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1. Even Rotten Tomatoes admits that movie-review aggregation is biased and broken. Is anyone ready to fix it?
By Jed Gottlieb
By Jed Gottlieb
2. Indeed, 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.
3. 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.
4. 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% of American moviegoers before they buy a ticket.
5. @mirandambailey decided to develop her own formula for aggregating reviews, by featuring female-identifying and nonbinary critics. @TheCherryPicks gives films a percentage-based rating and ranks them on a scale from “Don’t Bother” to “Run Don’t Walk”.
6. She hopes that when movie-seekers plug a title into a Google search, “we can have our Cherry scores next to the Rotten Tomatoes scores to provide a little bit of balance.” 🍒🍒🍒🍒🍅🍅🍅🍅
7. Beyond ratings, @TheCherryPicks calls attention to gender inequality in film and applauds progress. The site notes whether a film passes the #Bechdel Test (do two named women characters talk to each other about something besides men?)
8. ... also noting whether producers hired women for significant roles, and whether the director or screenwriter is a woman. The site also pulls together movies on a single theme, such as women and space exploration or dance.
9. Cherry Picks aggregates about a thousand critics and has profiles on more than 1,200 films.
10. Bailey says that with the site, she’s seeking not to overtake Rotten Tomatoes as a destination for criticism, but to provide more options for finding reviews. “Women and men often see and experience the world differently.”
11. “The same applies to how we see art and film.” She adds, “Rotten Tomatoes has its audience—it’s primarily a fanboy audience; you can tell by the colors they use and the content they have—and that’s great.”
“It’s not that moviegoers should read reviews primarily written by members of the same sex,” she says. “The critical sphere should reflect the points of view of the moviegoing population so that we can have a robust discussion about the cultural products in our world.“ 🍒
