Captain Marvel star Brie Larson accepted the Crystal Award at the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards in Los Angeles last night. During her acceptance speech she called for more diversity in film criticism.
The speech was captured by The Hollywood Reporter’s Rebecca Sun:
.@brielarson‘s Crystal Award acceptance speech was characteristically wonderful and I’m sorry I didn’t capture the whole thing on video. It was centered around @Inclusionists‘ film critics diversity study that was released this week. #CrystalLucys pic.twitter.com/qPjzjSjfKz
— Rebecca Sun (@therebeccasun) June 14, 2018
.@brielarson offers three application points for helping film critics better reflect the U.S. population: 1) Ensure studio publicists and other gatekeepers are providing press screening access to critics of color, many of whom are freelancers #CrystalLucys pic.twitter.com/sShRPHWENG
— Rebecca Sun (@therebeccasun) June 14, 2018
2) Feed the pipeline. @brielarson notes over 40% of J-school grads are women, and 22% are POC. “The talent is there; the access and opportunity are not.” #CrystalLucys pic.twitter.com/wlWYaZFzBA
— Rebecca Sun (@therebeccasun) June 14, 2018
3) Get on board what other organizations are already doing, such as Sundance and Toronto’s commitments to reserve 20% of its top-level press passes to underrepresented critics. #CrystalLucys pic.twitter.com/u5qX6NPa50
— Rebecca Sun (@therebeccasun) June 14, 2018
The first video captures Larson defending A Wrinkle Time, “I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time. It wasn’t made for him! I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color, to teens that are biracial.”
She continued, “For the third time, I don’t hate white dudes. These are just facts. These are not my feelings.”
She would later add, “Am I saying I hate white dudes? No, I am not. What I am saying is you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have a chance to see your movie, and review your movie.”
Larson’s comments are based off a new study from USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that analyzed the gender and race/ethnicity of the authors behind every Rotten Tomatoes review of 2017’s 100 highest-grossing movies.
The study found that out of 19,559 reviews, white men wrote 63.9 percent of reviews, white women wrote 18.1 percent, men of color wrote 13.8 percent, and 4.1 percent were written by women of color.
I’m not really sure what the race of a reviewer has anything to do with film criticism. Wouldn’t you be more interested in the opinion of the reviewer and their unique take on films? “White dudes” can have just as bad opinions as Asian dudes or black chicks. It’s not about what they look like, it’s about their opinion on the film.
And just as an interesting tidbit the critic score for A Wrinkle in Time on Rotten Tomatoes was actually 10 points higher than the audience score. The critics gave the film a 40%, while the audience rated it 30%. It looks like it was a lot more than “white dudes” who didn’t like the film. A Wrinkle in Time also came out this year, so it wouldn’t have even been included in this study, Larson references in her speech.
Do you think Larson is preparing for the Marvel version of Solo: A Star Wars Story with Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel?