More than three-quarters (78 percent) of reviewers of the top 100 films last year were men, according to the study from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, with white men making up the lion’s share (64 percent) of reviewers. Fewer than one-quarter (22 percent) were women, and minority women made up 4 percent of critics compared to 22 percent of the population as a whole.
Put another way, Rotten Tomatoes critics are nearly 16 times more likely to be a white man than a woman from a racial minority.
New Morning Consult polling shows the public is more likely to say gender and racial diversity among film critics is not important (50 percent) than to say it is (34 percent).
Yet in the same poll, conducted Aug. 30-Sept. 2 among 2,201 U.S. adults, respondents were more likely to say that critics’ gender and race impact their movie reviews than they were to say there was little or no impact. The poll has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
“The major reason that Hollywood has considered white guys to be the ‘default audience,’ and everyone else to be a niche audience, has been that’s who the critics are,” Alissa Wilkinson, an associate professor at The King’s College in New York City and Vox.com’s film critic, said.
She said it doesn’t make sense to call a film “niche” when it’s aimed at 50 percent of the public, as female-led films often are.
And the market may agree with her.
The female-led “Wonder Woman” was last year’s third-highest grossing film in the country, according to Box Office Mojo, bringing in $412.6 million. And Marvel Studio LLC’s first black-led film, “Black Panther,” released in February, is so far the highest-grossing domestic film this year. And “Crazy Rich Asians” maintained its No. 1 box office slot for three weekends in a row after its Aug. 15 release.
Two months after the release of the USC report, Rotten Tomatoes announced it would be diversifying its group of professional reviews. Of course, it’s unclear if that will change movie’s reviews: A June analysis by The Washington Post showed men and women tend to have roughly similar tastes in films, at least when it comes to the films they see as best and worst.
“Criticism is part of the ecosystem,” Wilkinson said. “And it’s important that it reflect the whole audience and not just people who historically have made movies.”
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