Destroying the Narrative White Hollywood Created
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2020
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
No matter how many tickets we buy, or how many hours we watch, Black Americans still have very little influence over what film or television gets made - or how it portrays us. The images of Black people pumped out to the mainstream range from affirming to annoying to actively damaging. Morehouse’s Dr. Stephane Dunn helps us unpack how we got here. She is one of the founding members of Morehouse’s Cinema, Television, & Emerging Media Studies Program, serves as its program director, and takes us from "Birth of a Nation" to "Good Times" to Tyler Perry.
Black History Year is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company. Obviously, the power that comes from knowing our history is important to you. PushBlack exists because we saw we had to take this into our own hands. You make PushBlack happen with your contributions at BlackHistoryYear.com. Most people do 5 of 10 bucks a month, but everything makes a difference. Thanks for supporting the work. Production support from Mikel Ellcessor and Jessica Rugh Frantz from Limina House and Sasha Kai Parker as editor/sound designer, with the PushBlack team: Tareq Alani, Brooke Brown, Eskedar Getahun, Abeni Jones, Patrick Sanders, and Cydney Smith.
Useful links:
They Set Us Up to Fail’: Black Directors of the ’90s Speak Out
How John Singleton Made History as the Oscars’ First Black Best Director Nominee
Charles D. King's Media Production Company Macro Puts Diversity First
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Do you think Hollywood has the best interests of black people in mind when they make films? |
| 0:06.0 | Decisions are made in rooms and offices at the highest level that are very conscious. |
| 0:12.0 | It's not happenstance that a mammy |
| 0:14.4 | ends up on the screen. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome to Push Black's Black History Year. I'm Jay and thanks for giving us |
| 0:22.0 | some time today. |
| 0:23.0 | When we were putting together ideas for the podcast, |
| 0:26.0 | we knew we wanted to dig into the ways |
| 0:28.0 | of black folks are represented in media. |
| 0:30.0 | We wanted to know, why are we portrayed in certain ways whose interest doesn't serve and |
| 0:37.0 | how can we take back control of our images I'm sure everyone has a lot to say about this one. So when we were looking for an |
| 0:44.9 | amazing expert, Morehouse's Dr. Stephanie Dunn was at the top of our list. Dr. |
| 0:49.8 | Dunn is one of the founding members of Morehouse's Cinema Television and Emerging Media Studies program |
| 0:55.7 | and she serves as its program director. |
| 0:58.4 | So in the context of film and other popular media, |
| 1:03.6 | what does Black Liberation look like to you? |
| 1:06.1 | Wow, that's such a great question. |
| 1:08.9 | Well, I think that film, just like the autobiography, |
| 1:11.6 | I think, served as a literary genre for one of the platforms |
| 1:16.0 | for us to articulate a vision of ourselves which was radical and revolutionary |
| 1:21.1 | because it pushed against the mainstream representations of us as merely servants as step and fetchets as mamies etc's etc. |
| 1:29.5 | So it's one of the modern technological artistic spaces, right, for us to claim as well to offer |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PushBlack, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PushBlack and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.