Abstract
In this examination of Oliver Stone’s JFK, I explore the rationale and means of how a power coterie of the sovereign interests mete out revenge for ‘transgressions against the state’ upon one of its own, the President of the United States (the body-politic). Incontrovertibly, the corporal body of this populist leader, John F. Kennedy, is publicly executed by internal competing sovereign factions, as Stone contends, as a means of retribution for Kennedy’s (the people’s will) invocation of political policies that challenged America’s ‘military industrial complex’ i.e. hegemonic corporate interests and the intelligence community’s structure and control of foreign policy objectives and practices. Paul Virilio’s War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception is a central text to my argument in considering how JFK can be read as ‘non-war, war film’ in its ‘battle’ to re-visit/destroy propagated ‘government truths’ about the case. I also draw from Michel Foucault’s notions on state subjugation, punishment and control to explain state complicity in the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 and how the demise of the ‘world’s most powerful leader’ can be read as a return to the pre-Enlightenment ‘public execution scaffold’.
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Notes
- 1.
The Warren Report, Government Printing Office, 1964; also see the 26 volumes of ‘supporting evidence’, which followed the initial publication of the summation report. Oswald was also found by the Commission to be ‘responsible’ for the slaying of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, but a few miles away from Dealey Plaza and less than 45 minutes after the assassination; all of Oswald’s actions are disputed in Stone and Sklar’s film script.
- 2.
Stone, Oliver & Sklar, Zachary, JFK, The Book of the Film: The Documented Screenplay, New York: Applause Books, 1992.
- 3.
Salewicz, Chris, Oliver Stone, New York: Orion Books, 1997.
- 4.
In 1979, former head of CIA covert operations, Richard Helms, acknowledged in legal testimony that Shaw had ‘agency connections’. Additional documents, released in 1992 through the Assassination Records & Review Board (via a Congressional act-of-law passed in the wake of public demand following the theatrical release of JFK), further confirmed Shaw’s agency affiliation.
- 5.
Stone and Sklar 1992.
- 6.
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World Revisited, London: Vintage Random House, 2004.
- 7.
Virilio, Paul, trans. Patrick Camiller, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, London: Verso, 1989, 10.
- 8.
Virilio 1989, 34.
- 9.
Ibid., 22.
- 10.
Stone and Sklar 1992.
- 11.
Virilio 1989, 10.
- 12.
Ibid., 177.
- 13.
Broadcast live across all three American networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) on 17th January, 1963.
- 14.
Foucault 1991.
- 15.
Here, Julius Caesar’s Shakespearian Senatorial demise is instructive.
- 16.
Virilio 1989
- 17.
Grosz, Elizabeth, Volatile Bodies: Toward a New Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
- 18.
Ibid., 61.
- 19.
Of note is director John Frankenheimer’s prescient Seven Days In May (released, February, 1964), which mines the thematic of an American internal coup d’état to topple the president via elements within the U.S. military; filming of the original 1962 novel was supported by Kennedy during mid-1963, with the production almost overlapping the assassination date in late November of that year.
- 20.
But not seen until 1975 as a continuous film strip; prior to that year, only government sanctioned and selected still frames had been published in various mainstream print-media for public consumption.
- 21.
The extant Zapruder film comprises 486 individual frames.
- 22.
Huxley, Aldous, The Art of Seeing (1943) in Virilio 1989, 14.
- 23.
Prior to the Shaw public trial, there were numerous published works and reputable critics challenging the government’s selective use of witnesses, the testimonies sought, the handling/interpretation of evidence and Oswald’s associations/guilt as presented to the public. This included the Zapruder film as it had been ‘secreted’ away in 1963; Garrison was only able to secure a copy for the 1969 trial under subpoena.
- 24.
Virilio 1989, 13.
- 25.
Virilio 1989, 16.
- 26.
Ibid., 26.
- 27.
Ibid., 25.
- 28.
Ibid., 3.
- 29.
Ibid., 17.
- 30.
Stone and Sklar 1992, 176.
- 31.
Also see Parkland, director Peter Landesman (2013), which encompasses a detailed sequence dramatising Zapruder’s actions that day, including the financial bartering for the rights to his home-movie; the film promulgates the ‘Oswald-did-it’ scenario, with no acknowledgment of any potential conspiracy.
- 32.
Dealey Plaza was created in 1940 as a city monument to George Bannerman Dealey, one of the founding city- fathers of Dallas.
- 33.
Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a referential ‘title-ode’ to the locale of the event by the director.
- 34.
Lubin, David, Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 37.
- 35.
Virilio 1989.
- 36.
Ibid
- 37.
Foucault 1991.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Virilio 1989.
- 40.
See Marrs, Jim, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989.
- 41.
Virilio 1989.
- 42.
Foucault 1991.
- 43.
see McLuhan, Marshal, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London: Routledge, 2005 (of interest, the first year published, 1964, coincided with the release of the government’s ‘Warren Commission Report’).
- 44.
Jameson, Frederic, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso, 2009, 355.
- 45.
Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Glaser, Sheila Faria, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
- 46.
see Fetzer, James H., Ph.D. (ed), The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK, Chicago: CatFeet Press, 2003; a comprehensive series of annotated essays by technical and scientific professionals who argue that the extant Zapruder film, as available for viewing today (including the ‘copy’ utilised in JFK), was visually manipulated by state-elements prior to its public dissemination.
- 47.
Baudrillard, Jean, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988, 177.
- 48.
Ibid., 6.
- 49.
Jameson 2009, 355.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
World-wide small screen home-viewing of JFK has now outstripped its initial theatrical release audience numbers from December, 1991 through 1992.
- 52.
Foucault 1991.
- 53.
see Douglass, James W., JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters, New York: Orbis Books, 2008; Mahoney, Richard D., JFK: Ordeal in Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983; Newman, John, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue and the Struggle for Power, New York: Warner Books, 1992
- 54.
see Jameson, Fredric, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
- 55.
Knight, Peter, The Kennedy Assassination, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, 163.
- 56.
see Douglass 2008.
- 57.
Virilio, 20.
- 58.
Salewicz 1997.
- 59.
Lubin 2003, For further discussion of film, filmmaker and other cultural image analogies to the Zapruder film see his chapter Twenty Six Seconds, 1.
- 60.
Post-JFK studio films that have mined this territory include: In The Line of Fire (1993); Conspiracy Theory (1997); Closed Circuit (2013).
- 61.
Stone’s adverse experiences in, and of, the Vietnam era were realised in his anti-war trilogy: Platoon (1986); Born On The Fourth Of July (1989); Heaven & Earth (1993).
- 62.
See the following Congressional investigations: The Rockefeller Commission (1975), The Pike Committee (1975), The Church Committee (1975), The House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978)
- 63.
See Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Frank Capra, 1939, Columbia Pictures.
- 64.
Salewicz 1997, 81.
- 65.
Variety Magazine, Dec 16, 1991, Todd McCarthy.
- 66.
See Stone and Sklar 1992.
- 67.
Virilio 1989, 32.
- 68.
Stone and Sklar 1992, 59.
- 69.
Virilio, 35.
- 70.
Stone and Sklar, 178.
- 71.
Ibid., 179 (the original published script line reads, ‘Do not forget your young president who forfeited his life’; this line was rewritten for the final shooting script and not updated for the publication of the book of the screenplay, see the end sequence in the film itself).
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, Simulacra and Simulation, Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1994.
———, Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.
Douglass, James W., JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters, New York: Orbis Books, 2008.
Fetzer, James H., PhD, ed., The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK, Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2003.
Foucault, Michel, trans. Alan Sheridan, Discpline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin, 1991.
———, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 1972–1977, New York: Pantheon, 1980.
Grosz, Elizabeth, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Jameson, Fredric, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, Bloomingon: Indiana University Press, 1995.
———, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London: Verso, 2009.
Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World Revisited, London: Vintage Random House, 2004.
Knight, Peter, The Kennedy Assassination, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2007.
Lubin, David M., Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Marrs, Jim, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989.
Mahoney, Richard D., JFK: Ordeal in Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
McCarthy, Todd, Variety Magazine, December, 16, 1991.
McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, London: Routledge, 2005 (originally published 1964).
Newman, John M., JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue and the Struggle for Power, New York: Warner Books, 1992.
President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The Warren Report, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964.
Salewicz, Chris, Oliver Stone, New York: Orion Books, 1997.
Stone, Oliver & Sklar, Zachary, JFK, The Book of the Film: The Documented Screenplay, New York: Applause Books, 1992.
Virilio, Paul, trans. Patrick Camiller, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, London: Verso, 1989.
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de Valk, M. (2016). Mr. Stone Goes to Washington: JFK 2.4. In: de Valk, M. (eds) Screening the Tortured Body. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39918-2_8
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