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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
There’s bound to be a contrarian.
Manohla Dargis from the New York Times already reviewed it
, so A. O. Scott (who also works for the Times) probably won’t be the one to break the streak.
So I was reading reviews for Black Panther on RT... anyone else notice that of the 15 top critics, none of the 9 with pictures are black? Out of 35 critics overall with photos, only 4 are black.
Some of the non-photo critics could be black, but I just found it really jarring to see a sea of white faces for the reviews.
edited 7th Feb '18 9:24:00 AM by wisewillow
I will need to find it again, but I recall there being an article talking about Rotten Tomatoes not being very diverse in its critic selection.
They’ve gotten better in some respects, such more frequent inclusion of Spanish-speaking reviewers, but like many things there’s still work to be done.
edited 7th Feb '18 9:26:56 AM by Tuckerscreator
Black people, not blacks.
Yes. 4/35 is 11%; however, I suspect that none of the non-photo reviewers are black. If I’m right, then 4/67 is 5% (rather than googling thirty people, I’m guessing based on the names; obviously I could be wrong).
I’ll also note that when a film has great cultural significance, choice of reviewer matters. I’d rather not have 90% of the Lady Bird’s reviews be by men, or 90% of Moonlight’s reviews be by straight people. Cultural perspective is an important aspect of a good review.
edited 7th Feb '18 9:33:32 AM by wisewillow
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From my understanding Rotten Tomatoes doesn't approve/disapprove individual reviews for individual movies, they approve/disapprove reviewers, who are then free to submit reviews for any movie they see fit.
And I'm not sure we want Rotten Tomatoes to get in the business of deciding who does and does not get to submit reviews for movies based on who better lines up with the target demographic. Perhaps they could do a better job at recruiting a more diverse range of critics, but I beyond that there's not a lot they can do.
But more specifically, to just not take the Rotten Tomatoes score as being anything other than a surface-level "Do a majority of critics approve or disapprove of this movie" thing, the more complexity that gets added the less useful it is for this purpose. If you want to see how people in a movie's target audience are reacting to the movie, then you should disregard the RT score entirely and look at individual reviews.
Re: Jessica Jones trailer: Oh, shit, are they literal about Jessica being "brought back from the dead"? Is she a Hand experiment too? Or a rival business also meddling with dragon bones?
And we all know whose hands those are clapping at the end.
edited 7th Feb '18 12:04:01 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!I am not sure how RT decides which reviewers they pick or not, but they seem to be partly go for the "serious" newspaper and entertainment outlets, which have a certain degree of professionalism. They have hardly any influence on how many minorities are hired for this very specific job.
Like with everything else, RT just reflects what is there.
edited 7th Feb '18 1:09:47 PM by Swanpride
RT decides the criteria for “Top Critics”; if they wanted to expand to more sources, they certainly could. There’s plenty of reputable, professional papers/magazines/websites they could add.
In other news, we’re down to 99%. Thanks, guy who claims that
This dude is entitled to his opinion, but that’s a very punchanble two sentences.
Honestly, what follows makes it even worse....
"What he doesn't get to do much of is jump around beating-up bad guys. That’s a shame. Marvel has finally given us an African superhero. The hope surely was that he would be allowed do superhoeroic things."
So apparently the main feature of a Superhero is that he has to punch things...
RT is a terrible system for deciding if a movie is good or not, and people put far too much stock in a number that tells you nothing about how well a given movie lines up with your personal tastes or interests.
If a lot of critics agree that a movie is good, it's going to have some merit, and don't get me wrong I'm very pleased that Black Panther sounds as good as it does, but I really hate the way RT boils down something so subjective to a percentage.
