My “He Said” partner in this dual column teaches a college course called “Poker in American Film & Culture.” When he suggested we each give our opinions on the portrayal of women in the classic poker film “Rounders,” I was intrigued. I watched the movie again.

Looking for the women in the film, my first thought after this viewing was that the women played minor roles. There were more women in the film as hookers, strip club dancers, and whores than in any other role. Interesting first impression, no?

Secondary female characters, specifically Barbara (played by Melina Kanakardes) at the private poker game in the first hour of the film and Petra (played by Famke Jannsen) who ran an underground poker club, were interesting. They were both femme fatales of sorts, women who dressed well, flirted incessantly, and seemed to be in control. However, in the case of Petra, she was a seductive character. Even when she paid a visit to the recently relationship-abandoned Mike McDermott (lead character played by Matt Damon) to collect a $7,000 debt, she wore a sexy dress, high heels, and a coat that fell off her shoulders. Though Petra was portrayed as one of the “poker people” in the film, she had a weakness for Mike that led her to accept only $1,000 of his debt and then make a romantic gesture toward him.

The primary female character was Jo (played by Gretchen Mol). In the beginning of the film, she was Mike’s live-in girlfriend. The audience’s first real impression of her was of a nagging girlfriend with a complete lack of understanding of Mike’s passion for poker. It was mentioned that she endured an earlier period in their relationship when he lost his entire bankroll, as portrayed in the opening scene of the film. However, years had passed, and she remained suspicious of his promise to stay away from poker entirely.

The distrust showed by Jo was stereotypical of a relationship in which one is truthful and dedicated, while the other longs to stray, if only to play poker. It also represented a somewhat antiquated view of a male/female partnership, in which the woman is the level-headed, practical, responsible part of the duo, and the man is deceitful, untrustworthy, and apt to break promises.

Moreover, Jo was portrayed as a selfish partner in the relationship. She not only disrespected Mike’s passion for poker by misrepresenting it as gambling numerous times, but she repeatedly insulted poker. Later in the movie, when she discovered his wad of large bills from a night of gambling he previously denied, she called it a “gangster’s roll.” Her responses to his desire to play poker were frivolous and sometimes downright cruel. It was more important for her boyfriend to hold a respectable job - in her opinion - and pursue the same law school dream with her.

Most interesting was in well into the second hour of the film when the two part ways. Jo then makes comments that indicate she knew full well that poker required skill and was not simply a wild gamble. Her character was written with that inconsistency on top of the stereotypical qualities, which made her disliked and even somewhat irrelevant.

The men in “Rounders” were also written with some disregard for women. Mike’s friends, specifically Les “Worm” Murphy (played by Edward Norton), showed nothing but contempt for Jo and Mike’s relationship with her. Worm’s comment after the breakup makes his viewpoint clear: “In the poker game of life, women are the rake.” Sadly, this has been one of the most quoted lines from the movie within male-centric poker circles.

Worm also ended up soaking his poker sorrows in a strip club, a scene that also featured a woman presumably giving oral sex to a man in the bathroom of the club. Later, the loan shark called “Grandma” had an office visited twice by the main characters in the film. Both scenes featured whorish women in his office, acting generally slutty, for lack of a better way to describe it, and Grandma treated them as such.

Overall, the message in the film was that women were liabilities. Moreover, they were impediments to living out one’s dreams. Sometimes, as with Worm or Grandma, women could be purchased for convenience’s sake, and those who tried to respect women, like Mike, were ultimately disappointed. Jo’s role in the film was to deny Mike’s dreams and disregard him as a person with his own identity and passion. Mike’s subsequent role in that relationship was to force disassociation with her in order to pursue his own dreams.

Sadly, this is the way that a rather sizeable group of men in the poker community still see women today, little more than a decade after the 1998 film that helped launch the poker boom.

See also: He Said: Dealing With the Women in Rounders