For generations, the American dream has been tied to steady work, a home, financial security and the hope of building a better life for the next generation.
But for many Americans, that dream looks different today.
Milwaukee filmmaker Faith Kohler explores that changing reality in her new documentary, "Out of Reach: The Struggle for the American Dream." It’s showing this week at Milwaukee Film’s Dialogues Documentary Festival.
The film examines the decline of manufacturing jobs, the changing American workforce, and how those shifts have affected people across generations.
WUWM Eric Von Fellow Akira Quinn spoke with Kohler about the film, its Milwaukee connections and how she came to tell the story of a changing American middle class.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Akira Quinn: Can you first explain the film and the story behind it?
Faith Kohler: "Out of Reach" is the story of the disappearing middle class in America.
We took a look at the lives of real people and the changes that have gone on in our cities throughout the United States, where deindustrialization, factories stop making things, has changed people's expectations for what life is going to earn them. And that's kind of the core of the story: What did my grandparents want for the American dream? What did my parents expect? How about me, my generation of people? And then the younger generation, the Gen Zs? We wanted to compare what was happening around people in each generation and then where that leaves us now.
The first part of the movie asks: "Do you think life is overall better or worse for workers than it was 30 or 40 years ago?" Did you find that answer while creating the film?
It was a very mixed answer, depending on who you ask. One of the things that I discovered, and what I love about making documentaries, is you can put together the shell of a story, but really what you're doing is following the facts.
We have a character like Mike, who started at Master Lock in the '70s and became the union president. He's watched as the company has morphed and evolved and changed.
He said it was like a family-owned company, and then at some point in the '80s, it didn't feel so family anymore. And then jobs started moving offshore. The amount of work they did here in Milwaukee was shrinking.
You drive down Lake Drive, you see the old industrialists' houses. And all that is an era that's bygone at this point. If you ask someone who started working in a place with the expectation that their company was gonna take care of them, you work hard, they give you something at the end of it, and then I look at the generations now, maybe they haven't been around for 40 years.
That's why I asked the question. I wanna see what 30-year-olds think about what things were 40 years ago. I think that's important for young people to understand what's changed.
What exactly is out of reach?
The American dream for a lot of people. I think about all the companies that were here: Harley-Davidson, A.O. Smith, Allis-Chalmers, Master Lock. Those were the companies where people actually worked hard and saw themselves working there for their entire career, and being able to have those family vacations that they talk about in the film.
And now the American dream is different for somebody who maybe graduates school and can't find a job, can't find a job in their field, because jobs are shrinking and going away. A lot of jobs that people are taking right now...might have no days off. A lot of them don't have health insurance because they can't afford it — smaller businesses can't afford to provide health insurance for their employees, so people either go without or they have to make trade-offs in their lives. If we have health insurance, then we can't afford a vacation. We can't afford a new car.
That's where the “Out of Reach” comes from in the title. At what point are we all able to achieve our concept of the American dream? I feel like it has shifted over the years. What the middle class had 30, 40 years ago: two people working factory jobs, going away, hollowed out the cities. You get left with shells. And then where do the people go? What's gonna happen to us when the jobs go away? So the American dream now, for some people that I've spoken with, might be affording health insurance and food and housing all at the same time.
The documentary is showing Saturday, Sept. 26 at 11 a.m. at the Oriental Theater, as part of Milwaukee Film’s Dialogues Documentary Festival.
Milwaukee Film is a financial supporter of WUWM.
