Movie explores the ailing American dream
Governor’s wife focuses on Oakland principal, others, in documentary
Over the past decade, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom has focused her attention on stories that examine American values, and especially those values that make the playing field uneven for the women, men and children of the nation.
Her first documentary, “Miss Representation,” looked at the ways in which the media and culture contribute to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence.
“The Mask We Live In” examined what Siebel Newsom describes as the “boy crisis” in America, the ways in which boys and young men are socialized into harmful ideals of power, dominance and aggression.
“The Great American Lie,” which debuts for streaming and on-demand viewing Friday, pulls back to capture her biggest picture yet, says Siebel Newsom, whose name may sound familiar because she shares it with her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“I really wanted to understand how this value system was impacting society at large,” says Siebel Newsom, who wrote, directed and produced the film.
“‘ The Great American Lie’ looks at the crisis which is that the American dream is out of reach for so many Americans.
“Social immobility and economic inequality is as bad as it was just before the Great Depression, and with COVID-19, you could argue it’s even worse,” she says. “A majority of Americans are, and have been for a while, experiencing hopelessness and despair.
“So the film really is the answer to the question that all of us are asking: How did we get here? It inspires a conversation about who we are and what we value, and it ultimately commits us to reimagining the American dream.”
And that new American dream, Siebel Newsom says, needs to be one that is more equal for women and the traditionally economically disadvantaged, a dream that “isn’t saddled with this upside- down hypermasculine value system of power, money and rugged individualism but is more embracing of a feminized value system of empathy, care and collaboration, and recognition that we’re in this together.”
The film follows five people from different backgrounds and opportunities to illustrate its message, such as Ruby De Tie, an Oakland middle school principal, who overcame a tough childhood and now struggles to lift up the mostly underprivi
leged students in her care.
We meet Saru Jayaraman — an attorney and activist from Whittier who settled in the Bay Area and founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center United to advocate for lowwage restaurant workers — and her husband, Zachary Norris, executive director of Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which works on criminal justice and prison reforms.
Siebel Newsom also ventured beyond California to spend time with Scott Seitz, a blue-collar worker from a struggling steel town near Youngstown, Ohio. She then went to Lake Charles, Louisiana, to visit Sharon Galice, a conservative whose views on the causes of homelessness and poverty changed when she volunteered with her church to lend them a helping hand.
“Ruby is fighting an uphill battle,” Siebel Newsom said of the East Oakland school administrator. “Kids are coming; they don’t have the quote-unquote American dream conception of boots or even bootstraps.
“Saru, she’s exposing how we devalue what we feminized in our culture: women’s work, service work and how we underpay that. Zach really exposes the inequities in our criminal jus
tice system, and how we’re not just harming the individual who’s in the system, but we’re harming their families (and creating) this intergenerational poverty.”
She found Seitz after the 2016 election and went to talk with him to find out what was happening in his community to turn historically Democratic steelworkers into supporters of the Republican running for president that year.
And Galice was important, Newsom says, because she demonstrated dueling sides of a conservative Christian perspective: First, a sense of judgment over those who aren’t doing well in the world, then a deeper understanding of the causes for the struggles of many disadvantaged Americans.
“In reality, what’s happening in America is that, as Ruby says, some people are born on first base, some people are actually born on third — and you’re seeing more and more of that with intergenerational wealth,” she says.
“But most folks that we’re talking about in Ruby’s story, and that Sharon was exposed to, are born outside of the ballpark,” she says. “And they have so many challenges and struggles to actually achieving the American dream.”
Siebel Newsom might have been born on second base — her family’s circumstances provided for private
schools and a comfortable life — but gender and life experience opened her eyes to the issues she’s explored in film. (In addition to her own films, she has been an executive producer on several acclaimed documentaries about sexual assault, including the Oscarnominated “The Hunting Ground.”)
“Miss Representation,” her look at the under-representation of women in seats of power, was inspired by both her time working overseas in indigenous communities helping women launch micro-enterprises to support their families, and later her studies at the Stanford Business School where she was one of a small number of women in her class.
“I’ve always been attuned to think that there’s more to life than money and power,” she says. “And I really feel like because I was born of privilege it’s my responsibility to do something with that privilege and give back.
“So it’s a combination, I would say, of my personal experiences and observations,” she says. “And then really looking at the intersection in particular of gender, race and class issues.
“You can’t live a good life in an unjust society, right? And there’s no leak, as my husband says, on your side of our boat. We are in this together, and I think that for me that is the right way to be and think and behave.”