Meryl Streep Rips Rotten Tomatoes For Unfairness To Women
By:
Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep is unhappy with highly influential film review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes because she thinks that it's unfair to women in film.
Speaking at the "Suffragette" film conference, Streep said the Tomatometer, which determines a movie's overall review percentage on the site, has a gender imbalance and represents more male reviews than female ones. Because Rotten Tomatoes is so popular, it has the power to dictate what moviegoers decide to see in theaters.
RELATED: New Data on Female Occupations in Movies and TV is Troubling
“In the United States when people go to find a movie to watch at night, to go out to the movies they go to something called Rotten Tomatoes," she said at the conference, according to the Daily Beast. "So I went deep, deep, deep, deep into Rotten Tomatoes. There are 168 women. And I thought that’s absolutely fantastic, and if there were 168 men it would be balanced. If there were 268 men it would be unfair but I would be used to it, if there were 360, if there were 4... actually there are 760 men who weigh in on the Tomatometer.”
Streep added that the gender imbalance in reviews "absolutely" has the potential to impact box office earnings.
“I submit to you that men and women are not the same, they like different things. Sometimes they like the same thing but sometimes their tastes diverge," she said. "If the Tomatometer is slighted so completely to one set of tastes that drives box office in the United States, absolutely."
RELATED: Gender Pay Gap in Hollywood Revealed in New Chart
Streep appears in the film "Suffragette," which is about how women earned the right to vote after World War I. She was also criticized last week for refusing to label herself a feminist during promotion for the flick.
“I am a humanist, I am for nice easy balance,” she told London's Time Out.
The Daily Beast asked Streep whether these remarks still stand. Her response:
"There’s a phrase in this film that says ‘Deeds, not words.’ And that’s sort of where I stand on that. I let the actions of my life stand for where I am. Contend with that—not the words.”
Streep famously cheered like crazy when Patricia Arquette mentioned equal pay in her Oscar acceptance speech earlier this year.
