The JFK assassination: 50 years gone
My grandmother is obsessed with the Kennedys. John, Bobby, Joe, Jackie — the whole clan and their collective secrets and bad luck. She reads whatever she can about the Kennedys; every time I visit her it seems she has a new book about the Kennedys. She cannot get enough. Why? [Shrugs shoulders.] I have no clue, but something about the Kennedys and their mythical, quasi-monarchal status in American history interests her, as it does so many others. Frankly, I don’t get it. The mystique eludes me — or at least does not affect me as it does those who were alive when John F. Kennedy was president.
Bobblehead wrote an excellent post regarding the anniversary of JFK’s assassination and the nostalgic allure of Camelot. (The Washington Post also published this excellent story about Abraham Zapruder.) I feel the need to write something, so I think I will heed Bobblehead’s call for thoughts from fellow Millennials.
Fittingly, Oliver Stone’s JFK was on last night. I have never seen the whole thing; I always seem to start watching twenty or thirty minutes in, which is exactly what I did last night. Many details were apparently fudged for the sake of the storyline, but I think it is a touching and powerful movie that captures the absurdity and complexity (imagined or not) of the events and people surrounding Kennedy’s assassination.
That, I think, has always been half of the JFK story for me: the myriad assassination theories, of which everyone seems to have their own. Fact and fiction blur, and sometimes I cannot even believe it actually happened. An American president was killed? To a certain extent, it has become so mythologized that it does not seem real. That, it seems, is what millions of Americans may still be coming to grips with, why there is so much nostalgia for a so-called pre-assassination innocence. Events happened so quickly and the change apparently so stark that they are still in some kind of shock.
That is the other half: the nostalgia, of which the so-called Kennedy Camelot represents youth, charisma, glamour, and hope — all dashed that one day in Dallas. Whenever my parents talk about the JFK and Robert Kennedy assassinations, the sparkle fades from their eyes as the weight of shattered optimism and the sadness of what could have been settles over them. I do not know what that is like, but somehow I am able to empathize. (NPR ran a story about the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s live radio performance the day of the assassination and it featured a clip of Erich Leinsdorf informing the audience of Kennedy’s death. The audience reaction gave me goosebumps.) (Also, I have always admired Wade Goodwyn and the ending of his story yesterday is one of the reasons why: “Friday, Dallas will take one more turn at the washbasin of redemption — 50 years after the fact, wanting to cleanse its hands, its soul, once and for all.” The washbasin of redemption. Whoa.)
I have marveled at both the theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination and the supposed era that ended when he died. The significance of Kennedy’s assassination is palpable because it is a watershed moment in our nation’s history. But that is what it has always been for me: history. I have no personal connection to it, as I do 9/11, because I did not live through it. Yes, I can appreciate its importance and impact, but I am only a future onlooker, living in a world that had already been changed by the events fifty years ago today. I have never known a world in which John F. Kennedy was alive, and I therefore may never understand my grandmother’s obsession with the Kennedys.
Bobblehead wrote an excellent post regarding the anniversary of JFK’s assassination and the nostalgic allure of Camelot. (The Washington Post also published this excellent story about Abraham Zapruder.) I feel the need to write something, so I think I will heed Bobblehead’s call for thoughts from fellow Millennials.
Fittingly, Oliver Stone’s JFK was on last night. I have never seen the whole thing; I always seem to start watching twenty or thirty minutes in, which is exactly what I did last night. Many details were apparently fudged for the sake of the storyline, but I think it is a touching and powerful movie that captures the absurdity and complexity (imagined or not) of the events and people surrounding Kennedy’s assassination.
That, I think, has always been half of the JFK story for me: the myriad assassination theories, of which everyone seems to have their own. Fact and fiction blur, and sometimes I cannot even believe it actually happened. An American president was killed? To a certain extent, it has become so mythologized that it does not seem real. That, it seems, is what millions of Americans may still be coming to grips with, why there is so much nostalgia for a so-called pre-assassination innocence. Events happened so quickly and the change apparently so stark that they are still in some kind of shock.
That is the other half: the nostalgia, of which the so-called Kennedy Camelot represents youth, charisma, glamour, and hope — all dashed that one day in Dallas. Whenever my parents talk about the JFK and Robert Kennedy assassinations, the sparkle fades from their eyes as the weight of shattered optimism and the sadness of what could have been settles over them. I do not know what that is like, but somehow I am able to empathize. (NPR ran a story about the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s live radio performance the day of the assassination and it featured a clip of Erich Leinsdorf informing the audience of Kennedy’s death. The audience reaction gave me goosebumps.) (Also, I have always admired Wade Goodwyn and the ending of his story yesterday is one of the reasons why: “Friday, Dallas will take one more turn at the washbasin of redemption — 50 years after the fact, wanting to cleanse its hands, its soul, once and for all.” The washbasin of redemption. Whoa.)
I have marveled at both the theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination and the supposed era that ended when he died. The significance of Kennedy’s assassination is palpable because it is a watershed moment in our nation’s history. But that is what it has always been for me: history. I have no personal connection to it, as I do 9/11, because I did not live through it. Yes, I can appreciate its importance and impact, but I am only a future onlooker, living in a world that had already been changed by the events fifty years ago today. I have never known a world in which John F. Kennedy was alive, and I therefore may never understand my grandmother’s obsession with the Kennedys.
