Meryl Streep takes on Rotten Tomatoes, the Catholic church
By Dan Selcke
Amid accusations that promotions for her new movie are insensitive, Meryl Streep blasts Rotten Tomatoes and the Catholic church for sexism.
Meryl Streep has had an interesting couple of days. Her new movie, Suffragette, gets a wide release soon, and she and some of her costars have caused controversy by wearing tee-shirts bearing a line from the movie: “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.” That’s an actual line from a 1913 speech given by women’s rights activist Emmeline Pankhurst, whom Streep plays in the movie, but it’s struck some as racially insensitive, what with America’s rich and exciting history of slavery.
Streep also disappointed some people when she declined to identify herself as a feminist in a recent interview with Time Out London. “I am a humanist,” she said. “I am for nice easy balance.” She doubled down on that stance when The Daily Beast asked her to clarify her remarks. “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.”
If this doesn’t quite qualify as getting caught in a firestorm, it could at least be said that Streep is caught in a light hail. Still, she put that ‘deeds, not words’ philosophy to work when she called out two of the world’s most sacred institutions—the Catholic church and movie review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes—for sexist behavior.
The Catholic church is sexist in a pretty obvious way: women aren’t allowed to vote in Vatican City, which…yeah, that’s pretty backward. The sexism on Rotten Tomatoes is a little more insidious, as Streep explained. The actress went “deep, deep, deep, deep into Rotten Tomatoes” and counted the number of female and male critics ranked on the site. When she was finished, she found that the tally stood at 168 to 760. Streep’s argument is that such a lopsided representation reinforces and prioritizes male views of what makes a good movie.
"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. If the Tomatometer is slighted so completely to one set of tastes that drives box office in the United States, absolutely."
The question of whether male and female critics actually want different things from a movie is up for debate, as is the question of whether Rotten Tomatoes actually sways public opinion, but the disparity is stark.