In the 2024 season, San Francisco 49ers star wide receiver, Brandon Aiyuk sustained a serious leg injury. For reasons known only to the player, he then went AWOL, not showing up for meetings and rehab sessions. This violation of his contract allowed the team to void the $27 million in “guaranteed money” he had coming, and he didn't even fight it via the players union. The Niners may even try to claw back some of Aiyuk’s signing bonus, bringing his total loss to $45 million.
Signing with another team for the upcoming season would make up some of the loss, but he's still under contract with the 49ers, and they don't have to pay him because he's on the “left squad” list. They're holding him in a costly limbo that he chooses not to escape from. To get off that list, Aiyuk just has to return to the 49ers, who will then be forced to release him because they don't want him on the team. But he’s publicly stated he won’t do that because he wants nothing to do with his former team.
Novelists and filmmakers are better at telling a story of self-destruction like this than a journalist. A journalist can explore the exterior of the situation by supplying all the relevant facts, but artists also have access to their characters' interior life, which is where the answer to Aiyuk's puzzling behavior lies. Nothing on the exterior makes any sense. Why would anyone allow $27 million to be taken from him without asking for assistance from a powerful union at his disposal.
Maybe something in the player’s past is compelling him to work against himself. A chapter in a book or a few scenes in a movie could shed some light on this. So far, nobody in the media has been able to dig into his psyche like that, so the story’s causing mostly confusion among football fans, few of whom will earn $45 million in their entire lives.
Think of all the books you've read and movies you've seen in which the main character is hurting himself (I think this is more common with men), and everyone can see where it's going to end up except for that guy. People gravitate to these stories. Intelligent people can knowingly act against their own long-term interests, not because they’re slaves to a single compulsion, but because competing desires can pull them in the wrong direction. It's like someone sailing in a boat and knowing where they need to go, but then the wind shifts and they fail to make the proper adjustments to get back on course. Why they don't make the adjustment is great raw material for a compelling drama, while stories about everything going right on course tend to be flat, even though there's the occasional “feel good” hit like Rocky.
A prime example of a movie’s ability to delve into the interior life of its protagonist is Uncut Gems, directed by the Safdie brothers. The film depicts an uncomfortable mind with such visceral intensity that it's a relief when the final credits roll. Protagonist Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is, on the surface, a compulsive gambler, but if his story were told from that angle only, as a journalist would do, it’d be about as interesting as watching a film about a character who shoots up heroin in scene after scene. Howard isn’t simply acting out of compulsion. Unlike the drug addict who's given up on life, he's not indulging in his addiction to kill the pain. He's taking crazy risks because they give him a thrill. He wants the feeling of being the man who wins, even believing that a big win will restore his relationship with his wife.
For the screen, the directors recreate the disquiet of Howard's mind with their kinetic camera work and the feeling of claustrophobia the tight camera angles produce. Nonfiction doesn't have such tools at its disposal.
Literature, due to its ability to enter the consciousness of a character, is also well-equipped to explore the phenomenon of people being their own worst enemies—case in point: The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates Gatsby's downfall isn't simply the surface story that he loves Daisy too much. He's done everything possible to get his lost love back, and right when he's on the verge of accomplishing that, he self-sabotages because he's created a selfish fantasy that Daisy won't comply, even though she still loves him. This self-destructive error triggers a series of events that lead to Gatsby's downfall. As a novelist, Fitzgerald had an advantage over a journalist in telling a story like this. He uses Nick, Gatsby's friend and Daisy's cousin, to get inside of Gatsby's head.
Films like Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street deals effectively with the complexity of self-destructive impulses, and the memoir by Jordan Belfort that the movie’s based on also does a good job. Belfort was a high-profile stockbroker with a spectacular life until his inevitable downfall, making him a good candidate for nonfiction. What's unique about novelists and filmmakers is their ability to make a riveting story out of the life of a total nobody with a prosaic life. Kazuo Ishiguro does this with his protagonist in his novel, The Remains of the Day. Stevens is the dedicated Butler to Lord Darlington, which leads to his undoing when he allows loyalty to his boss to crowd out other personal priorities. The sad result is that he shies away from pursuing a relationship with a woman who's also interested in him, and neglects taking care of his sick and dying father, whom he loves.
In the end, Stevens finally has the emotional distance to understand what he's done. Instead of having a breakdown by fixating on the past, he's left to reflect on the metaphorical “remains of the day.”
Many readers might interpret this as a nuanced, poignant story of an epiphany that comes too late in life. Others go beyond this observation and see how Stevens losing his direction cost him everything in the end. They might think, “I don't want to do this to myself.” One of the benefits of art is that it can help people live better lives by revealing valuable truths that ordinary experience obscures.