Dangerous Knowledge: The JFK Assassination in Art and Film

Notes

Notes Introduction The AssHsination Debates I. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Btrth ofthe Prtson) trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978; Vintage Books, 1979), 202. 2. Roland Barthes, S/Z) trans. Richard Miller, with a preface by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985), ID5. 3. This subject really deserves separate treatment elsewhere, where a historical review of the response of Hollywood and television to current events could be detaIled without Sidetracking the subject at hand. However, it seems worth noting that, despite the growing capacity oftelevision news to cover the globe (although not to analyze its developments adequately), its docudramas continue to focus on the privately scandalous - preppie murders , Long Island love affaIrs, sensational murder trials. Current events topicality seems little more than an advertising hook for such progranuning. 4. FredericJameson, "Periodizingthe Sixties:' in The 60S WtthoutApology) ed. Sohnya Sayers et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, I985), l82. 5. ChrIStopher Lasch, "The Life of Kennedys Death:' Harpers) October 1983,32. 6. Gerald Posner, Case Closed (New York: Random House, 1993). 7. Dominic LaCapra, Soundings in Critical Theory (Ithaca: Cornell Umversity Press, 1989), 37. 8. This list does not include those congressional committees whose work overlapped with the assassination investigation: the Edwards Committee III the House and the Schweiker Committee in the Senate, both undertaken in the fall of I975, or the Church Committee ofthe same year, devoted to CIA activities. 9. For the most thorough cataloguing of these materials, see DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone, comps., The Assassinatwn ofJohn F. Kennedy: A ComprehensiveHistoricalandLegalBibliography) [963-[979 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980). The figure 2,300 is taken from this source and includes Items issued in the foreign press ofwestern Europe. lO. For more on these organizations, see Skepttc 9 (September/October 1975), 4l -42. 223 I I. Among these are Citizens for Truth About the Kennedy Assassination, located in Hollywood, California, and the JFK Assassination Information Center. The latter, founded in 1989, is located near Dealey Plaza in Dallas and was cosponsor of the ASK assassination symposium held November 18-22,1993. 12. For a more general discussion of this culture of skepticism, see Morns Dickstein, Gates ofEden: Amertcan Culture in the Sixties (New York: Penguin , 1989),248-251. 13. Sayres et al., The 60S WithoutApology, 8. 14. The most comprehensive single source detailmg the activities of the media and how they covered the assassination is Barbie Zelizer, Covertng the Body: The Kennedy Assassmatwn, the Media, and the Shaping ofColleaive Memory (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1992). In her history ofthe journalistic coverage, Zelizer attempts to demonstrate how the press consistently worked at self-legitimation. However, she does not discuss all aspects of the underground press nor does she consider the presence of assassination literature in soft-core pornography. Still, no other source comes close to Zelizer's thorough analysis. Several other sources provIde bnef chronologies of the press/ media repotting. See, for example, Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Faa: The Warren Commtsswn, the Authorities and the Report, WIth an mtroduction by Peter Dale Scott, preface by Rtchard S. Schweiker (New York: Vintage Books, 1976),458-464; Guth and Wrone, The Assassinatwn ofJohn F. Kennedy, xi-xxxiv; Mattin Shackelford, "What We Were Told About the Assassination oUohn F. Kennedy: A Weekend of Newspapers, aDecade ofMagazines:' in Ian MacFarlane, ProofofConspiracy (Australia: Book Distributors, 1975), 131-140. 15. I will discuss the sale and possession ofthe Zapruder film and its deployment byLife in a subsequent chapter. 16. Joachim Joesten, Oswald:Assassin orFall Guy? (New York: Marzani and Munsell,I964). 17. Thomas Buchanan, Who KtlledKennedy? (New York: Pumam, 1964). 18. The House Select Committee on Assassmations also failed to produce an index for the fourteen volumes accompanying its final report. See Sylvia Meagher and Gary Owens, Master Index to'theJF.K Assassination Investigations : The &ports and Supporting Volumes of the House Selea Committee on Assassinatwns and the Warren Commission (Metuchen, N.T.: Scarecrow Press, 1980). 19. DaVId S. Lifton, BestEvtdence: Dtsguise andDeception in theAssassination ofJohn F. Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf 1980), 15. I take Lifton's reference to ordinary folk to be more accurate than sappy. For more on the assassination buffs see Trillin, cited below. 224 Notes to Introduawn 20. CalvinTrillm, "The Buffs;' TheNewYorkn; 7 June 1967, 41. I will refer to these independent researchers by several names, primarily cntzcs and buffs. Many within this network disapprove of the term buff, believing that its casual, hobbyist...