The 2010 film, Leaves of Grass, starring Edward Norton includes a humorous conversation between two brothers—one a dignified professor of philosophy, the other a mostly uneducated hydroponic marijuana grower.

“Y’all hardly ever write about a topic,” the latter complains. “You write about what some other fella wrote about the topic. So Heidegger’s got some idea, and then some French guy’s got a take on that, and then you write a review on that, and then some other fella’s gonna come along, and on and on and on.”

“You’ve very neatly explained academia,” the professor retorts.

Though, at times, this approach to broad concepts can seem a bit like a cycle of people taking pictures of people taking pictures, there is a reason it has held up so well in academia—that is, it forces theories to undergo critical evaluation from multiple perspectives and ensures these perspectives offer reasoned interpretations of their subjects.

It’s a rigorous, fact-checking system that helps maintain the integrity of academia. It’s also terribly underused in other non-academic settings, especially in the media. 

For some clarification, I will refer to art, music, television, film, literature and so on as “primary media” and reviews, statements, critiques and things of that nature about primary media as “secondary media.”

We need to take a more critical lens to how we discuss the media, paying special attention to what we mean by any given form of secondary media.

This is not to say that primary media doesn’t need some extra criticism. In fact, most mainstream media these days run rampant with sexism, homophobia, racism and so on. But it receives, accordingly, most of the public’s criticism.

With more criticism of primary media, we see more improvements. For instance, even one episode into the new series of Doctor Who, it’s evident that complaints about the show’s subtle sexism have reached show runner Steven Moffat. “Deep Breath,” the first episode in the eighth series, offers a more female-friendly experience for viewers than it has in recent years.

And, no, it isn’t just coincidence either. Moffat addressed the numerous complaints, acknowledging that the only proper way to respond is to improve the show, rather than to defend past faults.

“I think it’s important that there is a feminist critique of television because things that go unquestioned go unchanged, and what goes unchanged becomes institutionalized, and what becomes institutionalized becomes your fault,” Moffat said in an interview with Swedish podcast network, TV Dags.

Of course, this is true. So far society has done a relatively fine job of keeping its entertainment in check as of late. The discrepancy between the analytical populace and the media it analyzes comes with the absence of critical assessment of secondary media.

Claire Boucher, known by her stage name Grimes, lamented on her personal Tumblr in February how frustrating it is as a woman in the experimental music genre to be compared so constantly to Björk.

“It just seems like lazy journalism,” Boucher wrote. “Any female artist who makes even remotely experimental music is constantly compared to bjork (sic) by journalists who completely ignore the legacy of every other experimental female musician who isn’t bjork.”

The singer/producer went on, claiming the secondary media would never compare a female musician to a male.

“The media seems to think you can only be similar to musicians who have the same sex organs as you,” Boucher wrote.

Likewise, secondary media outlets have compared Broad City, a comedy about two women, aged 22 and 25, living in New York, to Girls, Lena Dunham’s HBO drama centering on a group of girls in their twenties living in New York, since it first aired on Comedy Central.

Other than the fact that both shows’ main characters are women in New York, there isn’t much reason to compare the two. Yet, critics can’t seem to stop hailing Broad City as the anti-Girls. That’s as asinine as comparing 30 Rock to Mad Men because both deal with business in New York.

By comparing Broad City to Girls and Grimes to Björk, critics get away with confining women to a sub-genre of whatever art they pursue. Unless we hold critics and reviewers accountable for their lazy, hindering and unnecessary comparisons—not just about gender but about any identity category, this trend will continue, reducing marginalized groups’ efforts to enter mainstream media into elective, dismissible sub-genres.