Media, science, and justice – the moral lesson learnt from Deflategate. Journalist Despina Afentouli discussed with filmmaker Julie Marron about her documentary Four Games in Fall. The film explores the issues of media manipulation, science for hire, and perversion of the legal system, all through the Deflategate.
See the World Premiere of ‘Four Games in Fall’ on February 25, 2018 @3:45pm at Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street) as part of New York City’s 7th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival.
Fair play, along with respect, friendship, excellence, and human spirit describe the core of the Olympic values. However, what is the place of these values in a modern society nowadays? How can fair play be preserved when the social pressures undermine the traditional sports’ values? To what extent athletes and sports organizers are responsible for safeguarding the Olympic spirit? What is the role of the judicial system, mass media, and science in society and who do they serve?
“The standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept” – but how could these words of Thucydides from the Melian Dialogue relate to a current film on sports and especially on football?
“We constantly see examples of the powerful dominating the weak; it is endemic in our society, despite what we would like to believe about our culture”, said the American filmmaker, Julie Marron, during her interview about her documentary Four Games in Fall.
“Not having grown up with football”, Julie stressed, “one of the things that really struck me as I worked on this film is how much the sport is integral to our society”. In her film, as she explained, it was mentioned “how football reflects who we think we are as Americans… and how it’s the way we pass our culture along to our children.”
Focusing her film on Deflategate, Julie clarified that it provided a unique way to her to examine three themes – media manipulation, science for hire, and abuse of the legal system.
“The film uses a manufactured sports scandal as a lens to examine issues that are important and highly topical today”, she highlighted. “But ultimately, it’s also a story of an individual’s triumph over powerful forces…”
In other words, the director believed that her film “gives us the opportunity to see how our media – which is vital to a functioning democracy – can be manipulated to serve the needs of the powerful. It shows us how entrenched the “science for hire” industry is across the board in our society… […] It reveals an asymmetrical power dynamic between the NFL and the NFL Players’ Association, a dynamic which plays out to the detriment of players every day and in many quite serious ways.
“…It’s especially interesting because the person involved, Tom Brady, is arguably the most powerful player in the NFL. The fact that the NFL had the resources and the leverage to make an example of him should have a chilling effect on the other players in the league”, she noted.
However, Julie underlined that Tom Brady had an avenue for victory that is not available to most people: “He [Tom Brady] had the field. And when he took to the field for this “trial by ordeal” – and I think Super Bowl 51 was clearly a trial by ordeal in the eyes of many – he gave one of the most inspiring performances in recent memory. His loss in the “real” world made his win in the sporting arena that much more poignant.”
“The much more powerful aggressor was assured victory, and what we commonly think of as “justice” played no role in the outcome”, the filmmaker argued, mentioning that “Despite his [Tom Brady’s] wealth and fame he was no match for the NFL backed by a team of billionaire owners.”
In terms of media manipulation, Julie thought that getting a better understanding of how sophisticated public relations tactics exploit our cognitive biases, we have to recognize them before we can start to overcome them: “Understanding that the news isn’t just the news…what issues are reported and how issues are reported are often considered in light of sponsors, powerful content providers, and ownership of media…economic power matters.”
Similarly, she explained that it is important, not only to recognize that science for hire exists, but also to understand how corporate funded science operates: “We can be better consumers of information if we begin to understand who controls the purse strings. Consumers need to advocate to get industry influence out of government bodies like the FDA, NIH, and so on.”
But one would wonder, what is the moral lesson that can be drawn from Deflategate, after all? “Ultimately, Deflategate itself doesn’t really matter”, Julie said, underlining that “What matters is that we pay attention to these things and do what we need to do to correct them. If Deflategate can act as a vehicle to draw attention to how media, science, and the legal system are manipulated for the benefit of the few and powerful, then I think we should pay attention to that.”
About the film
Julie said that it took approximately a year to make the film, longer, including the starts and stops required for outreach and fundraising activities.
For her, as she mentioned, the biggest difficulty was choosing what to keep in the film and what got left on the cutting room floor: “There were many issues within the Deflategate scandal that our research and interviews indicated made the conclusions of the investigations suspect, but had to limit exploration of these issues due to time constraints. We had enough good material […] to make a three-part miniseries instead of a single documentary!”
Julie stressed that in order to ensure objectivity in her film, she “tried to tell the story primarily using interviews with experts in various fields who were very clearly not biased in favor of the Patriots”, including the MIT Professor, Jon Leonard and the New York Law School Professor, Robert Blecker.
Besides, as she highlighted, she was not actually a football fan, and that was not a “fan” film in any respect: “It didn’t matter to me necessarily if Tom Brady was involved in deflating footballs, and I didn’t actually have a preconceived notion either way when I first became interested in some of the issues surrounding Deflategate.”
To learn more about the Director/Writer Julie Marron and the film Four Games in Fall, please visit:
http://www.lemonmartiniproductions.com/about.html
http://www.fourgamesinfall.com/
Despina Afentouli
Dr. Despina Afentouli (www.afentouli.com) is a journalist, sociologist and postdoc researcher with professional work experience in media, academic institutions and public sector worldwide. Dr. Afentouli holds a PhD in Sociology, a Master’s degree in International Journalism, and a Bachelor’s degree in International and European Studies and Translating/Interpreting (German-English). Dr. Afentouli has participated as a speaker, co-ordinator and organizer of educational seminars and cultural events.
About Winter Film Awards
New York City’s 7th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival runs February 22-March 3 2018. Check out our jam-packed lineup of 93 fantastic films in all genres from 31 countries, including Animation, Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Documentary and Music Video. Hollywood might ignore women and people of color, but Winter Film Awards celebrates everyone!
Winter Film Awards is an all volunteer, minority- and women-owned registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2011 in New York City by a group of filmmakers and enthusiasts. The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the NY State Council on the Arts.
