If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. - Ursula K. LeGuin

Monday, January 25, 2010

It's A Man's World...

***Updated to appease Drax****

...at least at the movies. A while back I ran across this post about The Rule from an Alison Bechdel comic strip. The Rule is a guideline for what movies the main character will go to see. The requirements are:
  1. There has to be at least two women in it who
  2. talk to each other about
  3. something besides a man.
Seems pretty simple, eh? Well as it turns out we are hard pressed to find movies that actually fulfill these requirements.

I found this blog where readers can nominate movies and rate them on how many of the requirements they fulfill. It is pretty sad and quite frankly I disagree with many of the ratings. Personally I feel if the conversation the two women have involves having a baby that should also count as a rule violation, but hey, maybe I'm being too picky.

I found these posts around the end of the year so I couldn't resist making a list of the movies I I watched in 2009 (I only included movies released in 2009) and wanted to see how they fared. I'm sorry to say, not to well. Here they are:
  1. Star Trek
  2. 2012
  3. The Hangover
  4. Paul Blart: Mall Cop (It was on Netflix. We were bored and desperate.)
  5. Funny People
  6. The Taking of Pelham 123
  7. The Soloist
  8. Julie & Julia
  9. The Men Who Stare At Goats
  10. Sunshine Cleaning
  11. Good Hair
  12. Tyson
  13. Up In The Air
  14. Sherlock Holmes
By my best estimate, only 2 of the 14 (14%) possibly meet all three requirements (Julie & Julia & Sunshine Cleaning). Even sadder, very few even have 2 women in them, no less talking to each other about anything.

What movies have you seen that meet the requirements?

8 comments:

Drax said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Drax said...

But think of the drinking game possibilities!!

Drax said...

But maybe the goats were girls! And they talked!

Drax said...

But... Paul Blart: Mall Cop?!?!

Annie said...

I can't think of a single thing that meets this requirement. Sad, isn't it?

ruth pennebaker said...

I did love Julie and Julia. Two women who loved their work! How ... quaint.
Other than that, I can't think of any other contenders. Hated It's Complicated, which should have been re-named It's Simplistic.

Amanda@Lady Scientist said...

I've tried to invoke that rule with my general movie-watching habits. But when I did I realized that there were no movies left to watch! Isn't it sad that it's 2010 and we still have this problem?

Julie said...

I can't think of one movie that meets these requirements, but I'll let you know if I do find one. We watch a lot of Independent films, but even in those, I can't think of one off the top of my head. I'm sure daughter will make one:)