Deconstructing the DA: The Garrison Image in JFK
George Michael
Evica
Cineaste 19, 17-19
(1992)
JFK is the cinematic equivalent
of a tragic epic of national pride which recalls The
Iliad and the political myths of the Middle Ages, legends articulating
humanity’s sense of its own sacred identity. The Kennedy of Oliver Stone’s
film, neither archetypal king of Camelot nor revisionists’ failed chief
executive, embodies the best hope of the nation—but also threatens a dark
alliance dedicated to greed and power.
So it becomes necessary to kill him.
Just as the film’s President Kennedy is the target of malevolent forces
and is killed, so Stone’s fictional Garrison battles these same forces in a
losing but heroic battle. Less a Quest myth (or Search for the Lost Father
legend), JFK is a Wasteland story—a
maimed leader is sacrificed, a land is turned barren and dark, and an
all-too-human hero strives to cleanse his stricken country.
In the film, Kennedy and Garrison both function as metaphors, the first
embodying the meaning of his own dying, the second embodying the experience of
that death through knowledge. Garrison as the tragic protagonist of stone’s
film travels through the stages of the monomyth—initiation, transformation,
and return, ultimately defeated in his greatest conflict but bringing back a
boon: the wisdom necessary to face the truth of the assassination. For the
viewer, Stone’s Garrison becomes both surrogate and guide.
For every reductionist argument of the Warren Commission, Stone (through
his fictive Garrison) offers multiplicities: a half dozen rifle rounds pouring
into the unprotected limo; two, even four shooters; and sufficient political
motivation to implicate everyone who hated JFK. Opposing the official pseudomyth
of the President’s death, Stone employs excess, irony, and inversion, the
ancient weapons of the social transformer.
Inversion of Stone’s key organizing idea: “Black is white, white is
black,” says Stone’s Garrison (as did the real Garrison), and inversion
figures in the film’s casting. The historical Jim Garrison was six foot six
inches tall, weighed 220 pounds, and, although hampered by eye problems, chose
not to wear glasses in public. Played by Kevin Costner, Garrrison (Stone’s
central inversion) is less than six feet tall, trim, and wears his glasses
throughout. These eyeglasses (plus other reflecting surfaces) are part of
another powerful organizing principle in the film, intensifying its theme of
knowing through seeing, suggesting the fictional Garrison’s (and our own)
developing insight into the truth of JFK’s death. Both sound and sight are of
course relevant to the film’s organization, but eyewitnessing
is especially significant in JFK.
Costner’s portrayal of Garrison and the actual Jim Garrison have much
in common, sharing (as Stone has said) a “fundamental decency…and
integrity.” The film’s Garrison has the air of a well-organized university
lecturer, especially in the crucial and moving courtroom scenes. The historic
Garrison is also literate, even scholarly. His two books on the assassination
are coherent, well-written, and persuasive, often praising populist values with
the same strength and pride as the fictional Garrison. Both Costner’s Garrison
and Stone’s are charming, articulate, meditative, passionate, and outspoken.
But Costner’s Garrison is almost seamless, a commanding presence whose sense
of his own rectitude grows incrementally through the film despite his familiar
problems. Not so the historic Garrison, called “contradictory,”
“unpredictable,” and “incautious” by many of the people who knew him
when he was District Attorney. These complexities of character are faintly
explored by Stone, but only faintly: Kennedy and his death were the critical
issues for the director, not Garrison.
When Clay Shaw was arrested and prosecuted, charges of homophobia and
closet anxiety were aired against Garrison. Similar accusations have been made
against Stone for his portrayal of gays in JFK.
The historic Garrison controlled crime and vice in New Orleans using a string of
street informers—small time hoods, prostitutes, and gays (the latter figuring
in Garrison’s actual JFK investigation). And though Garrison now admits that
Shaw was a minor character in the assassination story, his evidence did suggest
Oswald (with the aid of an Oswald double) was being framed by some members of
the gay community who, more importantly, had ties to the CIA, the Mafia, or
both.
But Garrison was not the first to examine a possible homosexual dimension
in the Kennedy murder. The Warren Commission’s staff itself, particularly
several of its lawyers, explored reputed gay links to Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack
Ruby, and their associates, questioning a number of witnesses closely on the
subject.
Garrison’s official staff members were serious, confident, and assured.
Only one regular investigator abandoned Garrison, though several researchers and
volunteers quit the Garrison team (some stealing files and giving them to the
Shaw defense team). Journalists close to Garrison during the JFK inquiry could
not believe Garrison would risk self-destruction unless he were absolutely
confident of his correctness. And how could an intelligent, able, and dedicated
staff [have] been so badly mistaken?
The actual Jim Garrison (who was not so well prepared for trial as the
film’s Garrison) believed the government would never allow Clay Shaw (actually
a CIA asset) to be brought before the bench. Indeed, both the federal and state
governments deliberately blocked Garrison, acts of obstruction of justice. The
real Garrison felt strongly that, under pressure, the power structure would
either give up vital information and precipitate a new federal investigation, or
it would sacrifice Shaw.
Neither happened.
Both the historic and the fictional Garrison presented the same case for
conspiracy invalidating the Warren Commission’s conclusions: an impossible
single bullet theory; too many wounds to Kennedy and Connally (at least eight);
multiple origins for the shots; a controlled and suspect autopsy; Oswald as a
U.S. intelligence agent, impersonated in New Orleans (and in Texas and Mexico),
and patsied; a subsequent cover-up and suppression of evidence; and political
motives for murdering the President (including Kennedy’s exploration of
peaceful options in U.S. relations with Cuba, Southeast Asia, and the Soviet
Union).
“Stone…re-invented Jim Garrison,” New
York Times film critic Janet Maslin has said. On the contrary, Oliver Stone
has deconstructed both the Garrison investigation and Garrison himself, ridding
them of all the double agents, disinformation sources, competing researchers,
and intemperate and often contradictory statements issued (sometimes falsely)
from Garrison’s office.
The essential argument of the film is given in the fictional Garrison’s
stunning courtroom summation, uniting politics and passion: a recognition of
treason in high places, a rejection of the power structure’s false history,
and a call to populist action
The ancient myths were sacred stories, but they were also script for
ritual dramas enacted by the people in cleansing and renewing their community,
nation, and world. Costner’s Garrison urges us to perform such a rite of
political renewal, and so he also functions as our tribal shaman, guiding us
through a major change in political consciousness.
“Nobody owns history,” Barbara T. Roessner has said. Oliver Stone’s
Garrison charges us to reject the largest historical lie of the twentieth
century: the official version of the JFK assassination.