HAA's Rape Storylines

[Formerly Known as FKAJ]

Maybe I don't remember the episode as well as you do, but that was when he was drugged and brainwashed. Just because he's been deprogrammed doesn't mean that he remembers everything he did. I don't know if we can really trust his declarative memory on this one.

[emmasi]

I choose to believe he raped her because if he didn't, then it's just a cheap way of rewriting history. Jonah - Michael - is not a bad person and he never was. Raping Tasha doesn't change that. He was brainwashed and scared and hardly had a choice in the matter. It'd be like hating Rocco for stabbing Sally - it makes no sense when Johnny was the one calling all the shots and threatening the poor kid with instant death, and giving him a "family loyalty" guilt trip besides. Mama Rose was doing the exact same thing to Jonah, and even if Jonah knew in his heart that it was the wrong thing to do, it was a matter of self-preservation, and of protecting Robbie and Tasha as well (Mama Rose wanted to kill Robbie if Jonah didn't keep him from interfering with her plans, and probably would have killed Tasha too if she refused to go along with it all). He was in an impossible situation, and I'd find it hard to hold the decisions he made (or had made for him) against him.

I think it was wrong of the writers to take all of that away from the character by saying that none of it ever happened. It's like he never existed as anything but Martha's perfect boyfriend.

[lilaccat]

Yeah I have to agree and I think to some extent it makes you forget about what these characters did - if they said rape I would probably think a lot less of Kane and Jonah whereas because they keep just saying attack or just trivilising the fact that anything happened it seems easy to think that it will all just be forgotten

[Anaya]

I choose to believe he raped her because if he didn't, then it's just a cheap way of rewriting history. Jonah - Michael - is not a bad person and he never was. Raping Tasha doesn't change that. He was brainwashed and scared and hardly had a choice in the matter. It'd be like hating Rocco for stabbing Sally - it makes no sense when Johnny was the one calling all the shots and threatening the poor kid with instant death, and giving him a "family loyalty" guilt trip besides. Mama Rose was doing the exact same thing to Jonah, and even if Jonah knew in his heart that it was the wrong thing to do, it was a matter of self-preservation, and of protecting Robbie and Tasha as well (Mama Rose wanted to kill Robbie if Jonah didn't keep him from interfering with her plans, and probably would have killed Tasha too if she refused to go along with it all). He was in an impossible situation, and I'd find it hard to hold the decisions he made (or had made for him) against him.

I think it was wrong of the writers to take all of that away from the character by saying that none of it ever happened. It's like he never existed as anything but Martha's perfect boyfriend.

I absolutely agree with you. The whole believers storyline was completely rewritten by bringing Jonah back and that too for nothing special other than to have Michael/Jonah as a spare part in the whole JM saga! They could have just brought in any random guy to play the perfect boyfriend part.

Bringing Jonah back would have been excellent if they actually centred the whole storyline on him and his past!

The only positive of bringing Jonah back was that we got to drool over James Mitchell onscreen during his short stint!

[Scented_Lies]

One question: how did they handle Ailsa's storyline where she found out that Shauna was her daughter?

I'm pretty sure they didn't use the word "rape". When Shauna worked out what happened I clearly remember her saying something along the lines of, "forced himsefl upon". Even though they didn't use the word "rape" though, just saying that made it more effective than simply saying "attacked" or whatever. "Taken advantage of" is another phrase I hate, it could mean anything. You could take advantage of a sale in a store for example. Rape is a completely different matter.

As for what actresses could portray it, Leah, Irene, Belle and Mattie could probably handle it. Maybe even Annie.. I don't think Sally could. Its not that Kate isn't a good actress its just that the writers couldn't possibly put her character through much more with what they have planned for her at the moment. Among the male actors, Ric or Dan are probably the only ones who could, but HAA would NEVER try to deal with male rape.

[tanya]

we can't not choose to accept the story plots or change what's happened on screen because we don't think it works!! that's not our job, that's just altering your own reality of what did happen so i''m not sure how anyone can say that they don't want to accept that michael didn't rape tasha because they feel it takes away from the whole story, it doesn't work like that. and to start doubting his word is another way of doing that-clearly the writers are telling us that he didn't rape tasha, there was nothing to suggest that he did it when he came back or that it was in any doubt from that point, we were told that he didn't rape her, they moved on from it and that was that. for us to try and over-analyse things is going a bit far, like saying that he was drugged/brainwashed and then deprogrammed, so therefore we shouldn't trust what he says. like i said, the writers told us that he didn't do it, and that's the reality. end of story.

having said all that, i was talking to my little sister about the storyline and they couldn't have planned too far ahead that he was going to come back coz when tasha was with the believers, mumma rose DID intend on (the then) jonah to get her pregnant, when, according to what we know now, she was supposed to know that he was sterile and so it was useless him going into her tent! so when they got him back as michael, they had to do some fast work with that storyline, so the problem lies with the writers doing some dodgy stuff and not because we want to blame michael for a rape he didn't commit!

...and he was martha's perfect boyfriend! silly girl for chucking away a prize like that! if i had someone half as fantastic, i'd put them in a cage and never let them out of my house!! hehe

oh! and he was wasted as a poor pawn in the stupid jack & martha saga, i really thought he'd be a regular, i was thinking that if tasha came back, there's a storyline for him, and i actually thought they'd send him looking for his real family, coz he ended up with mumma rose when he was fostered, and i really wanted to know whether he cared if he couldn't have kids! what a great dad he would have made! such potential, and all wasted when so much could have happened to develop his story and let us get to know more about him!

[emmasi]

the problem lies with the writers doing some dodgy stuff and not because we want to blame michael for a rape he didn't commit!

If you read my post again, you'll understand that the dodgy writing is exactly my point, and I never blamed Michael - or Jonah - for anything.

I don't think I have to accept what the writers want to chop and change. They often contradict the past (did Kim's mother leave him when he was a young kid, or did Barry kill her when he was still a baby?), so it really is a matter of opinion. Jonah's sterility only proves that he didn't impregnate Tasha, he was still quite capable of raping her. It is my belief that Mama Rose sent him in so that her son would appear to be the father of the miracle child, and then sent someone else in to be the actual sperm donor. The fact that Jonah believed for so long that he actually did rape Tasha suggests to me that he did do it, and that learning that he's sterile was just a small mercy that helped him to change that horrid perception of himself. He began to believe that, if Tasha was made pregnant from the rape, then it couldn't possibly have been him who did it - it was all a trick of false memory, planted by Mama Rose. But if you watch the Believers storyline, it's more than clear that Jonah knew exactly what he did to Tasha and that he was deeply sorry for it.

[tanya]

hmm...i don't think using kim's mother's story as an example was a good one; i don't recall either explanation so can't comment on them but if they said both things as two separate explanations, on different occasions, then that was obviously a clear contradiction and an oversight on the writers' part BUT in michael's case, there was no such contradiction. his actions as jonah were explained to us, and while it wasn't seamless on the writers' part, it was certainly believable and plausible, no matter how he behaved after we're led to believe that he raped tasha, or how we saw his perceived guilt - if we want to blame the writers some more, this is where we can do so OR we have to remember that he'd been drugged, so of course he'd be confused and i don't think we can use his behaviour as 'evidence' of his guilt. in fact, there is no real evidence that he'd done it at all. his time in prison, the counselling and rehabilitation that he got while he was in there, clearly worked to sort out fiction from truth, which was what he revealed to us, and while his sterility doesn't make him incapable of rape, the fact that he tells us he didn't on TWO occasions - i just remembered that he also repeats to irene that 'i didn't do what you think i did to tasha', that time annie was in hospital and irene didn't want annie to go back to live on the farm while michael was there - is enough to make us accept his word.

in my previous post, i said that afterwards there was also never any doubt that he was telling the truth about not raping tash - what i meant by that was that everyone, including martha, irene and alf, his cardcore haters in the beginning, accepted what he said, and he himself was also never shown to be in doubt of it either, as none of them referred to it again.

(btw. i missed the revelation that barry hyde was josh's killer, and he was also guilty of killing his wife?? i remember a strange man at the beginning, who then softened and was quite likeable, but was he really just a psycho serial killer??? (if killing two people qualifies you as a serial killer!) )

[Formerly Known as FKAJ]

Barry killed his wife by pushing her head underwater, when he found her trying to drown Kim as a result of post-natal depression. As for Josh, Josh had drawn a gun, they were fighting over it, and it accidentally went off. Both charges were dropped to manslaughter, but we never found out what happened at trial.

[emmasi]

Kim was trying to find his mother, because Barry had told him that she'd walked out on them. (Originally, Kim said that she left when he was around 7 or 8, so he remembered it. For this storyline, it had been changed so that Kerry had "left" when Kim was a baby, and he couldn't remember.) Barry then revealed to Kim that Kerry was dead, and he was the one that killed her. He came home and found her trying to drown Kim in the bathtub, and realised that she'd killed their other son, Jonathan, the same way. He snapped and drowned her instead... Then Josh found out about it, and the fact that Kim had kept the secret for Barry. He threatened to have Kim put in jail, and so Barry killed him to protect Kim. It was fairly accidental though - he hadn't gone there with the intention of killing Josh. The gun just happened to be there... ironically, I think Josh was using it for protection. We never did get to see Barry's trial, but the last judge he had seemed to understand the circumstances of it all. He was pretty compassionate, and let Barry stay at home while he awaited trial, rather than locking him up.

Anyway, about Jonah. You're completely right - the writers did explain it like that and it's their full intention to have us believe it. However, I think it's a cop out on the writer's part, and I've therefore found a way of getting around it. I don't think that Jonah - damn, Michael - is lying about it. I wouldn't accuse him of that. I think that he believes he's innocent... now... but that doesn't mean that I have to believe it if I don't want to. What I'm doing is creating a fiction, and I know that, but it's a fiction that can logically work, so there's no reason it couldn't be that way if that's how I want to see it.

I don't disagree with you at all about what the writers' intentions were, I just happen to think that those intentions were stupid and disrespectful to the characters of Jonah, Tasha, Robbie, and even Martha. Especially to decide that they were going to change the paternity of Tasha's baby without even telling her about it. She trusted Jonah, she left her husband for him, and she believes that he raped her. If it's not true, then it's not fair to let her and Robbie think that it is. If they really wanted to rearrange the story for a good reason, and take the time to cover it properly, I probably wouldn't mind quite as much. As it is, the only reason they did it was so that Martha could hook up with him, and so that the fans would have no reason not to love him - which shows Martha in a bad light for betraying Tasha, and herself, after what Jonah did to them both. (Even if he didn't rape Tasha, he still held Martha and Rebecca hostage on Mama Rose's orders, and seduced Tasha away from her family and friends - turning her against them all - for the purposes of getting her pregnant, apparently against her will.) It also treats the viewers like idiots who can't see a good person for a bad deed. I resent that, and so I choose to ignore the whole sorry affair.

You're determined to defend Michael, I understand that, but I want you to understand that I'm not attacking him. He's an excellent character, and a beautiful person. I like him a lot. I just don't think that it's fair to erase his past in order to make it perfectly easy for everyone else to like him too.