Tag Archives: JFK

Jul 07 2021
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Uncategorized

JFK (1991) is a masterpiece of garbage.

The Kennedy ‘Camelot’ worship is just pathetic, a whitewashing of some truly horrific folks. I just don’t get it and the only explanation I have for the adulation of that pampered clan is that when you’ve got Nixon or Goldwater you have to pick the lesser of two … something like that. Anyway, the outright lies in this movie are audacious in their temerity. The director quite literally makes shit up. No wonder the amenable masses think everything is a conspiracy these days.

But what a cast, what style, what editing razzmatazz. If you could define bravura it would be peak Oliver Stone. He’s the best kind of worst propagandist. What does the lad get up to these days aside from interview dictators? His last masterwork was Any Given Sunday (1999). I saw a film he made about Alexander the Great. It was worse than one of my shites after tanning a vindaloo.

“Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.”

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Jun 08 2017
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Film, Photography, Uncategorized

Iconoclasm and ‘truth’ – challenging the official narrative.

Iconic moments of recent history are inseparable from the defining image which catapults them into popular consciousness – the Moon Landing, ‘Tank Man’ at Tiananmen Square, that famous kiss on VJ Day.

It’s only through viewing other photographic sources that we can escape the prism of these force-fed yarns and experience events three-dimensionally.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
‘Tank Man’ at Tiananmen Square.
The Berlin wall opens, 1989.

 

I see some accompanying images of articles and do wonder why, time and time again, the same stock image is used. It’s as if the rest have been erased and this one is the last Malteser in the box.

Every single piece I’ve ever read about the JFK Assassination is accompanied by stills of the Zapruder film, which has served as the basis for conspiracy theorising and debunking. No one denies its value, but it has to a large extent conveniently encapsulated and simplified the entire discourse (the ‘death’ of the American Dream, the dawn of cynicism) into a singular artefact.

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It’s in our nature to seek easy explanations. What happened immediately before and after the event has been sidelined (with the causal factors and consequences), the icon seemingly enough to digest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s the problem. There’s only one picture doing the rounds.

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