Introduction

1For nearly three decades my research has focused on representations of gendered violence in mainstream media. I have undertaken a range of projects assessing various elements within this general subject area, and I have published five books as well as many book chapters and journal articles focusing on this broad topic. Over the years, it seems fair to say that the salience of gendered violence representation has never waned, but rather has tended to augment as scholars, social actors, and the public have become more aware of the ways in which crimes of gendered violence, including sexual assault and rape, are a ubiquitous aspect of life. While court cases, including celebrity trials, have been constantly in the public eye, more recent developments such as #MeToo and the Time’sUp movement have brought even more attention to the importance of understanding gendered violence and attending to the ways in which we write about, talk about, and imagine it.

2In the United States, the most important historical factor in understanding discourses surrounding rape and sexual assault is the rape law reform movement, active throughout the 1970s and beyond. This movement called attention to important biases against accusers and victims within the legal system. For example, prior to the start of the rape law reform movement, juries were given a special instruction that accusers in rape cases tended to lie for a range of motives. Police often doubted rape claimants and failed to gather evidence, or interviewed victims in a way that cast suspicion and blame on them instead of on a perpetrator. Courts allowed information about a claimant’s sexual experiences to be considered as relevant evidence in rape trials, and many women had labeled the trials experience for victims as a “second rape” in which they had to relive the experience through hostile questions. Pointing to an abysmally low conviction rate for rape cases, rape law reformers set out to address the imbalance created by biases against accusers and in favor of the accused. Their efforts were successful in many ways, and states began to change their laws related to rape and sexual assault in 1974. My first two major books examined significant mainstream discourses where I was able to identify them. These projects were aimed at providing an account of how and where rape reform understandings had been incorporated in mainstream discourses. According to theorists such as Michel Foucault (1972) and Michael Calvin McGee (1980), the identification of patterns of what is said as well as what is left unspoken can provide evidence of what a society considers common sense. The systematic documentation of changes in these patterns around rape and sexual assault in my work has provided evidence of a clear shift in dominant ideology surrounding these crimes as well as their perpetrators and their victims. Comparative discourse analyses demonstrate how dominant ideology clearly evolved in the decade and a half following the first reformed rape statutes in the United States. They show how the rape law reform movement, which aimed at social change, was successful not only in achieving specific statutory goals, but also in altering the ways in which the broader society understands these crimes and the people who are involved with them.

3In addition to documenting shifts in dominant ideology surrounding rape and sexual assault, my work has had two important broad goals. First, it has provided evidence of the limitations of discursive and ideological shifts across genres and forms. Second, and relatedly, it has examined the ways in which rape reform discourses have been incorporated into mainstream understandings of rape and sexual assault. My first book (Cuklanz, 1996a) set out to compare three important dominant discourses about rape: news, popular fiction, and the law. Since most news stories focus on specific legal cases, the latter were an ideal starting point. Within this frame, I examined dominant discourses surrounding three nationally publicized sexual assault cases. For the second book (Cuklanz, 2000), setting out to look at televisual fiction, the first important finding was that the vast majority of stories about rape and sexual assault were found in episodic series in the police/detective genre. Thus, this book focused on televisual detective fiction. Through the examinations of the ways in which language and ideas from a movement for legal and social change (the rape law reform movement) were accepted into, or effectively kept distinct from, dominant discourses of law and mainstream media, I believed we could work toward a clearer picture of how dominant ideologies change. These two book projects provide an idea of how our culture’s very notion of what is real, true, and understandable shifted during the key years following the 1974 passage of the first reformed rape statute in Michigan. They fit within a field of research that was emerging during and after the years of publication, including works by Helen Benedict (1992), Bonnie Dow (1996), Marian Meyers (1997), Sujata Moorti (2002), Sarah Projansky (2001) that examine either representations of sexual crimes in the mainstream media or the ways in which feminist discourses found a place in these same media representations (see also Cuklanz, 1998b; 2003).

Comparative Discourses on Legal Cases

4Rape on Trial: How the Mass Media Construct Legal Reform and Social Change (Cuklanz, 1996a) examines dominant discourses surrounding the Rideout rape in marriage case (1978), the New Bedford gang rape case (1983), and the Dotson/Crowell recantation case (1985). These were the first nationally publicized cases related to sexual assault that produced a significant volume of discussion. Each of these cases also served as the basis for a fictionalized narrative released for popular consumption. My analysis in this book underscores the context of rape law reform in the United States. It examines the ways in which traditional framings of rape and sexual assault, which were dominant prior to the successes of the rape law reform movement, were deployed in relation to reformed ideas about the same criminal activities. Traditional notions of rape included several opinions that are now considered “myths,” such as the idea that victims invite or enjoy sexual assault, the idea that accusers tend to be liars who invent false claims of rape, and the idea that rape is committed by marginalized males (including men of color and the mentally-disturbed) rather than normal and well-respected members of the community. The rape reform movement showed that false claims of rape are extremely rare, that victims do not wish for sexual assault, that the belief that victim behavior is an excuse for sexual violence is unacceptable, and that there is no specific profile for rapists. Rather, rape and sexual assault can be perpetrated by men of any race, mental health status, level of education and income. Traditional framings about rape portrayed the crime as one of extreme violence perpetrated by a single problematic individual on an unknown victim. Rape reformers pointed to evidence showing that many rapes are committed by men who know their victims. Rape and sexual assault, they showed, can be carried out by acquaintances, intimate partners, and even spouses.

5Published in 1996, approximately 20 years after the first legal successes of rape reform, Rape on Trial sheds light on the ways in which traditional and reformed ideas about rape are intermingled in mainstream discourses including those of news media, fiction, and legal documents. The initial research was conducted on a case-by-case basis, while the book’s chapters explore how each type of dominant discourse manages the conflicting ideological impulses of feminist rape law reform and traditional rape myths. Three earlier publications focus on specific cases in order to provide a coherent sense of how the particular fact pattern of a case may influence its framing in dominant narratives.

6First, the 1993 article “Truth in Transition: Discursive Constructions of Character in the Rideout Rape in Marriage Case” (Cuklanz, 1993) investigates some of the limitations of mainstream discourses surrounding the subject of rape in marriage for this first nationally publicized marital rape case. Although the latter was the first to be tried in Oregon under the reformed marital rape law, it was not a good test case and resulted in coverage that concentrated primarily on the accused husband’s innocence and honor. One of the important limitations in news coverage was the tendency for reporters to seek opposing quotes from the attorneys on each side. However, neither attorney seemed to have an understanding of intimate partner violence or of the circumstances that might constitute rape within marriage. The defense attorney provided ample quotes bolstering the credibility and image of John Rideout, while there was no similar spokesperson for Greta Rideout. While the fictional made-for-TV movie that emerged after the close of the legal proceedings did manage to provide a plausible means of understanding what the phrase “rape in marriage” might mean, news coverage was largely baffled by the concept and did not seriously entertain it as a logical possibility. Many news publications boiled the situation down to “he said versus she said” and suggested that there was no way to adjudicate what occurred between a husband and wife. In this case it seemed that the law was ahead of news discourses, and some publications even questioned why legislators had passed the marital rape legislation.

7Second, the 1995 chapter “News Coverage of Ethnic and Gender Issues in the Big Dan’s Rape Case” (Cuklanz, 1995a) focuses on the 1983 Big Dan’s gang rape case in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It examines news, legal discourse, and the Hollywood film The Accused (1988), based on this case. A central finding of this chapter is the way in which mainstream news constructed feminist victim advocacy in direct opposition to community activists concerned about possible lack of fair treatment of the accused men, some of whom were immigrants from the Azores and did not speak English. Although these groups were not enemies and in fact the victim was also a member of the local Luso-American community, news frames continued to pit these groups against one another as opponents. Meanwhile, even the direct quotes featured in news pointed to media coverage itself as the most problematic component for both victim and accused. In addition, while news frames continued to emphasize the importance for the victim of coming forward and “telling her story,” the reality for her was that media coverage and release of her identity resulted in personal threats that forced her to move out of state. This somewhat blind assertion of the “benefit” of coming forward to assist law enforcement efforts has been echoed in many forms and genres over time, particularly detective fiction. This sort of focus draws attention away from the actual experience of the accuser, for whom a police report and trial testimony can often have extremely high personal costs. It also fails to raise the question of the extremely low conviction rate for cases of this type and implies blame on women’s reluctance or reticence.

8Finally, a second 1995 publication, the article “Opposing Verdicts in the Webb-Dotson Rape Case: Legal Versus News Constructions” (Cuklanz, 1995b) examines discourses surrounding the 1985 Gary Dotson recantation case. Gary Dotson had been convicted based primarily on eye-witness testimony of accuser Cathleen Crowell in 1979, although the case did not become the subject of media publicity until the recantation of 1985. Gary Dotson was granted clemency by Governor James Thompson in 1985, although Illinois law stipulated that this did not result in release from prison. News coverage and the legal framework defining innocence and guilt were clearly at odds in this case, with media coverage essentially lobbying for Gary Dotson’s release. Gary Dotson was exonerated years later based on DNA evidence.

9In broad terms, the conclusions of Rape on Trial are that fictional discourse to that point had done the most to bring feminist (rape reform) discourses to light, while news was in some ways more conservative, sometimes going as far as to question the “new laws” that allowed for the possibility of rape within marriage, tending to side with the accused. Significantly, the book decisively shows that some elements of the rape reform message are more amenable than others to dissemination in media discourses. While even mainstream news was able to accept the idea that women do not wish for or deserve to be subjected to violent sexual assault, there was a remaining hesitance to accept the notion that husbands could also be rapists, or that false accusation was not more likely in rape cases than in other types of felony crimes. Of the three cases presented above, one was an actual false accusation (Gary Dotson) and a second (the Rideout case) was covered as if it were a false accusation. The third (Big Dan’s) case was at first also covered with suspicion of the accuser, until details of the evidence of the case were publicly available. At this point, a handprint of bruises on the victim’s thigh as well as eye-witness bystander testimony made it seem more likely that the victim was telling the truth. Once these facts were established, coverage turned toward defense and support of the victim. Overall, although news discourse was slow and reluctant to change, and although news norms – such as quoting attorneys in a case rather than legislators or victim advocates – limited the type of discussion included in most stories, mainstream news did accept the idea that victims do not ask for violent sexual assault and are not to blame when they are raped. Fictional discourses, especially made-for-TV movies did quite a good job of incorporating feminist ideas and even articulating full-blown feminist perspectives on some elements, although they stopped short of endorsing these points of view. Fictional discourses were able to focus substantially on the victim’s experience and the effect of sexual assault on their lives.

10In 1991, just after the period examined in Rape on Trial, the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas was briefly stalled when the content of an FBI interview with former colleague Anita Hill became public. The Senate Judiciary Committee decided to hold additional hearings, which took place over several days and were nationally televised. My article “Mainstream News Frames the Hill/Thomas Hearings” (Cuklanz, 1996b) shows how news coverage shifted focus between the start and end of these additional hearings. In justifying them, articles pointed to a limited number of frames, concentrating on gathering information and finding out the truth. However, at the close of these special hearings, news highlighted the fact that Anita Hill had not “proven her case.” The fact that the hearings were not equipped or designed to provide proof, and that Anita Hill could not have been able to prove her case in that forum, were irrelevant. These limitations were again at play during the extraordinary additional (and televised) hearing in the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court. While accuser Christine Blasey Ford had better legal representation and somewhat more negotiating success around the terms of her testimony, the ambiguous circumstance and purpose of the latter, and the devastating effect on her life and reputation echoed the events of the Hill/Thomas hearing. Once again, the experience of the accuser took a back seat to other considerations including the “search for the truth” and the honor and reputation of the accused.

Prime Time Detective Fiction’s Rape Narratives

11While Rape on Trial focuses on mainstream representations of highly publicized sexual assault cases and compares three forms of dominant discourse, Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence (Cuklanz, 2000) examines televisual fiction during roughly the same period, from 1976 to 1991. The book has three important findings. First, during the period in question, which coincides with the spread of rape reform statutes in the United States, treatments of this subject were found in a genre generally understood as a “masculine” genre (Fiske, 1987). Since about 80 % of television programs featuring sexual assault as a central theme were episodes of police/detective serial dramas, the book focuses primarily on these programs, with some important outliers in situation comedies included in the findings. These treatments tended to concentrate on themes directly related to masculinity, and these episodes often contrasted a version of failed or problematic masculinity embodied by the rapist, with ideal masculinity as embodied by a male detective or police officer. Surprisingly, the stories were not really about victims or survivors of sexual assault, and did not focus on their experiences of victimization and recovery. Instead, they took interest in the heroic, even feminist actions and views of the central male protagonist detective, who in many episodes went so far as to literally instruct a victim’s boyfriend, husband, or father in the correct way to support and understand his beloved. Written with a male audience in mind, these episodes tended to tell the story from a man’s point of view. In the vast majority of examples, women’s experiences and perspectives were marginalized or absent.

12The second central finding of this book is that United States prime time stories about rape and sexual assault saw a significant shift in the mid-1980s. Prior to this time, the majority of rape stories in episodic television represented sexual assault as a violent stranger rape. Victims were often murdered or ended up significantly damaged, both physically and psychologically. The main findings related to this “basic” rape plot from the earliest seasons were published in Cuklanz, 1998a. Episodes featuring rape as a central narrative during these years fit this pattern of violent stranger rape almost exclusively. However, in the mid-1980s, an alternative narrative is found alongside this traditional story of stranger rape. In this alternative scenario, women are victimized by acquaintances rather than strangers. A few episodes in this later period also contain significant spoken lines by victims, who are able to express emotions including anger and to advocate on their own behalf rather than waiting passively for detectives to protect and defend them.

13Finally, it is important to note that the book shows not only how these two styles of narrative about rape are found in episodic television, but also that the innovations of the second type of narrative do not at all replace the first. Rather, what the book labels as the “basic rape narrative” of violent stranger assault, passive survivor and heroic detective, is found alongside the newer narrative of acquaintance rape, throughout the period examined in the study.

14To bring together the key findings of both books (Cuklanz, 1996a; 2000), the most important conclusion is that mainstream media discourses surrounding rape and sexual assault have tended not only to favor the accused, but even to become discourses primarily about masculinity. This tendency to prioritize male experience and frame rape stories in terms of their effect or potential effect on the accused, is still a staple of American news coverage of #MeToo as well as highly publicized court cases. In the few years just prior to 1991, the period examined in both of these studies, some progress was made in the incorporation of feminist ideas of rape law reform. This limited progress included the acceptance of the idea that women do not wish to be raped, and that sexual assault should not be blamed on the victim. However, none of the discourses examined made much progress in understanding the victim’s point of view. Victims in fictional television episodes had few spoken lines and virtually no female community through which to process their feelings and their experiences of sexual victimization and survival. Mainstream news did little to move beyond a legalistic approach to sexual assault victimization, tending to emphasize the importance for assault victims to come forward and tell their stories in public in order to assist in the identification and prosecution of perpetrators. However, none of these mainstream discourses focused on the reality of limited changes in the realm of evidence collection and the conduct of trials, both of which still tended to be grueling and painful experiences for victims of rape and sexual assault. Although acquaintance rape had started to receive some representation, it was often in terms remarkably similar to violent stranger rape. Date rape, in which the two parties entered into some form of interaction that later devolved into violence, remained almost entirely off limits to media discourses during this period.

Sexual Assault in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit

15In the Fall of 1999, NBC debuted its second program in the Law and Order franchise, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), a scripted series ostensibly devoted to crimes of sexual assault and rape. The series became quite popular and has had an unexpectedly long run, and as of this writing is currently in its 20^th season of production. The series is shot on location in New York City, and was the first prime time drama series to focus extensively on crimes of violence against women. As the first prime time scripted series to give sustained attention to sexual assault and rape, it is of central importance to scholars examining the intersections of television history, feminism, sexual assault, and the crime drama. For these reasons, my co-author, Sujata Moorti, and I have analyzed the series’ representations of crimes of sexual violence, victims, and perpetrators, as well as the responses of police and, to a lesser extent, the courts. Our research on this series produced an article (Cuklanz, Moorti, 2006) that was later reprinted in two consecutive editions (editions 3 and 4) of the popular Gail Dines and Jean Humez reader Gender, Race, and Class in Media (2010; 2014). The end result of the full research project examining 17 seasons of SVU is the 2017 monograph All-American TV Crime Drama: Feminism and Identity Politics in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (Moorti, Cuklanz, 2017).

16Our initial research question was simply how a detective series, traditionally focused on masculinity and the male-dominated profession of police detective work, could combine its generic constraints with a purported focus on crimes of sexual violence, around which significant feminist analysis and social activism had been centered. The series would have to incorporate and combine all of these elements, and we were interested in how the writers would manage this complex representational challenge in creating a popular mainstream entertainment product, limits already demonstrated in Rape on Prime Time. As the first few seasons evolved and the show’s popularity was evident, we also wondered what elements drew audiences, particularly female viewers, to the show. Our findings reveal several ways in which the series has broken new ground in terms of its depictions of sexual assault and of victims in particular. Whereas prior serial detective and police dramas seldom focused on the experiences of the victim, SVU was sometimes able to do so. Some episodes featured survivors struggling to put their lives back together, or advocating for the police to complete their investigation before the statute of limitations ran out, or finding solidarity with other survivors. SVU breaks new ground in its depiction of a few strong and articulate victim-survivors who assist detectives in their search for evidence and suspects. The show sometimes evinces unprecedented (for this genre) sophistication in its treatment of topics such as beauty culture and pornography in relation to gender power relations and sexual assault. Both detectives (Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson for most seasons) voice feminist understandings of rape, gender, and victimization. Unique in the history of the televisual crime drama, Olivia Benson offers a consistent female professional voice in support of victims of sexual assault. In the male-dominated field of detective work Olivia Benson also espouses feminist positions when confronted with sexism in the workplace, confronting victim-blaming colleagues in several instances. Female audiences have found strength in her character’s strong advocacy and continued professional success.

17While the show has managed to re-write the relationship between the police/detective genre and narratives of sexual assault, for instance in refusing to blame the victim, it has also fallen short in that it has also tended to reinforce some of the traditional rape myths that continue to circulate in our mainstream culture. Many narratives play out racial stereotypes in the form of initial suspects for crimes of rape and sexual assault. Although men of color are often exonerated, it is clear that elements of identity such as gang membership, prior criminal activity, and a disdain for law enforcement make them legitimate suspects. In these stories, racialized tropes are re-inscribed. Also, there is little room for female solidarity or bonding in the professional world, and Olivia Benson is almost always isolated from any close female colleagues. In spite of these limitations, the series has handled some aspects of race in nuanced ways. It has managed at times to render visible the victimization of women of color without hypervictimization. These depictions help articulate concerns of feminists regarding the ways in which fears of black male sexuality have shaped cultural definitions of sexual assault (Brownmiller, 1975; Davis, 1981) and of critical race theorists, who highlighted the historical silencing of black female victimization. SVU’s depiction of racialized victims thus helps correct the dominant tropes of black femininity in popular culture (Collins, 2005).

18Significantly, the series has aired a number of false rape narratives or varying types, including outright lies and staged entrapments of innocent men. Other narratives rely on visual evidence from the crime scene to indicate one set of facts, only to reveal in later scenes how the evidence itself managed to “lie” about what really happened. In the end, in many cases it seems difficult to judge whether a rape story is true or false. Finally, the series has maintained a fairly heavy emphasis on female criminals including a large number who are mothers or otherwise functioning as caretakers. Female caretaking emerges as a significant source of damaging and even criminal behavior on the part of women, while men’s criminality remains unrelated to parenting or caretaking in all but a few isolated episodes. This means that realistic treatments of serious issues such as incest are quite rare. Patriarchy as a system of power remains uninterrogated in the vast majority of episodes surround father-daughter abuse. Instead, guilty or accused fathers are represented through a range of tropes that render them either powerless or forgiven. These include total exoneration through revelations of a daughter’s lies; mothers turn out to be more monstrous or guiltier than their husbands; and fathers appear pathetic, contrite, or reformed.

19On the whole, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit can certainly be understood as an important advance in the detective/police genre. Victim’s voices are heard more strongly and are vigorously supported in many narratives. The show’s commitment to keeping the actual crime of sexual assault off-screen is also an important advance that has helped turn viewer focus to elements other than sexualized violence for entertainment. Its popularity is certainly based on other features such as its strong female protagonist and its ability to focus on women’s experiences of sexual assault and survival to a greater extent than most prime time products.

Edited Anthologies

21The book organizes its case studies into three general categories: representing violated bodies, the political arena of violence, and transformative/alternative practices. We expand understandings of GBV even beyond the new definitions found on the international stage, examining transgender victims, child victims, victims of domestic violence, and victims of serial murder. The chapters show how familiar tropes of news coverage of GBV cases are found in particular combinations depending on the local context and the parameters of the specific cases. In addition to analyzing news coverage, these chapters also venture into interrogations of music videos, literature, and film. By expanding the boundaries of research on representations of GBV in both form and genre, and by examining the global significance of these cases and images, each chapter helps to demonstrate the importance of attending to the ways in which we depict, discuss, and construct knowledge about rape, sexual assault, and other forms of GBV. There is much more work to be done in order to fully understand the strengths, limitations, and impact of these images in a range of contexts across the globe.

22In addition to expanding the boundaries of understanding gendered violence on the global stage, my work has also extended further into an examination of representations beyond the popular and mainstream discourses that reify and modify dominant ideology. A second anthology, co-edited with Heather McIntosh, focuses on documentary representations of gendered violence (Cuklanz, McIntosh, 2015). Documentary forms, often undertaken from an insider’s perspective, or at least with motives other than profit and popularity in mind, have the potential to enrich our understanding of crimes of gendered violence beyond the ideological transformations outlined in my earlier work. In many cases, these productions have provided a significant voice for victims and survivors that is notably more substantial that any found in more popular media forms such as mainstream news and fiction. Here we have in many cases texts that are aimed to raise social consciousness, to bring public attention to a private issue and to private pain and suffering, and/or to provide a perspective that has not been represented in mainstream media or does not lend itself to unbiased coverage in profit-motivated entertainment genres. These alternative productions have reached a critical mass, with several well-known and acclaimed documentary examinations of difficult subjects emerging in recent years.

23While many of the text discussed and analyzed in this volume are documentary films, we seek to expand the definitions of key terms and explore the boundaries of textual representation. In addition to studying important and groundbreaking films released in the short period prior to the start of this project, such as Sex Crimes Unit (Jackson, 2011), Call + Response (Dillon, 2008), Sin By Silence (Klaus, 2009) and The Invisible War (Dick, 2012), the anthology also includes discussions and analysis of autobiography, photography, documentary theater, user-generated online video, and television news as documentary forms. Forms of violence examined here include sex trafficking, global sex work, rape in war, military sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, and sex crimes under investigation by the New York Police Department. This collection also includes interviews with directors of four important documentary films, and extrapolates on some of the challenges involved with creating a text focusing on victims and survivors of sexual violence. These challenges encompass the necessity of minimizing re-traumatizing survivors of past violence; finding artistic, sensitive, and socially aware methods of bringing private knowledge of un-representable events and feelings to light; balancing the exigencies of a given medium with the requirements of its audience; challenging stereotypes and familiar representational tropes and attending to issues related to personal identity such as race, class, sexuality, age, and other elements of individual subjectivity. In assessing and analyzing specific documentary texts, the chapters in this volume elucidate documentary techniques that have been used to further these difficult goals, as well as some of the ways in which these efforts can at times fall short. An important added aspect of this collection is its inclusion of case studies in which documentary production was an integral part of a specific effort at social change or a specific social movement. Most notably, a chapter by Laura Vazquez (2015) on “The Invisible War” illustrates how a documentary film can bring enough awareness to an issue that viewers and stakeholders are moved to action. The chapters in this collection provide examples of texts and strategies that aim to push for shifts in our understanding of gendered violence by focusing on victim voices and by calling our attention to injustices and limitations of our accepted ideas and policies.

Gender, Media and Violence

24Besides the above described works examining specific texts and genres of mediated communication in relation to representations of gendered violence, I have published several overviews of this area of research. Each project has delineated the latter a bit differently. Some works have focused on violence in general or on specific types of violence, while others have concentrated on the larger field of gender and media representation. Over the years, while the categories of feminist theory have shifted and augmented, in media studies, the basic goals of deconstructing the play of power within media texts and of providing an explanatory framework for patterns of gender bias across media texts and genres has remained constant. The display of power and the patterns of bias, although ever-evolving, have retained some of their basic elements over the decades. Women are still generally under-represented with respect to men, are more likely to be portrayed as victims of violence than as perpetrators, and when female characters are victimized, they are more likely to experience lengthier and more graphic abuse than their male counterparts. Females are less likely to take action on their own behalf and more likely to require male intervention to avoid, escape, or recover from assault. Although these patterns may be more exaggerated in some media forms or in relation to some content areas compared to others, the general schemas remain consistent with very few exceptions.

25Importantly, sexual assault and abuse are still framed frequently and even predominantly in a range of media as stories about men and masculinity. The recent coverage of the #MeToo movement provide an immediate and notable example. Many (though by no means all) stories focus their attention on the men who are accused, the immense or awesome power and position that these men have attained, and the distance of their “fall” pursuant to sexual abuse allegations. These stories echo the very same limitations of much earlier media representing rape and sexual assault. Stories that focus on women’s experience as well as the ways in which power has been abused to create painful, unethical, and criminal situations and actions are now a somewhat larger part of the media landscape on this subject, and this shows some development toward the presentation of a different truth beyond that of the accused man and the effect of “unfortunate” choices on his life, reputation, and career.

26Of overviews of research focusing specifically on violence, my contribution “Mass Media Representation of Gendered Violence” (Cuklanz, 2013), and the overview “Gendered Violence and Mass Media Representation” (Cuklanz, 2006) are the most broad-reaching. An earlier and shorter encyclopedia entry on “Wilding and berserking” appeared in Violence in America: An Encyclopedia, (Cuklanz, 1999) although this publication does not have a central focus on media representation.

27Overviews of the broader field of gender studies in communication and media scholarship have included my first publication, co-authored with Kathryn Cirksena (Cirksena, Cuklanz, 1992), a book chapter mapping categories of gender and feminist theory onto binaries of western philosophical thought such as public/private and reason/emotion. This chapter, a part of the textbook Women Making Meaning: New Feminist Directions in Communication (Ed. Lana Rakow), has been widely used in classrooms for many years. Lately, I teamed up with Maria Pilar Rodriguez, to co-author an article entitled “Gender Dimensions in Media and Communication Studies: Main Concepts and Illustrations in Mass Mediated Texts,” published in the Spanish journal Analisi: quaderns de comunicació i cultura (Rodriguez, Cuklanz, 2014). Finally, most recently I contributed an article on “Feminist Theory in Communication” to the 2016 publication International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, edited by Robert T. Craig (Cuklanz, 2016).

Conclusion

28Through a concerted focus on representations of gendered violence across contexts, forms, genres, and discourses, my work has shown how dominant ideologies have been reinforced and stabilized in some ways. Significantly, though, I have also been able to delineate some of the major shifts in mainstream thinking related to rape, sexual assault, and other forms of gendered violence both in the United States and abroad. This work is ever more relevant as the society gains an increasing awareness of the reality of such abuses of power and the ways in which how we talk about and represent these abuses can further enable or work to eliminate them.