The American Question

The American Question is a decisive snapshot of American values and how they impact the way our society, and in turn the world, operates. For decades, America’s most important export has been values, and if our values are in disarray, so the global culture will follow.

With the rise of globalization, we have slowly but surely divided ourselves into international “city-nations” that have little in common with places only an hour outside of the metropolitan/cosmopolitan regions. To be clear, places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have more in common with London, Sydney and Shanghai than areas only an hour outside of their jurisdiction. This is something I know acutely on a personal level.

According to The New York Times, I grew up in one of the poorest counties in America, both economically and educationally. In my Title I public school education, 90% of students were on free or reduced lunch. Very few in my graduating class were afforded the opportunity to graduate from college, even less living outside of the state of Georgia. Most reside within a fifty-mile radius of where we grew up. Why is this so?

Where I was raised, no one has rich uncles or family members who can provide them with economic mobility. The job market provides you with limited options: working in the prison system, school system, agriculture, or very limited options within the private sector.

Raised by a single mother after my father’s unexpected passing, I spent my teenage years creating high school graduation videos, documentaries, and children’s audiobooks in order to save money to start making my own projects. Through that work, I got into film festivals, saved money to attend them and eventually, was able to make my way to Los Angeles where I have since directed other documentaries, narrative films, music videos and ad campaigns.

I am an exception, not the rule, and I recognize that every time I am home and meet my childhood friends who struggle to put food on the table — they gaze at my life on Instagram, taking pictures with Miley Cyrus, as I traverse the globe working in places they could never see.

That is why I have joined this team to tell this story, because my entire worldview is framed by this insider/outsider perspective, privy to a world that was impossible to access as a child raised in a town of 123 citizens. How can someone who grew up in Los Angeles or New York, from which many people in the entertainment industry hail, begin to understand the struggles of my friends and family?

Because of this insider/outsider perspective, I understand the other half of the coin that people where I grew up cannot see. They don’t realize that the $50,000 house they can buy would cost a million in my neighborhood. They don’t have to compete with an international marketplace in a cosmopolitan city. In many respects, they also don’t have to live in a world with diverse cultures and faith backgrounds. Thus, how can we begin to expect one side to understand the other when no one seems to be able to speak for both sides?

Directorially, I have a voice and deeply rooted passion that can speak to bridging that gap. Truthfully, both Americas have similar goals in pursuit of what our culture has determined as the American Dream. We all want a house, a car and to create a life that is better than our parents. How we arrive there, however, is quite different.

If you live in an area where economic and educational opportunities are abundant, then we have access to utilize those resources. With them, we become comfortable in our lives. As those things are satisfied, we then begin to grow the pyramid described in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Yet if you live in an area where none of these opportunities are available, then you cannot put food on the table, and thus, why should you care about social, environmental or other issues that aren’t tangible to your basic well-being?

The American Question attempts to bridge that gap through showcasing shared American values, as defined by the Constitution, and how those values connect to current events, such as globalization, immigration and communal decay. We do it through cities in every sector of the country, rural, suburban and urban, that serve as microcosms for these broader societal shifts, places that represent and are connective to all parts of America.

Through exploring these vast topics with intellectual openness and curiosity, we eschew our preconceived notions, and indeed life experiences, by putting ourselves in the shoes of the subject to understand how they arrived at their conclusion.

We neither demonize nor praise different parts of America, permitting the viewer to understand their issues, identify the common values that our culture collectively feels is different, and provide a cautionary tale framed by cultures past, if ours cannot find a way to come together.

These goals might sound lofty, and they are. But if we can start a conversation, then people can remove their own personal politics from the equation to understand each other as Americans once again.