hello!
We have to remember why Luke decided to pull off the sailboat seduction, with Bobbie's help. Laura had said she was going to tell Scottie and Lee EVERYTHING, so as to convince them that Frank Smith was really a dangerous mobster. Luke tried to convince her that was a terrible idea that would get them all killed, but he wasn't getting anywhere with Laura. So he came up with the seduction because he knew if Laura felt partly responsible for what happened between them that she wouldn't have the courage to spill the beans about everything in her confusion. And he knew she had feelings for him. I actually thought the writing around it was well done and compelling.
The rape, and the story afterward, was easily some of the most complex material I’ve ever seen on a soap. Laura’s emotions ran the gambit. She was at times distraught, confused, enraged, delusional, jealous, needy and so much more. Luke was tormented by what he did. But he wasn’t rewritten instantly like a white knight. Remember the scene where Laura’s at the disco with her husband and a jealous Luke plays Rise? Or Luke being disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant? Despicable behavior, but very human, and Tony was so good you felt bad for Luke too. They were obviously in love afterward and it was complicated. Date rape often is.
I think the legendary Doug Marland was the head writer for all that? Didn’t he leave because he didn’t agree with Luke and Laura ending up together? I read an interview with him and he had totally different plans for Luke.
I love the original rape story. I hate the rewrite that started with the sailboat seduction scene. That’s a great scene, but the rewrite is a total insult to the complex, very well written and acted rape story that Doug and his team wrote.
Thankfully when Wendy Riche and Michelle Val Jean revisited the rape in 1998 they returned some of that ambiguity. Laura finally calls it rape again, for the first time in over 17 years. But she also makes it clear that it was complicated, that they were in love, and that she had some responsibility in what happened that didn’t make it right, but made the situation more complex than anyone would understand.
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.
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."
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