this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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I think it's fair to say that the women's list has a lot of focus on relationships, but I don’t think that difference in the nature of conflicts is quite as clear between the two lists.
Harry Potter has the loss of family as a part of his motivation, but the actual conflict in the series is with the external threat that he and his friends need to overcome, generally starting as a conflict between students and faculty and ending in a forceful struggle between our heroes and actual villains. That plus Wonder Woman and Hunger Games makes a fairly sizable portion of the list where the conflict is a more direct fight.
On the other side of the equation Rashomon is a murder investigation that's about conflicting stories rather than a direct conflict between characters. Seven Samurai is far more focused on the tension between the samurai and the villagers than the fight with the bandits. Rocky isn't about the conflict with his opponent, it's about struggling to follow a dream, finding self worth, and living up to your potential with a romantic relationship in there for good measure. Casino isn't about an external conflict, it's more of a "rise and fall of" story, where the authorities aren't really characters at all, just an inevitable consequence of the choices the main characters made, and the fallout from their relationships with each other crumbling. Lawrence of Arabia is set during a war but is about Lawrence and the relationship he forges with his Arab allies. The Great Escape has conflict that is all about avoiding violence, I don't think there is even a single instance of the heroes solving a problem through violence. And that's just the ones I know off the top of my head.
I'm not saying there's nothing to the observation, just that I don't think it's clear cut at all.