‘Review bombing’ of trending shows and movies like She-Hulk and Turning Red is ruining the credibility of online ratings
The Hindu
This form of sabotage has happened to stories with a diverse cast and crew, especially those that espouse progressive views
A couple of weeks ago, Marvel released its latest show, the largely comedic She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, created by Jessica Gao, which follows Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) who accidentally gets exposed to her famous cousin Bruce Banner’s blood and becomes the titular ‘She-Hulk’, a 6’7” green-skinned being with super-strength.
Like its predecessor Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk too is a lot of fun and features eccentric, colourful characters. Crucially, these are both shows created by women of colour — Ms. Marvel’s showrunner Bisha K. Ali is Pakistani-American while She-Hulk’s Gao is Chinese-American. Straight white men are, for a change, nowhere near the thick of things.
Because of this, these two shows — as well as a bunch of other women-led and -centred Marvel productions, such as Black Widow, for instance — have been subject to a very contemporary form of sabotage: review-bombing.
This phrase refers to frustrated or bad-faith commentators ‘downvoting’ something on the Internet, or in the case of entertainment database IMDB, writing a very large number of 1-star reviews in a coordinated manner, resulting in the film or show’s overall rating falling drastically. Typically, this has happened to movies or shows with a diverse cast and crew, especially stories that espouse progressive views.
‘Too woke’
Unsurprisingly, high-profile projects like those of Marvel or Pixar are often in the firing line. Not too long ago, Pixar children’s movie Turning Red, directed by Chinese-born Canadian animator Domee Shi, was review-bombed.
The pretext, or so conservative groups would have us believe, is that the film pursued “woke ideology” by openly discussing periods and menstrual cycles (hence the pun in the movie’s name) in a kids’ movie. Once again, the movie centred a Chinese immigrant family in Canada and most of the characters were non-white.