What evil lurks in the hearts of men?

• Author: Rapping, Elayne
• Position: Sexism in the mass media

For a moment there, between the "Tragedy of the Fallen Hero" phase and the "Race Is the Real Issue" phase of the O.J. Simpson affair, the media took a moment to do a few belated mea culpas about their historic and egregious neglect--no, let's be honest, their distortion and glamorization--of violence against women. For those few intense days right after Simpson's arrest, when news of the football hero's history of wife-beating ignited the long-suppressed rage of women everywhere, there seemed to be some real understanding and concern about how the courts, the police, the media, and the society at large collude to keep women unsafe and in constant fear, even in their own homes.

Not that this reaction was immediate. Not at all. It took the emotional equivalent of a nuclear explosion from the female population to get the attention of the major media, and then the world. Not since the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas confrontation have I seen such a dramatic division along gender lines in the way a news event was perceived and talked about.

Right from the start--on that amazing night when ninety-five million of us sat transfixed by the movements of a white Bronco being followed by a fleet of police cars along a deserted freeway lined with apparently crazed spectators cheering their "hero" on--the lines were being drawn. Although the mostly male news teams certainly didn't get it for a while.

Cindy Garvey, the ex-wife of an abusive baseball star, knew of Nicole Simpson's battery and had even tried to counsel her. Garvey seemed every bit the "hysterical female" to her co-panelists on CNN as she expressed her rage at the sympathy and adulation most of the press and the world was then giving O.J.

"The love that so many people have for him ... the fact that so many are cheering him on," gushed the fawning male anchors, as they tried to fill the empty hours of airtime. And, as Garvey alone seemed to understand, it was enough to set the collective teeth of the female population on edge. During the next few days, the gender wars were on. So intense was the female response that, as in the case of Anita Hill, all the major media finally had to take time out from business as usual to do cover stories and front-page features on the subject of domestic violence.

And then, as quickly as it had appeared on center stage, it was gone, rerouted to the back pages of daytime soap opera and talk shows, women's magazines, and church-basement support groups. Well, what else is new? Feminists have been tirelessly laboring in the courts and legislatures and health-care institutions for more than twenty years now to change the nation's perceptions and priorities where gender violence is concerned.

While much has changed for the better, there is probably no single issue in which the problem of the "male gaze" in media--the tendency of film and news media to present things from the male point of view--is more serious or dangerous. Hollywood movies, TV news reporting and drama, and hard rock and rap music have a long and inglorious history of glamorizing male violence and distorting its social and emotional realities. Quite simply, we have not seen images of male violence that accurately target its sources and hold its perpetrators accountable.

The movies are the primary culprit. It is on the big screen that we see the most constant, most compelling, and most distorted images of male violence. What the movies show us are male villains who are really not like you and me. They are larger than life, in charm or viciousness--often both--and are, therefore, somehow separate from the "normal" males we actually know, or are...