People: I remember when (in the glorious pre-women's studies days at my alma mater) in a Modern Drama course a couple of female grad students (including myself) finally asked our sixty-something prof why so many of the plays we were reading (Mamet, Pinter, Shepard, et al) were so incredibly violent and abusive toward their women characters; nota bene that all three men have been heavily involved in film projects, to certain degrees of acclaim. Our Prof's response was: "I think that the women in those plays are very important characters." [We did pursue that, and asked if we became "important characters" when we walked down the street and guys yelled threatening stuff at us, but he reassured us by asking the familiar counter-inquiry, "Well, what were you wearing?"] I'd like to ask, at this juncture in all our media/OJ ponderings: Is/was Nicole Brown Simpson an "important character" in this drama? And, more to the point perhaps, should we ask what she was wearing? Just some mental meandering; I couldn't flame if I had a blowtorch. Be groovy or B-movie -- Amy Nelson Amy Nelson Department of English Rutgers University [log in to unmask]