I have to confess that General Hospital is not a soap I've ever watched regularly and, with my life being a bit chaotic recently, I hadn't followed the story at all. I'd seen reports about it on soap websites, of course, but I hadn't had the time to tune in.
The e-mail this weekend, though, prompted me to take a look at this story, which is a groundbreaking one for a daytime soap in the United States. I've heard a few rumors over the years that a male/male rape storyline was in the works on various soaps, but they always turned out to be nothing more than online speculation.
I've always thought it would be a pretty powerful story, if told right, but I honestly didn't think an American soap would ever go there. I knew that it had already happened on a British soap, though. Back in March 2000, Hollyoaks wrote what from most accounts was a pretty intense and well written storyline involving a male/male rape.
The character of Luke Morgan (played by Gary Lucy) had been bullied for awhile by his football teammate Mark Gibbs and some of his friends. When Luke finally stood up to Mark, he and his friends beat Luke up in a locker room after a football match. Luke ran off, but the guys gave chase and two of Mark's friends held Luke down while Mark raped him.
The actual rape took place in a special late night episode of the soap, but the aftermath played out on the show itself as Luke battled depression, lost his girlfriend because he felt he couldn't tell her about being raped, and eventually attempted suicide before finally opening up to his friends, family, and the police about what had happened to him.
Even then it was far from clear sailing, with Luke's father not wanting him to go public about the rape and his parents marriage crumbling in the aftermath. Mark and his friends were eventually found guilty and sent to prison, but it was far from easy for Luke to move on even after that. (I've only seen bits of the story itself on YouTube and read summaries, so bear with me if I got any details slightly wrong).
It always seemed less than likely that an American soap would tell such a story, especially when rape itself has always been such a poorly handled issue on daytime. Countless female characters have been raped over the years, but there are a few glaring examples that stand out as especially outrageous. Most famously (and most reprehensibly), of course, is General Hospital's Luke & Laura, where the rapist and his victim ended up not only marrying each other but becoming one of daytime's most popular supercouples.
On Days of Our Lives the character of Jack raped his wife, Kayla, before going on to become a lovably comedic character and one half of the popular Jack & Jennifer, not to mention a brother-in-law to Kayla, who'd married his brother.
The character of Todd Manning on One Life to Live was the leader of a very famous (and very well told) fraternity gang rape storyline back in 1993. While hardly a heroic character, Todd remains front and center on the soap today, with wives, ex-wives, children, and even a shared grandchild with his victim, Marty Saybrooke.
Worse, he essentially raped Marty again a few years ago when she had amnesia. That rape was more emotional than physical, since the clueless Marty thought she'd fallen in love with him and didn't regain her memory until after she'd made love to her rapist.
That's just a drop in the bucket and only touches on the male/female rapes. There have also been several stories in which a female character essentially rapes a male character and gets away with it completely, with no one even recognizing it as rape.
The one that comes to mind right away for me is from Days of Our Lives, where Sami Brady (herself a rape victim!) drugged her sister Carrie's boyfriend, Austin Reed, and had sex with him while he thought she was Carrie. That is certainly rape and would be described as such if the roles had been reversed.
That's really just the tip of the iceberg on this subject, so I'm sure you see why I thought that a male/male rape was doubly unlikely in a medium that is already squeamish about two men being together when both parties are willing.
So I wasn't really sure what to expect with this General Hospital storyline. It made sense that if any soap would feature a male/male rape, it would be the more violent than most GH, but I'd also trust them the least to deal with the aftermath of such a groundbreaking story.
The victim was 17 year old Michael, son of the show's lead character, mob boss Sonny Corinthos. Michael was in prison for murder last spring when he was beaten and raped by a fellow inmate named Carter, who was subsequently killed by Sonny's right hand man, Jason, who'd found out that Michael was being harassed by the man. The show left what exactly had happened up to viewer's imaginations until just a few months ago, when Michael discovered a friend being attacked and finally flashed back to what had happened to him.
Jason had his suspicions about how far the harassment in prison had gone, especially given how uncomfortable the virginal Michael seemed about the topic of sex after his release, but it wasn't until January that Michael finally confessed to Jason that he'd been raped.
Chad Duell (above), the actor playing Michael, really blew me away in that scene, as well as in subsequent scenes where he tells his brother & friend and discusses it with mother and then his macho, mob boss father.
Overall, in fact, I'm fairly impressed with what I've seen of this story, which admittedly is not much more than the clips I've just linked to! But Chad Duell seems a promising talent and I'm glad that Daytime has taken on another subject that seemed forever taboo. It's especially important, I think, that people finally see a story in which something that has largely been treated as a punchline in pop culture- being raped in prison- is far from being a joke.
2 comments:
I thought Jack raped Jennifer on Days of our Lives...
No, he raped Kayla. Jennifer, as is likely when you're a woman on daytime, was also raped, though her assailant was Lawrence Alamain.
To the show's credit, they did use Jennifer's rape to get Jack to face up, emotionally speaking, to what he'd done to Kayla a few years before.
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