The Invisibility of Women of Color in Film Criticism

The University of Southern California’s (USC) Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and Time’s Up collaborated back in June to examine the scarcity of critics of color in film journalism and its impact on which movies reach the top. Three months later, in September, the initiative continued to explore the issue in “Critic’s Choice 2,” a follow-up report created with the Time’s Up initiative’s entertainment arm.

As Colorlines summarizes, some of the highlights of the report are,

• White men outnumber women of color in Rotten Tomatoes’ critical pool by a ratio of 17.7 to 1.
• The industry’s biggest studios aren’t doing enough to make sure critics of color review their films.
• Women of color are more likely than white men to write positive reviews of movies starring women of color.

The report points out:

This study reveals that the reviewers themselves bear only a slight resemblance to the demographics of ticket buyers. How widely critical opinions and appraisals deviate from audience reactions based on these demographic indicators remains to be answered. For now, it is clear that while the position of critics in entertainment is unique, the lack of women and people of color in the ranks of reviewers is no different than in the rest of Hollywood.

Read the full story in Colorlines here.

Image: Pixabay / rawpixel