#GAReads | Only 34 percent of all critics featured on Rotten Tomatoes are women
photo credit: Kilyan Sockalingum, via Unsplash (cropped)
…data shows that male critics often give a thumbs-down to films that female critics review positively. Male reviewers of 2016’s Ghostbusters, which starred four women, rated the film an average of 10 percentage points lower than female reviewers did.
Though Rotten Tomatoes is often thought of as neutral, its critics, like film critics at large, skew mostly white and male. Only 34 percent of all critics featured on Rotten Tomatoes are women, according to a recent study by Martha M. Lauzen, executive director at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. This matters because the site has an outsize influence over our selections and opinions—as the largest aggregation site for critical reviews of movies and TV series, it’s consulted by 36 percent of American moviegoers before they buy a ticket.
Read Jed Gottlieb’s full article at Columbia Journalism Review here…