Film has long been recognized as a powerful transmitter of culture because
it transmits beliefs, values, and knowledge; serves as cultural memory; and
offers social criticism. Consequently, the cinema remains a continual
battleground in the cultural conflicts in America. The reform efforts of
the Progressives in the early twentieth century and the HUAC investigations
of Hollywood personnel in the late 1940s and '50s demonstrate one example of
the enduring public concern over the "quasi-educational" role of film in
American life (Cressey 513).

Perhaps no film in recent history has captured more attention and generated
more controversial debate about the persuasive power of a motion picture
than writer/director Oliver Stone's JFK. Even before this three-hour $40
million Warner Brothers production reached theaters on 20 December 1991,
veteran journalists, determined to protect their own coverage of the events
in 1963, attacked the picture as a polemic distortion of history, a
propagandistic blend of fact and fiction, evidence and speculation. (1) While
the film was running in theaters, former Warren Commission staff defended
the conclusions of their investigation in the 1960s; the Navy pathologists
confirmed the findings of their autopsy on Kennedy as well. In the end, JFK
became the catalyst for direct political action. On 27 October 1992, former
President Bush signed into law a resolution establishing an independent,
five-member board appointed by the president to review and release files
accumulated by the Warren Commission and two later congressional
investigations, as well as FBI and CIA materials.(2)

The most publicized debates over JFK were directed at the film's claim to
historical truth and the legitimacy of the commercial filmmaker, and
especially toward Oliver Stone, as a reteller of the past. There were other
films made prior to JFK, both commercial and documentary, that challenged
the Warren Commission's findings, but none created the controversy that
surrounded Oliver Stone's production.(3) This is in part because JFK entered
the cultural dialogue in the early 1990s, a time of tremendous conflict over
the meaning and destiny of America; interpretations of the past were charged
with greater significance in the struggle over national identity than ever
before.

By examining how Stone constructed his narrative about the assassination, we
can observe the complexity of turning historical subject matter into a
commercially successful film in the classic Hollywood narrative style, while
also uncovering Stone's version of the assassination. Moreover, the box
office success of the movie and the concurrent debate indicated more than
mere fascination with the Kennedy assassination. The whole affair
demonstrated how effective a motion picture can be as a transmitter of
knowledge, history, and culture. As a result, the debate about the validity
of JFK extended much further into the war-torn cultural landscape of America
in the 1990s than most observers have noted. The JFK controversy was a
telling incident demonstrating the larger cultural conflict over values and
meaning in America and the competition to define national identity. Though
largely neglected by most critics, the response of religious conservatives
to JFK, in particular, showed how the cultural war over the future of
America was in part waged through interpretations of the past, even those of
a commercial filmmaker.

Commercial Film as Cultural History

No other medium can approximate the realism of film, regarding its ability
to allow the viewer to experience, i.e., "hear" and "see" the course of
events taking shape in a certain way. By putting even seemingly unrelated
actions together into a coherent narrative form, a film can juxtapose
people, events, and circumstances in such a way as to offer an
interpretation of their meaning and significance. As film historian David
A. Cook explained, in distinction from a literary narrative, "film
constructs its fictions through the deliberate manipulation of photographed
reality itself, so that in cinema artifice and reality become quite
literally indistinguishable" (93-4). The realism of the cinema, then,
charges the artist's interpretation with authenticity, especially for an
uninformed audience.

In this manner, JFK became a seamless montage of possibilities, blending
historical evidence and speculation. The film overwhelmed the viewer with
information presented in the quick-editing style of MTV music videos. "It
is like splinters to the brain," Stone said of the MTV-styled imagery in
JFK. "We were assaulting the senses in a kind of new-wave technique" (qtd.
in Gardels and Connors 52). Stone exploited the images and icons captured
by the extraordinary television coverage of the events surrounding the
assassination and seared into the collective memory. The combination of
re-shot documentary footage with the original, simulations, and reenactments
staged and shot on the actual location contributed to the film's claim of
authenticity while also playing with audience expectations. The result was a
heightening of the film's realism, a fantastic cinematography that, as
critics maintained, was also a propagandistic technique: selective
storytelling blending fact and fiction. By employing historical images in a
different context of meaning, i.e., a narrative giving an alternative
interpretation of the events surrounding the assassination, Stone
intensified his demythologizing of the Warren Commission's lone gunman
theory.

Los Angeles Times film critic Jack Mathews made the statement, "Filmmakers
have a tacit responsibility not to lie or distort truth when truth is the
very thing they claim to present" (25). Regarding the Kennedy
assassination, however, Stone's co-scriptor Zachary Sklar argued, "Since
nobody agrees on anything, nobody is distorting history. The only official
history is the Warren Commission report, and that nobody believes" (qtd. in
Conant 67). Consistently since 1966, public opinion polls have shown that a
majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy involved in the
assassination. More recently, U.S. News and World Report said that only 10
percent of Americans believed the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald
acted alone.(4) Opinion polls and the media debate showed the lack of
consensus concerning the historical truth about Kennedy's assassination. The
wide range of disagreement, in general and over so many particulars,
demonstrated both the absence of shared public knowledge and just how much
of the account remains obscured in controversy and confusion.

This state of affairs made it all the more difficult to conceive of a film
(or any other kind of project for that matter) on the assassination that
would not be disputatious. Apart from Warren Commission apologists
(considered by Stone "a dying breed"), the assassination remains an
unresolved event. But even among the independent conspiracy researchers, who
became Stone's primary source for information about the assassination, there
was considerable dispute about what constituted reliable historical evidence
and what was purely speculation.(5)

To make JFK, then, Stone had to serve both as a narrative filmmaker and a
discriminating cultural historian. This is not as peculiar a combination as
one might think; the narrative form has been the predominant mode for
historical discourse. Indeed, as historian Hayden White said, "It seems as
difficult to conceive of a treatment of historical reality that would not
use fictional techniques in the representation of events as it is to
conceive of a serious fiction that did not in some way or at some level make
claims about the nature and meaning of history."(6) The cinematic historian,
not unlike a cultural historian, analyzes evidence and constructs an
interpretation of the interpretations in search of meaning. The task is to
work the facts, the substance of an event or experience, into meaning, i.e.,
forms and patterns that make the event understandable and highlight its
significance. Such an interpretation is inevitably based on the information
and knowledge available to the interpreter and influenced by current social,
cultural, and ideological trends. What this amounts to is a reconstruction
of past events presented in a different cultural context and form, precisely
Stone's intention. "I think the artist has the right to interpret and
reinterpret history and the events of his time," he has said on more than
one occasion (qtd. in Morrow and Smilgis 74). But the inquisitive historian
here is also the commercial filmmaker, trying to reconstruct the events by
keeping a tight narrative structure, dramatic tension and resolution, and
then restaging them with live actors, often with established public images
(as in the case of Kevin Costner in the role of Jim Garrison). The
industrial context in which a film like JFK is produced, namely the
Hollywood structure with its rules for narrative pattern, filmic style,
formulas, audience expectations, demographic marketing, and investors hoping
to reap huge profits, is crucial to any discussion of the film's content.

Assassination Hollywood Style

JFK was itself a result of "triangular shooting," a cross between the Akira
Kurosawa film Rashomon, Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and
Stone's own filmic style characterized by a penchant for detailed realism.
Rashomon is a Japanese film classic that recreates a murder by juxtaposing
the different realities of the participants, thereby creating an ambiguity
about what really happened and leaving it up to the audience to draw its own
conclusion. Stone frequently compared JFK to the Kurosawa film. "In my
film," he said, "the camera reflected the search for truth. Its various
angles captured the simultaneous points of view from an array of witnesses
and their own fragments of apprehension. In short, what you see represented
over and over again in the film are fractals of consciousness that,
altogether, add up to the reality of the moment. They are shards of an
event about which the whole truth is perhaps unknowable" (qtd. in Gardels
and Connors 52-3). But Stone's cinematic exploration of "all possible
scenarios of who killed Kennedy and why" (qtd. in Anson 98) is, at least in
one sense, as one-sided as the document it was intended to supplant. The
possibilities Stone explored all advanced the thesis that Kennedy was
murdered as the result of some kind of conspiracy. The lone assassin theory
was not only excluded but discredited. Although audiences may have left the
theater unsure of who killed Kennedy, the film left no doubt that whoever it
was participated in a high-level government conspiracy.

Like a history textbook, JFK begins with an introduction and thesis. Former
President Eisenhower's warning about the increasing power of the
military-industrial complex, i.e., the military and intelligence networks
and corporate contractors with interests in the defense industry, provides
the context for the events that receive treatment throughout the film. A
montage of scenes in black and white follows, depicting a series of events
leading up to 22 November 1963. The cinematographer's notes show that the
intent of the opening scenes was to establish a historical base for the
film. "Utilize the opening documentary material to establish a concrete
foundation of factual reality," he wrote. "Let the audience move through the
material, never doubting its authenticity" (qtd. in Fisher 45).

Stone's thesis unfolds throughout the film. Kennedy had inaugurated
dramatic changes in foreign policy following the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the
Cuban Missile Crisis. The president resented being lied to and manipulated
by the intelligence community (regarding Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam) and had
begun to consolidate his control over the military and intelligence
agencies. By October 1963, it was clear that Kennedy was planning a
complete withdrawal of United States troops from Southeast Asia and working
toward an end to the cold war.

As a consequence of these events, a high-level conspiracy was hatched, a
coup d'etat, involving members of the military-industrial complex. The
assassination was carried out by low-level military, CIA and FBI operatives,
anti-Castro Cuban exiles, and members of organized crime, all of whom had
reason to hate Kennedy.

Stone's cinematic re-staging of the assassination in Dealey Plaza showed
several gunmen firing that day with the fatal head shot coming not from the
sixth floor of the Book Depository building but from the "grassy knoll. "
Oswald was portrayed as what he claimed to be, a "patsy" set up to take the
blame for the crime and then silenced by Ruby, who was hired by the mob.
Afterward, the Warren Commission, the CIA, FBI, Dallas Police, LBJ (as "an
accessory after the fact"), and the news media were all involved in the
cover-up.

The screenplay, based largely on Garrison's book On the Trail of the
Assassins and Jim Marrs's Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, was
written in the classic Hollywood mode, which David Bordwell said " makes
history unknowable apart from its effects upon individual characters. "(7)
Despite the controversy surrounding Garrison's investigation and subsequent
trial of Clay Shaw (the jury returned in less than an hour with a not
guilty verdict) and Garrison's low regard among assassination researchers,
Stone decided on the district attorney's story "as the narrative framework
of the movie. I was taken with the way in which a man starts to investigate
one small corner of the conspiracy-in this case, the summer of 1963 in New
Orleans, where Oswald passed the time-and comes to realize that a small-town
whodunit has global repercussions. . . . Like a Capra everyman, he is
darkened and sacrificed, yet wins his soul in the end" (68). The Garrison
character, in the tradition of the classic Hollywood style, is a strong
protagonist motivated by a pure desire to solve the unknown and make a
contribution to a better and safer world. As the central character, he
holds the cause-and-effect narrative together, undergoing a series of
conflicts and trials before bringing resolution to the demanding and
perplexing situation in which he finds himself.

The scriptwriters wove together the Garrison investigation and the mountain
of details assassination researchers have compiled into a riveting story
about a lone crusader battling the mighty forces of corruption in American
institutions. Scenarios that historians in the area constructed from
documents, testimony, and material evidence became scenes in the film. The
writers transposed scenes, created situations, and invented composite
characters to strengthen both the narrative structure of the film and the
case for conspiracy.

Garrison never had a Washington, D.C., meeting with a figure such as Mr. X
(Donald Sutherland) during his investigation. The scene was based on
Stone's meeting with former Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty and served
primarily to introduce the larger scheme behind the conspiracy to
assassinate Kennedy. Garrison's second meeting with David Ferrie, a highly
dramatic moment in the film that establishes the conspiracy, also did not
take place. This scene was based on Garrison's memos on Ferric and a
meeting between Ferrie and one of the district attorney's staff. Scenes
including Dealey Plaza witnesses were transposed in context, while remaining
accurate regarding their testimony. Garrison's conversation in Dealey Plaza
with witness Sam Holland was borrowed from the Lane/D'Antonio documentary.

Several composite characters were created to reduce the complexity of the
information presented and keep the plot moving with heightened drama. Among
them were the homosexual Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon), two composite
anti-Castro Cubans, and the mysterious Mr. X, loosely based on Colonel
Prouty. The formation of the Garrison character, however, provides the best
illustration of this technique at work.

In the film, Garrison, a lone crusader for dramatic purposes, is actually a
composite character representing conspiracy theorists. Garrison served,
Stone explained, as "a metaphoric protagonist. He stands in for about a
dozen researchers, and in that sense we take liberties and make his work
larger, and make him more of a hero" (qtd. in Conant 66). In this way Stone
maintained the strong cinematic hero, the lone figure fighting against a
corrupt system, while also keeping the film current regarding conspiracy
research. "I took the dramatic liberty of having Garrison and his staff
uncover much of the evidence that was really uncovered by other, uncredited
researchers, such as Sylvia Meagher, Josiah Thompson, Mark Lane, Robert
Groden, Peter Dale Scott, Paul Hoch, and Mary Ferrell. (It is typically
Capraesque that private citizens have done the work while government bodies
stagnated.)," Stone explained. "As a result, the film brings together
several layers of research from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, we hope, in a
seamless jigsaw puzzle that will allow the audience, for the first time, to
understand what happened and why" (69).

Stone allowed the Garrison character, then, to speculate about what might
have happened in connection with the assassination and cover-up, both to his
staff and at the trial. Major scenes and the delivery of important
speeches, traditional dramatic conventions, helped organize and maintain the
unity of the story. Dramatizations were used to support speculations. Was
Oswald's palm print put on the rifle after the fact? Was the "pristine
bullet" planted on the hospital stretcher by Ruby? Did Clay Shaw know David
Ferrie? Was Ferrie perhaps murdered to guarantee his silence? After each
question was posed, a grainy black-and-white flashback showed it happening.
At the trial, as Garrison's (Kevin Costner's) voiceover recreates the
shooting in Dealey Plaza based on evidence and testimony, the film shows, in
a mixture of live and documentary black-and-white footage, the motorcade
driving into an ambush with not one, but several, gunmen firing at the
president. The scene is most unforgettable (even for those who think it most
outrageous). But as critics observed and Stone said, it was all of one piece
in the film, "a seamless jigsaw puzzle" that left it up to the generally
uninformed audience to distinguish between evidence and speculation. (The
same, however, could be said about the Warren Commission Report.)

It is beyond the scope of this essay to give an exhaustive analysis of the
film. The two central premises, however, deserve some attention. First,
Stone's thesis that Kennedy was planning a withdrawal of United States
troops from Vietnam after the 1964 election and, subsequently, working to
end the cold war, is credible. No one can say for certain what Kennedy
would have done had he lived beyond November 1963. There is sufficient
testimony and documentation, however, to argue that despite the conflict
within his own administration, he would not have led the United States
further into the Vietnam conflict.(8)

Second, the likelihood of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination remains
viable, even probable. Subsequent research done on the assassination both
in the private and public sectors has exposed many of the inadequacies of
the Warren Commission Report. The House Select Committee on Assassinations
(19761979) concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as the result
of a conspiracy," and that the Warren Commission Report "was not, in some
respects, an accurate presentation of all the evidence available to the
commission." Robert Tannenbaum, who served as deputy chief counsel for the
HSCA said, "I'm not saying the CIA was involved. But there's no doubt in my
mind that the CIA knows exactly what happened."(9)

On both issues, then, although Stone did not adopt the "official" position,
his interpretation was certainly within a reasonable realm of inquiry. JFK
was by no means a documentary, but the film transcended the fictional
narrative, entering the discourse on the assassination by offering a
credible thesis and presenting ideas and information that engaged the issues
besetting a vital, and yet contentious, twentieth-century event. JFK did
not to solve the crime of the century, but Stone managed to reinterpret the
evidence and testimony to create a cultural myth that challenged the crazed
lone assassin theory of the Warren Commission Report. This film showed how
effective forms of narrative are in the social construction of meaning. In
a poll published in a July 1992 issue of Entertainment Weekly, 24 percent of
the respondents said the film changed their minds about the Kennedy
assassination (25). JFK, probably more than other historically based films,
established the contemporary filmmaker among the proprietors of American
culture and history, the legitimate storytellers, and interpreters of the
past along with the government, the press, and educational institutions. As
a result of this new social arrangement, the cinema became a contested
feature in the changing landscape of American politics and culture in the
early 1990s.

Keep Off the Grassy Knoll

The debate over JFK was more than a momentary outburst of criticism:
arguments over historical veracity and legitimation were indicative of a
deeper cultural conflict. This was perhaps best observed in the unreserved
commentary JFK (and other historically based films) received from religious
conservatives. Though not alone in their reaction, they were the most
outspoken on their side of the "culture wars" in the early 1990s, which
James Davison Hunter described as "ultimately a struggle over national
identity-over the meaning of America, who we have been in the past, who we
are now, and perhaps most important, who we, as a nation, will aspire to
become in the new millennium" (50). Several filmmakers during the 1980s and
early 1990s, most notably Stone and Spike Lee (Malcolm X), used cinematic
renderings of past events as a means of contemporary social criticism. These
films received enormous critical attention and scrutiny certainly in part
because interpretations of the past, and control over which are accepted in
the present, become more critical during periods of cultural tumult and
social change.

It is no wonder, then, that religious (and social) conservatives launched a
fervent attack on the film industry in the early 1990s. This was not
unprecedented; theirs is a long history of battling for morality in movies
to protect the impressionable young. Once again they organized economic
boycotts, established watchdog organizations, created their own movie- rating
system, and lobbied entertainment personnel. Their most visible advocate,
Sneak Previews, co-host Michael Medved, fanned the flames with his
accusation that Hollywood was the mouthpiece of a liberal conspiracy. In
order to pursue its own leftist agenda, he argued, the Hollywood elite
ignored the beliefs and values of the vast majority of Americans, thereby
forsaking tremendous financial profits in their determination to undermine
and corrupt "traditional" American values, i.e., "hard work, traditional
family, a strong national defense, and material acquisition" (Medved 280).
Control over the meaning and future of America was at stake, he said, and in
the war on traditional values, Hollywood had become "an all-powerful enemy,
an alien force that assaults our most cherished values and corrupts our
children" (Medved 3).

Religious and social conservatives traced the roots of the current conflict
back to the social and cultural upheaval in the late 1960s. By the
conservative scorecard, this decade was in reality the moment when evil
entered American life in the form of liberalism (the "L word"). James
Dobson of Focus on the Family, for example, called the late 1960s "the fork
in the road where we went astray." The liberalism of the sixties was really
an aberration in American history, they argued, that knocked the country off
course. Their mission was to get the country back on track by protecting
the credibility of American institutions and traditional values from a
liberal onslaught. Most Hollywood products since the late sixties, Medved
submitted, were the result of an "unrepentant radicalism of an industry lost
in its own curious time warp, its outlook permanently frozen in the
worldview of the sour summer of '69, set in amber somewhere between the
release of Easy Rider and the messianic mud-fest at Woodstock" (281). But
conservative critics, like Medved, were doing their own revisionist writing
about a pivotal decade distinguished by Vietnam, the civil rights struggle,
and political assassinations. Consequently, they were in open conflict with
filmmakers representing other perspectives who, quite expectedly, would want
to explore one of the most divisive and troubled, yet formative periods in
recent history.

The Kennedy assassination in particular continues to have a mythic presence
in American society, a tragic reminder of the unfulfilled promise of Camelot
and the excesses of Great Society liberalism. If Kennedy had not been
killed, Stone said, the world "would be a much healthier place. The
massacre in Southeast Asia would not have occurred. The cycles of poverty
and recession were fueled by the war economy by Johnson. Inflation resulted
on a massive scale. The whole economic world shifted as a result of the
Vietnam War" (qtd. in Ansen 49). Any disputation about this single event,
perhaps more than any other in the 1960s, could certainly have an impact on
the struggle for national identity and cultivate a general cynicism and
distrust of American institutions. Religious conservatives had no real
interest in defending mobsters, anti-Castro Cuban exiles, renegade military
operatives, or most others specifically indicted in Stone's film. But they
shared the fear held by many that JFK had the potential to replace the
Warren Commission Report as the version of history that many people, and
especially the young, accepted as the truth. They attacked the verity of
the film in order to undermine its potential impact as cultural myth.
Stone's "countermyth" to the lone gunman theory, they charged, was part of a
dangerous liberal plot to undermine traditional American values and society.
JFK was further evidence of the larger forces at work in America, and
religious conservatives mounted a defense against what they considered
another anti-American onslaught from the left to be defended against in
order to win the larger cultural war.

Stone himself, Medved pointed out, described JFK as "a battle over the
meaning of my generation with the likes of Dan Quayle, a battle between
official mythology and disturbing truth.(10) Stone's politics and filmic
preoccupation with the turbulence and disillusionment of that decade made
him an obvious target of conservatives. Medved singled Stone out as
representing the "perspectives of the looney left," and JFK was a frequent
illustration in his book. "On those relatively rare occasions when a
contemporary filmmaker takes us on a journey into the nation's past, the
implicit purpose almost always involves a searing indictment of some
enormous American misdeed," Medved said (30, 225). JFK's "ruthless and
successful government plot to murder a reformist President" was listed among
the indictments, along with Dances with Wolves, Far and Away, Mississippi
Burning, Come See the Paradise, Missing, Salvador, and others.

The influence of the Hollywood system on the portrayal of Garrison also did
not escape Medved. He charged Stone and Kevin Costner (The Untouchables,
Dances With Wolves) with exploiting the latter's all-American Capraesque
image in order to "eliminate the famous flaws of the flamboyant real- life
prosecutor; he [Costner] reverted to his by-now familiar stance as an
ennobled Everyman and provided Stone's ominous, nightmarish film with a
moral center that contributed significantly to its success" (Medved 208).
Of course, Medved had to attribute the triumph of the film to Costner' s
traditional heroic image; otherwise, the box-office success of JFK
contradicted his thesis that the vast majority of Americans were not
interested in what he considered liberal assaults on the American past.

Ted Baehr, chairman of the Atlanta-based Christian Film and Television
Commission, included three feature articles to discredit the film in his
Movieguide: A Biblical Guide to Movies and Entertainment. One writer
considered the renewed "liberal interest" in the assassination as part of a
larger communist plot to incite political revolution in America. "Is it a
coincidence that, at this time of historic political upheaval in Russia,
Stone has been ordained to foment one here in the United States?" he asked.

There are those who would rejoice to see our own government collapse with
that of the Soviet Union. If enough Americans can be manipulated to believe
that our own government was behind the Kennedy assassination, who knows what
could happen? The call to arms is clearly bleated by Costner's Garrison, who
challenges the jury to root out the conspirators "or we better build
ourselves another government." (Guidry 12)

The Christian Crusade called the film "a masterful piece of liberal
propaganda." Stone, the writer said, was on "an anti-conservative witch
hunt-masterfully defaming anyone with conventional, traditional or
right-wing convictions." His motives for making the film were obviously "to
defame conservativism" and "to absolve leftists and cast serious doubts
against conservatives." This writer proposed that the film contained a
"not-so subtle message: leftists are our friends, right-wingers are
dangerous killers" (Wilkerson 2, 13).

Recognizing the force of film as a popular medium of cultural communication,
conservative critics treated JFK, as well as other historically based films,
as making significant contributions to the cultural dialogue, and,
therefore, our collective understanding of the meaning and significance of
past events. But these critics usually reserve their most hostile
denouncements for films that treat religious themes, like The Last
Temptation of Christ, for example. Their inflammatory reaction to JFK
revealed the confluence of their religious convictions and conservative
politics. They identified faithfulness to God with the defense of
traditionally held conservative values, elevating that which is historically
conceived and culturally defined to the morally absolute. It followed the
line of reasoning that American institutions that embodied these values were
sacred; any attack on the conservative American tradition or representative
institutions acquired an apocalyptic quality for its supporters, an ultimate
battle between the forces of good and evil.

JFK represented as much for religious conservatives. It was powerful
cinema, from editing and cinematography to the gripping narrative, and these
critics recognized it as a very persuasive means of communication. Even the
Movieguide reviewer, while denouncing JFK as part of a leftist plot to
undermine the U.S. government, admitted: "It is with an element of chagrin,
therefore, that we confess to enjoying the ride" (Guidry 5). Of greater
significance was the fact that the film challenged the authority and
credibility of American institutions, indicting the government in a
conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States and including
the press in a cover-up and preservation of a false account of the events.
The scope of the conspiracy raised serious questions about American
democracy, suggesting the existence of a plutocracy in American society.
These were charges that, even though leveled by a commercial filmmaker,
demanded a response from the self-appointed custodians of American religious
conservatism.

History and Mythmaking

It was not unreasonable to argue, as Stone did, that the Warren Commission
Report was flawed in its original purpose, i . e., to provide the "factual"
truth about the assassination, but was "a stunning success as a mythical
document" (72). At times history does function like myth, Warren Susman
explained, providing unity for a society, justification for the existing
social order, reinforcement of basic values, and sanctification of community
goals.(11) The Warren Commission Report was enormously successful in this
regard. Despite noted inadequacies in the report and continued public doubt
about its findings, the Warren Commission Report cleared the government of
any complicity in the crime, thereby affirming its basic goodness and
justifying its unmodified continuance. Subsequent revelations, however,
about CIA-Mafia cooperation in the plots to kill Castro, Vietnam, Watergate,
and the Iran-Contra Affair have only increased suspicions of government
involvement in the plot to kill Kennedy. Moreover, post-Cold War revelations
cast doubt on the credibility of American institutions and created an
atmosphere for acceptance of interpretations from outside traditional lines
of authority.

The ensuing controversy over JFK demonstrated the significance of popular
storytelling in the creation, maintenance, and transformation of culture,
especially during times of upheaval and confusion. Stone's attempt "to film
the true inner meaning of the Dallas labyrinth-the mythical and spiritual
dimension of Kennedy's murder"(12)--as he said, emphasized the importance of
analyzing historically based films such as JFK in the context of the
commercial Hollywood system as a means of distinguishing fact and fiction,
truth and speculation in the creation of a mythic narrative based on a real
event. A recognition of the important role the cinema has as a transmitter
of culture, such filmic interpretations should be treated as only one among
many works in the cultural dialogue contributing to our understanding of the
meaning and significance of past events. The flood of new and republished
books on the assassination in the wake of the film (four made the New York
Times bestseller lists) may be a sign of some such dialogue. This is
imperative for genuine conversation about those events and issues that
define our national identity and shape our cultural preoccupations.

NOTES

1. For a fuller treatment of the news media's struggle to maintain its
cultural authority and legitimation as retellers of this event, see Barbie
Zelizer, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the
Shaping of Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

2. Legislators conceded the role JFK played in the introduction of the joint
House-Senate resolution to release to the public nearly all the government
documents on the Kennedy assassination. Sen. David Boren (D-Okla. ) admitted
"the pressure on the government created by the film is the key reason" for
the resolution to open the files. "We are here because of a movie, " said
Henry Hyde (R-Ill.). "Let's face it." Quoted in "Legislation on JFK death
data near final form," Grand Rapids Press, 5 March 1992, A13; Dennis
Wharton, "More Digs Against 'JFK' in D.C.," Variety, 25 May 1992, 10.

3. Probably the most notable, Executive Action, a 1973 National General
Pictures release starring Burt Lancaster, Will Greer, and Robert Ryan, tried
to show how a group of right-wing conspirators plotted and carried out the
assassination of the president. Like JFK, this film used both documentary
and newly shot footage. Among the other films on the assassination- Winter
Kills (1979), The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, which aired on television in
1977, The Parallax View (1974)-only The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
generated any discussion. Opening in theaters a year before the Kennedy
assassination, this thriller about a soldier who was brainwashed to carry
out assassination orders contained several haunting parallels to the actual
events in November 1963.

There are also several documentaries on the Kennedy assassination including
Best Evidence (Rhino), adapted from David Lipton's book of the same title,
Reasonable Doubt, the Single Bullet Theory (White Star), Who Didn' t Kill ...
JFK (3-G Home Video), Declassified: The Plot to Kill JFK (VidAmerica), and
Four Days in November (MGM/UA). Perhaps the best is Rush to Judgment (MPI),
based on Mark Lane's book of the same title and filmed by the renowned
documentary filmmaker, Emile D'Antonio.

4. Ted Gest and Joseph P. Shapiro, "The Untold Story of the Warren
Commission," U.S. News & World Report, 17 August 1992, 29. A CBS telephone
poll taken between January 22 and 25, 1992, showed that 77 percent of those
surveyed believed Oswald did not act alone; 75 percent thought there was an
official cover-up in the case. Bill Carter, "Dan Rather Returns to the
Assassination," New York Times, 4 February 1992, B1. In a Time/ CNN
telephone poll (17-22 December 1991), 72 percent of the people surveyed said
the American people had not been told the truth about the assassination; 73
percent thought there was a conspiracy; 50 percent said the CIA was
involved, 48 percent the Mafia, 34 percent the Cuban government. For the
complete results of this survey, see Ron Rosenbaum, "Taking a Darker View,"
Time, 13 January 1992, 56.

5. Independent researchers had mixed reactions to the film. They were most
disturbed when Stone embraced many along the fringe of the
assassination-research community--Beverly Oliver (the "Babushka Lady" ),
Larry Howard, founder of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas,
former Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (who, it was discovered, had
connections with a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic, racist organization, the Liberty
Lobby), and Jim Garrison himself--who were an embarrassment to the more
respected researchers.

6. Lisa Kernan, "Hayden While Lectures at UCLA," Archive: UCLA Film and
Television Archive Newsletter, September/October 1992, p. 2. See also Hayden
White, " 'Figuring the Nature of the Times Deceased': Literary Theory and
Historical Writing," in The Future of Literary Theory, ed. Ralph Cohen (New
York: Routledge, 1989) 19-43.

7. David Bordwell, "The Classical Hollywood Style, 1917-60," The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960, David Bordwell,
Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson (New York: Columbia University Press,
1985) 13.

8. Stone outlined the chronology of events in "Who Is Rewriting History?, "
New York Times, 20 December 1991, P. A-35. Leslie H. Gelb gave a
contrasting perspective in "Kennedy and Vietnam," New York Times, 6 January
1992, A-17. For further support of Stone's position, see the R. W. Apple,
Jr. (author of JFK and LBJ and chief Washington correspondent of the New
York Times) interview in Tom Wicker, "Opinions Considered: A Talk with Tom
Wicker," New York Times, 5 January 1992, sec. 4, P. 4; Marcus Raskin, "JFK
and the Culture of Violence," American Historical Review 97:2 (April 1992):
495; John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle
for Power (New York: Warner Books, 1992); Roger Hillsman, "How Kennedy
Viewed the Vietnam Conflict" New York Times, 20 January 1992, A-20; Theodore
H. White, In Search of History: A Personal Narrative (New York: Harper &
Row, 1978) 531.

9. David Gates, "Bottom Line: How Crazy Is It?" Newsweek, 23 December 1991,
53. For a thorough critique of the Warren Commission Report, see Mark Lane,
Rush to Judgment (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992) and Sylvia Meagher,
Accessories after the Fact: The Warren Commission The Authorities, and The
Report (New York: Random House, 1992).

10. Medved, 293. The original source of this quotation is Robert Scheer,
"Oliver Stone Builds his Own Myths," Los Angeles Times Calendar, 15 December
1991, 4-5.

11. Warren 1. Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American
Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pant he on Books, 1984) 10.
The Warren Commission Report bears the marks of a document of expediency,
produced under extreme time constraint and pressure to comply with the
political realities of the moment. It has been suggested, for example, that
the Warren Commission Report averted World War III by ruling out any
involvement of the Soviets or Castro in the assassination. It also
prevented a deeper probe into United States insurgency efforts, removed any
suspicion about the new president, and helped ease the political transition
from Kennedy to Johnson, The passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and
1965, worked through Congress in the aftermath of the assassination, assured
the American people of the continuity of government. Stone, with the support
of several historians, disagreed with those who contended that this was also
the case with United States policy regarding Vietnam and the cold war. See
Raskin, 487-88; "The Assassination and the Cover-up: What Really Happened?"
Tikkun, 7:2 (March/April 1992): 43-44; Medford Evans, "Coup d'Etat, " The New
American, 6 April 1992, 21. (This essay originally appeared in American
Opinion, September 1967.)

12. "Oliver Stone Talks Back," 72. Elsewhere Stone said: "Filmmakers make
myths. They take the true meaning of events and shape them. D. W. Griffith
did it in 'Birth of a Nation.' In 'Reds,' Warren Beatty probably made John
Reed better than he was [but] was truthful in a mythic sense. I made
Garrison better than he is for a larger purpose" (Ansen, 49).

WORKS CITED

Ansen, David. "What Does Oliver Stone Owe History?" Newsweek 23 Dec.
1991:49.

Anson, Robert Sam. "The Shooting of JFK." Esquire Nov. 1991: 93-102+.

Bordwell, David. "The Classical Hollywood Style, 1917-60." The Classical
Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. David
Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. New York: Columbia U P,
1985. 3-84.

Conant, Jennet. "The Man Who Shot JFK. " GQ Jan. 1992: 61-67+.

Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film, 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton,
1990.

Cressey, Paul. "The Motion Picture as Informal Education." Journal of
Educational Sociology 7(1934): 504-13.

Dobson, James C. Focus on the Family (newsletter). May 1993.

Entertainment Weekly 17 July 1992:25.

Fisher, Bob. "The Whys and Hows of JFK." American Cinematographer Feb.
1992: 42-52.

Gardels, Nathan, and Leila Connors. "Splinters to the Brain." New
Perspectives Quarterly 9.2 (1992):51-53.

Guidry, William B. "Masterful Theater, Spurious History." Movieguide: A
Biblical Guide to Movies and Entertainment 13 March 1992:4-5+.

Hunter, James D. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York:
Basic Books, 1991.

Mathews, Jack. "Who Issues Historical Licenses Anyway?" Los Angeles Times
Calendar 5 Jan. 1992: 25 -26.

Medved, Michael. Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on
Traditional Values. Grand Rapids: Zondervan/HarperCollins, 1992.

Morrow, Lance, and Martha Smilgis. "Plunging into the Labyrinth. "
Time 23 Dec. 1991:74-76.

Stone, Oliver. "Oliver Stone Talks Back. " Premiere Jan. 1992:67- 72.

Wilkerson, Keith. "Who Did Kill JFK?" Christian Crusade March
1992:1-3+.

PHOTO: Oliver Stone directs Kevin Costner in the role of Jim Garrison in
JFK.

PHOTO: JFK: Gary Oldman recites Lee Harvey Oswald's statements to the press.

PHOTO: Garrison (Kevin Costner) confers with Mr. X (Donald Sutherland) in
Washington, D.C.

PHOTO: Garrison and his assistant recreate the Warren Commission account.

PHOTO: Garrison reexamines the evidence in the courtroom scene of JFK.

~~~~~~~~

By WILLIAM D. ROMANOWSKI
WILLIAM D. ROMANOWSKI teaches film studies and other communications courses
at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is currently completing a
book entitled MakingMagic: Entertainment and American Culture.

Copyright 1993 by Heldref Publications. Text may not be copied without the express written permission of Heldref Publications.

Romanowski, William, Oliver Stone's JFK.., Vol. 21, Journal of Popular Film & Television, 06-01-1993, pp 63.