. No, I.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I think it's really love, Luca.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, Yes, that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And then randomly, in the middle of all of this,
Luke walks over dramatically to the record player flips it
on and a song comes on and he turns to
her and says, I can't die without holding you in
my arms, just one time.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
No, you really feel that the tension is building, and
then things clearly unravel, Luke.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Let me call it tactic playing, and.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
So you don't see the right itself, let me go.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
But it's unambiguous.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
It's definitely her raise are ripped, she's looking upset, she's crying.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
She's clearly said no ahead of time.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, she's screaming no when it starts and quotes.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's a kind of jarring moment because it happens pretty suddenly,
like you go.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Goose bumps watching it.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, because you're sort of like, oh, it's gonna be
a seduction, and then suddenly it's a rape. And cut
to disco lights. There's a commercial break, we come back,
we're back on the disco lights. It's like very surreal
kind of vibe. And then the thing that really drives
home that this is a rape is she's now lying
(16:23):
on the ground, she is cowering, her closer torn and
her clothes are torn.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
He is standing above her.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
He seems like he's in a bit of a daze,
and the phone rings and you sort of get the
sense of that's supposed to like break his reverie. And
she sneaks away and it's her husband, and it's her
husband on the phone and he's like, have you seen Laura?
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And Luke lies about it.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
So that's kind of the acknowledgment that he knows he's
done something wrong because he's lying about whether or not
she's been there.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And that's the scene.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Okay, that was a lot.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
But one other strange detail I have to mention is
so that song that's playing in the background when the
assault occurs, this is the song that Luke kind of
dramatically goes over to the record player and turns on,
and it's this jazz funk instrumental hit. This is a
real song. It's called Rise.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And that song then goes on to become number one
on the Billboard charts.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
I know, it's crazy and like for.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
A jazz funk instrumental that was as rare then as
it is today.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
And it's funny. Actually, I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
You called me and I was in Palm Springs with
a friend and in a weed shop.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Naturally, that's where either of us would be at any given.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Moment, and we had just gotten out of the car
where that song was playing. And this friend of mine,
who happens to have written her college thesis on rape
and Soapapera's side now call her is like, oh, do
you know what this song is? And she explains this
to me and I'm like what. And then you called
me and you're like remember that moment in general Hospital,
which of course I didn't really remember. But this song
(17:57):
goes on to be at the top of all of
the charts, and actually our younger listeners might recognize it
because twenty years later, Puff Daddy actually puts a clip.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Of it into Biggie's song Hypnotized.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Oh excellent song, by the.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Way, which like, I can hear that in the back
of my mind as we're listening to this, so it's
sampled in Hypnotized in nineteen ninety seven, because Puffy later
says an interview like this was the song of the
summer when he was like ten years old in New York, Like.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
All the kids were like jamming and.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Roller skating to this song, which of course was popular
because of this rape. Soon how do we get from
this clearly very traumatic scene between Luke and Laura, which
happens in nineteen seventy nine to then this star studded
(18:49):
royal level wedding two years later.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
That's the crazy part, right. As I mentioned, Luke was
supposed to be a temporary character. He was supposed to
come on, you know, have this violen scene with and
then he was supposed to be killed. And what happens
is audiences respond so well to him.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And again let me acknowledge how wild that is.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
He was so immediately popular that producers decided they wanted
to find a way to keep him on the show.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Wait, and how do they know he's so popular?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, partially because the way soaps worked is since they
were being produced so quickly and because they're on every day,
the network is able to gauge almost immediately audience sentiment.
So they're using actual data that's showing them that Luke.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Is quite popular. Okay, we got to keep Yeah, this
gets some coverage.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
At the time, the ratings weren't good before this, the
ratings start to creep up, so.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
They do not kill him off.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Okay, but that leaves them with the problem a little.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Bit of a conundrum, which is if audiences are falling
in love with Luke and really feel drawn to this
romance between him and Laura and want Laura to end
up with Luke, not Scottie. How do they reconcile that
with the violent rape that has occurred, and also that
(20:08):
they have acknowledged as such, And just to really put
a fine point on the fact that the show never
really tried to make the rape ambiguous initially she goes
to crisis counseling after this. On the show, like they
do not initially shy away from the fact that it's
a rape. They will eventually and will get into all
(20:28):
of that, but when it happens, it is really clear
what's happened.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Tony Geary, the actor who.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Played Luke, actually says in an interview, at some point,
we never expected the audience to be like on Luke's side,
and so we did a rape and then the audience
fell in love with Luke and that wasn't our faults.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
So what were we supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
And like, maybe the thing you were supposed to do
is be like, hey, guys, rape is bad, But instead
they are moving the needle over and over again until
they literally reshoot the scenes.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
They literally go back.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
They can appear in flashbacks so that.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
The scenes they're showing for flashbacks aren't as disturbing.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
They're literally softening the thing over and over and over again,
and the character is being gaslet in real time. The
audience is being gas lit in real time.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Maybe you should name me as the rapist. You in jail, well,
maybe that's where I belong.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
No, don't say that you're not a criminal.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Then by the time the wedding happens.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
The thing that's kind of interesting is that by the
time thirty million people are watching the wedding, a lot
of those people have never seen it an rape. They
don't even be right, and they have only seen these sanitized, softened,
more romantic flashbacks.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
And actually they even remove the song. They stop playing
the song because the song is like so associated with
the rape.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Oh wow, so interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And when they're reshooting these scenes and softening them up,
there's a thing that happens that's actually quite controversial for
the people at the time who remember that it's a rape.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I mean, there is an audience that remembers.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And at one point Laura is narrating the scene and
she describes it as the first time Luke and.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I made love. Oh wow, and there is a reaction.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's not like a huge national reaction or anything, but
there are people at that time who are like, what
is happening?
Speaker 4 (22:25):
And actually we know one of those people one of
our executive producers, Cindy Levy.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Cindy is a journalist, the former editor of Glamour magazine,
and the co founder of The Meteor, But most relevant
to this conversation, she was a General Hospital super fan.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
I started watching it probably in nineteen seventy nine and
watched it with varying levels of religious devotion until around
nineteen eighty four or eighty five. I was part of
that generation X, so called latchkey kid generation, and so
I used to come home and General Hospital was kind
(23:03):
of my babysitter, Like my parents were divorced and my
mom worked, and I would race home from school so
that I could turn on.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
ABC channel seven and.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
Watch it at three o'clock, usually with a humongous.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Bowl of coffee ice cream. It was like a comfort
hour for me. Why did you love it so much?
Speaker 5 (23:25):
It was just fascinating. I just had never seen anything
like it before. I remember these super adult plots, prostitution,
There was Bobby Spencer who used to be a quote
unquote hooker, and there were a lot of plots around infidelity,
and then there was Luke and Laura. Laura was supposed
to be sort of in her late teens, even though
(23:47):
she seemed incredibly glamorous and grown up to me at
the time.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Do you remember what you initially thought when Luke showed up.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
I have a vague memory that Luke Spencer was supposed
to be a kind of bad boy character, a disco mostly.
I remember his kind of open neck shirts and his
permed hair, although I didn't know it was permed at
the time, but he had kind of been allure.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
You've told me in the past that you were watching
the episode when Luke raped Laura. Can you describe that experience.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
So there's this one Friday. I couldn't tell you what
time of year it was. I couldn't tell you the month,
but I know it was a Friday afternoon, which is
when they always did the big happenings or cliffhangers. And
I came home from school, I was watching by myself,
and Luke was at his club, Luke's place, and Laura
(24:40):
she was there, and Luke is clearly in love with
Laura and telling her how much he wants her, and
then all of a sudden, it clearly becomes a rape scene.
And I don't know if I even knew the word
rape then, but I knew it was violent. And it
(25:02):
was really an unsettling scene because they weren't shying away
from how violent it was. He's like pushing her down
on the ground. She's saying no. And the next scene,
as I remember it, she's walking around outside and she's dazed,
and she's clearly been through a violent act. And yet
(25:27):
was it violent because the messed up thing is it's
also portrayed as romantic, like he wants her so much
he can't stop himself, and he doesn't stop himself and
he keeps going. That scene definitely led me to think
that it had something to do with desire. It was
a bad thing, and it hurt her, and that was clear.
(25:50):
But it hurt her because he loved her so much
he couldn't help but hurt her. There's also this sub
theme that she kind of pities him because is poor guy.
You know, he can't help it. And I think now
seen in the cold light of day and a bunch
of decades more experience, like that's a very classic way
(26:11):
that women are thought to think about bad men or
violent men, that they can't help it, and are you
really going to hold them accountable for their actions? Poor guys,
they've suffered enough. But I didn't see any of that
at the time. I just sort of witnessed that they
continued to fall in love and that it was like,
(26:31):
Hella romantic.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Were you rooting for them? I was totally rooting for them.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
I mean not then that day of the rape, but
as time went on and everybody was rooting for them,
and you know, it culminated in this wedding, which I
was probably too young to really care about. But man,
that wedding was a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Do you remember talking to your friends about it, talking
to them about the rape.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I don't remember talking to any friends about it at
the time, but a couple of years after that scene
aired on General Hospital and it was still kind of
the only reference point I had for rape. I was
walking home from school and I was on this sort
of like backwoods road and this guy pulled up next
to me in a trans am. I was probably thirteen
at the time, and he had his pants down around
(27:20):
his knees and you know, was flashing me said something
to me. I screamed, ran away, ran home, called my
friend and I said, you're not going to believe what
just happened to me. On the way home from school,
I was like shaking. I'm sure my voice was trembling.
And she said, did you get raped?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And it was.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
Like we didn't know enough to know how awful that
would have been. Like to her, it was this dangerous, alarming,
but still kind of hot thing that could have happened.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Looking back on it now, how do you think about it?
Speaker 5 (28:00):
My friends and I talk about this all the time,
like my friends who I grew up with, like, can
you believe that Luke rape Laura?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Nope?
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Still can't believe that Luke raped Laura and that that's
what led to this relationship, and particularly over time, like
I stopped watching Soapapa's probably when I was in high school.
But when I look back on it, it's such a
fundamental messing with how a whole generation of girls who
weren't really getting any kind of education around consent. All
the things we talk about now with varying degrees of success,
(28:30):
we weren't talking about at all then and It's such
a devastating message about what a guy will do if
he loves you enough, like he's going to hurt you,
and you know you should forgive him for that, because
poor guy.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
This storyline between Luke and Laura was obviously very serious
subject matter. But one of the things that occurred to
me when we started to work on this episode is
that now we're sort of looking back on it and
talking about it in a serious way. But the reason
soap operas were often dismissed is that they did have
and I just want to make sure we don't lose
sight of this. Banana's absolutely wild storylines like demonic possession
(29:22):
and you know, clones like you would get in an accident,
someone would clone you, you'd have a baby would turn
out to be the devil. There was like a storyline
on One Life to Live where they time traveled. I mean,
there were these just like insane storylines, and Lucan Laura
weren't an exception. They would go on these Raiders of
the Arc type adventures. But then there is this period
(29:44):
in the late eighties and nineties where it becomes quite fantastical. Okay,
that is partially why soap operas get this rap as
a silly, sort of cheesy thing, but at the same time,
there were a lot of social issues are introduced, partially
because women are not being hired to make prestige television,
(30:06):
They're not being hired on primetime shows.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
They are making these soap operas.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
They are hiring other women to be the writers, and
so a lot of topics that those women are interested in.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Oh, that's really interesting discussed too, the place that a
woman showrunner or a woman writer could actually thrive.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And yeah, thrive and actually explore real issues that women
were facing, domestic violence, addiction. So you sort of have
this idea, Oh, it would have been handled more sensitively,
but I think this just reflects how people genuinely think about.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Right, And yeah, that's interesting too.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
It's like, actually, maybe this is more accurate to what
we really did think of it at the time.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, and also maybe this was a sensitive handling for
the time, Like maybe the way this would have been
handled in previous iterations is she wouldn't have been believed
or she would have been dismissed. Like there is an
attempt made here to handle this with sensitivity. They have
Francis and Tony Gary, the actors meet with a social
(31:03):
worker before they tape the scene. I mean, there is
an acknowledgement that this is a difficult subject to tackle.
It's just interesting that even their version of sensitivity is
so baked into the era that it represents that it
still reveals these really outdated notions about rape.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
I can give you my perspective here.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So we did end up calling your friend Daniel Thompson,
who you mentioned at the top of the show.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Oh good, I'm so glad.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
The history of soaps is so vast and expansive that
it's like saying, let me tell you the history of
the world in like five minutes.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
For those listening, this is Daniel Thompson. She's a longtime
television writer and researcher and the person that I basically
go to whenever I have a really intricate question.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
About TV of the past. So what did she say?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, first, she said that it wasn't her thesis that
she wrote about soaps and sexual assault storyline oops, But
it was a very long college essay, so you weren't
that far I mean close enough. But besides being able
to share what she learned about this very specific topic,
she just has this crazy extensive knowledge about the topic,
and she was such a huge soap fan, so she
(32:15):
really delivers.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
I think that you have to remember that soaps don't
just have love in the afternoon. In fact, that's actually
why I stopped watching soaps, because there was not enough romance.
It's kind of known for dealing with serious issues always,
and sometimes they get it right and sometimes they don't.
But like in nineteen seventy three, the first legal abortion
on television shown, no All My Children, the first gay
teenager on TV that was Billy Douglas played by Ryan
(32:41):
Phillippy on One Life to Live nineteen ninety two. You
have the first gay marriage in two thousand and nine,
and All My Children the first transgender coming out storyline
in two thousand and six. Soabaperas are actually the place
where serious issues are addressed. And so, just to like
put Luke and Laura's scene in context of the time,
the frase date rape was not even coined until nineteen
(33:02):
seventy five by Susan Brown Miller in her book Against
Our Will, And so for further context, it was nineteen
eighty two when Miss magazine ran what was like a
groundbreaking study about the subject of date rape, which was
still not really known as a concept because most people
at the time thought of rape as being something that
was committed by a stranger and not someone that was known.
So I think in that context, Luke and Laura is
(33:25):
kind of radical because it's bringing up an issue that
was something people had not really understood or known, that
is of extreme relevance to its viewers, which are primarily women.
And I think what's interesting about Luke and Laura is
that the character was never intended to be a romantic
companion for her. This was definitely not the first act
of sexual vince in soaps, but it is, from my understanding,
(33:49):
the first relationship where the relationship followed the act of
sexual violence instead of preceded it.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
But I don't necessarily.
Speaker 6 (33:57):
Think that it kind of sparked off this new trope
of sexual assaults in soap operas. I think, if anything,
it kind of brought in the conversation in a way
that changed it. And because awareness s crew, I think
that storylines about it became more pervasive.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
So one question I.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Have is, all, right, so multiple decades have passed, It
was actually just a couple of years ago that it
was the fortieth anniversary of the wedding, and so there
was all this sort of quote unquote in retrospective coverage
of it, and Jeanie Francis spoke about it. So are
those who were involved in the show at the time
expressing different perspectives on it when they look back today.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I think they're expressing different perspectives and also admitting that
they had different perspectives even at the time. It's also
worth noting that the show itself has acknowledged and revisited
the assault a few times since it originally aired. Obviously,
you know, we think about these things differently now, and
the show is aware of that, and so there have
It's been a few times in the show's history where
(35:02):
they tried to confront that, And there was this scene
between Luke and Laura at some point where they discussed
what happened, and she confronts him many years later and
he apologizes, we should.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Talk about what happened that night, that one bad night
twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Eventually, Luke and Laura go on to have kids, so,
you know, as the show is evolving, there's also a
confrontation between Luke and his son with Laura Strangely, their
kid is named Lucky, and he confronts Luke about assaulting
his mother.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
These are not going anywhere until we have this out.
I am you gonna do?
Speaker 5 (35:40):
What if I walk out the door?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
What would you do? Force me to stay? Why?
Speaker 6 (35:43):
Because you're stronger than me?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
What do you know? And Luke of course apologizes again
here because it's always part of a redemption arc they're
trying to give him.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
You were conceived, born and raised in love, nothing but love.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
But what's also happened is that I think there was
a lot of questions about this rape when the wedding occurred.
It's not like journalists who were covering the wedding at
the time didn't ask about it, and the onus was
really put, especially on Jeanie Francis, who was quite young,
to sort of explain this thing. She was often asked
about it, and she felt like she had to defend it,
(36:19):
and I think Tony Gary also felt that way, and
neither of them seemed like they really appreciated being.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Put in that position, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
They both left the show not long after the wedding
and then returned.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Oh for those.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Later storylines, I mean not just for those later storylines.
But then they just returned to the show in the nineties,
and she's gotten to the point where she owed very
openly now, even though she's still on the show today,
rejects having been put in this position and has said,
and I'll read a quote from her, as a young kid,
at seventeen, I was told to play rape, and I
played it.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
But at seventeen, you follow the rules, you do as
you are told, and you aim to please. And now
at sixty, I don't feel the need to defend that anymore.
Think that story was inappropriate. I don't condone it. It's
been a burden that I've had to carry to try
to justify that story. So I'm not doing that anymore.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
That's interesting, and you know, to think about how these
things play out differently today. It was interesting you mentioned
that at the time the actor thing, Luke and Lawer
actually saw a social worker to talk about the playing
of this.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
But now you would have an intimacy coordinator on set.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Yeah, it would be a totally different ballgame, or you'd
hope that it would be a totally different ballgame. I think, look,
Geinie Francis is in her sixties now, right, just had
forty years to reflect on this thing that happened to her.
But she was a seventeen year old girl playing with
a thirty seven year old actor, right, I mean, just
the whole thing would be handled so differently now because
in addition to the rape, there would be the statutory issues.
(37:41):
There just is I think a better understanding of how
power dynamics work, Like it wasn't even really brought up
at the time that he was her boss.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
It's also like, were this scene to play out today,
there would be a concurrent dialogue happening on Twitter and
elsewhere about how it was handled in real time, and
so you'd be having to preemptively prepare for the criticism
that you knew you were going to face and really
make sure it was handled delicately. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I mean an interesting thing is is, did you see
The Accused When I came out, that was sort of
like one of the first depictions I ever saw of
gang rape.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
And now the dialogue around that movie has actually even shifted,
Like I.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Think it's kind of fascinating because I've seen dialogue about
how it's too violent it's presented and too daring away.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
It's not it's like triggering.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And I think that's really interesting because the reason that
movie was so groundbreaking when it happened is because it
was presented in so violent a way. It sort of
forced you to face the reality of that violence. Yeah,
but now if you played it so violently, they would
say it was exploitative, right, Like, if you did that
scene now, you would want to handle it with more
sensitivity because we get that rape is violence. We don't
need to like shove it in your face that same way.
(38:52):
But that cultural context is important. When that movie happened,
people didn't really understand how violent rape could be, so
it had to be so aggressive.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
I think now two storylines are forced to grapple with
the enduring trauma of something like that happening, right, and
that has to be written in Yes.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And I think, let's be honest, we've all or most
of us, have watched many years of Law and Order SVU,
and that has in many ways changed the way that
rape is handled on other shows. That's an interesting example
of a show that not only has kind of moved
the needle in terms of how a lot of us
understand sexual assault, but has actually changed the way other
(39:31):
shows handle it because it has really introduced a lot
of ideas into the culture that are now very commonly
acknowledged as facts, and those things continue to evolve.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Okay, So I feel like we need to take a
moment to just pause and reacknowledge what we're talking about.
This show is about how we internalize these messages, right, So,
look like nineteen eighty one, I was not born when
this hit, Like this was a little bit before our time,
but when you think about the time when we were
sexually coming of age, like how the strands of this
(40:09):
might have still impacted us in the way that we
saw ourselves in the culture, Like, yes, was it okay
for guys to be really aggressive when they wanted to
pursue you?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I mean, I definitely sell the answer to that was yes.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I think I put up with a lot of things
that now I see in my niece like that you
would never put up with.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
You know, we just accepted a certain level of behavior.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That we wouldn't now know And now it's understood that
this is completely unacceptable, But you know, at that time,
I think people just really didn't understand what the boundaries were,
Like this reminds me of this crazy jarring anecdote that
I read, which is really stayed with me. It's that
Tony Geary, the actor who plays Luke, told the story
(40:55):
that when he would go to like soap opera conventions
and events after the scene aired, women would come up
to him and say, rape me Luke.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
And it's like a thing that he would tell because
he was so disturbed by it.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
But I think it says so much about what we've
been talking about here, which is that there's this underlying
sense that a woman should like want to be found irresistible.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Right, And it just introduces this idea that men express
love or this like need through violence, and that if
you experience it as violence and not love, the problem
is with you and not the thing that's happened to you.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Right.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
I'd be really interested to hear from Cindy a someone
who actually lived through this.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
I think I learned that as a woman, it's incredibly
flattering and important to be desired by a man, and
that even if that quote unquote desire is violent and
hurts you or hurts other people, that like, on some
level that's okay. I feel like in a way, I'm
(41:59):
a best case scenari. I had a very feminist mom
who did not truck with those kinds of stereotypes at all.
I'm lucky that in those years after watching that on
General Hospital, I didn't have any kind of rape experience myself,
which is unusual I think for women. But still, on
some level, I think it just underlined this very present
(42:21):
message in our culture that you're kind of nobody unless
a guy has overwhelming desire for you. I mean, when
you think about it, General Hospital taught a whole generation
of women like me, girls at the time what relationships were,
what family secrets were, about, what infidelity was, and also
(42:43):
what sexual violence is. And I don't think it taught
us accurately.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a
cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want us
to explore in a future episode. Email us at inretropod
at gmail dot com, or find us on Instagram at
in retropod.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and
associate producer.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina at Norville.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli. Sound
correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your
hosts Susie Beannacarum.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
And Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
We're also executive producers for even more check out in
retropod dot com.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
See you next week.
Hi everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Before we start, just a note that we discuss sexual
assault and violence in this episode.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I Laura wear a Baldwin. Hi, Lucas, Lorenzo Spencer take
thee to be my wedded wife, to be my lawful
wedded husband. Hoop better poor worse so Richard for poor.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
The voices you're hearing are Luke and Laura, two beloved
characters from one of the most popular soap operas of
all time, General Hospital.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
This is their wedding, which took place in nineteen eighty one,
Hunt Be I Pledge my trust.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It may have been fictional, but this wedding, a two
day television event, was celebrated by fans as the wedding
of the decade. More people watched it than the real
wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, which happened that
same year. But what is often forgotten about this iconic
soap opera couple is that just a few years before this,
(00:56):
Luke sexually assaulted Laura. I'm Susie Bannaker.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
And I'm Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a
cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Today, we're talking about how one of TV's most famous
and beloved relationships started with a rape, but we're also
talking about the incredible power soap operas once had and
shaping public perception for better and for worse.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
So, Susie, I know nothing about soap operas except that
there is one starring a woman named Jessica Bennett who
shares money.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Is that true?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
It's called Passion Passions.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
That was a short lived but very wild soap opera.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
She remains on Wikipedia. Anyway, were you a huge General
hospital fan? Like what led you to this moment?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
So?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I wasn't a General hospital fan specifically, I did occasionally
watch it, but I was a huge soap opera fan.
I would come home in middle school and watch soap
operas every afternoon.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I was a Days of Our Life girl.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
One Life to Live girl, which was kind of unusual
because it was split.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Days of Our Lives was on RBC.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Do you remember the tagline for Days of Our Lives
like sand to the hour live zero?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
So are the Days of our Lives?
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Of our lives?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I would come home from school and I would watch
with the snack every afternoon and then eventually I went
to boarding school for high school, but when I came home,
it was like something I looked forward to, like a
summer or winter break indulgence.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
And I think that's kind of why I.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Wanted to focus on this subject, this relationship, because soap
operas were just so influential for generations of American girls
and women. I mean, also some boys obviously, but they
really were geared towards women, and this particular plotline really
came at the peak of their popularity, and so it
(02:58):
seems worth exploring this really relationship that was seen as
so romantic but started with an assault.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
As you say that, I'm remembering that I mentioned this
to my mother in law recently, and she revealed that
actually my husband, like the first three years of his life,
she would constantly have this show on in the background
while they were just I don't know, hanging out doing
baby stuff or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
And you know, guess what.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
She remembers this relationship between Luke and Laura as completely romantic.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I think that's what most people thought.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yeah, and they'd go on to have this decades long relationship,
So that makes a lot of sense. I mean, Laura
is still actually a character on the show. But for
those who didn't grow up on General Hospital, can you
give us a little primer on what the show was.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, it was a soap robera that started in nineteen
sixty three and had its heyday in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
It was just hugely popular.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It was about two families living in the fictional town
of Port Charles, New York, and there are various trials
and tribulations, and not surprisingly, it was centered in a hospital.
You might say it was the original Gray's Anatomy and
what went on there. Sometimes it would go off in
weird adventures, but that's really been the core of the
show for the last sixty years.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Okay, So, Luke and Lear are characters who do not
work in that hospital.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, they don't work in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Not literally, everyone on the show works in the hospital,
got it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
They just live in Port Charles.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Okay, And where should we begin in terms of their
Can we call it a relationship?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, I mean it's not a relationship in the beginning,
right because of the way it starts. But I actually
want to begin with the wedding because I think that
that's the moment that becomes such a cultural phenomenon. Right,
It was a two day event, so it's two hours long.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
There's like really long stretches of them just like driving
up in cars, like the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and then
there's this really long stretch of them just like literally
greeting the guests.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's like an actual wedding, which is why.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It's fascinating that it was the most watched soap opera
episode of all time. When people loved it, they wanted
to feel like they were there at this wedding because
they were obsessed with this couple.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Wow, why were people so obsessed with this couple? Like
what was the appeal?
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So, I mean it's hard to say. To some degree,
you don't ever know why people become really attached to
certain characters on television or certain storylines. But Lauria is
actually kind of an interesting character because she's already become
a pretty central character to General Hospital when Luke is introduced, okay,
and that's because they're trying to push towards younger audiences.
So she's a teenager, and I think one of the
(05:32):
quotes I read from a fan was like, we love
her because she's sixteen like us, but she lives the
life of a twenty eight year old. Okay, that's partially
why I wanted to start with the wedding, because you
kind of need to understand that this wasn't just like
a popular episode of television.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
It was literally the closest thing American tat to her
royal wedding.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And just to prove that I'm not exaggerating, more people
tuned in to watch this fake wedding than tuned in
when Megan Markle and Prince Harry had their actual wedding
in twenty eighty wild yeah, and like local news sent
correspondence to viewing parties like all across Manhattan, from an
office in Madison Avenue to a dorm at NYU, fans all.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Across the country watched for the big moment.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
To them, it was their wedding. Of course, we're excited
about a dry eye on the house. Doesn't they get
married with them?
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I love what thing.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
We're confident they get to Gema just between you know,
they're very much in love and it's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
It was just this wildly popular thing, even among celebrities
like Elizabeth Taylor was such a fan of the show
that she requested to be on it and made a
guest appearance, and you can kind of see her in
the background of these shots. She's playing a villain who
is cursing them on their wedding day. And also this
(06:53):
is the year where Diana and Charles get married, okay,
and they have a real wedding, right, but then this
is such a big and that Diana sends champagne for
this fake way. She sends the actors champagne to congratulate
them on their fake oh wow, oh my god, which
like an amazing little detail here is that Genie Francis
is underage when this wedding.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Jennie Francis who plays Laurae.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Francis, who plays Laura Spencer, is twenty and so they
don't give it her champagne.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So they don't even give it, or she doesn't know
about the champagne until years later when they're doing an
in thin. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I don't know what kind of champagne it was, but
I think Luke said he like kept the box. I mean,
it's imagine getting a bottle of champagne from what was
like the most famous woman in the.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
World at that time.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Okay, so the culture of the world is kind of
treating this fake wedding like a real wedding.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
People took the day off work, and there's like a
note in the research that someone was like, Hey, I
told my boss I was going to a wedding because
I was you know, like bars played it like people
gathered around in bars at lunchtime end quotes to watch
this wedding. And I mean a thing that I think
people sort of forget. It's hard now to remember what
(08:03):
a stranglehold soap operas had on the culture in the eighties.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Or even television.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, on television, I mean they also made the most money.
Like I think part of the thing is, yes, a
lot of people watch them, but more than that for
the networks. At ABC, for example, they made up fifty
percent of revenue, so they had an enormous amount of power.
And that's why suddenly you see all these actors, these
famous actors who got their start on soap operas. It's
because soap operas had money to pay actors, and primetime,
(08:31):
you know, it had money, but not the way soap
operas did, and that wasn't always the case, right, Soap
opera's initially were kind of seen as this thing for women,
made by women, this sort of.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Silly, ridiculous thing.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
And you know, it could be silly and ridiculous, and
we can talk about that, but daytime was an enormously
powerful arena at this point.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
I don't think I fully appreciated that that soap operas
had huge power to shape culture, and also that it
was women both making and watching them.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, initially, soap operas were really watched by stay at
home moms, and that's kind of why initially they're dismissed.
But then this thing happens at the end of the
seventies where a lot of women enter the workforce and
there's a dip in viewership. Okay, but then the women
who are staying at home start to allow their children
to watch TV with them.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
That's kind of like a shift.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And so a lot of girls and boys who are
home with their moms become addicted to these shows. And
then it becomes common to be a college student who
gathers around, right.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
This is why there's viewing parties in these dorm roo.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yes, you know, a common thing that was talked about
among soap fans is that they would schedule their classes
around their sobb.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Wow, it's such a different time.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
But it's like worth noting that even though soap operas
aren't that popular now, General Hospital is still on the air.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Oh right, I mean people forget that, but it.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Is the longest running scripted drama and the longest running
American soap opera. How do you started airing in nineteen
sixty three. You can watch it on television. What do
you mean you watch it on E you do? Yeah,
you can watch it in the afternoon on ABC. And
by the way, two million people still do Okay, I mean,
I think the thing that's different.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Is there's like a lot of options now.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, so it doesn't seem as popular, but two million
people is not a paltry number.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
That's way more than most cable shows get.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
But we don't think about it as a cultural phenomenon
because it seems so low in comparison to the fact
that in their heyday, one in fifteen Americans watched General Hospital.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
So we're talking about a storyline on General Hospital involving
the two most popular characters, Luke and Laura. These are
characters America obsessed over in the nineteen eighties. Thirty million
people tune in to watch their wedding. But when you
say out loud how that relationship began, which is with
Luke assaulting Laura, it almost feels like it can't be true.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, it is hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And we're about to walk you through the assault scene,
which will make it feel unfortunately very real. But first
I want to give you some background on how we
get to that scene. And I'm going to actually blow
your mind with so many things here, because to begin with,
Luke is Laura's boss.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Oh okay, where do they work at a disco?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Laura is seventeen. Luckily for Laura, she's already married. She's
seventeen and married, Oh okay, a crime. So Laura and
Scotty were actually like a pretty popular soap opera couple
in their own right. But you know, the whole thing
on soap operas is if there's a happy couple, they
must face like an extraordinary number of obstacles, like they
must get.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Kidnapped, they must get cloned.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So the obstacle that's thrown in Laura's and Scotty's relationship
is Luke. There is a nurse at the hospital that's
upse Sess with Scottie, so she asks her brother Luke
to come to town and try and seduce Laura. Okay,
and Luke wasn't even really supposed to be a major
character on the show. He was just brought in as
(12:12):
a temporary character who was going to be a bad boy,
an obstacle in Laura's relationship with her husband Scottie. But
the writers had planned from the beginning that he was
going to rape her because they wanted that storyline for ratings.
Wild Wild, The ratings have started to wane. You know,
they're making an effort to bring in younger viewers. It's
(12:33):
working a little bit with Laura, but this is the
last rated TV show.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Oh so it's not doing good at this time.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
At this time, I'm talking to me, and it's the
lowest rated soap opera on TV. It's like number twelve
or something. I mean, there's so many soap operas on
TV at this time. And that's actually what makes it
so remarkable that within three years it's literally the number
one show.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
Can you imagine being like, our show is doing really bad.
What can we do to get better ratings? I know,
let's say to rape.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I mean, it is wild, but it does work.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And I think one of the things that's interesting is
the executive producer that was brought in at that time
came from TV movies where rape was a much more
common topic, but it was presented more from like the
crime aspect. So I think that's not a lot starrying,
not a love story, and I think that's why she
has this idea to introduce this rape and knows that
(13:25):
that is like popular with viewers. That must be kind
of what she's thinking when she introduces this character.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Okay, so this new thirty two year old character, Luke,
ends up hiring seventeen year old Laura at his nightclib.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, so Laura has gone to Luke, who runs the
big disco in town, to ask for a job and
he hires her. And meanwhile, he has some shady backdoor
dealings with the mob. That's why he's like such a
bad boy, and that's his backstory. So the context of
this scene is that Luke has gotten mixed up with
(13:57):
these mobsters who are forcing him to kill a local
politician and he feels like if he kills this other person,
he will also be killed.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay, And so this scene picks.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Up where she has seen him crying because he is like,
I'm a dead man walking, Okay, we come you cry.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
I wasn't crying.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
You were, and you didn't know that I was here.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
First.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
I was like, Oh, that's kind of progressive of them,
Like he's shedding cheers.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I'm sure it's not gonna be so progressive, is it?
Can it worked out in time? Time is what I've known.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
He's sort of setting it up that like, if you
don't have time, then you must have the woman you love.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And that's definitely how the story plays that he knows
he's running out of time. He's so in love with
her that he must have her this one time.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
He might he has to act on this love lust.
I said I was going to be dead killed little lady.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Can't you get that through your head?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Now get out here?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
So he's pushing her away because essentially the messages he
can't control himself, and then he professes his love.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Damn it, Laura, I'm with you. No, I.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
I think it's really love, Luca.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, Yes, that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
And then randomly, in the middle of all of this,
Luke walks over dramatically to the record player flips it
on and a song comes on and he turns to
her and says, I can't die without holding you in
my arms, just one time.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
No, you really feel that the tension is building, and
then things clearly unravel, Luke.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Let me call it tactic playing, and.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
So you don't see the right itself, let me go.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
But it's unambiguous.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
It's definitely her raise are ripped, she's looking upset, she's crying.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
She's clearly said no ahead of time.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, she's screaming no when it starts and quotes.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
It's a kind of jarring moment because it happens pretty suddenly,
like you go.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Goose bumps watching it.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, because you're sort of like, oh, it's gonna be
a seduction, and then suddenly it's a rape. And cut
to disco lights. There's a commercial break, we come back,
we're back on the disco lights. It's like very surreal
kind of vibe. And then the thing that really drives
home that this is a rape is she's now lying
(16:23):
on the ground, she is cowering, her closer torn and
her clothes are torn.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
He is standing above her.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
He seems like he's in a bit of a daze,
and the phone rings and you sort of get the
sense of that's supposed to like break his reverie. And
she sneaks away and it's her husband, and it's her
husband on the phone and he's like, have you seen Laura?
Speaker 1 (16:44):
And Luke lies about it.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
So that's kind of the acknowledgment that he knows he's
done something wrong because he's lying about whether or not
she's been there.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And that's the scene.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Okay, that was a lot.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
But one other strange detail I have to mention is
so that song that's playing in the background when the
assault occurs, this is the song that Luke kind of
dramatically goes over to the record player and turns on,
and it's this jazz funk instrumental hit. This is a
real song. It's called Rise.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And that song then goes on to become number one
on the Billboard charts.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
I know, it's crazy and like for.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
A jazz funk instrumental that was as rare then as
it is today.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
And it's funny. Actually, I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
You called me and I was in Palm Springs with
a friend and in a weed shop.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Naturally, that's where either of us would be at any given.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Moment, and we had just gotten out of the car
where that song was playing. And this friend of mine,
who happens to have written her college thesis on rape
and Soapapera's side now call her is like, oh, do
you know what this song is? And she explains this
to me and I'm like what. And then you called
me and you're like remember that moment in general Hospital,
which of course I didn't really remember. But this song
(17:57):
goes on to be at the top of all of
the charts, and actually our younger listeners might recognize it
because twenty years later, Puff Daddy actually puts a clip.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Of it into Biggie's song Hypnotized.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Oh excellent song, by the.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Way, which like, I can hear that in the back
of my mind as we're listening to this, so it's
sampled in Hypnotized in nineteen ninety seven, because Puffy later
says an interview like this was the song of the
summer when he was like ten years old in New York, Like.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
All the kids were like jamming and.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Roller skating to this song, which of course was popular
because of this rape. Soon how do we get from
this clearly very traumatic scene between Luke and Laura, which
happens in nineteen seventy nine to then this star studded
(18:49):
royal level wedding two years later.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
That's the crazy part, right. As I mentioned, Luke was
supposed to be a temporary character. He was supposed to
come on, you know, have this violen scene with and
then he was supposed to be killed. And what happens
is audiences respond so well to him.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And again let me acknowledge how wild that is.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
He was so immediately popular that producers decided they wanted
to find a way to keep him on the show.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Wait, and how do they know he's so popular?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, partially because the way soaps worked is since they
were being produced so quickly and because they're on every day,
the network is able to gauge almost immediately audience sentiment.
So they're using actual data that's showing them that Luke.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Is quite popular. Okay, we got to keep Yeah, this
gets some coverage.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
At the time, the ratings weren't good before this, the
ratings start to creep up, so.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
They do not kill him off.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Okay, but that leaves them with the problem a little.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Bit of a conundrum, which is if audiences are falling
in love with Luke and really feel drawn to this
romance between him and Laura and want Laura to end
up with Luke, not Scottie. How do they reconcile that
with the violent rape that has occurred, and also that
(20:08):
they have acknowledged as such, And just to really put
a fine point on the fact that the show never
really tried to make the rape ambiguous initially she goes
to crisis counseling after this. On the show, like they
do not initially shy away from the fact that it's
a rape. They will eventually and will get into all
(20:28):
of that, but when it happens, it is really clear
what's happened.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Tony Geary, the actor who.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Played Luke, actually says in an interview, at some point,
we never expected the audience to be like on Luke's side,
and so we did a rape and then the audience
fell in love with Luke and that wasn't our faults.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
So what were we supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (20:47):
And like, maybe the thing you were supposed to do
is be like, hey, guys, rape is bad, But instead
they are moving the needle over and over again until
they literally reshoot the scenes.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
They literally go back.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
They can appear in flashbacks so that.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
The scenes they're showing for flashbacks aren't as disturbing.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
They're literally softening the thing over and over and over again,
and the character is being gaslet in real time. The
audience is being gas lit in real time.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Maybe you should name me as the rapist. You in jail, well,
maybe that's where I belong.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
No, don't say that you're not a criminal.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Then by the time the wedding happens.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
The thing that's kind of interesting is that by the
time thirty million people are watching the wedding, a lot
of those people have never seen it an rape. They
don't even be right, and they have only seen these sanitized, softened,
more romantic flashbacks.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
And actually they even remove the song. They stop playing
the song because the song is like so associated with
the rape.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Oh wow, so interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And when they're reshooting these scenes and softening them up,
there's a thing that happens that's actually quite controversial for
the people at the time who remember that it's a rape.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I mean, there is an audience that remembers.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
And at one point Laura is narrating the scene and
she describes it as the first time Luke and.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I made love. Oh wow, and there is a reaction.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
It's not like a huge national reaction or anything, but
there are people at that time who are like, what
is happening?
Speaker 4 (22:25):
And actually we know one of those people one of
our executive producers, Cindy Levy.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Cindy is a journalist, the former editor of Glamour magazine,
and the co founder of The Meteor, But most relevant
to this conversation, she was a General Hospital super fan.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
I started watching it probably in nineteen seventy nine and
watched it with varying levels of religious devotion until around
nineteen eighty four or eighty five. I was part of
that generation X, so called latchkey kid generation, and so
I used to come home and General Hospital was kind
(23:03):
of my babysitter, Like my parents were divorced and my
mom worked, and I would race home from school so
that I could turn on.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
ABC channel seven and.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
Watch it at three o'clock, usually with a humongous.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Bowl of coffee ice cream. It was like a comfort
hour for me. Why did you love it so much?
Speaker 5 (23:25):
It was just fascinating. I just had never seen anything
like it before. I remember these super adult plots, prostitution,
There was Bobby Spencer who used to be a quote
unquote hooker, and there were a lot of plots around infidelity,
and then there was Luke and Laura. Laura was supposed
to be sort of in her late teens, even though
(23:47):
she seemed incredibly glamorous and grown up to me at
the time.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Do you remember what you initially thought when Luke showed up.
Speaker 5 (23:54):
I have a vague memory that Luke Spencer was supposed
to be a kind of bad boy character, a disco mostly.
I remember his kind of open neck shirts and his
permed hair, although I didn't know it was permed at
the time, but he had kind of been allure.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
You've told me in the past that you were watching
the episode when Luke raped Laura. Can you describe that experience.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
So there's this one Friday. I couldn't tell you what
time of year it was. I couldn't tell you the month,
but I know it was a Friday afternoon, which is
when they always did the big happenings or cliffhangers. And
I came home from school, I was watching by myself,
and Luke was at his club, Luke's place, and Laura
(24:40):
she was there, and Luke is clearly in love with
Laura and telling her how much he wants her, and
then all of a sudden, it clearly becomes a rape scene.
And I don't know if I even knew the word
rape then, but I knew it was violent. And it
(25:02):
was really an unsettling scene because they weren't shying away
from how violent it was. He's like pushing her down
on the ground. She's saying no. And the next scene,
as I remember it, she's walking around outside and she's dazed,
and she's clearly been through a violent act. And yet
(25:27):
was it violent because the messed up thing is it's
also portrayed as romantic, like he wants her so much
he can't stop himself, and he doesn't stop himself and
he keeps going. That scene definitely led me to think
that it had something to do with desire. It was
a bad thing, and it hurt her, and that was clear.
(25:50):
But it hurt her because he loved her so much
he couldn't help but hurt her. There's also this sub
theme that she kind of pities him because is poor guy.
You know, he can't help it. And I think now
seen in the cold light of day and a bunch
of decades more experience, like that's a very classic way
(26:11):
that women are thought to think about bad men or
violent men, that they can't help it, and are you
really going to hold them accountable for their actions? Poor guys,
they've suffered enough. But I didn't see any of that
at the time. I just sort of witnessed that they
continued to fall in love and that it was like,
(26:31):
Hella romantic.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Were you rooting for them? I was totally rooting for them.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
I mean not then that day of the rape, but
as time went on and everybody was rooting for them,
and you know, it culminated in this wedding, which I
was probably too young to really care about. But man,
that wedding was a really big deal.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Do you remember talking to your friends about it, talking
to them about the rape.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
I don't remember talking to any friends about it at
the time, but a couple of years after that scene
aired on General Hospital and it was still kind of
the only reference point I had for rape. I was
walking home from school and I was on this sort
of like backwoods road and this guy pulled up next
to me in a trans am. I was probably thirteen
at the time, and he had his pants down around
(27:20):
his knees and you know, was flashing me said something
to me. I screamed, ran away, ran home, called my
friend and I said, you're not going to believe what
just happened to me. On the way home from school,
I was like shaking. I'm sure my voice was trembling.
And she said, did you get raped?
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And it was.
Speaker 5 (27:41):
Like we didn't know enough to know how awful that
would have been. Like to her, it was this dangerous, alarming,
but still kind of hot thing that could have happened.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Looking back on it now, how do you think about it?
Speaker 5 (28:00):
My friends and I talk about this all the time,
like my friends who I grew up with, like, can
you believe that Luke rape Laura?
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Nope?
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Still can't believe that Luke raped Laura and that that's
what led to this relationship, and particularly over time, like
I stopped watching Soapapa's probably when I was in high school.
But when I look back on it, it's such a
fundamental messing with how a whole generation of girls who
weren't really getting any kind of education around consent. All
the things we talk about now with varying degrees of success,
(28:30):
we weren't talking about at all then and It's such
a devastating message about what a guy will do if
he loves you enough, like he's going to hurt you,
and you know you should forgive him for that, because
poor guy.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
This storyline between Luke and Laura was obviously very serious
subject matter. But one of the things that occurred to
me when we started to work on this episode is
that now we're sort of looking back on it and
talking about it in a serious way. But the reason
soap operas were often dismissed is that they did have
and I just want to make sure we don't lose
sight of this. Banana's absolutely wild storylines like demonic possession
(29:22):
and you know, clones like you would get in an accident,
someone would clone you, you'd have a baby would turn
out to be the devil. There was like a storyline
on One Life to Live where they time traveled. I mean,
there were these just like insane storylines, and Lucan Laura
weren't an exception. They would go on these Raiders of
the Arc type adventures. But then there is this period
(29:44):
in the late eighties and nineties where it becomes quite fantastical. Okay,
that is partially why soap operas get this rap as
a silly, sort of cheesy thing, but at the same time,
there were a lot of social issues are introduced, partially
because women are not being hired to make prestige television,
(30:06):
They're not being hired on primetime shows.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
They are making these soap operas.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
They are hiring other women to be the writers, and
so a lot of topics that those women are interested in.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
Oh, that's really interesting discussed too, the place that a
woman showrunner or a woman writer could actually thrive.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And yeah, thrive and actually explore real issues that women
were facing, domestic violence, addiction. So you sort of have
this idea, Oh, it would have been handled more sensitively,
but I think this just reflects how people genuinely think about.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Right, And yeah, that's interesting too.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
It's like, actually, maybe this is more accurate to what
we really did think of it at the time.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, and also maybe this was a sensitive handling for
the time, Like maybe the way this would have been
handled in previous iterations is she wouldn't have been believed
or she would have been dismissed. Like there is an
attempt made here to handle this with sensitivity. They have
Francis and Tony Gary, the actors meet with a social
(31:03):
worker before they tape the scene. I mean, there is
an acknowledgement that this is a difficult subject to tackle.
It's just interesting that even their version of sensitivity is
so baked into the era that it represents that it
still reveals these really outdated notions about rape.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
I can give you my perspective here.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So we did end up calling your friend Daniel Thompson,
who you mentioned at the top of the show.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Oh good, I'm so glad.
Speaker 6 (31:33):
The history of soaps is so vast and expansive that
it's like saying, let me tell you the history of
the world in like five minutes.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
For those listening, this is Daniel Thompson. She's a longtime
television writer and researcher and the person that I basically
go to whenever I have a really intricate question.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
About TV of the past. So what did she say?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Well, first, she said that it wasn't her thesis that
she wrote about soaps and sexual assault storyline oops, But
it was a very long college essay, so you weren't
that far I mean close enough. But besides being able
to share what she learned about this very specific topic,
she just has this crazy extensive knowledge about the topic,
and she was such a huge soap fan, so she
(32:15):
really delivers.
Speaker 6 (32:19):
I think that you have to remember that soaps don't
just have love in the afternoon. In fact, that's actually
why I stopped watching soaps, because there was not enough romance.
It's kind of known for dealing with serious issues always,
and sometimes they get it right and sometimes they don't.
But like in nineteen seventy three, the first legal abortion
on television shown, no All My Children, the first gay
teenager on TV that was Billy Douglas played by Ryan
(32:41):
Phillippy on One Life to Live nineteen ninety two. You
have the first gay marriage in two thousand and nine,
and All My Children the first transgender coming out storyline
in two thousand and six. Soabaperas are actually the place
where serious issues are addressed. And so, just to like
put Luke and Laura's scene in context of the time,
the frase date rape was not even coined until nineteen
(33:02):
seventy five by Susan Brown Miller in her book Against
Our Will, And so for further context, it was nineteen
eighty two when Miss magazine ran what was like a
groundbreaking study about the subject of date rape, which was
still not really known as a concept because most people
at the time thought of rape as being something that
was committed by a stranger and not someone that was known.
So I think in that context, Luke and Laura is
(33:25):
kind of radical because it's bringing up an issue that
was something people had not really understood or known, that
is of extreme relevance to its viewers, which are primarily women.
And I think what's interesting about Luke and Laura is
that the character was never intended to be a romantic
companion for her. This was definitely not the first act
of sexual vince in soaps, but it is, from my understanding,
(33:49):
the first relationship where the relationship followed the act of
sexual violence instead of preceded it.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
But I don't necessarily.
Speaker 6 (33:57):
Think that it kind of sparked off this new trope
of sexual assaults in soap operas. I think, if anything,
it kind of brought in the conversation in a way
that changed it. And because awareness s crew, I think
that storylines about it became more pervasive.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
So one question I.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Have is, all, right, so multiple decades have passed, It
was actually just a couple of years ago that it
was the fortieth anniversary of the wedding, and so there
was all this sort of quote unquote in retrospective coverage
of it, and Jeanie Francis spoke about it. So are
those who were involved in the show at the time
expressing different perspectives on it when they look back today.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
I think they're expressing different perspectives and also admitting that
they had different perspectives even at the time. It's also
worth noting that the show itself has acknowledged and revisited
the assault a few times since it originally aired. Obviously,
you know, we think about these things differently now, and
the show is aware of that, and so there have
It's been a few times in the show's history where
(35:02):
they tried to confront that, And there was this scene
between Luke and Laura at some point where they discussed
what happened, and she confronts him many years later and
he apologizes, we should.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Talk about what happened that night, that one bad night
twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Eventually, Luke and Laura go on to have kids, so,
you know, as the show is evolving, there's also a
confrontation between Luke and his son with Laura Strangely, their
kid is named Lucky, and he confronts Luke about assaulting
his mother.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
These are not going anywhere until we have this out.
I am you gonna do?
Speaker 5 (35:40):
What if I walk out the door?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
What would you do? Force me to stay? Why?
Speaker 6 (35:43):
Because you're stronger than me?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
What do you know? And Luke of course apologizes again
here because it's always part of a redemption arc they're
trying to give him.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
You were conceived, born and raised in love, nothing but love.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
But what's also happened is that I think there was
a lot of questions about this rape when the wedding occurred.
It's not like journalists who were covering the wedding at
the time didn't ask about it, and the onus was
really put, especially on Jeanie Francis, who was quite young,
to sort of explain this thing. She was often asked
about it, and she felt like she had to defend it,
(36:19):
and I think Tony Gary also felt that way, and
neither of them seemed like they really appreciated being.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Put in that position, to be honest.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
They both left the show not long after the wedding
and then returned.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Oh for those.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Later storylines, I mean not just for those later storylines.
But then they just returned to the show in the nineties,
and she's gotten to the point where she owed very
openly now, even though she's still on the show today,
rejects having been put in this position and has said,
and I'll read a quote from her, as a young kid,
at seventeen, I was told to play rape, and I
played it.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
I didn't even know what it was.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
But at seventeen, you follow the rules, you do as
you are told, and you aim to please. And now
at sixty, I don't feel the need to defend that anymore.
Think that story was inappropriate. I don't condone it. It's
been a burden that I've had to carry to try
to justify that story. So I'm not doing that anymore.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
That's interesting, and you know, to think about how these
things play out differently today. It was interesting you mentioned
that at the time the actor thing, Luke and Lawer
actually saw a social worker to talk about the playing
of this.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
But now you would have an intimacy coordinator on set.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Yeah, it would be a totally different ballgame, or you'd
hope that it would be a totally different ballgame. I think, look,
Geinie Francis is in her sixties now, right, just had
forty years to reflect on this thing that happened to her.
But she was a seventeen year old girl playing with
a thirty seven year old actor, right, I mean, just
the whole thing would be handled so differently now because
in addition to the rape, there would be the statutory issues.
(37:41):
There just is I think a better understanding of how
power dynamics work, Like it wasn't even really brought up
at the time that he was her boss.
Speaker 4 (37:51):
It's also like, were this scene to play out today,
there would be a concurrent dialogue happening on Twitter and
elsewhere about how it was handled in real time, and
so you'd be having to preemptively prepare for the criticism
that you knew you were going to face and really
make sure it was handled delicately. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I mean an interesting thing is is, did you see
The Accused When I came out, that was sort of
like one of the first depictions I ever saw of
gang rape.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
And now the dialogue around that movie has actually even shifted,
Like I.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Think it's kind of fascinating because I've seen dialogue about
how it's too violent it's presented and too daring away.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
It's not it's like triggering.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
And I think that's really interesting because the reason that
movie was so groundbreaking when it happened is because it
was presented in so violent a way. It sort of
forced you to face the reality of that violence. Yeah,
but now if you played it so violently, they would
say it was exploitative, right, Like, if you did that
scene now, you would want to handle it with more
sensitivity because we get that rape is violence. We don't
need to like shove it in your face that same way.
(38:52):
But that cultural context is important. When that movie happened,
people didn't really understand how violent rape could be, so
it had to be so aggressive.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
I think now two storylines are forced to grapple with
the enduring trauma of something like that happening, right, and
that has to be written in Yes.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And I think, let's be honest, we've all or most
of us, have watched many years of Law and Order SVU,
and that has in many ways changed the way that
rape is handled on other shows. That's an interesting example
of a show that not only has kind of moved
the needle in terms of how a lot of us
understand sexual assault, but has actually changed the way other
(39:31):
shows handle it because it has really introduced a lot
of ideas into the culture that are now very commonly
acknowledged as facts, and those things continue to evolve.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Okay, So I feel like we need to take a
moment to just pause and reacknowledge what we're talking about.
This show is about how we internalize these messages, right, So,
look like nineteen eighty one, I was not born when
this hit, Like this was a little bit before our time,
but when you think about the time when we were
sexually coming of age, like how the strands of this
(40:09):
might have still impacted us in the way that we
saw ourselves in the culture, Like, yes, was it okay
for guys to be really aggressive when they wanted to
pursue you?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I mean, I definitely sell the answer to that was yes.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I think I put up with a lot of things
that now I see in my niece like that you
would never put up with.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
You know, we just accepted a certain level of behavior.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That we wouldn't now know And now it's understood that
this is completely unacceptable, But you know, at that time,
I think people just really didn't understand what the boundaries were,
Like this reminds me of this crazy jarring anecdote that
I read, which is really stayed with me. It's that
Tony Geary, the actor who plays Luke, told the story
(40:55):
that when he would go to like soap opera conventions
and events after the scene aired, women would come up
to him and say, rape me Luke.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
And it's like a thing that he would tell because
he was so disturbed by it.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
But I think it says so much about what we've
been talking about here, which is that there's this underlying
sense that a woman should like want to be found irresistible.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Right, And it just introduces this idea that men express
love or this like need through violence, and that if
you experience it as violence and not love, the problem
is with you and not the thing that's happened to you.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Right.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
I'd be really interested to hear from Cindy a someone
who actually lived through this.
Speaker 5 (41:38):
I think I learned that as a woman, it's incredibly
flattering and important to be desired by a man, and
that even if that quote unquote desire is violent and
hurts you or hurts other people, that like, on some
level that's okay. I feel like in a way, I'm
(41:59):
a best case scenari. I had a very feminist mom
who did not truck with those kinds of stereotypes at all.
I'm lucky that in those years after watching that on
General Hospital, I didn't have any kind of rape experience myself,
which is unusual I think for women. But still, on
some level, I think it just underlined this very present
(42:21):
message in our culture that you're kind of nobody unless
a guy has overwhelming desire for you. I mean, when
you think about it, General Hospital taught a whole generation
of women like me, girls at the time what relationships were,
what family secrets were, about, what infidelity was, and also
(42:43):
what sexual violence is. And I don't think it taught
us accurately.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a
cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want us
to explore in a future episode. Email us at inretropod
at gmail dot com, or find us on Instagram at
in retropod.
Speaker 4 (43:09):
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and the Media.
Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and
associate producer.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina at Norville.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli. Sound
correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your
hosts Susie Beannacarum.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
And Jessica Bennett.
Speaker 4 (44:00):
We're also executive producers for even more check out in
retropod dot com.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
See you next week.
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