An “image:” this is how John F. Kennedy is often described. His life, a movie; his existence, iconic. Over fifty years after his death, Kennedy’s assassination remains very much alive in popular culture. Much of this lingering American obsession with JFK is with the Zapruder film, the most complete footage of the assassination. Filmed on the day of the assassination, November 22, 1963, the footage is now a YouTube sensation:
This website explores the ways in which JFK, and specifically his assassination, have been represented in art and popular culture since his death- as compared to the art and music made about him in his lifetime. There will be a particular focus on the newer video reproductions and parodies of the Zapruder film. As evidenced by his strong presence on YouTube, JFK has maintained in his death the status he held as “‘the television president,’”* though in ways very different than he might have hoped. These parodies, often grotesque, bring up important questions about the long-lasting American obsession both with JFK as an American hero and with his death.
As Haidee Wasson so poignantly asks, “Why is it that we can justifiably laugh at murder, wear it on a t-shirt and continue to investigate it thirty years later? Does the assassination itself become more or less meaningful? Or, rather, might the murder become more and less meaningful, as it greets shifting socio-historical contexts?”** By exploring the art, music, and film made about both JFK’s life and his death, we can begin to answer these questions.
* Zelizer, B. (1992). Covering the body: The Kennedy assassination, the media, and the shaping of collective memory. University of Chicago Press. page 23.
** Wasson, H. (1995, Assassinating an image: The strange life of kennedy’s death. Cineaction, , 4-0_3. page 6.
Witnessing Disaster
Princeton University
