The JFK Assassination and Ant Farm's "Eternal Frame"

Even though my major is in Art History, I usually concern myself with the pre-1900 world. That being said, I have never taken an American history class besides the one I took my junior year of high school, and even then we didn't get past 1980. We only brushed on the JFK assassination, since my teacher decided to focus more on the cultural impact than anything else. I had heard of "the grassy knoll" but never really knew what it referred to, and I knew there were some conspiracy theories about Lee Harvey Oswald, but I couldn't name any. The entire decade that was the 1960s was such an upheaval in history - so many significant assassinations, and so much unrest in the country. I can only wonder if the world would be different today if JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, as well as others, hadn't been assassinated within five years of each other.

I finally had the chance to look up some of the history of the JFK assassination in Dallas, and I have to agree that some things simply don't add up. While I've never been big on conspiracy theories, I feel like the entire case/autopsy/later rulings were mishandled and are thus relatively open to interpretation. There were over 15 completely separate conspiracy theories on ONE website I looked at, and I'm sure there are many more. I found that I was intrigued by them, and had to give several of them credit. You always have to wonder if the Vice President really only accepts the ticket in the hopes that maybe one day they'll be the one in the Oval Office.

Americans have always been obsessed with media, to the point where one could argue that we are completely controlled by it. I think Ant Farm's "Eternal Frame" is a good example of how people use media to relive the past. These artists wanted to be a part of this chunk of history, and they brought all of the passersby in the area along with them. People were so touched that they didn't even seem to mind that two of the women in the procession were portrayed by men in drag!

I feel like I don't know enough about the event itself to make too much of a comment on it, and because of this I'm kind of unenthusiastically looking forward to seeing either the Zapruder film or the "Eternal Frame" in class. Looking forward to it because it's a part of history that irrevocably changed our country; unenthusiastically because I am not one for enjoying a particularly violent movie. Several of the writers in our readings remarked that they were haunted by the videos, especially the "Eternal Frame" which replays the same scene over and over again, until the viewer supposedly becomes numb and accepts it, and tries to get something more out of the imagery. I feel that if I watch something violent over and over again, the picture will just be even more rooted in my subconscious than it would be otherwise - think of something you've only seen once, and probably only at a glance, and how something that brief can stick with you (and maybe haunt you) for the rest of your life.