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