Luke and Laura UnRevised Message Board: Re: Gloria Monty on the rape (1998)

It was an amazing scene. It was so fraught with emotion and desperation. The fact that the audience didn't see the rape made it even more sensational. You could only know what happened between them from the scenes that followed. Laura stumbled into the park sobbing. Luke was distraught. Was the upset due to a rape or the fact that they had already fallen in love without recognizing it? He was drunk. He wasn't even sure about what he had done. It was a sort of date rape before its time. It was something that got out of control between two people who were caught up in an emotional spiral.

I thought the scene in the hospital with the flowers was confusing. Had Laura just lost her memory of the event? Was she trying to protect Luke from prosecution, and why would she do that? It certainly had me riveted to my seat every day for the next installment.

It was a time when characters on soaps were easily identified as good guys or bad. it was quite obvious that Tony's Luke was a treasure to the show. I thought he was done for with this rape episode. Gloria left just enough wiggle room for him. She ignited a firestorm on the talk shows. In the following months, Luke became one of the most popular characters ever on a soap. It was obvious that LnL had struck a chord with the audience. I never have seen anything like it before or since.

Previous Message

In September 22, 1998 SOW. Gloria said that she helped
to create the scene and she directed it, but didn't write it.
She says, "I refuse to call it rape. Someone told me that
sequence would never fly today because women are different, and
they would object to it. That's nonsense." She said she
intentionally directed it to have what really happened to Laura
vague in the audience's mind. "You heard her scream 'No, but we
cut away before. You didn't know what ultimately happened,
except that they had sex. I wanted the audience to wonder, 'was
it a rape?'" She says the truth came out later in more subtle
scenes and THOSE are the ones she wrote, rather than the rape.
She says that these later scenes were overlooked.

"After the seduction, Luke went to see her in the hospital. He
brought flowers and she smiled and said, 'Thank you,' and, most
importantly, she accepted the flowers. She acted as if nothing
had happened. She could have looked at him the way that she did
and accepted the flowers, if she thought that what had happened
was a rape. The night of the seduction, this man had one day to
live. He was going to die. She came into the disco, and he kept
telling her to go away. In an emotional sequence like that, if
she had started running out and he caught her and dragged her
back, then I would also say it was rape. But if the man says,
'Get out, get out, please leave,' and you stay. . . then you're
crossing the line."