The Mandate Letter, by Jason Rogers, focuses on the intersection of masculinity and mental health. Thanks for being here. If you were forwarded this email, get your own:
Hello friends! We’ve made it to the end of the year. I don’t know about you, but I will cross the finish line crawling rather than on my feet. It’s been both amazing and exhausting simultaneously, and I am very excited to recharge for a couple of weeks so that I can get a good fresh start in 2022.
It’s been a significant year of development for me. Not only has the Mandate Letter grown, but I think it’s starting to find its tone and tempo. A couple of notable pieces you might have missed: An essay I wrote about attending a men’s group with the MandKind Project and another on the intersection of masculinity and NFTs.
I’ve also written elsewhere. I made my NY Times debut (!) with a piece about head safety in surfing. I also had more articles published with Men’s Health on men’s groups on Clubhouse (the social media app), “Men Who Take Baths,” and the stress and strain of my Olympic years.
Like last year, I also want to share my favorite creative work from 2021 that explores the themes of this newsletter: masculinity and mental health. But before we dive in, I have a humble request. If you want to show this post some love, please consider liking and retweeting the thread below.
Ok, here we go!
📺 TV Series
Sort Of
📺 TV — “Sort Of” centers around Sabi, a gender-fluid and wry-witted nanny. After their boss falls into a coma, they struggle to help keep a family together while also contending with their Pakistani mother, who still treats them like a “son.”
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | Full Series on HBO Max 🔗
Dave — Season 2
📺 TV — Season 2 of “Dave” with comedian-rapper Lil Dicky showcases a new kind of hip hop icon — one more interested in self-discovery, expression, and vulnerability than flashy displays of wealth. “Don't mind me, I'm over here redefining the alpha male,” he raps in ep. 9.
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | Full Series on Hulu 🔗
Succession — Season 3
📺 TV — On the surface, “Succession” presents as a show about the too-often fetishized world of the ultra-wealthy. However, its genius is making its characters (primarily men that will deploy whatever means necessary to “win”) look like rats trapped in a cage.
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | Full Series on HBO Max 🔗
🎞 Film
Mogul Mowgli
🎞 Film — In Mogul Mowgli, Riz Ahmed plays a British-Pakistani rapper on the cusp of mainstream success. When an auto-immune disease nearly cripples him, he must revise a macho persona and confront a legacy of generational pain.
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | Film on Youtube 🔗
The Power of the Dog
🎞 Film — The Power of the Dog, set in 1920s Montano, focuses on Phil Burbank (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), a Yale-educated, self-styled macho rancher who bullies everyone around him. However, his ill-temper derives from the shame he feels about his sexuality which he hides in plain sight.
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | Film on Netflix 🔗
The Tragedy of Macbeth
🎞 Film — Although not yet in theatres, I expect the Tragedy of Macbeth will offer an interesting take on gender, as the original play frequently discusses the relationship between masculinity and violence.
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | In theatres on Dec 25 and Apple TV on Jan 14 🔗
📹 Documentary
Cusp
📹 Doc — “Cusp” follows the lives of several teenage girls who struggle with questions of purpose and identity as they navigate the macho-charged culture of their small town in Texas.
🔗 Trailer on Youtube | Film on Showtime 🔗
Father and Gun
📹 Doc — “Father and Gun” is one of few documentaries that explore the relationship between men and weapons without a clear political edge. Instead, Ted Griswold examines masculinity through scenes in which dads provide their young sons their first experiences with a gun.
🔗 Film at The New Yorker 🔗
Modern Masculinity by The Guardian
📹 Doc — I love this Guardian series on masculinity hosted by Imam Amrani — particularly the episode “My psychologist had never seen a black man with self-harm scars” in which she talks to writer and artist Derek Owusu about stigmas in the black community around mental health.
🔗 Episode at The Guardian 🔗
🎶 Music
“Boys Do Cry” by Piff Marti
🎶 Music — Boys Do Cry was a viral earworm by hip hop artist Piff Marti that offers thoughtful lyrics about men & vulnerability: “To be a real man, you don't need no one to prove, fuck who told this to you, cause boys do cry.”
🔗 Video on Youtube | Piff Marti on Instagram 🔗
“Racist, Sexist Boy” by The Linda Lindas
🎶 Music — The viral hit “Racist, Sexist Boy” by the teenage members (one is 11!) of The Linda Lindas is a punk-anthem critique of all the crappy ways teenage boys are taught to act.
🔗 Video on Youtube 🔗
“I'm Not Okay But I Know I'm Going To Be” by Raleigh Ritchie
🎶 Music — Raleigh Ritchie is back again with a profoundly vulnerable song about mental health. “I'm not okay, But I know I'm gonna be alright,” Raleigh sings.
🔗 Video on Youtube 🔗
📚 Books
Man Enough by Justin Baldoni
📚 Books — After a viral TED Talk (2017), actor and director Justin Baldoni started Man Enough, a movement for positive masculinity. His debut book, which bears the same name, tackles troublesome notions of masculinity and is definitely an edifying read.
🔗 Book at all major booksellers 🔗
Lost In Summerland by Barrett Swanson
📚 Books — In “Men at Work,” an essay in Barrett Swanson’s debut collection, Lost in Summerland, the author turns his piercing observational skills on a men's retreat and the crisis of masculinity at large.
🔗 Book at most major booksellers 🔗
Remaking Manhood In the Age of Trump by Mark Greene
📚 Books — Remaking Manhood In the Age of Trump explores the harms of domination-based masculinity. Author Mark Greene is an intellectual agitator in the best possible way. His writing pushes me to reexamine aspects of manhood that I never thought I would.
🔗 Book at Amazon 🔗
📓 Articles
“As a Black Man in America, I Feel Death Looming Every Day” by Joél Leon Daniels
📓 Articles — After Virgil Abloh’s death, Joél Leon Daniels penned a courageous essay about his own father’s passing and the too often felt pain within the black community that results from systemic inequity in health care outcomes and deprioritization of mental health.
“Like too many Black men, I’ve struggled with suicidal ideations, with an undying fear of not being enough or being too much, and with the gap between Black life and the death I feel constantly looming."
🔗 Essay at the New York Times 🔗
“What I Saw in My First 10 Years on Testosterone” by Thomas Page McBee
📓 Articles — Journalist, author, and screenwriter Thomas Page McBee wrote an eloquent account of his past 10 years taking T detailing the myriad ways that the trans experience is (sometimes intentionally) misunderstood.
“I also wanted it known that despite the media fixation on a trite narrative about what it meant to be trans, I was not “a man trapped in a woman’s body or any cliché like that,” as I emailed my friends and family. I was a man and I was born trans, and I could hold both of those realities without an explanation that could be written on the back of a napkin.”
🔗 Essay at the New York Times 🔗
“The Soft Sell of Hims” by Jesse Barron
📓 Articles — Journalist Jesse Barron digs into the history and sometimes questionable marketing tactics deployed by the telemedicine brand Hims which sells generic ED and hair-loss meds to men.
“The fact that a company could uncontroversially market Viagra to 25-year-olds while the Me Too movement gathered force is something that requires an explanation, and the explanation begins with the Hims Man. In advertisements, he is never in a social context: He is floated on a background of desaturated pink. There is never a clue as to his profession, never a glimpse of an office, a car, or an apartment. When we see him with a woman, they are practically disembodied — an arm on a shoulder, a closely shaved neck, two eyes gazing into the lens. It’s a post-social landscape where maleness is purely physical. There is no process of seduction. Nobody is in pursuit.”
🔗 Article at NY Mag 🔗
🎙 Podcasts
Ocean Vuong on Talk Easy
🎙 Podcasts — This Talk Easy interview with Ocean Vuong, the author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, an enlightening conversation on a range of topics; however, Vuong is particularly elegant and incisive when speaking about masculinity and the ways American culture has sent the construct off course.
🔗 Interview at Talk Easy 🔗
Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen on Renegades
🎙 Podcasts — In my favorite episode of Renegades, Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen discuss how their relationships with their fathers impacted their (then flawed) perceptions of masculinity.
🔗 Interview on Spotify 🔗
Jason Wilson on Joe Rogan
🎙 Podcasts — I’m generally skeptical of Joe Rogan; however, his recent interview of Jason Wilson thoughtfully dives Wilson’s viral-video-fueled transformation from martial arts instructor to role model for young black men. Notably: “Men [need] the freedom to be vulnerable,” Wilson said.
🔗 Interview on Spotify 🔗
🤳🏻 Social Media
Sea Shanty TikTok
🤳🏻 Social Media — This year started with a TikTok revival of the sea shanty singing tradition popular amongst sailors in the 1800s. What else can I say besides, how bizarre and great. I want more.
🔗 Video on TikTok 🔗
Dress Up Gang
🤳🏻 Social Media — The members of the Dress Up Gang have been carefully thumbing their noses at traditional masculinity in their hilarious sketch videos. For example, in “The Molly Bro,” a festival-goer calls out DJs for keeping all the audience’s love to themselves.
🔗 Video on Instagram 🔗
Tom the TikTok Needle Point Guy
🤳🏻 Social Media — I think it’s a good sign of progress that one of the top needlepoint influencers on TikTok is a muscular, bearded dude!
🔗 Video on TikTok 🔗
Update: The Mandate Book Club is now the Mandate Media Club
Apropos of all the fantastic creative work above, we will be expanding the scope of our free, ongoing discussions from just books to media of all forms. We may still tackle a lengthy tome or two; however, moving forward, the club will be adopting a smorgasbord approach. For example, I might pick several similarly-themed articles or throw in an episode of a TV show and podcast. The point is to have eclectic fodder for debate while allowing the conversations to occur at a decent clip.
Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, January 11, 2022, at 4 pm (pacific), and we will be discussing the “Nice Guy” stereotype. Between the appearance of "the nice guy" trope in numerous TV shows and films, books like No More Mr. Nice Guy, the "nice guy syndrome" (where nice guys aren't so nice), the cultural idiom "nice guys finish last," and the ever-present social media advice to "kill your inner nice guy" advice, there's a lot to unpack.
We do our best to scratch at some interesting questions such as: What constitutes niceness? At what point does being considerate of others' needs turn into being a "pushover"? Is presenting as a "nice guy" a form of manipulation? How does niceness intersect with healthy models/examples of masculinity?
It is free, and all are welcome; however, limited space is available.
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