The Mary Sue: Film criticism, like every other aspect of the industry, tends to be dominated by cishet white men. Rotten Tomatoes is trying to level the playing field with both their grants for underrepresented critics to attend film festivals and by welcoming in a large class of new Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics. Of the 600 critics, 55% are women, which means that the class has reached gender parity, a rare statement to be made.
3 comments:
Elena Keogh
Rotten tomatoes movement to assist critics of "marginalized backgrounds" and the recent statistic that 55% of their staff are women, brings up a very interesting point in terms of representation. Gender and racial equality are battles that people of minority groups continue to fight every day and are long over do movements. However, more importantly, when a group of people from different backgrounds join together to work on a project or piece of art the various perspectives assist in making the piece more complex. In order to accurately represent multiple perspectives regarding a work, multiple different backgrounds need to come to the table. Bias also plays a role, in the sense that a review of a piece of artwork that is only represented by a certain group of people is incredibly one - sided and therefore not completely accurate.
Rotten tomatoes movement to assist critics of "marginalized backgrounds" and the recent statistic that 55% of their staff are women, brings up a very interesting point in terms of representation. Gender and racial equality are battles that people of minority groups continue to fight every day and are long over do movements. However, more importantly, when a group of people from different backgrounds join together to work on a project or piece of art the various perspectives assist in making the piece more complex. In order to accurately represent multiple perspectives regarding a work, multiple different backgrounds need to come to the table. Bias also plays a role, in the sense that a review of a piece of artwork that is only represented by a certain group of people is incredibly one - sided and therefore not completely accurate.
This is a huge step forward for gender equality and inclusion! It’s crazy that I’ve never even given a thought to who it is that reviews entertainment for us, let alone what gender they are or what they identify as. Now that I think about it, It’s extremely important that film critics represent the population as a whole and not just straight white males. When we watch films we want to relate to what we are watching, which is why the people who review these films need to represent all kinds of people so they can recommend movies that are geared towards all different audiences. I applaud Rotten Tomatoes for making a huge effort to create inclusivity in their company! They are also hiring more freelance workers which allows more people of different lifestyles to come and express their unique viewpoints when it comes to film. People need to be more aware of inclusivity as it relates to the film critic industry because I don’t think that’s something that people give much thought to.
-Jillian Warner
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