A scathing new study is showing how underrepresented demographics are sorely absent from film criticism.
The study was done by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Rotten Tomatoes review data was used for the study.
According to the study, 82 percent of the reviews of the top 100-grossing films of last year were written by write critics. Only 18 percent of reviews of those films were written by “underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds.” USC’s study says that this doesn’t reflect society’s ethnic and racial groups as people the people from these backgrounds represent 39 percent of the population.
When it comes to gender, it was about the same statistics as well. 78 percent of reviews were written by men and only about 20 percent were written by women.
“The very individuals who are attuned to the under and misrepresentation of females on screen and behind the camera are often left out of the conversation and critiques. The publicity, marketing, and distribution teams in moviemaking have an opportunity to change this quickly by increasing the access and opportunities given to women of color as film reviewers,” said Dr. Stacey Smith, the founder and director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and one of the report’s co-authors.
Read more about the study at Variety.