Marty Saybrooke - Reception and Impact

Reception and Impact

For more details on this topic, see Todd Manning and Marty Saybrooke rape storylines.

Marty's impact on daytime television has been substantial. The 1993 gang rape storyline inspired feminist studies, and Haskell won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress for the role in 1994. In 2009, she won for Outstanding Lead Actress.

Though the rape storyline was well-received, it was also criticized. Opinions were given that it polarized "the gap between rapists and the raped". There was concern that the show departed from the rape paradigm by not only insisting the essential "goodness" of Powell Lord, who had also raped Marty, but that it implied peer pressure "could be an adequate (or even physiologically possible) excuse for rape". Analyst Mary Buhl Dutta reasoned the storyline invokes "rape myths" cataloged by scholar Martha R. Burt, such as "only bad girls get raped," "women ask for it," and "women 'cry rape' only when they've been jilted or have something to cover up". Burt said such myths "deny or reduce perceived injury, or ... blame the victims for their own victimization".

At the time of Haskell's return to the role in 2008, Marty was called "one of those tentpole characters that everyone who has watched One Life to Live at some point remembers".