Man up. Take it like a man. Boys will be boys. Boys don’t cry. Don’t be such a girl. These familiar phrases reinforce long-standing patriarchal tropes about what it means to be a man. Those ideas about masculinity are constantly being modeled back to us in our media and are introduced into our psyches at a very young age - a recent study found that in children’s television the most prominent stereotype depicted about masculinity is of boys and men as violent or aggressors - continuing to normalize these problematic narratives.

This episode, we are going to be talking with Dr. Jackson Katz about the concept of masculinity, how it’s been defined to us, and how he believes it needs to change. Jackson is a thought leader in the growing movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence. He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention, which focuses on gender violence prevention, and is the first major program of its kind to engage with sports culture and the military.

In addition to his two books, Jackson has produced a slate of films examining culture, masculinity and violence, including the award-winning documentary, Tough Guise, and has also appeared in numerous popular documentaries, including Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In. And at the end of this podcast, you should watch his viral TEDx talk, Violence Against Women Is a Men's Issue.

Only 20% of Americans know someone who is transgender. That reality has meant the majority of the public learned all they know about Trans people from media depictions. This is a problem, since historically there has been little to no Trans representation in writers rooms. This has led to Trans characters often being portrayed in ways that perpetuate simplistic, stereotyping, and even transphobic narratives, with storylines only focused on their gender, rather than their whole self as an individual.

While there has been progress in increasing Trans visibility in Hollywood with popular shows like Pose and Transparent, there is also the persistent reality that the ignorance manufactured by decades-old tropes in the media has fueled the disproportionate violence, poverty, and systemic discrimination that the Trans community continues to face.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Susan Stryker about the legacy of Hollywood’s portrayal of transgender people in film and TV. We will also explore how some of those narratives are beginning to be challenged and changed, and the work ahead still to be done.

We're going to be talking with Abraham Sisay about the portrayal of black mental health in the media. Abraham is the founder and lead strategist of Alkamba Company, a modern day content distribution agency based in Kansas City. He started his company to help create a bridge between cultures through storytelling. Abraham is also the creator and executive producer of Freedom Project, a documentary series that takes viewers inside the journey of individuals as they cope with mental illness.

Hysterical - that was an actual medical diagnosis used to describe women experiencing any type of mental health condition. Looking at women’s mental health through that bianary - the happy woman with no opinions or the insane, wild woman - has been the hallmark of how women’s mental health has been portrayed in film and television since the beginning.

This reductive dismissal by the media of the spectrum of women’s mental health needs and experiences has led women to believe that in order to be “normal” they had to be unemotional, and programmed men to believe that any woman who expressed their feelings must be “crazy.”

In this episode, we speak with with Jessica Good about where those narratives originated, why they have persisted and the deprogramming work that is being done to change them.

Hollywood has a long history of misrepresenting, well, just about everything having to do with mental health. A recent USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study found that it is rare to find content with a mental health storyline, and those storylines are often disparaging, satirizing, or trivializing when made. These types of portrayals create fear and shame around even talking about mental health, even though more than 50% of us will experience a mental health condition in our lifetime. We talk with Ruhi Bhalla, who works on the Social Impact team across the MTV Entertainment Group at ViacomCBS, to understand those narratives and unpack them.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five American youth experience a mental health condition, but as many as half will not seek out support. The way young people are conditioned to understand and respond to their experiences is often influenced by the media. So when programs about young people glamorize suicide, mock asking for help, or delegitimize their feelings as being hormonal, it can leave anyone, and especially youth, feeling shame, isolated, and prone to conceal what they are experiencing for fear of ridicule and judgement. In this episode, we speak with John MacPhee, CEO of The Jed Foundation, about how Hollywood is working to deconstruct these narrtiaves. 

In this episode, we speak with Maya Rose Dittloff, a Blackfeet, Mandan, and Hidatsa writer, director, and activist. We discuss the the essential role of narrative sovereignty in narrative change, and the growing world of Indigenous cinema as a response to that need. We’ll try to better understand how to identify and deconstruct these pervasive dominant narratives, the new narratives movement leaders like Maya are introducing, and how Hollywood has played a role in perpetuating and challenging these narratives.

As always, you can find the resources we mention in this episode as well as more information and the transcript at The Other Story substack. 

The anti-Asian hate occurring across the US is finally shining a light on what has been a long history of oppressive and discriminatory narratives about the AAPI community. We speak with Jaimie Woo, Emmy-nominated creative producer, New York Times best-selling author, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant, about the dominant narratives that have persisted around Asians and Asian Americans, how activists like herself are working to reframe and deconstruct those narratives, and Hollywood's role in this work. You should also check out her podcast, Are You There, Universe? 

You can check out the transcript of this episode, as well as find all the resources mentioned in the interview and more at The Other Story substack - https://theotherstory.substack.com/

Jee Kim, founder of The Narrative Initiative, and Romain Vakilitabar, founder of PathosLabs, speak with Jennifer Gottesfeld about what narrative change actually means and how that work intersects with the entertainment industry.