An interview with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who created Miss Representation, and then turned her lens on what’s happening to boys and men with The Mask You Live In.
The 2015 documentary, The Mask You Live In, discusses in detail the distorted cultural views of masculinity, which has led to dehumanizing attitudes about women in our society that often results in violence towards women, emotional detachment, and behavioral disorders.
The film funded over $100,000 on KickStarter after the success of Director Jennifer Siebel
Jennifer Siebel Newsom also served as an Executive Producer for the critically acclaimed documentary, The Invisible War, which was credited by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-D) in shaping a new bill that addressed the rampant sexual assault in the military.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s latest documentary is a continuation of the themes discussed in Miss Representation.
The Mask You Live In reveals the destructive and often conflicting messages that boys are subjected to on a daily basis. The film explores the influences of media, video games, and sports culture in reaffirming the narrow definitions of masculinity, and creating a culture that views women as objects, and idealizes violence as a way to assert male dominance.
Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than are women in other high income countries. According to the film, ninety percent of homicidal perpetrators are males. This social and cultural trend of violence merged with masculinity is perpetuated and enforced through media, ranging from video games, violent films and television shows, advertising, and the emergence of the internet porn industry in the past two decades.
Rather than demanding institutional changes, the films discuss what these images in our entertainment represent, and through media literacy, people can begin to broaden the constrictive and destructive gender stereotypes imposed on us.
We spoke with Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom
In 2014, Elliot Rodger went on a killing spree in that left six dead and thirteen injured. “Women … don’t deserve to have any rights … [they] are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such,” he wrote in a manifesto left behind after the shooting in Santa Barbara, California. Just a few weeks ago, a high school boy in Idaho was arrested for threatening to “kill all the girls” because they refused to send him nude photographs. In early October, the Umpqua Community College shooter in Oregon ranted in a manifesto about his dismay at not having a girlfriend. The Lafayette, Louisiana shooter a few months earlier openly hated feminists and targeted a female-led movie to carry out a mass shooting. What do you see as the origins of this violence and this resentment being conveyed by so many of these mass shooters towards women?
We live in a patriarchal society where we unfortunately put our girls and boys, men and women, into boxes, social constructs, and gender stereotypes. These stereotypes have become increasingly extreme.
On the one hand, as you saw in Miss Representation, we’ve socialized not just our girls, but our boys to believe about our girls, that a woman’s value lies in her youth, beauty, and sexuality. So in a sense we’ve made our women objects versus agents.
On the other side, we’ve socialized our boys, and also taught our girls this is the value of boys, that their value lies in power, dominance, control, and aggression. So what you’re seeing is, over time, boys become men who have been socialized to see women as objects, who have been socialized to repress their emotions, deny their true feelings and as a result not know what to do when they’re shamed, humiliated, or feel disrespected, because they don’t have the emotional literacy that we allow our women to have because of the way we socialize our women and girls to value relationships, value feelings, and value emotions, whereas we tell our boys don’t cry, crying is for sissies, toughen up, be a real man.
So what you’re getting is, in addition to obviously a combination of easy access to guns and mental health issues, a case whereby young men have been socialized not only to feel entitled or privileged that women are secondary, or of less value, or anything associated with femininity is of less value to them, but that women are the property of or objects for them.
So what happens is you have these young men, again there’s obviously a lot of play here with mental health issues and isolation, but what you have is that these young men, when they don’t get what they want from women and girls, and they feel shamed and humiliated for not getting what they want from these women and girls, you have them lashing out, and the only way they know how to lash out is through use of violence.
Does the media contribute to these notions of masculinity and femininity or merely reflect them?
The media definitely contributes to a culture of violence. Let’s just take a couple of examples. If you look at the violent video game industry or if you look at violent pornography, or you look at just the news media’s celebration of war and crime.
My husband always has the TV on when he’s shaving in the morning, so I get to hear the news, and you wake up and oh my god there’s fighting in Israel, there’s deaths in these conflicts. It’s everywhere around us and yet it’s not. The media is obviously trying to report the news, but they’re also all about eyeballs, trying to capture your attention, so they’re going to lead with the most high stakes, violent, or grabbing headlines.
Not to mention the number of TV shows that solve problems with gun violence.
That’s a big focus in the work that we do here at the representation project. What you’ll see when you watch The Mask You Live In, is that our culture perpetuates this notion of men equaling violence or men resorting to violence to achieve their goals, or get the girl, in Hollywood and through the entertainment industry. It’s old, it’s tired, it’s not very creative, but you see it in the superhero films all the way to the hip hop music videos all the time. It’s all about being more of a “man.” The more you resort to violence, the tougher you are, and it’s just unfortunately a very limiting narrative that we’re feeding our young boys and men.
What can parents and educators do to help children break away from these attitudes?
It all starts at home, but obviously, especially in America, 70% of the women in the workforce are working moms, so unfortunately we have a culture where parents don’t have a lot of time with their children. What we try to do is make that time count and make that time matter. We provide parents with not only the films, but the curriculum, the conversation starters, and resources and tools to have conversations that deconstruct these limiting narratives about what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl.
At home, I have two daughters, a son, and one other son on the way. It was very important to me out of the gate to reinforce to my son that to be a man is to be caring and loving, so I gave him a doll when his younger sister was born, just as I gave his older sister a doll, to reinforce that boys need to learn to care for things. That’s part of being a human being.
We all know, and the studies indicate that we’re all born with empathy, and boys are slightly more sensitive at birth than girls are, but we socialize that sensitivity out of them.
The epidemic of violence we’re seeing in our society, it’s a public health crisis, and it’s not natural. It’s been sort of socialized and reinforced by the larger culture and limiting narratives we’re feeding our boys and men. So it’s up to us as parents to spend the time nurturing our children’s emotional well-being, and reinforcing that boys and girls can have emotions, and it’s not healthy to repress your emotions, what to do with their emotions, what to do when there’s conflict so they don’t resort just to violence, and how to deal with shame and humiliation, which is part of being a human being. There are a lot of things we can do as parents and educators.
Frankly, I feel tremendously for our educators. They’re overwhelmed, understaffed, under resourced, not always all trained in therapy, psychologically, and ways to deal with some of the issues confronting youth today, so it really has to be a concerted team effort when it comes to supporting our young children. It goes beyond the teachers, it goes to the coaches, the caregivers, the mentors.
We have a lot of work to do in our country and what we’re doing at the Representation Project is working with these different communities, bringing them together through the films, trying to inspire them to take action, and providing them with the tools and resources so they can be the best support to youth in their communities.
What inspired you to make the film Miss Representation, and subsequently establish The Representation Project?
I witnessed injustices and inequities, especially when I entered the entertainment industry, and saw the under representation of women, and the misrepresentation of women In positions of power and influence, and that’s really where Miss Representation was really born, but I knew in making the film, it needed to be more than a film, it needed to be a movement as well and hence I started the Representation Project.
I’ve always been someone who recognizes that there’s only so much one individual can do, and that at the end of the day we’re all in this together. We created this culture and we can recreate this culture, but men need to be a part of the cultural conversation and the gender equity solution. The only way they’re going to be a part of the solution is if we engage them, if we turn the lens on them and are able to expose them to the limiting narrative they’ve been fed. And so, having made Miss Representation, I knew I needed to turn the lens on boys and men in order to bring them into the conversation to help them be a part of the larger solution.
What has the reception of the Representation Project been like and what are some of the organization’s greatest accomplishments so far?
The support, the accomplishments, and achievements we’ve made just in terms of changing attitudes, behavior, and ultimately transforming culture have been enormous relatively speaking given we’re this small non-profit organization.
Our “Not Buying It” campaign was credited for transforming the portrayal of women during the Super Bowl in a matter of three years.
Our “Ask Her More” campaign was credited for transforming the cultural conversation on the red carpet during the Oscars and Emmys in a two year period, so I know we’re having a huge impact.
We try to educate people and connect the dots for them. Especially fathers of daughters who understand that culture limits their daughters. Many fathers of daughters are concerned about their daughter’s future, therefore these men are a little more conscious about the need to play a role in recreating that culture. I feel like we’ve brought a lot of those men on board.
One of the things we do is we try to elevate the men that aren’t “celebrities”, but who are incredible thought leaders and change agents in the masculinity arena and I think we’ve elevated some of those voices through our film, through getting the film out there in distribution, not just in America but all over the World.
In partnership with these men, its really about elevating and celebrating the discourse around what is healthy masculinity, what does that look like and how can men be healthier role models to young men and how can we support our boys in not repressing their emotions and denying their true selves.
There’s a whole movement that we’re building, it’s doing its work in the world in a really profound and powerful way, and it’s resonating.
Lolabunny, one might be inclined to retort your comment with: ‘It would be better if you would just be honest with yourself and everyone else. You never cared about men’s issues. You never worried about anything bad a man can face… You are just against men as a group in many ways. You actually want men not to be heard as much, and that their progress stagnate. Men, who are the ones who push for a better treatment of women more than women do that themselves… No, it’s not okay to be like that, either.’ But rather than validate that type… Read more »
@ Mostly_123 Good response, but I think you’re wrong on a major point. Lolabunny seems to believe that women should be able to speak for every group. Women should get to decide what concerns are valid for men. Sort of what I believe the author does here. Everything is done in terms of women’s experience. She asserts that we live in a patriarchy where men are taught to use violence to dominate women which would hold true only if you ignore the experience of men who are abused by women. This is not a small number of individuals. The CDC… Read more »
Cassie Jaye’s “The Red Pill” looks like it will be taking a more honest look at the issue. Give that a look.
@ Erin This is the message I get from the article. Men and women are both affected by cultural images / norm, (patriarchy or whatever you chose to call it), but men are the only one’s who interact with it, benefit from it, and uphold it. The things that the article clearly ignores is the disposability of men. If WOMEN are valued less than men, why are most homicide victims men? Even the people women kill are mostly men. If women are valued less than men, why is 75% of non-reciprocal DV perpetrated by women against men? Obviously, there is… Read more »
“And yet, all of you exclusively responded to the article only wanting to focus on men as victims while appearing to want to pass any blame or responsibility for our culture off of men and exclusively on women” First of all, where? Do not put words into my mouth. Secondly, no, actually. I don’t want to blame women, I don’t want women as a topic to enter into the discussion. Feminists ask this all the time wrt discussions about women’s issues (see: the sneering “whatabouttehmenz?”) So why is it so bloody horrible that I want a discussion about men and… Read more »
“Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s latest documentary is a continuation of the themes discussed in Miss Representation.”
Was the discussion ever about men or boys?
You only need to read the article to see that it is. Could you please answer the questions I asked above?Starting with the violence in porn question and all the rest? I would very much be interested in your thoughts.
@ Erin Men are also 80% of the homicide victims, but more to the point when you examine female killers, they are more likely to kill men than women. BOTH men and women view a man’s life as lesser so you can chalk it up as a societal belief. Maybe it’s because in these violent video games it mostly MALES / MEN who are killed. She may have a point, but her focus is still on the violence done to women if not exclusively then primarily. Hence, has it ever been about men or boys. Look at the violence in… Read more »
Erin,
“ Could you please answer the questions I asked above?”
I will.
If you first answer 8ball’s question: “ So why is it so bloody horrible that I want a discussion about men and boys to actually be about men and boys?” (and that doesn’t devolve into “but women have it worse.”)
FlyingKal, Tom and 8Ball, please read the article again. I see a distinct difference in the tone of the article and the tone of your responses to it. The article approaches the topic from the perspective that social constructs appear to be doing harm to both women AND men, to girls AND boys. It’s trying to break down cultural expectations of men as much as it is of women. And yet, all of you exclusively responded to the article only wanting to focus on men as victims while appearing to want to pass any blame or responsibility for our culture… Read more »
Erin, this is not the first time I’ve heard about this documentary. I’ve been hearing about it for several years now, in fact. I don’t need to read the article again, thank you. As I said, I’d like to think this will not be more “boys are broken and masculinity is toxic” rhetoric, but I’m not holding my breath. And frankly, yes Erin at this point in time I’m not really worried about women. While I do acknowledge that women face many hardships in the world, I also recognize that there are MANY organizations that are working towards rectifying those… Read more »
Erin,
My comment to the article really didn’t have anything to do with any of the questions you pile upon each other.
But to its defense, I can say that the article itself was certainly more fair minded and sensitive to the subject than you appear to be.
Erin, you are usually the voice of reason around here. But when will you realize these men around here are just your typical misogynistic pigs who couldn’t care less about anything that makes women’s lives harder? That they truly believe women are too “hysterical” when it comes to their issues, and that only male issues are of importance? That they love to blame women equally, and many times totally, for a society and culture that was built by straight white men keeping in mind the straight white man’s delight and commodity as a priority (the bad things that still troubles… Read more »
Wow, International Men’s Day has really brought the hater out in you hasn’t it? I suppose that it easier to just tell people they are X, Y, and Z rather than listen to them. That way you don’t have to reflect on how you’ve contributed to the problem. Isn’t that the whole point of falsely claiming the society is patriarchal to absolve women of all the injustices they’ve perpetrated?
Don’t bother.
John,
I reckon that the joke here is on anyone who’ve ever had a comment moderated out around here.
Sometimes I suspect the staff here at GMP write these things themselves as click-bait… 😉
I want to resubmit this link concerning the movie The Invisible war without comment. My original comment contained one or two sentences of my own and was not approved. I think it’s important that male victims are not silenced so will resubmit the quotes and link portion of the original comment. “Two male rape survivors who appear in “The Invisible War,” an Oscar-nominated documentary about military sexual assaults, are criticizing the movie’s brief focus on male victims as an ironic snub ” “The publicity campaign hawking the film — and its Academy Award candidacy — includes a website that shows… Read more »
I’d like to think that this won’t devolve into more “girls have problems, boys are problems” rhetoric but considering (iirc) they interviewed Michael Kimmel for this, I’m not really holding my breath.
Interesting how when women have issues, society is expected to change to deal with it, and to hell with the consequences. Boys have issues, it means boys themselves need to change.
8ball, that’s the truth. The fact that “patriarchy” was brought into this, says that it’s a male problem that needs to be corrected. My bringing up what I did is to point out that there needs to be a time where women will have to take responsibility for how boys are today. The known effects of fatherless homes. https://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/ The reality is Women raising kids is a matriarchal setting. It’s also evidenced in the way society is pushing against traditional male roles and sanitizing them to where male gender roles as it was once recognized will no longer exist. Traditional… Read more »
“We live in a patriarchal society where we unfortunately put our girls and boys, men and women, into boxes, social constructs, and gender stereotypes ” I struggle with this especially when I find the following stats. According to U.S. Census Bureau,3 out of about 12 million single parent families in 2014, more than 80% were headed by single mothers.” “Today 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 — a total of about 17.4 million — are being raised without a father” “Not to mention the number of TV shows that solve problems with gun violence.” Oh here we… Read more »
Gun violence …. That damn patriarchal attitude again pushing the boys into using guns. Without having to have to go into my client charts for the past 15 years, I can pretty much bet a dollar to a doughnut that the wide majority of the clients who had charges which included the use of a firearm were boys who were/are being raised by single mom’s. The same boys who play violent video games and listen to music that not only promotes violence but also degrade women. WHEN are the mom’s going to be held accountable? Could someone please tell me?
When a mother is actually at fault, then they should be held accountable. Other than that, it’s just your usual vile anti-single mother crap. Oh look – most single mothers are poor women who come from a culturally broken part of our society – but instead of seeing the fact that single parenthood COMES from that scenario, I’m going to blame single parenthood (and the women much more, or maybe exclusively, as my misogyny has to be polished at all times) FOR said scenario! And sure – fathers should be seen as important as the mothers for the kids lies,… Read more »
“The epidemic of violence we’re seeing in our society, it’s a public health crisis, and it’s not natural. It’s been sort of socialized and reinforced by the larger culture and limiting narratives we’re feeding our boys and men. So it’s up to us as parents to spend the time nurturing our children’s emotional well-being, and reinforcing that boys and girls can have emotions, and it’s not healthy to repress your emotions, what to do with their emotions, what to do when there’s conflict so they don’t resort just to violence, and how to deal with shame and humiliation, which is… Read more »
You are right. It’s important that men are emotionally intelligent, but also for their own good. In fact, being at peace with themselves will also bring peace to everyone around. That is true that most people expect men to resort to violence if necessary. They also expect women to do that many times, even more when it comes to defending their children. Men are still more expected to do so because of their superior physical strength and stamina – and because most of the times the attacker will be another man. I don’t see many people blaming men for getting… Read more »