is there a more oft-cited “proof” of conspiracy than back and to the left
Any information can be misused. How can a film of an actual event cause harm?
I think PSXer meant whether the film has caused more people to believe in the conspiracy theory.
I don’t really think so - anyone who looks at it seriously is confronted with the fact that the right side of his head exploded, indicating that the shot couldn’t have come from the front/right. It’s such a problem for the conspiracy crowd that many of them say the film itself is a fake.
No, it’s done more good than harm. The problem is that, like the films of the Twin Towers coming down on 9/11, ignorant people will look at it and spout their ignorance. But if the films didn’t exist they would simply use something else and we’d have less actual evidence to disprove the crazy.
-XT
Humans will always have the ability to look facts straight in the eye–and then mangle them for their own purposes.
I wonder…is the Zapruder film the first instance of a widely watched video which shows the horrific damage of a full-on headshot in a real-life situation? Man, it’s still hard for me to watch it, not because I’m squeamish, but because it just seems to make the world a darker place.
There is WTC video, but I think a lot more people believe in a JFK conspiracy than a 9/11 one
Maybe, but Oliver Stone hasn’t done a faux-documentary thriller on 9/11 yet, so there is still time.
Probably the first that was widely seen by the public (the only other head shot like that I can think of that was widely seen by the public was the execution of a Vietcong spy by some idiotic South Vietnamese officer that was caught on film and shown widely in the US…and that was years later than the JFK assassination).
It’s chilling to watch, and I’m with you on it seemingly making the world a darker place. I was a baby when it happened, but I grew up seeing the footage and hearing about it from my folks. My grandma used to keep almost a shrine to JFK in the house…very similar to the shrine she had for Jesus and the Virgin Mary and such.
-XT
Can you imagine the impact back then, seeing the Zapruder film on the news, (although I don’t know if it was shown to the general public on the news after the event) and then seeing live coverage of Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby? Wow!
Still, without the film of Kennedy’s murder, we couldn’t have the MST3K gang quip during blurry bad movies, “Filmed in Zapruder-vision!” So that’s a good thing.
Not a video, but there is a still photo of a fighter taken just at the moment he is hit by a fatal rifle shot, taken during the Spanish Civil War just prior to WWII.
There are also a lot of still photos from the American Civil War; many of them showing people recently killed. I don’t recall any actually showing the moment of someone being shot (that would be hard to do with the equipment of the time), but there are probably some accidental ones.
I imagine that’s the one he’s talking about. It’s a powerful photo, but there’s a certain amount of controversy around it. Some people think it was staged by the photographer.
wasn’ shown to the public until 1975
It’s not “some people,” it’s the verdict of overwhelming evidence; “The Falling Soldier” was staged.
Interesting. Got a link to the whole story? I’ve never heard that it was pretty much established.
Google search-“the falling soldier” faked
Lots of arguments on both sides.
Zapruder took a film of the actual assassination. That is a record that the world needed. How much worse would it have been if we did not have that?
I think the Twin Towers is a good analogy. This is the sort of thing that attracts conspiracy theories.
For the record, I don’t think Oswald came up with the assassination all on his own. Some one or some ones were egging him on and/or helped him. In my opinion.
Well, we would have to rely on just the 12 other films of the Kennedy assassination:
- Mark Bell
- Charles Bronson
- Malcolm Couch (WFAA-TV)
- Jack Daniel
- Elsie Doorman
- Robert Hughes
- George Jefferies
- John Martin
- Maria Muchmore
- Orville Nix
- Patsy Paschall
- Dave Wiegman (NBC)
But none are as good as the Zapruder film. Only 2 of them show anything of the actual impact of the bullets: Nix (24 seconds), Muchmore (about 3 seconds, first shot only).
Sure he has. He just troubled himself to use mostly factual stuff rather than, to put it gently, “making shit up”. He must be getting soft in his old age.