....is concerned with the complex relationship between men and women presented in popular culture. The 2010 series explores gender dynamics, violence and sexuality in a darkly satiric manner. Mixed imagery from 50's pulp magazine Inside Detective and text from the eponymous popular 90's guide to dating become a re-imagining of the how-to companion to modern romance. In employing intertextuality Martin both familiarizes and estranges viewers from the content, in doing so she investigates how the narratives of popular culture are used to socialize the sexes. The series subverts these messages by re-contextualizing their respective intentions as titillating pulp and gendered indoctrination.
The contrast of image and prose challenges both, demands further examination into the expectations each provokes.
In her pairings of text and image, Martin suggests the psychological effects of confusing depictions of love, sex, obsession, and violence; how mechanisms for survival can come to resemble love.
The Rules makes use of the conventions of the self-help genre as well as the thriller narrative to explore not only the societal realities of violence against women, but the expectation of violation.