Moonlight: Mental Illness in Pop Culture

Mental Illness in Pop Culture

2016 Academy Award winning Moonlight intersects race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, interpersonal violence, and emotional neglect, all swirling around together with the identity development challenge of intimacy vs. isolation. These issues come together in three compelling chapters from the life story of a character known alternately as “Little,” “Chiron,” and “Black,” representing names he was referred to as a child, adolescent, and adult, initially set in Miami during the War on Drugs. The film challenges traditional assumptions about right and wrong as well as who people can trust to get their essential needs met, showing the infused mental health issues that come about and (sometimes) get resolved, in a perpetual and often generational cycle. In the podcast, we tentatively disagree with each other about the idea of how much “choice” is involved in some choices, but we ultimately agree the film represents the inherent beauty of human nature: flawed people doing the best they can under complicated circumstances and seeking relationship. In this podcast series, we focus on pop culture portrayals of mental health issues and professional helping in film, believing that public perception is both reflected and influenced by popular media.