A Soap Opera Romance That Started With An Assault

Hi everyone.

Before we start, just a note that we discuss sexual assault and violence in this episode.

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.

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.

This is their wedding, which took place in nineteen eighty one, Hunt Be I Pledge my trust.

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, Luke sexually assaulted Laura. I'm Susie Bannaker.

And I'm Jessica Bennett.

This is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped.

Us and that we just can't stop thinking about.

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.

So, Susie, I know nothing about soap operas except that there is one starring a woman named Jessica Bennett who shares money.

Is that true?

It's called Passion Passions.

That was a short lived but very wild soap opera.

She remains on Wikipedia. Anyway, were you a huge General hospital fan? Like what led you to this moment?

So?

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.

I was a Days of Our Life girl.

One Life to Live girl, which was kind of unusual because it was split.

Days of Our Lives was on RBC.

Do you remember the tagline for Days of Our Lives like sand to the hour live zero?

So are the Days of our Lives?

Of our lives?

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.

And I think that's kind of why I.

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 seems worth exploring this really relationship that was seen as so romantic but started with an assault.

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.

And you know, guess what.

She remembers this relationship between Luke and Laura as completely romantic.

I think that's what most people thought.

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.

Yeah, it was a soap robera that started in nineteen sixty three and had its heyday in the nineteen eighties.

It was just hugely popular.

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.

Okay, So, Luke and Lear are characters who do not work in that hospital.

Yeah, they don't work in the hospital.

Not literally, everyone on the show works in the hospital, got it.

They just live in Port Charles.

Okay, And where should we begin in terms of their Can we call it a relationship?

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.

Oh wow.

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.

It's like an actual wedding, which is why.

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.

Wow, why were people so obsessed with this couple? Like what was the appeal?

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.

It was literally the closest thing American tat to her royal wedding.

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.

Across the country watched for the big moment.

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?

I love what thing.

We're confident they get to Gema just between you know, they're very much in love and it's a really beautiful thing.

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 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

Jennie Francis who plays Laurae.

Francis, who plays Laura Spencer, is twenty and so they don't give it her champagne.

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.

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.

World at that time.

Okay, so the culture of the world is kind of treating this fake wedding like a real wedding.

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 a stranglehold soap operas had on the culture in the eighties.

Or even television.

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

Silly, ridiculous thing.

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.

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.

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.

That's kind of like a shift.

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.

This is why there's viewing parties in these dorm roo.

Yes, you know, a common thing that was talked about among soap fans is that they would schedule their classes around their sobb.

Wow, it's such a different time.

But it's like worth noting that even though soap operas aren't that popular now, General Hospital is still on the air.

Oh right, I mean people forget that, but it.

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.

Is there's like a lot of options now.

Yeah, so it doesn't seem as popular, but two million people is not a paltry number.

That's way more than most cable shows get.

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.

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.

Yeah, it is hard to believe.

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.

Oh okay, where do they work at a disco?

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.

Kidnapped, they must get cloned.

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 a temporary character who was going to be a bad boy,

Oh so it's not doing good at this time.

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.

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.

I mean, it is wild, but it does work.

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 that is like popular with viewers. That must be kind of what she's thinking when she introduces this character.

Okay, so this new thirty two year old character, Luke, ends up hiring seventeen year old Laura at his nightclib.

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 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.

Okay, And so this scene picks.

Up where she has seen him crying because he is like, I'm a dead man walking, Okay, we come you cry.

I wasn't crying.

You were, and you didn't know that I was here.

First.

I was like, Oh, that's kind of progressive of them, Like he's shedding cheers.

I'm sure it's not gonna be so progressive, is it? Can it worked out in time? Time is what I've known.

He's sort of setting it up that like, if you don't have time, then you must have the woman you love.

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.

He might he has to act on this love lust. I said I was going to be dead killed little lady.

Can't you get that through your head?

Now get out here?

So he's pushing her away because essentially the messages he can't control himself, and then he professes his love.

Damn it, Laura, I'm with you. No, I.

I think it's really love, Luca.

Yes, Yes, that's what it is.

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.

No, you really feel that the tension is building, and then things clearly unravel, Luke.

Let me call it tactic playing, and.

So you don't see the right itself, let me go.

But it's unambiguous.

It's definitely her raise are ripped, she's looking upset, she's crying.

She's clearly said no ahead of time.

Yeah, she's screaming no when it starts and quotes.

It's a kind of jarring moment because it happens pretty suddenly, like you go.

Goose bumps watching it.

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 on the ground, she is cowering, her closer torn and her clothes are torn.

He is standing above her.

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?

And Luke lies about it.

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.

And that's the scene.

Okay, that was a lot.

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.

And that song then goes on to become number one on the Billboard charts.

I know, it's crazy and like for.

A jazz funk instrumental that was as rare then as it is today.

And it's funny. Actually, I don't know if you remember this.

You called me and I was in Palm Springs with a friend and in a weed shop.

Naturally, that's where either of us would be at any given.

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,

Of it into Biggie's song Hypnotized.

Oh excellent song, by the.

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.

All the kids were like jamming and.

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 royal level wedding two years later.

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.

And again let me acknowledge how wild that is.

He was so immediately popular that producers decided they wanted to find a way to keep him on the show.

Wait, and how do they know he's so popular?

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.

Is quite popular. Okay, we got to keep Yeah, this gets some coverage.

At the time, the ratings weren't good before this, the ratings start to creep up, so.

They do not kill him off.

Okay, but that leaves them with the problem a little.

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 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

Tony Geary, the actor who.

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.

So what were we supposed to do?

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.

They literally go back.

They can appear in flashbacks so that.

The scenes they're showing for flashbacks aren't as disturbing.

Oh wow.

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.

Maybe you should name me as the rapist. You in jail, well, maybe that's where I belong.

No, don't say that you're not a criminal.

Then by the time the wedding happens.

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.

And actually they even remove the song. They stop playing the song because the song is like so associated with the rape.

Oh wow, so interesting.

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.

I mean, there is an audience that remembers.

And at one point Laura is narrating the scene and she describes it as the first time Luke and.

I made love. Oh wow, and there is a reaction.

It's not like a huge national reaction or anything, but there are people at that time who are like, what is happening?

And actually we know one of those people one of our executive producers, Cindy Levy.

Yeah.

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.

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 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.

ABC channel seven and.

Watch it at three o'clock, usually with a humongous.

Bowl of coffee ice cream. It was like a comfort hour for me. Why did you love it so much?

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 she seemed incredibly glamorous and grown up to me at the time.

Do you remember what you initially thought when Luke showed up.

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.

You've told me in the past that you were watching the episode when Luke raped Laura. Can you describe that experience.

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 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.

Were you rooting for them? I was totally rooting for them.

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.

Do you remember talking to your friends about it, talking to them about the rape.

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 his knees and you know, was flashing me said something

And it was.

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.

Looking back on it now, how do you think about it?

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?

Nope?

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

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

They are making these soap operas.

They are hiring other women to be the writers, and so a lot of topics that those women are interested in.

Oh, that's really interesting discussed too, the place that a woman showrunner or a woman writer could actually thrive.

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.

Right, And yeah, that's interesting too.

It's like, actually, maybe this is more accurate to what we really did think of it at the time.

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 worker before they tape the scene. I mean, there is an acknowledgement that this is a difficult subject to tackle.

I can give you my perspective here.

So we did end up calling your friend Daniel Thompson, who you mentioned at the top of the show.

Oh good, I'm so glad.

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.

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.

About TV of the past. So what did she say?

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 really delivers.

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

But I don't necessarily.

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.

So one question I.

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.

Yeah, one hundred percent.

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

Talk about what happened that night, that one bad night twenty years ago.

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.

These are not going anywhere until we have this out. I am you gonna do?

What if I walk out the door?

What would you do? Force me to stay? Why?

Because you're stronger than me?

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.

You were conceived, born and raised in love, nothing but love.

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, and I think Tony Gary also felt that way, and neither of them seemed like they really appreciated being.

Put in that position, to be honest.

They both left the show not long after the wedding and then returned.

Oh for those.

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.

I didn't even know what it was.

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.

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.

But now you would have an intimacy coordinator on set.

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.

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.

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.

And now the dialogue around that movie has actually even shifted, Like I.

Think it's kind of fascinating because I've seen dialogue about how it's too violent it's presented and too daring away.

It's not it's like triggering.

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.

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.

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

Okay, So I feel like we need to take a moment to just pause and reacknowledge what we're talking about.

I mean, I definitely sell the answer to that was yes.

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.

You know, we just accepted a certain level of behavior.

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 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.

Oh my god. Yeah.

And it's like a thing that he would tell because he was so disturbed by it.

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.

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.

Right.

I'd be really interested to hear from Cindy a someone who actually lived through this.

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 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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina at Norville.

Our artwork is from Pentagram.

Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli. Sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts Susie Beannacarum.

And Jessica Bennett.

We're also executive producers for even more check out in retropod dot com.

See you next week.