Fair Game is a movie based on true events involving undercover agent Valerie Plame and her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson wrote an article in the New York Times shortly after President George W. Bush stated in his State of the Union Address that there was evidence that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger. In this article, Wilson talks about what he didn't find while he was in Niger (i.e. the uranium). After Wilson’s article was published, Robert Novak submitted an article in the Washington Post outing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent. In Novak's article he claims it was Valerie who "sent Wilson to Niger," he uses this claim to discredit Wilson's original article. Director Doug Liman, who is most commonly known for his work in the Bourne films, used Wilson and Plame's personal accounts to make Fair Game as accurate as possible. In a "mass media war" against the Wilsons and the Bush Administration, Fair Game is likely to keep viewers on their toes as well as inform them of the amount of power the government truly has.
According to a study from Washington University in St. Louis, popular historical-based movies have the potential to completely distort students' perceptions of what is actually historical fact. “We found that when information in the film was consistent with information in the text, watching the film clips increased correct recall by about 50 percent relative to reading the text alone,” said Andrew Butler, a psychology doctoral student in Arts & Sciences.“In contrast, when information in the film directly contradicted the text, people often falsely recalled the misinformation portrayed in the film, sometimes as much as 50 percent of the time.” Based on the information given in the study, it is imperative that historical-based movies get the facts right. When making a movie, directors will often alter historical fact in order to make their film more enticing. It is our job as media smarties to research and recognize when and where these discrepancies in the film occur.
With this blog, we intend to evaluate the movie Fair Game for historical accuracy. We plan to look at each of the scenes individually to check for any error or inaccurate portrayal of events. We will also list the scenes in the movie that we deem similar to what truly happened in 2003 during the Plamegate scandal. We will then look at the ideologies hidden in the film and uncover them for our readers. We will dissect the journalism ethics used or ignored by people involved with the scandal and the director of the film. With this blog, we hope to find the truth behind Plamegate.
Depicted below is a timeline of events detailing a bit more about how the situation involving the leak of Valerie Plame unraveled. With the rest of this blog we hope to address each of the events in more detail.
