Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No.

1, 2003

The Monsters Next Door: Media

Constructions of Boys and Masculinity

Mia Consalvo

Introduction
DEATH GOES TO SCHOOL WITH COLD, EVIL LAUGHTER

TRAIL OF MAYHEM, COLUMBINE PLUNGED INTO NIGHTMARE OF BUL-

LETS AND BLOOD

THE MONSTERS NEXT DOOR: WHAT MADE THEM DO IT?

WHY?

These are a few of the headlines that appeared in US newspapers and news
magazines concerning the April 20, 1999 school shooting at Columbine High
School in Littleton, Colorado. Although school violence in the US accounts for
only a small fraction of violence involving children nationwide (John Cloud
1999), the unusual, recurring character of these crimes has focused attention to
them out of proportion to their actual numbers. Over the past few years, there
have been similar occurrences every few months. Previous to Littleton, there
were incidents in Oregon, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi, along with
others stretching further back. They have become a grim list of referents brought
out and re-hashed with each new outbreak of school violence.
On April 20, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris entered their high school in
Littleton, Colorado, and went on a shooting spree. At the end of the day, one
teacher and fourteen students were dead, including the two shooters who killed
themselves before authorities could apprehend them. Police investigators found
many unexploded bombs throughout the school, and also learned that the pair
had been planning the attack for at least a year, to coincide with the anniversary
of Hitlers birthday. It was the deadliest school shooting ever to have occurred
in the US, and it received extensive media coverage.
Studies that explore how gender is represented in news coverage of violence
have tended to focus primarily on women. Many have documented how women
are portrayed, often as victims of male violence (see, for example, Helen
Benedict 1992; Cynthia Carter, 1998; Deborah Jermyn 2001; Katherine Kinnick
1998; Judith Marlane 1999; Marian Meyers 1997, 1999; C. Kay Weaver, Cynthia
Carter, and Elizabeth Stanko 2000). Studies of men and the media have until
recently been few in number (Fred Fejes 1992; Diana Saco 1992). More recently,
Jackson Katz (1999) has addressed how masculinity and violence intertwine in
deadly ways in his video Tough Guise, but scholarly analyses in this area are
relatively new (see also John Beynon 2002).
ISSN 1468-0777 print/ISSN 1471-5902 online/03/010027-19 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1468077032000080112
28 Consalvo

Studying how men are constructed in crime news is important, because when
news reports explore the factors that led Klebold and Harris to their actions,
for example, this coverage is constructing for audiences the elements considered
relevant to the crime, and through omission, those that are irrelevant. Inattention
by media researchers is especially evident concerning news representations of
white men. Black men have been studied in relation to crime news, but it was
mostly their race (rather than gender) that was the salient factor of analysis
(Mary Beth Oliver 1994; Mary Beth Oliver and G. Blake Armstrong 1995).
Feminist media theorists who examine news coverage of violence have argued
that crime news serves as a normalizing force in society, illustrating for us what
is deviant and what is not. As Margaret Gordon and Stephanie Riger explain,
this coverage is important because given the dearth of firsthand information
most people have about violent crime, the media play a vital role in creating for
the public the vicarious reality about criminal victimization, and about the
capacity (or incapacity) of American societys institutions to deal with it (1989:
67). Because of this reliance on the media for understandings of crime, feminist
media theorists argue that it is important for news coverage to fairly reflect
crime in society.
Past studies of mediated masculinities also focus on adult men and fail to
interrogate constructions of young or adolescent boys. These representations are
particularly important, as they may show gender as a process being worked
outrehearsed, refined, and modified. Robert W. Connell writes that masculin-
ity is relational, meaning masculinities come into existence as people act (1998:
154). This study then explores how the news media initially constructed Harris
and Klebold, including the details of their past that were considered relevant to
the actions they took. It argues that in its initial coverage the media emphasized
certain factors and ignored others, and so functioned to let systems such as
hegemonic masculinity and school culture mostly off the hook. Coverage also
demonized specific media forms (video games and the Internet) as particularly
dangerous risk factors, yet with no real proof of such danger. Finally, initial
news coverage set the tone for singling out and harassing different kids across
the US who may have looked or acted in ways suddenly deemed dangerous.
For this study, news coverage of the Columbine school shootings was col-
lected and analyzed. This included taped television news broadcasts for a week
following the event from ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC; coverage in the news
magazines Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report; and articles and
editorials from the Denver Rocky Mountain News and the New York Times.1 The
focus was not to ascertain differences between news outlets in coverage, but
rather to determine what overall picture emerged from various media. It is
important to note that this study analyzed a subset of the voluminous coverage
of this event. It also focuses on a specific time frame regarding the accountthe
first few weeks of coverage. Later pieces on the killings did attempt more
complicated angles concerning Klebold and Harris, especially in the areas of
high school cliques and harassment of nerds. However, this article is con-
cerned with the immediate response to the event, which did set the stage for
later interpretations, and allowed initial judgments to be made. The following
questions were asked:
What were the central themes about the killings that the media outlets
emphasized?
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 29

How were the killers and The Trench Coat Mafia portrayed in terms of their
interests and their social position within the high school?
Was race an issue in the coverage? If so, how?
Was masculinity an issue in the coverage? If so, how?

The sex/gender distinction: where men are men and women are women
Judith Lorber writes that in Western societies, we see two discrete sexes and
two distinguishable genders (1998: 34), where the feminine is ascribed to
women and the masculine to men. Feminists have challenged these divisions,
arguing that gender is a socially constructed system, ascribing particular traits to
particular sexes without correspondence to reality. Judith Butler (1993) goes
further in claiming that gender is a daily enactment that individuals must
engage in, which is ultimately judged by others. Each day, with each act, our
gender comes to matter more and more. Connell (1998) supports this as-
sertion, as he believes that the accomplishment of masculinity is socialit comes
into existence as people act in everyday life, and does not exist as a given
essence of a persons being, apart from their physical and social reality.
This line of theory can also be applied to the medias representations of the
masculine/male. Just as gender is enacted and constructed by individuals, it is
also constructed in media content. In both cases, the constructions are fluid and
inconstant, changing over time in response to (and also in challenge to) changing
societal mores. Media scholars can analyze how media outlets construct mas-
culinity in a particular time and place, and how these outlets differentiate
between various forms of the masculine.
One central argument of this line of research is that, as with representations
of women, there are multiple representations of men, and therefore multiple
masculinities (Beynon 2002). All of these forms are made to seem natural and
inevitable, therefore becoming ideological and seeming trans-historical. These
studies draw links between varying representations and cultural meanings of
what it means to be a man in contemporary US society. For example, Lance
Strate (1992) studied beer commercials, and found them to be a manual on
masculinity, instructing men on how to socialize and drink alcoholic beverages.
Researchers have also investigated male friendships on television (Lynn Span-
gler 1992), the construction of men in advertising (Diane Barthel 1992; Jackson
Katz 1995), and in sports (Becky Beal 1996; Toby Miller 1998; Donald Sabo and
Sue Jansen 1992; Nick Trujillo 1991; Michael Welch 1997). While this research is
valuable, there is very little work done examining nonfiction, non-entertainment
portrayals of menespecially white mensuch as those found in news cover-
age. This is especially important given that the criteria for acceptable mas-
culinities is likely different in fiction and nonfiction representations of men. So,
then, how men enact masculinities in everyday lifeand how these acts are seen
by othersis likely quite different from heroic portrayals of masculinity at the
movies.
Although masculinity and men are viewed as dominant in Western culture,
most men are not actually in dominant positions, most of the time. Instead,
multiple masculinities are ordered into a hierarchy. Within the hierarchy,
different masculinities are delineated by race, class, sexual orientation, and other
factors, such as education or social interests. Thus, although in a sexist society
30 Consalvo

men have privileges that women do not, gay men are not as privileged as
heterosexual men, and black men have less social power than white men. In high
school, male geeks have less social standing than jocks, even if they may
later go on to positions of greater power and influence. Michael Kimmel argues
that due to these divisions, manhood is only possible for a distinct minority,
and the definition has been constructed to prevent the others from achieving it
(1998: 238). He further believes that this leads to a situation where men feel
powerless, when in fact they are still living in a system that privileges men as
a group. Robert Hanke (1998) argues that these varying facets or subcategories
of masculinity serve to keep in place one dominant versionhegemonic mas-
culinity. This ideal masculine subjectivity comprises white, middle-class,
heterosexual, professional-managerial men (Hanke 1998: 186). Hanke groups
these subcategories into two areas: subordinate masculinities and conservative
masculinities. The category of subordinate masculinity is usually illustrated (by
Hanke) through representations of gay male subculture. Within this subculture
are very different yet still rigid roles for menbut these roles are subordinated
to the hegemonic, as one of the bedrock characteristics of the hegemonic
masculine role is heterosexuality.2 Although Hanke does not extend the subordi-
nate category beyond gay men, I believe it can be applied to other categories of
masculinity, especially those not celebrated in contemporary society. This would
include outcast groups of boys in high school, who are harassed by more
popular groups, and who are also, importantly, less respected (or not respected)
by teachers and school administrators as well. Thus, subordinate masculinity as
a category can serve as a place for alternate representations of masculinity to
exist, but this category (by name itself) is not the dominant form, and can be
dangerous for those within it. Hanke also identifies conservative masculinity as
a place for supposedly progressive articulations of masculinity, although as
Hanke argues, they are not as enlightened as they appear. Conservative mas-
culinity can show glimmers of enlightenment but is ultimately concerned with
maintaining the status quo in gender relations.
In spite of these differences in constructs, all of these versions of masculinity
work in concert to ultimately retain the dominance of masculinity as a whole,
defining and redefining what is masculine in order to retain its privilege. One
question to ask of these various forms of masculinity, however, is whether the
oppression of boys in the lesser forms by those occupying the hegemonic
might prove lethal for those in the hegemonic position. If a boys masculinity
becomes too threatened or too subordinated by those that inhabit the dominant
form, masculinity may become self-destructing.
It is also important to acknowledge the relationship between masculinity and
the school system. Klebold and Harris were adolescents, and their daily lives
consisted of attending high school. Connell writes that schools are important
player[s] in the shaping of modern masculinities (1998: 155), and can be
considered agents as well as sites or settings for this learning to take place.
Schools also play an important role as both agent and setting in regard to sports
and sport culture. As an agent of gender shaping, Connell refers to Foleys
ethnography of a south Texas high school, where football was very popular.
Connell writes that:

Not only the football team but the school population as a whole use the game
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 31

for celebration and reproduction of the dominant codes of gender. The game
directly defines a pattern of aggressive and dominating performance as the most
admired form of masculinity, and indirectly marginalizes others. (1998: 160)

Further, as a setting for students, the peer culture of the school is likewise
important in affecting the ways that masculinities are expressed and developed.
Connell elaborates:
Peer culture is now closely linked with mass communication. Mass culture
generates images and interpretations of masculinity that flow chaotically into
school life and are reworked by pupil Some of these representations are at
odds with school agendas. Others (such as interest in sports) are likely to mesh.
(1998: 161)

This tension between mass and school cultures has important consequences
for students who are still learning and perhaps experimenting with expressions
of masculinity, and who are also trying to determine how violence might fit into
their particular construction. As Kimmel suggests, Violence is often the single
most evident marker of manhood. Rather it is the willingness to fight, the desire
to fight (1998: 236).
Yet violence or the threat of violence can figure into multiple constructions of
masculinity in different ways. Myriam Miedzian (1991) writes that US culture
celebrates violence, condoning its use in many instances. Some of these uses are
fictional, including action-adventure movies and television crime dramas.
Though these are normal facets of US culture, these types of violence are
largely developed for and enacted by men. Miedzian argues that violence is
considered a masculine trait, and therefore ascribed to menas something men
are interested in, participate in, and understand. This argument is thought
provoking but limiting, as it does not really address how violence is differen-
tially expressed by different masculinities. She does suggest that because our
society views masculinity as a norm, we do not recognize masculinity, as a
generalized category, as being deviant. But she is also quick to acknowledge that
the majority of individual men do not commit acts of violencerather men as a
group are more inclined to use violence, as it is associated naturally with
masculinity, and is therefore considered more acceptable. Katz (1995) supports
this assertion, and further focuses on the importance of advertising in re-
affirming these linkages, especially for white males. Jackson Katz believes the
linkage of white masculinity with violence is done by making violence appear
to be a genetically programmed male behavior, by associating muscularity
with masculinity, and by equating heroic masculinity with violent masculinity
(1995: 139). Medzian and Katzs assertion applies very well to fictional and
sporting representations of hegemonic masculinity (the male action movie hero),
but is conceptually limited by the very acknowledgment that most boys and
men do not commit criminal acts of violence.
So how were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold portrayed in the news, and how
was their violence explained? The next section of this paper examines how initial
media coverage constructed the boys. Subsequent sections analyze the more
detailed, later reports. Here I focus on how the media represented the boys
backgrounds (particularly their association with The Trench Coat Mafia) and the
factors journalists considered most likely to have triggered Harris and Klebolds
actions.
32 Consalvo

One horrific crime, two monstrous perpetrators

The story of the killings at Columbine High School were widely reported in
the US news media for many days after the event. On the day of the shooting,
ABCs Nightly News filled more than 40% of its time with Columbine, and the
next night CBSs Evening News devoted more than 14 minutes, or 70% of its
available time, to examining the events in Littleton. The shootings were the lead
story on all networks until the following Monday, when CNN was first to bump
the story to second in its lineup (the networks were soon to follow).3 However,
the other networks apparently felt the story was still of sufficient magnitude that
it was back as the lead story the following night on NBC. On the Sunday
following the shootings, the Denver Rocky Mountain News published two editori-
als, twenty-six letters to the editor, and twenty-two articles and columns
addressing Columbine. The New York Times published one editorial and eight
articles and columns the same day, many of which were of considerable length
(ranging from 401 to 1704 words). The news magazines were delayed by their
weekly publishing cycle, but finally addressed the event in their May 3 issues.
They all led with the event, using their covers to establish their commitment to
the story, and then used multiple stories including many pictures and diagrams
to document the events.4 Most news outlets offered timelines of the events as
they unfolded. Also included were related stories such as the killers back-
grounds (particularly their involvement with The Trench Coat Mafia), school
safety, past shootings, guns, violent media, the danger of high school cliques,
and stories on how to fight back or what kids can do to prevent events like
this from happening in their schools. Encircling or framing all of these stories,
however, was the ever-present, overarching focus on the event as a horrendous
crime, with the killers portrayed as inhuman monsters.
The shootings were presented as horrifying, with the perpetrators cast as utter
deviants for their acts. On the day of the shootings, the Denver Rocky Mountain
News ran an extra edition of its newspaper. Two of its headlines read:

SCHOOL WAR ZONE: MANY STUDENTS WOUNDED IN SHOOTING, EX-

PLOSIONS, FIRE AT JEFFCOS COLUMBINE HIGH (Mike Anton 1999a)

SCHOOL MASSACRE: UP TO 25 DIE IN JEFFCO RAMPAGE; 2 GUNMEN

KILL THEMSELVES AFTER 4-HOUR SIEGE (Mike Anton 1999b)

The next day, Wednesday, April 21 the Denver Rocky Mountain News ran
nineteen articles and columns on the event, under headlines including:

TRAIL OF MAYHEM: COLUMBINE PLUNGED INTO NIGHTMARE OF BUL-

LETS AND BLOOD (Lisa Ryckman 1999)

The New York Times ran three stories that Wednesday, all titled Terror in
Littleton, describing The Scene, The Trench Coat Mafia, and The
Overview (James Barron 1999; Brett Pulley 1999; James Brooke 1999a). The May
3 cover of Time proclaimed The Monsters Next Door: What Made Them Do It?
Both Newsweek and US News & World Report led with the simple headline
Why? All coverage, including television network news, used terms such as
massacre, horror, war zone, bloodbath, siege, and murderous rampage in their descrip-
tion of the events.
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 33

These descriptors served to cast the events as so deviant as to be beyond

understanding or comprehension. The use of terms like bloodbath or war zone is
normally associated with war reporting, or accounts of terrorism. In this case,
the perpetrators were high school students, rather than foreign governments or
terrorists. Additionally, although school shootings have received extensive news
media attention in the US, this crime was more massive in scaleproducing
more casualties than the previous shootingsand was also portrayed as even
more deviant. Previous shootings included that perpetrated by Michael Carneal
who opened fire on a prayer group in Kentucky, and Mitchell Johnson and
Andrew Golden who pulled a fire alarm so students would be ambushed when
exiting the school building in Arkansas. Yet Klebold and Harris were worse
because, it was reported, they took great pleasure in killing their classmates. One
article from the Denver Rocky Mountain News began They were shooting, and
they were laughing (Ryckman 1999). A student interviewed by CBS News on
Wednesday, April 21 stated, they were cheering when they were shooting
people, saying they wanted to do this their whole lives.
In casting Klebold and Harris as deviant, or as monsters, journalists set
them apart from normal boys in society. This is a common discursive shift
journalists make when portraying men who kill or batter victims whom journal-
ists deem to be blameless. For example, Marian Meyers (1997) writes that news
coverage of men who commit violence against women often portrays such men
as sick or deviant, therefore not reflective of society at large. Klebold and Harris
were definitively framed as deviant. This positioning has often been used to
differentiate between good men who otherwise did not pose a threat to others,
and men more likely to be considered bad or sociopaths, men outside the
mainstream of society (Meyers 1997). Therefore, violence can be an accepted trait
of certain masculinities, but only if exercised in certain ways. Violence employed
in heroic acts of saving the world or a woman in distress is acceptable and
lauded, in both fiction and reality. However, the use of violence for unjustified
killing leads to inclusion in a deviant/subordinate masculine position, for real
and fictional boys. Klebold and Harris were on the wrong side of the divide
even wearing black trench coats to make their associations obvious. By referring
to Klebold and Harris as monsters, another slippage occursmonsters are not
seen as gendered creatures, male or otherwiseessentially, they are not human.
So with this choice of labels, news coverage displaced gender and its attributes
from examination or potential culpability (Kate Clark 1992). Masculinity and its
variable constructions remained largely unnoticed, invisible in the easier frame
of the boys as monsters.
At the beginning of the coverage, there was also guilt by association that led
to a positioning of the group The Trench Coat Mafia as deviant as well. In early
television coverage they are referred to as a gang and as a large group
regularly walking the halls of Columbine High School, causing trouble and
frightening other students. Later coverage pointed out that Harris and Klebold
had isolated themselves from their friends in this group, but the association
stuck. Likewise, as news analysis delved more deeply into the boys and The
Trench Coat Mafias background, the positioning of the boys as monsters began
to shift somewhat, as the labels nerd and geek were applied to them. The
unfortunate effects of these associations will be discussed next.
34 Consalvo

The media asks why and finds, in part, The Trench Coat Mafia
Within this overarching framework, the news media provided an abundance
of analysis of factors that possibly led to the shootings. But journalists quickly
pounced on Harris and Klebolds friends as a fresh angle to be explored in
depth, made relevant because police had questioned some of them. This group
came with the unfortunate (yet headline-friendly) name the Trench Coat
Mafia, and was probed and scrutinized over the days of the coverage. News
stories in the New York Times and Denver Rocky Mountain News, in particular, had
many column inches discussing the groupits practices and role in Columbine
High Schools world of cliques. Through this coverage, the easy identification of
the shooters as inhuman monsters began to change. Their history as outcasts
emerged and their association with The Trench Coat Mafia was scrutinized. This
created some discursive confusion between the real danger posed by Harris and
Klebold as individuals, the perceived danger of The Trench Coat Mafia, and
teenaged geeks in general.
Immediately following the shootings, reports linked Harris and Klebold to
The Trench Coat Mafia, whose members mainly were known for wearing long
black trench coats in school. This group was initially described in the news
media as a gang with membership ranging from a small group to about 20
guys that were known as the dorks, the loners, the outcasts (Tina Griego,
Ann Imse, and Lynn Bartels 1999). Students interviewed by reporters also called
them nerds, geeks and dweebs (Pulley 1999) and kids who nobody wanted
to have anything to do with (Brooke 1999a). Clearly, these were not the popular
students at Columbine High.
Members of the group were also linked with deviant activities: seniors with
swastikas on their berets (Ryckman 1999), and the faces of the groups
members were sometimes covered with white makeup and dark eyeliner, and
their tongues were dripping with hatred for racial minorities and athletes
(Pulley 1999). To make the message more explicit and to suggest that these were
not simply weird but harmless kids, one headline in the Denver Rocky Mountain
News declared:

QUIET LONERS WORRIED OTHER STUDENTS, TRENCH COAT MAFIA

SPOKE ABOUT VIOLENCE, CARRIED REPUTATION FOR BEING OUT-
SIDERS (Griego, Imse, and Bartels 1999)

In the following days, the description of The Trench Coat Mafia became even
more damninga report stated that the parents of the black student killed by
Harris and Klebold said that their son had been threatened by the all-white
gang, which affected Nazi trappings (Brooke 1999b).
Some efforts were made to distinguish Harris and Klebold from the group.
Members of The Trench Coat Mafia tried to separate themselves from the killers,
stating that Harris and Klebold were not really core members of the group
(Jodi Wilgoren 1999), and also that the two had isolated themselves from the
group in the months before the shootings (ABC Nightly News, 24 April 1999).
The group members also denied charges made against themthat they were
into violence and bizarre activities: Were not a homosexual group, or Satanists,
or neo-Nazis (Wilgoren 1999). One group members mother tried to defuse the
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 35

menacing picture of the group by stating: I personally thought they looked

kind of goofy, but theyre kids (Wilgoren 1999).
According to news interviews with students, The Trench Coat Mafia members
(who were mostly white males), including Harris and Klebold, inhabited a
subordinated masculinity within the culture of their school. They were not part
of the in crowd, were not popular, and were either ignored or despised by
other kids. Although in contemporary society men and masculinity generally
hold dominant positions over women and femininity, subordinated masculine
positions still exist, and this group of boys fit into a subordinated positionput
there both by peers and by authority figures. Harris and Klebold rebelled against
it. Journalists reported that the pair were very angry, but they didnt know how
to release their anger and further they disliked authority. They did not like to
be told what to do (Griego, Imse, and Bartels 1999).
While benefits do accrue to men as a group, individual men often tend to feel
powerless and peripheral in society (Kimmel 1998). News coverage showed that
Harris and Klebold had been marginalized and harassed by the school culture
at Columbine High School. This marginalization was made manifest through
depictions of their relations with the jocks and preps at school. Most news
reports stated that they (Harris and Klebold as well as The Trench Coat Mafia)
got their fair share of being picked on (Pulley 1999). Although many stories
characterized The Trench Coat Mafia as geeks and losers, they were also
portrayed as one clique among many. The assumption that was not stated was
that all groups in high school are picked on, and that therefore everyone must
deal with others who dislike them. However, some reporters who allowed The
Trench Coat Mafia members to speak for themselves permitted a different view
to emergethat the group (and Harris and Klebold by extension) received much
more than their fair share of scorn from other groups. One member stated the
athletes would threaten us, leave notes in lockers, as they were driving by theyd
throw glass bottles and rocks and things at us and so their large hatred built up
between the two groups (NBC 1999).
In considering this evidence, Harris and Klebold, along with The Trench Coat
Mafia, were in a precarious position at Columbine High. Although as white
males they were supposed to be in a privileged position (relative to adult men
at the school), they were instead shown to be at the bottom. The group tried to
evade this positioning by denying potential identities (were not a homosexual
group) as well as by trying to opt out of the system itselfthey said they
wanted mostly to be left alone. Yet, school culture, as noted previously, tends to
celebrate and reward some masculinities and punishes or discourages others.
Columbine High was a place that glorified sports and athletes. In the hierarchy
of school relations, jocks were at the top, while geeks and nerds were at the
bottom. Jocks could revel in their position and gain status within the school for
their activities, while the geeks received only scorn.
If the geeks had rebelled against these strictures too much, they might have
been re-positioned as dangerous monsters-in-waiting, deserving of more
suspicion and further dislike, rather than a more highly respected version of
masculinitywhatever that might entail. News coverage positioned both The
Trench Coat Mafia and Harris and Klebold as outcasts-by-choice in their school,
and did not adequately explore the ramifications of this label or its limitations.
36 Consalvo

Harris and Klebold finally rebelled against the categoriesre-inscribing them-

selves into a dominant positionif only for a day.
The problem of bullying in school was made mostly irrelevant by Harris and
Klebolds over-the-top response. The role of the jocks and popular kids was
explored by the news magazines and given voice through The Trench Coat
Mafia members interviewed, but because of the magnitude of the attack,
bullying was largely dismissed by the media. You cant explain this as a jocks
vs. nerds tragicomedy. Theres a Trench Coat Mafia or something like it in
virtually every high school, and only this one exploded in mass murder (Mike
Littwin 1999: 3B). By suggesting that if the situation (bullying) doesnt directly
lead to mass murder, it isnt truly a problem; the jocks role (as perpetrators) in
pushing Klebold and Harris to take the actions they did is excused, and similar
situations can persist. Sport culture and its more dominant masculinity stand
unchangedits adherents held mostly blameless. While the jocks were not the
ones who engaged in the shooting spree, and Klebold and Harris cannot be
excused for their actions, some culpability must lie in the damaging social
hierarchies found in their high school, where jocks and sport culture were
regarded as more important and less culpable than other cliques or students.
Mafia members and geeks at all high schools were instead found to be more
blameworthy and suspicious than their dominant peers.
A few media outlets did explore the issue of social pressure in high school,
such as a report in Newsweek titled The truth about high school (Jerry Adler
1999: 58). The article did point out that jocks are usually at the top of social
hierarchies, and that they often pick on the unpopular students. Yet instead of
suggesting that this behavior is unacceptable and can detonate unstable kids, it
instead veered away from this conclusion by stating fitting in is partly a matter
of choice and in some ways, the system works, assigning kids the roles theyre
comfortable with. Likewise, a Point of View segment on ABC News on April
24 focused on the importance of fitting in. The program concluded with a girl
stating that when a teen makes a negative comment to another teen, its enough
to make a kid spend the night in your room crying about it. Although such
stories point out that kids may have a tough time fitting in, the potentially lethal
dangers involved in this form of subordination are not really addressed, but
instead glossed over.
News reports engaged in a process of singling out the misfits who already felt
targeted. This extended to kids across the nation who didnt fit in normal
categories of dress or interests. In the aftermath it was reported that students
wearing trench coats or speaking of shooting schoolmates were quickly disci-
plined, but students whose only crime was that they looked or acted different
from the norm were targeted as well. Jon Katz (1999), a journalist who writes for
the online publication Slashdot, wrote in a column after Littleton that:

The country went on a panicked hunt the oddballs in High School, a profoundly
ignorant and unthinking response to a tragedy that left geeks, nerds, non-con-
formists and the alienated in an even worse situation than before The big
story out of Littleton isnt about violence or the Internet, or whether or not video
games are turning our kids into killers. Its about the fact that for some of the
best, brightest and most interesting kids, high school is a nightmare of exclusion,
cruelty, warped values and anger.
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 37

Finally, some news accounts did suggest that targeting certain kids for
scrutiny might not be the best idea. New York Times columnist Timothy Egan
(1999: 1) wrote, what many schools really seem to want is a metal detector for
personality. However, by the end of the column, he had changed his stance
against student profiling and instead called for investigating those who are
fascinated with violent media, have easy access to weapons, and a flawed
character. Egan concluded: Taken together, all three elements spell trouble
(1999: 1). In effect, then, pressures to suggest ways to prevent school violence,
and ingrained beliefs about the value or untouchable nature of dominant
masculinity and sports culture, led to a situation where geeks and nerds across
the country were targeted by school administrators as well as some media
outlets for surveillance and suspicion, rather than understanding and support.

How could this happen here?

Although they may have been regarded by their peers as nerds, Klebold and
Harris were also middle-class white boys. Yet most journalists overlooked the
salience of their race, even though many stories noted that the boys were full
of hatred for racial minorities. The focus on their overt racism displaced
consideration of how racism permeates society and how it can extend beyond
overt acts of prejudice. At the time of the shooting, the town of Littleton was
98% white. Nonetheless, the news media consistently failed to explore how
structural racism might have contributed to such a demographic, or indeed, how
less explicit forms of racism might be at work in the community. Lines of
questioning like this would have required asking difficult questions and examin-
ing complex histories. It was far easier to suggest that the boys deviancy was to
blame for their racism as well.
The discussion of race (or its non-discussion) was instead submerged within
a classist argumentthe belief that violence can be escaped through white flight
to the suburbs. As Denver Rocky Mountain News columnist Robert Denerstein
wrote, again and again, people expressed surprise that it happened here you
certainly dont expect middle-class kids to go around killing each
other clearly, the kids who did the shooting had no conception of what life is
(1999: 31A). Denerstein assumes that violence is associated with poverty and
that with class advancement, crime and violence diminish substantially. Another
assumption embedded in his argument is that minorities are largely to blame for
such violence, and thus that their near-total absence from the suburbs also plays
a part in its niceness. However, violence is not the exclusive province of
impoverished minorities. Debra Dickerson (1999) has argued that blacks see
school shootings as white crime and the refuge of privileged white boys who
dont feel privileged:
Its not that whites are nonviolent by nature, and accordingly choose to express
their criminality in kinder, gentler ways, or that blacks are bell-curved at birth
with the Willie Horton gene With senseless, non-economic violent crime, the
issue is one of societal entitlement and what each strata of society sees as coming
to itthats the socio half of the equation. The Littleton killers felt robbed. As
white, middle-class males, they understood that they had a certain amount of
societal deference coming to thembut where was it? They took their comfort,
nice neighborhood and (until their rampage) safe school for granted; those
38 Consalvo

things werent enough. That couldnt give them the sense of specialness they so
clearly craved and felt entitled to.
For Dickerson (1999), race was very important in understanding the shoot-
ingswhiteness worked in concert with masculinity to produce a subject
position expectant of certain privileges. Denied these privileges, the middle-class
white boys lashed out. The continued invisibility of whiteness in news analysis
paralleled the medias failure to adequately interrogate masculinity. Instead, the
discussion moved to considerations of classand the shock that middle-class
kids (but not white kids) could do something like that. The failure to consider
whiteness might be a result of inexperience in considering whiteness as a factor
at all. Travis Dixon and Daniel Linz (2000) have written that televised crime
news portrays blacks and Latinos as significantly more likely than whites to be
portrayed as lawbreakers, with whites being underrepresented as lawbreakers
compared to their actual crime rates.
One way that race was used in the Columbine shootings was with the link
made between Klebold and Harris and white supremacist beliefs. In so doing,
the news media did not call into question the construction of whiteness or white
masculinity (or attempt to pathologize this position as has been done with black
masculinity) but instead deflected attention away from the whiteness of the
boys. Although they subscribed to white supremacist views, it was their beliefs,
not their skin color, which was the problem. Instead of questioning the makeup
of white Americans, the media instead focused on some deviant beliefs held by
a minority of whites. As such, the news accounts perpetuated racist accounts of
crime and proper criminals.

Video games and the Internet: the new scapegoats

Apart from The Trench Coat Mafia and racist beliefs, Harris and Klebolds
past use of video games and the Internet were scrutinized. The boys avidly
played the video game Doom, which features a first-person shooter. In
addition, the news media noted that Harris had constructed a Web page
detailing a list of things that he hated, both of which the media featured as prime
indicators of the violence to come.
News magazines provided the most extensive analysis of video games and the
Internet. Stories ranged from balanced considerations of gaming and Web
surfing to less analytical, more sensationalized accounts. For example, Time ran
a story titled Digital Dungeons (Chris Taylor 1999: 50) which had the sub-
heading Gory fantasy beckons to kids from websites and video games. It can
be playful. But often its hateful. Even the stories that provided more balanced
accounts, such as the Time report Are video games really so bad (Quittner
1999), undercut their claim. This story had a full page photograph depicting a
mother and father looking horrified while holding on to their teenage sons
pants as his head was being sucked into a computer monitor, as he held a game
controller.
One report on ABC (April 20, 1999) stated that a commonality of school
shooters was they are often unusually influenced by the media. Some re-
searchers say that young boys are heavy users of the media (Katharine Heintz-
Knowles and Meredith Li-Vollmer 1999). But does the media influence, or
simply interest them? The US Congress has blasted the makers of violent media,
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 39

issuing a report stating, the existing research shows beyond a doubt that media
violence is linked to youth violence. As one expert concludes, to argue against
it is like arguing against gravity (Senate Committee on the Judiciary 1999). The
report goes on to indict violent video games and the Internet as sites where kids
learn how to kill and like it.
The news media were drawn to this viewespecially because the evidence
was so persuasive on the surface. Yet, a report recently released by the US
Surgeon General states there is no connection between exposure to media
violence and long-term aggression. The only correlation found between media
exposure and aggression is a short-term link (hours to days after exposure)
limited to an increase in childrens physically and verbally aggressive behav-
ior (Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General 2001). Henry Jenkins
(2000) suggests that instead of wondering what media is doing to kids, we
should be asking what kids are doing with media.
What were Harris and Klebold then doing by playing Doom and creating
Web pages? I argue that games and the Internet are structured spaces to
experiment with and enact alternative gender rolesroles denied to most people
in everyday reality. The medium employedcomputerscan operate as pros-
theses or as an extension of bodies, extending abilities and augmenting gender
in a virtual space. In playing Doom, for example, a player could enact revenge
scenarios, and become a tough, stoic killer who would no longer have to deal
with bullying and abuse. Web sites also allow a public display of animosities,
with few apparent real repercussions. These mediated spaces allowed ex-
pression of alternative masculinitiesones that would take no crap from
anonymous opponents. Instead of practicing shooting skills, the boys were
perhaps play-acting different versions of themselves.
Doom is a first-person shooter game. In other words, you see the game from
the point of view of the protagonist, and your goal is to shoot everything that
comes your way. The main character in Doom is no 98-pound weaklinghe
(or she) sports practically unlimited firepower, and can run and jump with
inhuman stamina and skill. Playing the game might have meant trying on a new
and improved masculinityone that was dominant rather than dominated,
picking the fights rather than fleeing them, laughing at, rather than being the
object of laughter. Harris and Klebolds use of Doom is mirrored by many
other kids and adults who can use it to play the fantasy of being a powerful
actorwhere problems are simple and enemies easily eliminated. Most gamers
can put down the controller and the fantasy in the same motionas the Surgeon
Generals report concluded. Yet, the popularity of graphic, unremitting destruc-
tion, especially among boys and men, does raise the question of why these
images are so appealing, and whether this suggests men use these games to
enhance or reinforce feelings of powerfulness, rather than marginalization.
Harris creation of a Web page expressing his views can be scrutinized in a
similar way. Here in particular Harris could express his rage with few if any
repercussions. The vastness of the Internet worked to his advantage, allowing
him to simultaneously stand out and hide in the multitude of pages. His more
vicious thoughts and beliefs could be revealed, and a new version (or perhaps
the real version) of himself unveiled. Masculinity could be reworked and
reassembled into a presentation less subordinate than his position at school. For
both boys, computers possibly served as technological add-ons to their bodies.
40 Consalvo

By adding technological prostheses, they could upgrade themselves temporar-

ilythey could become Terminators in a particular time and space. Unfortu-
nately this virtual cyborgization was not enough, and they progressed to the
more deadly real prostheses of automatic weapons and bombs strapped to their
chests. In so doing, they transformed their bodies into agents of destruction,
terminator cyborgs, and their prostheses not simply extending them but destroy-
ing them as well.

Conclusions
This study examined news coverage immediately following the Columbine
High School shootings to determine how the media constructed Eric Harris,
Dylan Klebold, and The Trench Coat Mafia. I scrutinized how masculinity,
whiteness, and school and sport culture were treated in media reports and
examined this coverage to determine how it set the tone for later treatment of
real geeks elsewhere.
The positioning of Klebold and Harris alternated between monster and geek.
In the very beginning, the magnitude of their actions and their enjoyment in
killing allowed them to be portrayed as monsters. Yet once investigations into
their pasts began in an effort to determine what turned them into monsters, an
alternate vision of them as high school geeks emerged. In school they inhabited
a subordinate masculinitykept there by the jocks and popular kids. At a time
(high school) when identities are in constant formation and reformation, this
placement in a subordinate position likely did not sit well with them, as
evidenced by reports of their anger. As Dickerson (1999) maintains, as middle-
class white boys they likely felt they were being denied a privileged position
promised to them. For whatever reason, they exploded.
The casting of them as deviant placed them outside the mainstream of
hegemonic masculinity. The reversion to the idea that their underlying sickness
trumped every other cause gave complex issues that demanded attention short
shrift. School culture, whiteness, and the hierarchic structure of masculinities
were let off the hook far too easily, and instead media outlets focused on the
more sensational elements: video games, guns, and the Internet. Of course, the
magnitude of the crime left little room for understanding of the killersand
rightly so. Yet what resulted was a chilling message for high school geeks
everywherewho found themselves the targets of articles such as how to spot
a troubled kid. These articles set a tone for treating such kids as potential
felons, monsters-in-waiting, without deeper investigations into why they might
be troubled in the first place.
Harris and Klebold were constructed as sick killers who sprang from a more
or less troubled clique. Although the media frequently depicted Harris, Klebold,
and The Trench Coat Mafia as geeks and losers, they did not immediately
question what such marginalization might mean for boys still exploring and
constructing their gendered identities. Rather, most media stories took the
simpler route, claiming that though all were outsiders, it was by choice. The
bullying and abusesubordinationby other boys in school was not deemed a
dangerous enough factor, compared to other factors, to focus much attention on.
News coverage glossed over the reality of hierarchic masculinities in school
culture and did not intensively question the violence of some boys towards
 Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 41

others in daily interactions. Media stories functioned to contain troubling

representations of hegemonic masculinity by focusing on the sick/deviant
nature of Harris and Klebold, and at this point did not allow for more complex
discussions of masculinity and its role in school culture. Hierarchic conventions
within masculinity and within school culture were reinscribed more deeply into
news values concerning proper criminals and ways to cover crime, and trouble-
some factors went unnoticed and uncriticized. The process cast out the deviants,
and kept privilege for the members who agreed to play by the rules.
Until masculinity and its different constructions are better explored in general
society as well as in the news, we as news audiences and citizens will be blind
to how these masculinities are linkedfalsely and notto damaging traits and
behaviors. Questions of how these different forms ultimately work against each
other to destroy all those caught in their path will continue to be set aside. By
ignoring these differentials, masculinity as a system will remain untouched, and
opportunities for examining how boys and men might feel trapped in a losing
system go unexplored. The events at Columbine High School and others like
them demand better understandings of how masculinities are constructed,
contested, and reaffirmed in American society. How various boys and men are
depicted in the newswho is considered troubled and who is not, how
whiteness and middle-class status are dealt withcan have important conse-
quences for those still building their identities, as troubled kids after Littleton
affirmed. This case study has examined extensive media coverage, and has
demonstrated how gender continues to be a salient factor in analysis of crime
newsfor both genders. This level of analysis should continue, until masculinity
is interrogated as closely as femininity has been.

Notes
1. The nightly news broadcasts were taken from the most prominent news outlets on
television, which all provided extensive coverage of the shootings in their evening
accounts. The magazines were chosen because of their extensive coverage of the
events, their wide circulation, and their reputation for providing analysis and
commentary along with straight reporting of news events. Finally, the newspapers
were chosen for their locality in the former case and national reputation in the latter
case. Footage from ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC was obtained from the Vanderbilt
Television Archive in Tennessee. A constructed week was put together, beginning
April 20 and ending April 27, 1999. For each day, one television networks evening
newscast was chosen, with each network being represented twice in the sample. For
the newspapers, coverage on the day following the event was selected (April 21,
1999), as well as coverage on the Sunday following the event (April 25, 1999). Also,
coverage on April 20, 1999 from the Denver Mountain Rocky News was examinedthis
coverage appeared as a special late edition, and no other national newspaper had
coverage that day. Finally, the story appeared in the May 3 and May 10, 1999 issues
of each news magazine. Some related stories appeared in the following weeks, as the
issue of gun control and legislation was debated by Congress. The May 31, 1999 issue
of Time contained coverage of the later shootings in Georgia by T. J. Solomon, and
had a special section on how to spot a troubled kid. Newsweek had also covered the
Georgia shooting, but did so with a single story in the May 13, 1999, issue.
2. For example, Hanke critiques the work of Lehrer (1989) who wrote that the late-1980s
drama thirtysomething which presented a new view of manhood in which sensi-
tive, nurturing men, aware of themselves and their feelings, take the spotlight
42 Consalvo

(Lehrer in Hanke 1992: 192). Hanke argues that this view is a generalization, and that:
While television may offer a range of images of men, such redemptive readings do
not address the ideological work that exceptions to the hegemonic pattern do, within
a relatively stable framework of patriarchal codings of gender roles and relations,
marriage, and the family (1992: 192).
Hanke also argues here and elsewhere that although the men on the show were
depicted as ultimately sensitive and caring family providers, their problems were
largely relegated to the individual level, where social problems, prejudices, and
stereotypes were conspicuously absent (Hanke 1990). The show thus creates a
conservative masculinity that remains complicit with patriarchal ideology, masking
and displacing real gender inequalities, and effacing any further critique of dominant
gender ideology (Hanke 1992: 193).
3. All news outlets did devote considerable coverage to these events, although CNN
tended to give the shootings less coverage, and sensationalized the shootings less
than the other television networks. Speculating on reasons for this is not the focus of
this paper.
4. This included stories written during the initial days of coverage as well as stories
appearing a week or more afterward. There were no real differences in the news
medias approaches, which included the standard debates about gun control, parental
responsibility, reports on the dangerous side of the Internet, and the popularity of
violent video games such as Doom. Most news outlets also gave updates on
previous shootingswhether the shooters had been sentenced, how families were
coping in the aftermath, and activism (as well as lawsuits) that had come out of the
tragedies. The growing routine nature of the coverage was even commented on
ironically in the Time headline for the story of T. J. Solomons shooting spree in
Georgia, which read Just a Routine School Shooting (John Cloud 1999b: 34). By this
time, it seems, the media had figured out many of the angles with which to scrutinize
stories, and were very adept at employing them.

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Mia Consalvo is an Assistant Professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University.

Her research interests include the study of gender and race in popular culture and the news. She
has previously studied news accounts of domestic violence and the murder of a mail-order bride,
and the prevalence of domestic violence on the reality show Cops. She has most recently co-edited
(with Susanna Paasonen) the book Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency and
Identity (Peter Lang, forthcoming).