OLTL and GH: Watching Sadism for Thrills; Soaps Are Not Snuff Films

[DeeeDee]

The Lou Pearlman of Daytime.

[marceline]

Sadly Jessica has become a one-woman game of Whack-a-mole. They might as well have people line up to smack her, like that scene in "Airplane." I'll never understand how in a post-Buffy world soaps haven't figured out that maybe the women should be getting stronger not weaker.

What I find interesting about Stacy's death is that it was a microcosm of what soaps have become. She died within mere hours of giving birth and she died completely focused on Rex. Triangles, babies and death, that's all that soaps seem to offer up. Triangles, babies and death.

[Bright Eyes]

Word. What worse is those women who used to be strong, intelligent and just as capable and equal as any man on the show have been diminished or played as an (unfunny) joke. As a male myself, I live to see strong women in fiction, whether it be soaps, movies, or books. Without a strong woman, a story of any kind is severely lacking to me.

[quartermainefan]

There is an unrealistic, almost cartoonish quality to the violence on DOOL than some of these other things the article was talking about. Batman with Jack Nicholson has tons of violence and explosions and whatnot, but just because he shot Jack Palance does not mean the death of Jack Palance's character resonates as much as some of the violence in the Heath Ledger Batman movie. Elmer Fudd shot himself in the face probably dozens of times, but it hardly can be described as serious violence. And agan, Doug, Roman, Victor and Stefano all lived. Jack multiple times. Doug dying in the cemetery was fairly serious, I guess, but still retained a movie serial quality to it imo.

[R Sinclair]

Greg Madden? The man was buried alive and tortured for weeks in his own crap and piss. If we're going to be qualifying deaths, then by all means... that one tops them all. He put a baby up for a LEGAL adoption and was murdered for it. That beats a dumb broad falling through thin ice. And, I'm sorry, but calling a mobster's death "sadistic" or "misogynistic" is a load of crap. All because she was a woman doesn't change the fact that she was in the killing business from day one.

And to your point about Lorenzo being "tastefully" murdered off camera -- I'm pretty sure that had more to do with the writers wanting to give themselves an out in case they wanted to resurrect the character in the future than it had to do with the fact that he was simply a male.

[Sindacco]

Yes but at the time they were supposed to be dead. And I would think those death were pretty sadistic compared to those mentioned before. The reason I mentioned Stefano was because you mentioned Claudia, they were both knifed in the gut but neither died. But if you don't want to compare with DAYS we can look no furter then GH. Just a month after Claudia was knifed, Logan was killed when Lulu grabbed a knife and turned around so Logan was stabbed in the gut and died.

[R Sinclair]

Ooooh, good point! Not only that, we also got to see the actual stabbing in this glitzy promo with graphics set to a rock song and have it painted less about Logan's death but more about Lulu's journey back to an awakening Laura. Like I said before, men and women on soaps both die ugly, celebrated deaths. And sometimes, even if the deaths aren't exactly graphic, they are pretty much pointless. I'm still trying to figure out the point of GH killing Justus?

Soap Net: "Justus dies! How will Lainey react?"

Lainey: " "