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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2550 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 2, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In recent months I've developed something of an obsession with the JFK assassination, but precisely the opposite of how vanishing down a conspiracy rabbit hole usually goes: the more I read about it, the fewer doubts I have that the Warren Commission got it right and Oswald acted alone, and the more convinced I become that the various conspiracy theories advanced are a load of hot air. It's like the mirror image of an infohazard.

As part of this obsession, I recently watched Oliver Stone's film JFK for the first time. As entertainment, it's a very impressive piece of work: a masterpiece of editing, and quite possibly the only film I've seen exceeding three hours which is consistently engaging throughout and whose pacing never flags (the director's cut is 205 minutes and feels like half that, while I was bored out of my mind for the last hour of Oppenheimer despite it being only 180). Including one Randian* monologue in excess of fifteen minutes that never feels boring in your film would be an astonishing achievement in its own right; JFK somehow gets away with two.

But even what little I knew of the facts of the case made me uncomfortably aware that Stone was being extremely economical with the truth, if not including outright fabrications. I watched it for the second time with my girlfriend the other night, and paused it several times to point out one or other detail I knew to be false. I also don't feel the least bit uncomfortable describing it as an aggressively homophobic film: even moreso than Cruising, which gay activists actually tried to shut down while it was in production. (How strange that such an outspoken lefty as Stone wrote and/or directed the most homophobic and the most racist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Express_(film)) films produced in the Hollywood mainstream that I've seen.)

This morning I discovered this gem of a website from 2001 which exhaustively catalogues over a hundred distortions or fabrications in Stone's film (I'm about halfway through it now). The introduction clarifies the nature of the project:

Stone will not be criticized for adding a fictional female Assistant District Attorney to Garrison's staff (an inconsequential nod to 1990s-era sensibilities); or for having the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy occur on the eve of the Clay Shaw trial, when it actually occurred half a year before the trial began (an immaterial distortion for dramatic reasons).

Decisions such as these fall well within the bounds of artistic license. They are not material to the "case" Oliver Stone is arguing; they do not reflect upon the validity of Stone's theories or the guilt or innocence of his suspects. Such techniques as the rearranging of events, the collapsing of time, and the creation of composite characters are not invalid in and of themselves. When utilized solely in the service of telling the story and enhancing its dramatic possibilities, such techniques are perfectly legitimate.

It is when, intentionally or otherwise, such devices serve to mislead the viewer and distort the true nature of events that objection must be taken. That is what this article does.

If you've seen JFK and were at all taken in by any of the factual claims it makes, it's well worth making your way through this list to learn how thoroughly Stone misled the American public. One of the most interesting things I've learned from the website is that JFK was enormously controversial at the time of release, not just among people who accept the orthodox narrative of who killed Kennedy, but even among other JFK truthers. For example, Mark Lane (no stranger to controversy himself, and involved in the writing of the film Executive Action, which likewise alleges a "triangulation of crossfire" planned by the deep state and military-industrial complex), was horrified about how tastelessly the film defamed Clay Shaw (long since dead and unable to defend himself).

*In the sense of duration and tone, not content.

Any thoughts on the “secret service agent accidentally delivered the kill shot” theory? It’s the most interesting one I’ve recently heard.

The evidence that JFK was killed by Oswald's third shot seems so persuasive that I find it very hard to imagine another theory could be more so, but if you have a link that elucidates the Secret Service theory I'd love to read about it.

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