The significance of John F. Kennedys assassination and how it resonates a half century later [Balitimore magazine] The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination came up recently during a dinner with friends, all in their late 20s, early 30s. Mind you, we were hardly in an intellectual setting—Ocean City isn’t exactly a hotbed for political banter—but the conversations were thought-provoking nonetheless. “He seemed like a politician people could relate to,” my one friend said, after explaining that she had just seen The Butler (which features James Marsden playing JFK). “I don’t know. To me, he seems overrated,” another friend interjected confidently. “It was all golden and Camelot, but I wonder how much he would have been revered if he wasn’t assassinated.” “He was actually shot 20 years to the day before I was born,” a third friend mused. “Yeah, November 22. I should probably care more about it. But it was so long ago. I don’t really think about it.” I found it striking that each of my friends had a specific take on JFK. After all, not only were none of them born at the time of the assassination, but even our parents were still very young. What all of this goes to show is that JFK’s legacy and the assassination resonated with our generation—and continues to a half-century later. When you begin think about it, it’s easy to see why. Clues to his enduring impact are all around us. The Kennedys are pervasive in pop culture—whether it’s an Oliver Stone movie, a Marilyn Monroe joke, a heavy Boston accent from a Simpsons character, or a pivotal season-ending plot point on Mad Men. Also hard to ignore are the parallels between him and our current president—the good looks, fashionable wife, and two young children playing on the Oval Office rug and White House lawn. And, like my one friend pointed out, Kennedy was relatable—the young president represented progress. Similarly, during President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, I felt more engaged in politics than I ever have—a sentiment I know was echoed on college campuses and in urban settings across the country. Kennedy was also able to connect with young people, as well as break the Irish-Catholic barrier, engaging an entirely different demographic. Obama, of course, achieved a similar and monumental feat. Seeing an African-American get elected President was a pivotal moment for our country, and a milestone that many wished civil-rights champions—like JFK himself—were still around to see. But regardless of these connections, the assassination itself will never pack that visceral wallop for me that it did for those who were alive. My dad, for example, was only seven years old at the time, but his memory of the incident is vivid. He recalls the hallways of his elementary school, the teachers scrambling when the news broke—and, of course, the live TV coverage when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in front of millions. I have heard plenty of these “You know exactly where you were” stories and the only way I feel like I, or anyone in my generation, can relate is to think back to the panic of 9/11. “I remember walking to my first class when one of my friends ran to me, shouting, ‘We’re at war! They’ve attacked the World Trade Center!’” recalls local opera singer (and millennial) Caitlin Vincent, who recently played Jacqueline Kennedy in Camelot Requiem. (You can read more of her thoughts on page 178.) “September 11 will always be the date when the world changed forever: transforming from one we thought we knew to one we knew to fear. November 22, 1963 is a date of similar significance for the baby boomer generation.” Like Vincent, I imagine that panicked feeling was similar to that horrible day in November. Of course, news about the Dallas shooting trickled in slower than it did in 2001. The world watched Walter Cronkite with bated breath, instead of being able to follow updates on CNN. All eyes, I’ve heard, were glued to TV sets, and the world seemed to shut down as an era—characterized as Camelot—had come to an end. That era, though well depicted in history books and on screen, is another concept that’s difficult for those of my generation to connect with. We never lived it, of course, and our associations with the Kennedy clan have less to do with Camelot and more to do with the so-called “curse.” Since the assassination, the Kennedy family has been pummeled with one ill-fated event after another—Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, the Chappaquiddick incident, other car crashes, a skiing accident, and the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., to name a few. I do remember JFK Jr. clearly—his handsome face plastered across the cover of People magazine. While he was certainly no president, the idea of his and his wife’s death made me realize that the story was still being told—the story of this huge Massachusetts bloodline being doomed for tragedy. Camelot, indeed, seems like just a fairy tale for those who weren’t around to see it. But there was one time when the assassination felt very real—when I got an inkling of the incident’s power. In a college journalism class, our professor showed the Zapruder film of Kennedy being shot in Dallas. That slow-motion footage is now forever ingrained in my mind, where I’m sure it resides for many others. Some classmates even had to leave the room because it was too intense. But this was the first time I really watched. No longer was this just the 35th president on a term paper. This was a man, whose wife sat beside him as his brains were blown out of the back of his head. This was a man who was just trying to do his job—in a top-down convertible at his insistence—one crisp November afternoon. Probably the most haunting part of that film comes right before he is shot, and that is the image that resonates with me, that is the image I see in my head when I think of John F. Kennedy: a blurry, Technicolor frame of a handsome man waving to the crowd, an eternal symbol of what could have been. -.-Edited by John Lewis,Baltimore magazine; credit: Illustration by Sonia Roy, Jess Blumberg, Senior editor, Baltimore magazine baltimoremagazine.net/people/2013/11/local-reflections-on-jfk-assassination-50-years-later
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 22:42:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015