Backstory to this post: When I grew up, I watched soaps, mostly ABC soaps. Later on I got into Days of Our Lives and later some CBS ones. But the ABC Soaps are my bread and butter. I was about three when I started watching them with my dad who would always fall asleep leaving me to be enamored with stories that were way over my head.
One Life to Live , one of my soaps, did a groundbreaking and Emmy winning story about gang rape back in 1993. The story revolved around a young college student being raped by three frat brothers. The show portrayed a pretty graphic scene by network and daytime standards, followed the aftermath of the rape and its effect on the victim Marty, and her accusers, most pivotal the sadistic Todd. He tormented her and stalked her following the rape. Todd eventually became a fan favorite and was redeemed slowly over the years. All the time he and Marty ever interacted, Todd would treat her with a distant remorse while Marty always had the underlying disgust and contempt.
Now the characters are back in each other's orbit, Marty has lost her memory, and Todd is taking care of her, not telling of her life or the rape, and they are falling in love. The show is seriously selling this as a love story. Is a rapist and victim love story ever a good idea, even in daytime TV?
Looking back in history, soaps most famous couple started with rape. Luke and Laura, the 80's pop culture icons who put soaps on the map had a rocky start when Luke raped Laura at the campus disco. What was later called a "seduction" and piled under the rug in the 80's, was revisited in the 90's with amazing writing and acting by General Hospital. It was a story linking generations together as Luke and Laura's son was dealing with his best friend's rape, and repulsed to discover that was part of his parent's history, leading to a confrontation and first real conversation about the rape between daytime's supercouple.
So it might have worked for Luke and Laura, but that was the 80's, rape wasn't as publicized. That rape wasn't even dealt with onscreen. Todd was convicted of this rape, it haunted both characters for years. I guess viewer response is mixed as younger and newer viewers are positive and liking the romance, while longtime fans are outraged.
If a shows legacy in the past twenty years is most associated with this social conscious story, which was told so amazing the first time, now wants to go back and destroy it for ratings, what does that tell us about the state of television, and more specifically soaps?
Also, what message is the show sending to viewers, it's ok women, you get brutally raped and taunted about it afterwards, give them fifteen years, they have changed and just didn't know how to express their love then?
1 comment:
I'm an ABC soap fan myself, though I don't have much time to watch these days. You raise a really interesting question and you make a good comparison between the two soap storylines. I did get a chance to catch OLTL yesterday and there was a scene where Marty was contemplating this very question. I don't have an answer. But I can tell you that when Laura fell in love with Luke on GH 20+ years ago, EVERYONE was talking about it. Who had ever heard of such a thing?! VERY controversial! And to top it off, the Herb Albert song that Laura was raped to became a big hit.
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