Historical Voyeurism

One of the first books that made a deep impression on me – one that I discovered by myself, not one that was bought for me or read to me – was Life in Camelot: The Kennedy Years. I was in elementary school and found it in the school library in Taiwan. I remember being attracted to it because it looked different from all of the other books on the shelves. First was its size: it was large-format and fit awkwardly in the shelf, jutting out into the aisles, waiting to be opened. Then there were the beautiful photographs – the black-and-white glamour shots of Jackie, the contemplative shots of Jack, the horrifying pictures of the lifeless body in the surgery room. I was mesmerized by the book, and I remember that I would try to go the library after a couple of months to flip through the book. I think it was around the same time that I watched Oliver Stone’s movie JFK for the first time.[1] I don’t think I completely understood the movie at the time – I didn’t pick up on the nuances of the various conspiracy theories but the movie impressed on me that there was something dark and sinister that lay beneath the glamorous surface of Camelot.[2]

Why was I, living in Taiwan in the early 1990s, with very little cultural connection to anything the Kennedies represented, so fascinated by their stories? I think JFK’s world was alluring precisely because of its foreignness. Not only did it represent a time and place that was completely outside of my individual experience, but to a child on the cusp of adolescence, it was the world of “grown-ups;” a different world that was filled with sex, glamour, mystery, danger, and secrets existed. The JFK books provided me with peek into a world still forbidden to me. Maybe I couldn’t or would never participate in that world, but at least I could study it.

I had forgotten about my obsession with JFK until the recent resurgence of articles and books commemorating the 48th anniversary of the assassination. Stephen King has just published an alternate history of the event, and Chris Matthews has been making the rounds with his new “interpretive” (read hagiographic) biography of JFK. Frank Rich writes a really smart piece comparing the general hatred towards JFK with the current vitriol towards Obama, and the continuing menace of violence on the American political landscape. Colin Kidd in the LRB wonders why the JFK assassination attempt continue to fascinate and engender multiple conspiracy theories.

Errol Morris’s beautiful “Op-Doc” in the NYTimes on “The Umbrella Man” posits some compelling answers about why so many people continue to be bewitched by the JFK assassinations. Morris uses the case of “The Umbrella Man” (why was somebody standing under an open umbrella on a beautiful, sunny day in Dallas, almost exactly at the spot where JFK was shot?) to point to the infinite possibilities for historical interpretation and the fragility of supposed historical truths. Other than the highly dramatic assassination itself – a young, charming President killed in his prime with his wife by his side – the subsequent bizarre turn of events, such as Oswald’s silencing and the debates surrounding the Warren Commission Report[3], laid bare the fact that writing and interpreting history is problematic, contentious, and often flimsy at best. As Stephen King quotes Norman Mailer in an interview with Errol Morris, “people find it very difficult to believe it could have happened the way it happened because it suggests an absurd universe.” And I do think that’s largely why there are so many conspiracy theorists – it’s a way to continue to generate meaning in the face of a world full of events that make no sense to us.

What shocked me was how quickly these reviews and films drew me back to the curiosity and emotions of my childhood. After watching the Errol Morris short, I started Youtubing clips of the Zapruder film, and began reading through some of conspiracy theory forums. Almost two hours later, I was still clicking on links to different things. Reflecting on it, I realized how deeply the event had unconsciously shaped my intellectual interests throughout the years. My unending fascination with the 1960s, ideological fanaticism, and historical methodology, in a way, all have roots in my childhood interest in the JFK assassination. And sometimes I wonder how much I’ve changed exactly – is what I’m doing now just another way of performing what Colin Kidd calls a “historically informed voyeurism of the present?”

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1. Thinking about it now, how was I allowed to watch this R-rated movie at 10?  ↩

2. For awhile, I read a bunch of Mob-related books, because I was convinced of the connection between Cuba, the Mob, and the Kennedy assassination, detailed in books such as Mob Lawyer.  ↩

3. See, for example, discussion of the “Magic Bullet.”  ↩