Magdalene Magazine Hosts Launch of Mango Meter App
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18 February 2019 20:10 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Feminist online magazine Magdalene (Magdalene.co) in tandem with German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia hosted Saturday, 16 February 2019, the launch of Mango Meter, the world’s first ever feminist film review mobile application, at GoetheHaus in Jakarta.
Mango Meter is an online rating system that seeks to step up public awareness and sensitivity on the need to improve women and other gender representation in films and battle the spread of toxic messages through movies.
Mango Meter scores a movie on a 1-5 scale by accumulating users’ ratings, with 1 Mango being the lowest score and 5 Mangoes the highest according the feminist standards.
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The app will automatically tally the score and show the popular rating as well as the rating done by a team of Mango Reviewers as comparison.
Mango Meter is the brainchild of a group of feminist journalist, activists and academics from six Asian countries. The team comprises Chen Yi-Chien (Taiwan), Devi Asmarani (Indonesia), Medhavinee Namjoshi (India), Meggan Evangelista (the Philippines), Sahar Gul (Pakistan) and Sharmee Hossain (Bangladesh).
The creation of Mango Meter is facilitated by German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia as part of the Asian Political Feminism Program.
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“The idea came from the fact that all of us have at one time or another seen movies that depict women poorly in their narrative, while not having an Asian-driven platform to let the film industry know that they can do better,” said Namjoshi, a gender and human rights activist based in Mumbai.
The application, which is available on App Store and Play Store, also allows for the diverse cultural reality of Asia as reflected in films. By rating how sexist, racist, misogynist and classist the portrayals of women in popular cultural are, the public can challenge the film industry and show them that they deserve better.
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