“We’ve put young boys and men in a straightjacket, forcing them to conform to a construct and disconnect from who they really are,” The Mask You Live In writer-director Jennifer Siebel Newsom told BuzzFeed News.
The Representation Project
PARK CITY, Utah — Early on in the documentary The Mask You Live In, which premiered Jan. 23 at the Sundance Film Festival, the idiom "be a man" is identified as one of the most destructive phrases in the English language. That might be shocking to those who believe in adhering to traditional gender roles and the need for boys to learn about masculinity at a young age, but the documentary uses psychologists, coaches, and men of all ages to demonstrate the damage American culture's rigid definition of masculinity has had on society.
It's a subject close to writer-director Jennifer Siebel Newsom's heart. After making her 2011 documentary Miss Representation, which focused on the negative portrayal of women in the media, Siebel Newsom founded an organization called The Representation Project. In the course of the organization's research, Siebel Newsom and her team found startling statistics that indicated that the problems young women face start — and could perhaps end — with young men. It's that notion that prompted The Mask You Live In.
Joined by her husband Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California, Siebel Newsom sat down for an interview with BuzzFeed News to discuss tackling a subject as broad as masculinity — and the controversy involved in challenging long-standing cultural norms.
The Representation Project / Alice Mongkongllite for BuzzFeed
Where do you even begin with a topic as huge as masculinity?
Jennifer Siebel Newsom: We really started with the research and trying to comprehend and understand, Is there really a boy crisis going on? And when you compare boys to girls, boys are more likely to drop out of school, be prescribed prescription meds, binge drink, commit a violent crime, and/or take their own lives. And when you hear those statistics you go, Oh my gosh, it's not just that our girls and women are suffering, but our boys and young men as well. And so, that sort of spurred further investigation with thought leaders in the different areas that affect boys' lives — not only looking at sociologists and psychologists, but then going into the education system and understanding what's going on with boys there, and also looking at sports culture and media culture. So that's kind of the process.
When you were making the film, did you see it as being controversial? To some people, surely, the idea that the phrase "man up" is damaging might be harder to understand.
JSN: I believe that it will make some men uncomfortable and some women uncomfortable, because many of us have been taught our gender roles. Because they're so ingrained in us, we assume they're biology, and we don't understand epigenetics and we don't understand socialization, and it's much easier to bifurcate gender the way we have done. It's almost easier and safer for a lot of people. So I definitely think there are going to be people who are uncomfortable. But I try to make films, or at least this film, tonality-wise, a bit more gentle. I like to bring the viewer in.
I'll just bring my husband in here. We had so many focus groups and test screenings early on because it was critical that we brought men who weren't necessarily aware of gender being a social construct or even aware of their hypermasculine or machismo attitudes or behaviors. We wanted them to be compelled to see the film and we wanted to draw them in. [Gavin] was the one who was like, in the very beginning, with earlier openings, providing really helpful feedback saying, "You cannot open with that scene," or "You cannot open with that character." Finally, I feel like opening with Joe Ehrmann, the former NFL star who also coaches boys, it just felt like that was the right way to make the film more palatable for the majority of Americans.
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