Brie Larson Doubles Down – Wants Fewer White Men on Captain Marvel Press Tour
John F. Trent
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Captain Marvel actress Brie Larson doubled down on her views of press coverage. She indicated she wants fewer white men covering her Captain Marvel press tour.
Larson sat down with Keah Brown for Marie Claire to reiterate her position on white men when it comes to her Captain Marvel press tour.
“About a year ago, I started paying attention to what my press days looked like and the critics reviewing movies, and noticed it appeared to be overwhelmingly white male. So, I spoke to Dr Stacy Smith at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, who put together a study to confirm that. Moving forward, I decided to make sure my press days were more inclusive. After speaking with you, the film critic Valerie Complex and a few other women of colour, it sounded like across the board they weren’t getting the same opportunities as others. When I talked to the facilities that weren’t providing it, they all had different excuses.’”
Larson detailed her mission for diverse critics when she accepted the Crystal Award at the Women in Film Crytal + Lucy Awards in Los Angeles last June. She would specifically point to A Wrinkle Time and the abysmal reviews the film received from both critics and the audience saying, “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.”
Larson would state multiple times that she doesn’t “hate white dudes” while calling for them to be replaced as film critics.
“For the third time, I don’t hate white dudes. These are just facts. These are not my feelings.” Larson would 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.”
As Society Reviews points out, Larson is working with the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.” The initiative published a study examining the 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.
Founder and Director Dr. Stacy Smith made clear the Initiative’s objective in a statement last June:
“The very individuals who are attuned to the under- and mis-representation of females onscreen 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.”
Larson who stars in Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel as Carol Danvers described the film as her “form of activism.”
“The movie was the biggest and best opportunity I could have ever asked for. It was, like, my superpower. This could be my form of activism: doing a film that can play all over the world and be in more places than I can be physically.”
What do you make of Larson’s most recent comments? Do you think this could affect the box office take for Captain Marvel?
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