on jfk's anniversary
Where were you when JFK was shot? Me, I was somewhere in the cosmos waiting to be born, patiently counting down the eighteen years, six months, and twenty-four days till I breached the physical and began my innings as transcendental ego housed in flesh.
Sorry.
I know it’s not the best JFK story, but it’s all I’ve got.
Kurt Cobain, Diana, 9/11. Why do we persistently ask these “Where were you when” questions? And why are the subjects of these questions invariably the death and destruction of Celebrity? No one asks “Where were you when JFK was inaugurated?” No one cares. But almost every American that was alive at the time of Kennedy’s assassination seems able to provide an anecdote of exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of his death.
Kennedy assassination has had a curious and enduring fascination that goes far beyond the immediate political shockwaves it caused. Like the deaths of many public figures, (or the simultaneous deaths of vast amounts of unknown individuals, such as the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks), Kennedy’s assassination has become a strange and macabre cultural event, and this forms at least part of the impulse to ask “Where were you when.”
Furthermore, Western Celebrity-fetish has a nasty propensity to immerse itself in the spilled blood of its idols. Our senses are assaulted daily with images of Celebrity, and we eventually develop a sense of emotional attachment to these images. This in turn creates a voyeuristic phenomenon in our minds, whereby we feel we have a right of access to details of their deaths.
Luckily, celebrities have a certain habit of leaving the planet in a dramatic, tabloid-friendly fashion. Countless celebrity suicides or deaths-by-misadventure, the odd car crash and a sprinkling of murders – especially when the event itself or the immediate aftermath is captured on celluloid – go a long way to satiating both our appetite for celebrity palaver, and also that strange human impulse that is best summed up in the old maxim that we can’t help looking at the wreckage of a car crash as we slink past in the resultant traffic jam.
Sometimes though, our fascination with events like the Kennedy assassination goes beyond the callous fetish outlined above. Sometimes an event is so shocking that we can only start to deal with and comprehend it by giving it some resonance, some meaningful place in our own, unrelated and perhaps ultimately unaffected lives.
When Kennedy was murdered, America (and most of the world) was instantly convulsed in a state of absolute Horror. The psychological effect and scale of what had happened went beyond any frame of reference that anyone to date had a grasp of. Everything that had previously seemed untouchable about American (and Western) idealism was now up for grabs, suddenly seeming just as vulnerable as a president in an open-topped limousine.
When the shit rains down like that you have two options: you can either stand there and watch it gather around your ankles and think, “Jesus, that’s a lotta shit”; or, you can react and stamp your mark on that first shit deposit. By creating a personal association with the event you can hardwire an apocalyptic public signifier to a more manageable, personal signified in the brain.
And so, for many Americans, the “Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?” question was a way of dealing with the appalling vista on a personal level. Everyone that has a Kennedy story has etched his or her own mark on a social/cultural milestone. More importantly though, between the lines of these stories there is often a subconscious attempt at summing up or grasping the whole situation; crystallising a memory or an act or a moment that represents the shattering of “the great myth of American decency.”
When Hunter S. Thompson heard the news that J.F.K. was dead he was alone on his ranch in Woody Creek, Colorado. Feeling distraught, overwhelmed and powerless, he reacted in the only way that seemed available, which was to write a letter to William J. Kennedy, an old friend and editor from the San Juan Star and subsequently the author of several highly acclaimed novels:
I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at 8.30 when Western Union opens, so what the hell. Besides, I am afraid to sleep for fear of what I might learn when I wake up. There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything, much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today’s murder.
The letter that the above lines are taken from is perhaps the most perfect reaction to the Kennedy assassination I have ever read. It captures the shock, anger and fear of the moment. It is mundanely personal (the Western Union reference), and yet it contains the first known use of one of the most famous (albeit borrowed) trademark phrases of the twentieth century, “fear and loathing”. It is sublimely unaware of itself as a piece of writing, and yet over forty years later it manages to communicate more of the essence of that dark day than any number of books or movies combined.
So there you have it. Moment absorbed, cultural milestone etched, a world-changing event hard-wired to a personal memory, all culminating in a stroke of literary genius.
In short, striking gold in a polluted sea of shit.
Sorry.
I know it’s not the best JFK story, but it’s all I’ve got.
Kurt Cobain, Diana, 9/11. Why do we persistently ask these “Where were you when” questions? And why are the subjects of these questions invariably the death and destruction of Celebrity? No one asks “Where were you when JFK was inaugurated?” No one cares. But almost every American that was alive at the time of Kennedy’s assassination seems able to provide an anecdote of exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of his death.
Kennedy assassination has had a curious and enduring fascination that goes far beyond the immediate political shockwaves it caused. Like the deaths of many public figures, (or the simultaneous deaths of vast amounts of unknown individuals, such as the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks), Kennedy’s assassination has become a strange and macabre cultural event, and this forms at least part of the impulse to ask “Where were you when.”
Furthermore, Western Celebrity-fetish has a nasty propensity to immerse itself in the spilled blood of its idols. Our senses are assaulted daily with images of Celebrity, and we eventually develop a sense of emotional attachment to these images. This in turn creates a voyeuristic phenomenon in our minds, whereby we feel we have a right of access to details of their deaths.
Luckily, celebrities have a certain habit of leaving the planet in a dramatic, tabloid-friendly fashion. Countless celebrity suicides or deaths-by-misadventure, the odd car crash and a sprinkling of murders – especially when the event itself or the immediate aftermath is captured on celluloid – go a long way to satiating both our appetite for celebrity palaver, and also that strange human impulse that is best summed up in the old maxim that we can’t help looking at the wreckage of a car crash as we slink past in the resultant traffic jam.
Sometimes though, our fascination with events like the Kennedy assassination goes beyond the callous fetish outlined above. Sometimes an event is so shocking that we can only start to deal with and comprehend it by giving it some resonance, some meaningful place in our own, unrelated and perhaps ultimately unaffected lives.
When Kennedy was murdered, America (and most of the world) was instantly convulsed in a state of absolute Horror. The psychological effect and scale of what had happened went beyond any frame of reference that anyone to date had a grasp of. Everything that had previously seemed untouchable about American (and Western) idealism was now up for grabs, suddenly seeming just as vulnerable as a president in an open-topped limousine.
When the shit rains down like that you have two options: you can either stand there and watch it gather around your ankles and think, “Jesus, that’s a lotta shit”; or, you can react and stamp your mark on that first shit deposit. By creating a personal association with the event you can hardwire an apocalyptic public signifier to a more manageable, personal signified in the brain.
And so, for many Americans, the “Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?” question was a way of dealing with the appalling vista on a personal level. Everyone that has a Kennedy story has etched his or her own mark on a social/cultural milestone. More importantly though, between the lines of these stories there is often a subconscious attempt at summing up or grasping the whole situation; crystallising a memory or an act or a moment that represents the shattering of “the great myth of American decency.”
When Hunter S. Thompson heard the news that J.F.K. was dead he was alone on his ranch in Woody Creek, Colorado. Feeling distraught, overwhelmed and powerless, he reacted in the only way that seemed available, which was to write a letter to William J. Kennedy, an old friend and editor from the San Juan Star and subsequently the author of several highly acclaimed novels:
I am tired enough to sleep here in this chair, but I have to be in town at 8.30 when Western Union opens, so what the hell. Besides, I am afraid to sleep for fear of what I might learn when I wake up. There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything, much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today’s murder.
The letter that the above lines are taken from is perhaps the most perfect reaction to the Kennedy assassination I have ever read. It captures the shock, anger and fear of the moment. It is mundanely personal (the Western Union reference), and yet it contains the first known use of one of the most famous (albeit borrowed) trademark phrases of the twentieth century, “fear and loathing”. It is sublimely unaware of itself as a piece of writing, and yet over forty years later it manages to communicate more of the essence of that dark day than any number of books or movies combined.
So there you have it. Moment absorbed, cultural milestone etched, a world-changing event hard-wired to a personal memory, all culminating in a stroke of literary genius.
In short, striking gold in a polluted sea of shit.
posted by Tony at 1:01 p.m.
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