What if JFK’s assassination happened just as it did, but it didn’t happen to be caught on film? Abraham Zapruder left his camera at home, and other films were taken that day, but none happened to catch the assassination itself, for whatever reason.
How would things be different now? Would conspiracy theories have taken even deeper root than they already have, or would the lack of filmed evidence have cut off discussions about “back and to the left”?
More crucially, how would our cultural memory of that day be different?
It’s an interesting question. The Zapruder film almost raises more questions than it answers. But I tend to think that without it, the conspiracy theories would be even crazier. We’d have theories that JFK faked his own death or that aliens came down from outer space and shot him.
Of course we wouldn’t have those indelible images of JFK’s head exploding, or Jackie crawling onto the back of the limo.
Not really. Without it we’d have no good record of the shot timing, position of the vehicle at each shot and reaction of JFK’s body to each shot. With those and qualified experience and science, it’s possible to make an exact reconstruction of the critical few seconds of the assassination.
As much as what it portrays has been misrepresented, misunderstood and argued over, it may be one of the most significant historical records of all time.
But it hasn’t stopped varying opinions over why JFK’s body reacted the way it did to each shot, nor has it ended speculation over exactly how many shots were fired and where they came from. I’m no conspiracy theorist; I believe a preponderance of evidence shows that Oswald acted alone. But even documentary evidence is going to bring up questions and be interpreted in different ways.
On an individual basis, it seems to me that a visual record has a stronger emotional impact.
On 9-11-01, I was driving to work when I first heard of the WTC crashes (6:15 to 6:30 AM Pacific time). At first I thought the morning DJ’s were doing some kind of prank. The only emotion I felt during that drive was, mainly confusion and concern.
It wasn’t till I got home and turned on CNN and saw the images (as opposed to hearing the DJ say he sees lots of smoke on the TV) myself before I began to feel more alarm and adrenalin.
Ignorance and a predisposition to find a conspiracy don’t equate to qualified experience at interpreting and understanding the evidence.
That most people do not understand the biophysics of the small impact of a high-velocity bullet on the rear of the skull translating to enormous pressure that ruptures the skull in a jet that, in accordance with Newton, drives the skull sharply backwards is because they are ignorant, not because JFK was “obviously shot from the front.” Multiply by a dozen other contested points.
You would have a fairly small pool of eyewitnesses to the actual shooting, some of them looking in this direction, some looking in that direction, and a few who saw the actual impact of the shots.
Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. And like all memories, each time an event is recalled it overwrites the previous version, so to speak. Are you really remembering what happened at your 10th birthday party? Or are you remembering the latest time you recalled the event? It can be hard to tell.
You can imagine the conspiracy theories based upon the recollections of people all doing something else, and looking in different directions, during one of the most stressful days of their lives.
We have actual pictures, taken in real time, from more sources than just the Zapruder film, and even with these recordings, not memories, but unbiased recordings, there is argument of what we are seeing.
Side question - I’ve never seen the full Zapruder film, just what they show on various documentaries and whatnot. Is it graphic? Like, you can see his head get shot into, with blood and brains spraying out?
I’d like to see the full film, but not if it’s gross like that.
I agree with this assessment - I don’t think it is that disturbing. I’ve seen one of those knife beheadings - I’d rate that a 95 (0:100) - this a 5 or 10 - maybe less. You can’t really see any great detail - you can’t even really tell it is Kennedy other than it is an iconic image.
Almost like seeing a film of one of those predator drone attacks. You sort of know someone is getting killed, but you can’t really see much.
I think you have to put it in context - this was 1963 and people weren’t inured to hyper-realistic gore and violence, in HD yet. That’s a real man’s head being blown apart; a tremendously important man and one widely beloved; a President when that term meant something more than the untrustworthy asshole 49% of the people hate.
So it’s just grainy pink blobs. Big deal. It’s only the end of the world as we knew it you’re watching.
I say there would be less conspiracy theories. I’ve seen the Zapruder film. It definitely looks like Kennedy was shot from the front. That’s not to say he was; I’ve heard the theories about how it’s possible to be shot from behind and still recoil back, or how maybe the recoil forward ocurred between frames. Be that as it may, to the casual viewer the film does appear to show Kennedy being shot from the front, which is directly at odds with the official story.
That frames the whole CT experience: never mind what a genuine expert sees and tells you s/he sees; whatever obvious, basic and downright ignorant interpretation someone lacking any appropriate expertise comes up with must be the real truth, because nothing is ever really complicated or counter-intuitive. That’s just gummint/black ops/cover-up spin.
And never let any statement of the facts or expert opinion change the assumptions.
I think there might be fewer conspiracy theories without the film.
There are more conspiracy theories about 9/11 than there are about The Oklahoma City bombing. There’s a lot more visual evidence available to nutters for 9/11.
Same with JFK. There’s no film of Martin Luther King Jr or Bobby Kennedy or Malcolm X being shot, and a lot fewer conspiracy theorists too.
Aren’t there just as many conspiracy theories about Lincoln’s assassination as there are about Kennedy’s (of course Lincoln’s assassination really was the result of a conspiracy)? No film, almost 150 years later, and there are still dedicated Lincoln conspiracy buffs. I think that the Zapruder film is just one tiny piece of the Kennedy assassination puzzle for the true conspiracy buffs.
Who doesn’t think that John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Lincoln, as part of a planned 3-prong attack that was supposed to kill Lincoln, Seward and Johnson?
The Zapruder film wasn’t shown to the public until 1975. Did the conspiracy theories gain traction before or after that time? Even though the film wasn’t available until that time, was a description of it?
ETA: Wikipedia says that a few copies of it were made and available to researchers before 1975. Also that the existence of these copies made some think there was a secret contained on the film. If that’s true, in that sense the film could be said to have encouraged conspiracy theories.
The CTs and questions are about who was involved behind the three assassins, and their exact motivations. Not what the basic plan was, how it was to be carried out and how it was (and was not) executed.
The film itself wasn’t a secret and LIfe published a large sequence of frames in the 1960s. However, the public response to seeing the “head snap” set off what may have been the biggest CT wave of all.