They Say / I Blog

Class critics: Lisa R. Pruitt on the film Hillbilly Elegy and popular representations of the white working class

Ever notice when a film’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is way off from the critics’ reviews? What’s driving that? Lisa R. Pruitt, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis, digs into the negative critical reviews of the 2020 Netflix film Hillbilly Elegy in this December 3, 2020 essay. Pruitt argues that in the case of Hillbilly Elegy, the answer may lie in the country’s “steadily growing class divide.”

Lisa R. Pruitt, "The Chattering Classes Got the ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Book Wrong – and They’re Getting the Movie Wrong, Too," The Conversation, 3 December 2020

 

Representing the “full measure of humanity”: Belén Garijo on the importance of increasing diversity in clinical trials

Fueled by new biomedical technologies and unprecedented collaboration, pharmaceutical companies are rapidly developing and testing vaccines for SARS CoV-2 coronavirus. However, this swift pace of vaccine development might lead to “a potentially risky lack of diversity in clinical trials,” according to Belén Garijo, a healthcare executive and former doctor. Her October 9, 2020 essay in TIME explains how this lack of diversity is not a new problem: certain population groups have been historically underrepresented in clinical trials, which limits how well doctors and researchers can study the efficacy of the treatments and medicines being tested.

Belén Garijo, "We Must Use This Moment to Improve Diversity in Clinical Trials — And Not Just for Vaccines," TIME, 9 October 2020