Volume I, Issue v

January 1999

Books in Review by Arda Clark

No End to Her: Soap Opera and the Female Subject
By Martha Nochimson
University of California Press, 1992
Available in paperback; $14.95

In No End to Her, Martha Nochimson, a college instructor of film and television and a previous writer and editor of several soap operas, describes how soap operas, with their strong female characters, filter reality through a feminine consciousness and thus challenge male-dominated "Hollywood" versions of reality. She uses a fascinating mix of feminist film criticism, mythology, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics to advance her theories about female characters in soaps.

A linchpin of her book is identifying Freud's Oedipal theory of development--that a young boy is horrified by the absence of a penis in his mother, and assuming the mother has been castrated and fearing his own castration, rejects the mother and identifies with his father--as the informing principle of Hollywood movies. She uses James Bond movies as examples of such movies that portray masterful heroes who must dominate the dangerous feminine energy in order to make the world (patriarchy) safe. (The specific and amusing example she uses is that of Goldfinger in which James Bond must tame Pussy Galore in order to achieve his aims.)

The problem with Freud's theory, of course, is that it pre-supposes a male subject. Even if one accepts the theory that boys achieve masculinity by rejecting their mothers and bonding with their fathers, Oedipal theory does little to explain the development of young girls. Nochimson selects the myth of Persephone as the informing principle of feminine discourse, in which category she places the soap opera. In the myth, Hades, the god of the underworld, abducts and rapes Persephone. Demeter, Persephone's mother and goddess of grain and harvest, threatens to make the earth barren if her daughter is not returned to her. Zeus, who takes Demeter's threat seriously, intervenes and asks Hades to return Persephone to Demeter. Persephone, in the meantime, has eaten six pomegranate seeds and, according to Olympian law, having shared a meal with Hades, may not leave the underworld. The eventual compromise is that Persephone lives half the year with Hades (six months, one for each pomegranate seed) and the other half with Demeter.

While the Oedipal pattern "demands rejection of the feminine in the service of masculine bonding," the myth of Persephone shows the rejection of the feminine to be detrimental to society: It is Demeter's "alienation" that "suggests barrenness and dissolution." Nochimson then asserts that Persephone's myth "clears the way for a female subject who exercises influence not through control, subjugation, distancing, and exclusiveness, but through unity, cooperation, closeness, and inclusiveness." While the Oedipal hero must reject the feminine and choose his allegiance to masculinity, the Persephone myth provides a model of alternation, "an oscillation that can satisfy competing, but equally valid, claims."

Nochimson uses the Persephone myth throughout the book to discuss the heroines of soap opera. She identifies two historical periods of soap opera heroines: from 1933 to 1978 and from 1978 to 1988. The pre-1978 soap heroine is "an embryonic female subject" in a narrative that prevented the "heroine from assuming a separate identity." She refers to 1978 as "the watershed year of the existence of General Hospital," and points to Laura as the first heroine to become a "model of the power of feminine eroticism."

In addition to interpreting Laura, Nochimson provides extended readings of Viki Lord of One Life to Live, Kimberly and Kayla Brady of Days of Our Lives, and Julia Wainwright of Santa Barbara. (The jacket cover of No End to Her shows three stills of Julia Wainwright, portrayed by Nancy Lee Grahn, now Alexis on GH.) For this review, I want to focus on Nochimson's reading of the character of Laura. Nochimson identifies Laura Webber as a heroine who resolves the conflict between her desire and convention by following her desire. Moreover, in the process of following her desire, Laura, using her "erotic power," succeeds in breaking up what Nochimson refers to as "the Oedipal dyad" of Luke and Frank Smith.

For Nochimson, Laura's first heroic task is to reject "being used incestuously as an object" by David Hamilton. Nochimson explains that when Laura "realized Hamilton was offering her only exploitation, not love, she refused Hamilton's advances and killed him when he pressed his suit forcefully." While I have not seen the scene described above, my understanding, in part based on Gary Wagner's General Hospital: The Complete Scrapbook, is that Laura, horrified by Hamilton's revelation that he loves Lesley, not Laura, strikes Hamilton forcibly, causing him to fall and fatally injure his head on the fireplace hearth. A similar story, found in the History Highlights page of Port Charles Online describes how Rick Webber, Laura's adoptive father, uncovers Laura's affair with Hamilton, and angrily orders Hamilton out of the Webber home where he has been living. Laura pleads that Hamilton take her with him. When Laura overhears Hamilton tell Lesley that he loves Lesley and not Laura, a stunned Laura kills Hamilton by pushing him forcibly. Regardless of how Laura uncovered the truth about Hamilton, it appears that Laura was expressing her rage at having been used. But I don't see a conscious refusal on Laura's part to be additionally exploited by Hamilton. Hamilton's accidental murder may contain some symbolic truth of Laura's refusal, but the events surrounding Hamilton's death do not show a heroic Laura following her desire.

According to Nochimson, with Hamilton dead, Laura, "having successfully resisted the first stage of the patriarchal assault on the feminine," is "free to define her own erotic choices." Her next choice is Scotty Baldwin, the son of a lawyer who aspires to become a lawyer like his "socially correct" father. While Scotty is the "right" man in conventional terms, "for various reasons, audience and network seemed to be ready for a narrative that took arms against the problems caused by conventional marriage to a conventional husband." I believe Nochimson is correct in her assessment that the audience was ready for Laura to make a non-conventional choice. But the narrative power of Luke's obsession with Laura, the rape, and the Left-Handed Boy story cannot be ignored. Audiences supported Laura's unconventional choice at least partly because the Luke and Laura tales were much more interesting than the Laura and Scotty tales.

(Nochimson relates that Doug Marland, the head writer at GH in 1978, felt that "the emotional bond between Laura and Scotty was so complete that viewers would not accept Laura's interest in another man." Apparently, Marland intended to write a "Great Gatsby" story in which Luke, a member of the lower class, would aspire to win the privileged Laura, amass a fortune to impress the woman he loved, and die because of his mob connections. While Luke would disrupt the Baldwin marriage, after Luke's death, Scotty and Laura would re-unite. Marland left General Hospital before writing this tale, but believed, in retrospect, that given the audience enthusiasm for Luke and Laura, he would have had Laura leave Scott and unite with Luke.)

"The so-called rape of Laura by Luke was not a rape at all, since it was almost completely free from association with dominance-subordination eroticism. The labeling of their sexual encounter as a rape originated with Laura's use of the term. But...she described her lovemaking with Luke in this way only because she initially did not have the appropriate language. The failure of language was made quite clear on the show; nevertheless, the misnomer 'rape' was taken up by the media, even after Laura had disavowed it in the narrative, because mainstream discourse remained unable or unwilling to discuss Laura's rejection of conventional marriage in any other terms. (Although Tony Geary reinforced the misnomer in public relations appearances, it must be remembered that publicity exists in the discourse of the network, not in the special discourse of the soap opera narrative.)"

Nochimson acknowledges that the scene contains "superficial marks of conventional domination-subordination sexuality" but that "numerous" details in the story "erode the possessor/possessed model." The details she provides, however, are either insignificant or erroneously interpreted. She first advances the idea that since the "encounter" took place at the Campus Disco, Luke's turf, a male hierarchy might be indicated since he, as her boss, supersedes her as a waitress. She then dismisses this idea by stating that "their encounter takes place during a dance after hours, when male hierarchy is in abeyance." Nochimson's argument is flawed on two levels. First, no one needs to consider the setting or the employer/employee relationship in order to argue that the encounter was a rape. The reason the encounter was labeled a rape is because we see Luke forcing Laura to the floor while she repeatedly cries "no!", we see her ripped clothes and her smeared make-up, and we see Luke's profound regret once he realizes what he has done. Second, since Nochimson does bring up the employer/employee relationship, why exactly is male hierarchy in abeyance after hours? Would Nochimson be willing to consider it a rape if the encounter took place during working hours?

The second detail Nochimson points to in her argument that the rape is a misnomer is that Scotty is "elsewhere, having coffee with another woman (a notorious seducer of married men) at the very time he is supposed to pick her up." While this detail shows the troubled state of Laura and Scotty's marriage, it has no bearing on whether Luke and Laura's encounter is rape or lovemaking. There simply is no moment in the rape scene where we see Laura choosing Luke because her marriage to Scotty is in trouble. I believe Laura's conflicted feelings about her marriage contribute to her subsequent unwillingness to name Luke as the rapist, but those conflicted feelings have no place in a discussion of whether Laura was raped or was making love.

Nochimson's third detail is the dance. She contends that Laura's sexuality is awakened by the dance and that the "sight of her physical involvement with the music" in turn stimulates Luke's desire for her. Nochimson compares Laura's sensuality to Persephone, who is picking flowers in a field just prior to her abduction by Hades. Nochimson adds that "[Persephone's] own desire and the delight she takes in her own sensuality, it seems, are prerequisite to masculine desire." Without discussing alternative readings of what flower picking might symbolize, Nochimson's comparison of Persephone's delight in her sensuality to Laura's awakened sensuality is once again flawed. While an argument may be made that Laura initially enjoys the attention she receives from Luke, once she realizes that Luke's state of mind is confused and desperate, she struggles to leave. By the time Luke suggests the dance, Laura is already aware that she is in a dangerous situation. Just prior to his demand "Dance with me, Laura," Luke says: "I'm not going to die without holding you in my arms just one time." Laura knows that Luke's invitation to dance is in fact an invitation to sex and she turns Luke down. Luke then says, "I said, dance with me." What we see on Laura's face just prior to the rape is not what Nochimson describes as "Laura's struggle with her own desire, and with her fear of shedding conventional limits" but fear for her personal safety. Laura explicitly says: "Luke, I have to go now...you're frightening me." (Where we do see Laura's "struggle with her own desire" is in the scene on the sailboat where Laura, trapped by Luke behind what she believes is a jammed door, succumbs to Luke and admits that she does want to make love to him. Nochimson, however, does not mention this scene.)

Nochimson's next argument is intriguing and compelling in general terms, but she is incorrect about the specifics. She writes: "Laura's erotic power emerges in 'the rape scene,' but the contextual positioning of the polarities of intimacy and violence in that scene defy any appropriate application of the term: Luke and Laura make love while Luke is supposed to be carrying out a contract murder for Smith. Luke and Laura's sexual involvement at that moment defies the destructive submission to patriarchy each has made: Laura preferring intimacy with Luke to the emptiness of the marriage as she knows it, and Luke preferring intimacy with Laura to 'wasting' another of Smith's minions, who, mirroring Luke's very position, foretells Luke's own future." Nochimson, however, confuses two separate evenings. The night of the rape, October 5, 1979, is the night that Luke finds out that his assignment is to kill Mitch Williams on "election night." Election night (November 6) is a month after the rape and on that night Laura throws Luke's car keys away to prevent him from carrying out the assignment. Despite Nochimson's confusion, while the rape does not specifically keep Luke from his assignment, his involvement with Laura, and hence her "erotic power" is instrumental in Luke's defiance of Frank Smith and the breaking up of their Oedipal relationship.

Nochimson returns to the Persephone myth in discussing Laura's decision to go on the run with Luke. Here, the myth fits in nicely with Laura (Persephone) leaving her Lesley (Demeter) and Port Charles to be with Luke (Hades) for a while and then returning.

While I have focused on Nochimson's reading of Laura for this review, Nochimson herself focuses on Julia Wainwright's character and her relationship with Mason Capwell. Viewers of Santa Barbara may find Nochimson's extensive analyses interesting and rewarding. And while I strongly disagree with her interpretation of Laura, I do find Nochimson's theories stimulating. Her use of the Persephone myth is particularly rewarding, shedding light not only on soap opera's inclusion of masculine and feminine viewpoints, but also on the oscillating rhythms of the narrative.