Hundreds of major motion pictures have been made that have had strong political messages, or that were weighted with political connotations. Some of the more familiar ones are On the Waterfront, Patton, Silkwood, The China Syndrome, The Candidate, All the President's Men, American Beauty, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Network, An American President, Primary Colors, Red Dawn, Rambo, and Top Gun. Lots of other films could have been on this list. These, however, will do well to explicate the different visions filmmakers can convey when creating movies whose meanings go beyond psychotic car chases and unconventional love stories.
On the Waterfront wastes no time announcing that it is not merely a love story, unconventional or otherwise.
On the Waterfront wastes no time announcing that it is not merely a love story, unconventional or otherwise.
A political film does not require a mono-dimensional story-line and can in fact have multiple subtexts occurring simultaneously. To that end,On the Waterfront becomes even more political in the fact that it addresses moral choices of genuine consequence that may have something incidental to do with boy-girl love, but more importantly have to do with social responsibility. It is also a political movie in that it not so much suggests as insists that there is propriety in selling out friends for the greater good. Naturally, the movie does not even hint that people who have sold out their friends tend to heavily amplify just what that greater good is. Elia Kazan, the director whose name is synonymous with this film, did sell out his friends when he testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about his associates in the motion picture industry who might have been communists. Such allegations resulted in those writers, actors and directors being blacklisted by the movie studios, meaning that because of alleged or real political affiliation, Americans in the entertainment industry could not get work. And so the film takes on an interesting irony not lost on Victor Navasky, in Naming Names:
A story is told that in 1955, after Arthur Miller had finished A View From the Bridge, his one-act play about a Silcilian waterfront worker who in a jealous rage informs on his illegal immigrant nephew, Miller sent a copy to Elia Kazan, who had broken with him over the issue of naming names before HUAC. "I have read your play and would be honored to direct it," Kazan is supposed to have wired back. "You don't understand," Miller replied. "I didn't send it to you because I wanted you to direct it. I sent it to you because I wanted you to know what I think of stool pigeons." They had planned to collaborate on a movie about the waterfront called "the Hook," but now Kazan went on to do his own waterfront picture, On the Waterfront, in which Terry Malloy comes to maturity when he realizes his obligation to fink on his fellow hoods. And Miller wrote View, which tried simultaneously to understand and condemn the informer. Kazan emerged in the folklore of the Left as the quintessential informer, and Miller was hailed as the risk-taking conscience of the times.
A story is told that in 1955, after Arthur Miller had finished A View From the Bridge, his one-act play about a Silcilian waterfront worker who in a jealous rage informs on his illegal immigrant nephew, Miller sent a copy to Elia Kazan, who had broken with him over the issue of naming names before HUAC. "I have read your play and would be honored to direct it," Kazan is supposed to have wired back. "You don't understand," Miller replied. "I didn't send it to you because I wanted you to direct it. I sent it to you because I wanted you to know what I think of stool pigeons." They had planned to collaborate on a movie about the waterfront called "the Hook," but now Kazan went on to do his own waterfront picture, On the Waterfront, in which Terry Malloy comes to maturity when he realizes his obligation to fink on his fellow hoods. And Miller wrote View, which tried simultaneously to understand and condemn the informer. Kazan emerged in the folklore of the Left as the quintessential informer, and Miller was hailed as the risk-taking conscience of the times.
In its annual celebration of itself, in 1999 the Motion Picture Academy chose to honor Kazan with a lifetime achievement award, albeit, a posthumous one. The movement to honor Kazan was led by National Rifle Association chairman Charleton Heston. Many of those in attendance sat on their hands rather than applaud Heston's attempt to commemorate Kazan.
In 1970, the reactionary icon at the box office was a dead man. The movie of his life, Patton, was brilliant. Aside from its masterfully artistic pseudo-docudrama stylings, the film was hugely popular among critics and general public alike in large part because actor George C. Scott, as the title character, General George S. Patton, dwarfed the flag in front of which he paraded. The film was an artistic success in even larger part because Scott's portrayal was so extreme that the Left could misinterpret the film as a potently wicked satire while the Right could consider it a validation of their own deepest desires.
In 1970, the reactionary icon at the box office was a dead man. The movie of his life, Patton, was brilliant. Aside from its masterfully artistic pseudo-docudrama stylings, the film was hugely popular among critics and general public alike in large part because actor George C. Scott, as the title character, General George S. Patton, dwarfed the flag in front of which he paraded. The film was an artistic success in even larger part because Scott's portrayal was so extreme that the Left could misinterpret the film as a potently wicked satire while the Right could consider it a validation of their own deepest desires.
The character of general Patton and the makers of the two nuclear power films on our list looked at the world in different ways. The motion picture about Karen Silkwood, an actual worker at an actual nuclear reactor plant who herself was contaminated by radiation, was important, if not altogether timely. Brave in many respects, the title character of Silkwood, played by Meryl Streep, was a warts-and-all performance that involved drinking, swearing and smoking, as well as a hint at a lesbian relationship and an aversion to unstable reactor maintenance. The verisimilitude of Silkwood's persona was well handled. The difficulty some critical viewers had with the film was in the destruction of the real life protagonist. In the film, Karen Silkwood is murdered by as-yet unnamed assailants. (The film, however well-acted, was directed by the estimable Mike Nichols, whose fondness for the touch of the hand that feeds him is so strong he doesn't bite it; he gums it. There really isn't much indication of foul play in the film, at least not not indication to rock the system Nichols only pretends to distrust. As a postscript to the story, I quote here from the remarkably pro-system PBS Online: "The saga of Karen Silkwood continued for years after her death. Her estate filed a civil suit against Kerr-McGee for alleged inadequate health and safety programs that led to Silkwood's exposure. The first trial ended in 1979, with the jury awarding the estate of Silkwood $10.5 million for personal injury and punitive damages. This was reversed later by the Federal Court of Appeals, Denver, Colorado, which awarded $5,000 for the personal property she lost during the clean-up of her apartment. In 1986, twelve years after Silkwood's death, the suit was headed for retrial when it was finally settled out of court for $1.3 million. The Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel plants closed in 1975.") The movie quite logically leads the viewer to suspect that forces within the nuclear industry arranged for this to happen. What was not suggested by the filmmaker was a far more sinister shadow over the tragic business, one which Mark Lane intimates in Plausible Denial:
David Burnham had covered nuclear energy stories for the New York Times. Karen Silkwood, knowing of his specialty, had arranged a secret meeting with him to deliver documents to theTimes. almost no one knew of the planned trip save Silkwood and Burnham. She never met him; she was apparently murdered on the way to see him and her documents disappeared.
David Burnham had covered nuclear energy stories for the New York Times. Karen Silkwood, knowing of his specialty, had arranged a secret meeting with him to deliver documents to theTimes. almost no one knew of the planned trip save Silkwood and Burnham. She never met him; she was apparently murdered on the way to see him and her documents disappeared.
Somewhat less interesting was The China Syndrome, a film that had going for it only Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon, along with a release that coincided with the accident at Three Mile Island in which poisonous gases were released into the skies of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (The John Birch Society found this to be more than coincidence, strongly implying that Fonda had arranged for the accident to happen in order to boost ticket sales, quite a feat for a Hollywood starlet.) Lemmon was the real star, playing a man caught between the desire to be a loyal employee and an urge to prevent a reactor core to melt through to the water table, thereby creating a toxic geyser. The facts are painted clearly and the science is made disturbingly understandable, all the actors are comfortable in their roles, and the story works. There are realistic bits where plant workers wonder how Jane will get the power to operate her blow dryer and the reporters run into the normal diabolic resistance from PR flacks, as well as from freaks within the news organization. But somehow one simply does not quite get the idea that this could be the end of the world, at least when taken out of the historic context of President Carter inspecting Three Mile Island in ridiculously bright yellow boots.
However uneasy Carter may have appeared throughout most of his Presidency, it paled to Robert Redford's character in The Candidate. Redford joined with director Michael Ritchie to form a production team. In 1972 they released one of the most intricately fascinating motion pictures of all time. Redford stars as a Jerry Brown-style man of the beautiful people, one who is pro ecology, pro choice, and pro small labor. He even has a father who held the political power in the state of California (a la Pat Brown). The screenplay was written by Jeremy Larner, a talented writer who had created speeches for Eugene McCarthy four years earlier, witnessing first hand how the business of getting elected is a real business. But this is not just another take on the selling of the president. Where Larner's screenplay earned the Academy Award that it won and where Redford's talents as an actor truly sparkle are in the depiction of the candidate Bill McKay, struggling to be one with the people. On the one hand he cares so much about social justice that he rebels against his staff for coaching him on an up-and-coming press conference. On the other hand, when he initially mingles with workers, students, and urban dwellers, he appears vastly uncomfortable shaking hands, making eye contact and even commanding attention. Like Carter, like Brown, and like McCarthy, what Bill McKay does best is in expressing himself on issues about which he cares. It is easy to consider The Candidate as a product of the times, what with all the major progressive politicians in America neutralized either by murder or by condescension. In fact the film remains highly instructive and is in many ways a much better "Clinton movie" than any of those more closely related to the 42nd commander in chief's presidency.
Far more vulnerable and equally strong was All the President's Men. Can a movie that relies as much as this one does on public knowledge of the web-like complexities of Watergate, and of Watergate's role in sculpting the political future of the United States--can such a movie be successful decades later?
It can. Just as Casablanca, Key Largo, and Notorious--to site three easy examples--maintain their integrity despite blurred memories or historic ignorance or indifference, so does All the President's Men rise above the fascination of its subject matter to tell a great story well.
The movie is tightly based on the book of the same name by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two Washington Post reporters who investigated the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters with a tenacity that would exhaust and mystify any mainstream journalist working today--journalism today often involving the decision-making process regarding which press releases to run. As presented in All the President's Men, the investigation is a detective story of unfathomable consequence. If anything, director Alan Pakula and screenwriter William Goldman go farther than the book in asserting that Watergate was just one action in the overall operation to keep Richard Nixon in the White House. What the film does not and could not address was the interesting question of why the Post and Woodward in particular were so interested in following the story even beyond Nixon's resignation when almost no other paper in the country thought the matter all that important. What was ignored--what had to be ignored--was the question of whether the Post was being used as a CIA media asset to destroy Nixon as part of a limited hang out whereby the Agency admits to a certain amount of illegal activities to divert attention from larger issues, or, more likely, to rid the Agency of Nixon, who was taking serious action to control the CIA. Even though the film pulls back from these questions, it still manages to be one of the most enlightening and entertaining political films of all time.
Another magnificent political motion picture is American Beauty, a film discussed months ago in this blog but one which deserves our attention here for other reasons. The recurring message of this splendid film is to "look closer," and indeed--politics aside--looking closer is what this movie is all about. American Beauty at first seems to be a story of Lester and Carolyn Burnham and the power shift to destruction their marriage becomes. If that were all there were to this movie, cinematographer Conrad Hall would still have mined a gem. But upon renewed viewings, Annette Benning as Carolyn shows that she is passionately determined to castrate men over who she has gained sexual control, which is why she gets along so well with the homosexuals next door; that Kevin Spacey as Lester achieves some measure of triumph by regressing to the attitude of a teenager who is rebelling against his mother rather than against his wife. Looking closer we see that the political symbol underneath a neighbor's dinner plate represents the underside of culture, so perfect and so corrupt; that much of the self-help merchandise available is a way for people to quite literally program themselves to do stupid things; and that roses are often use to disguise monumental ugliness. There are so many layers to this film that it may indeed be impossible to perceive them all. But where this Sam Mendes picture bears its political stripes is in tying all the scenes together into a statement of purpose: as long as we can remain clear-headed about right and wrong and act accordingly in terms of ourselves and of others, then we have found what we thought we were seeking.
A film such as American Beauty would have been difficult to conceive during the Reagan-Bush administrations. Those twelve years of artistic repression lent themselves to high tech machismo and militarism in movies such as Red Dawn, where an attack by the Russians is defended by a rough and ready high school, or Rambo, where Sylvester Stallone grunts his way back into Vietnam to even up the score. Even so-called comedies such as Private Benjamin and Stripes were essentially recruiting films, suggesting there was still room for individual expression in the armed forces.
But the leader of all movies in the glorification of peacetime warring was Top Gun. More an extended music video than an actual motion picture, Top Gun starred Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, two prime poster boys for 1980's reckless ambition. Pepsi, fast cars, faster planes, and two people in love with each other for no discernible reason: all this was sprinkled amidst high technology aerial shots and power pop music about as exciting as dry ice. Admittedly a lot of good films have been based on thinner premises than this one. But the cross-marketing of soda products along with the unceasing media chatter about how thrilling the film was gave blessings to a pro-military regime.
We've got new idols for the screen today
Although they make a lot of noises
They've got nothing to say.
I try to look amazed but it's an act.
The movie might be new
But it's the same soundtrack.
--Graham Parker, "Passion is No Ordinary Word"
Primary Colors and An American President were moderately pleasant and inoffensive pictures to varying degrees based upon or inspired by the Clinton presidency. The former focuses on the election process as seen through the eyes of a James Carville type character. The latter is a more sensitive approach to the presumed scandal that would occur should a single president have a girlfriend opt to spend the night in the White House, particularly is she happened to be the head of a large environmental concern lobbying for issues over which the President had some authority. Neither film offered any new insight into the political process or into the way power works in the United States or anywhere else. It would, nevertheless, have been hilarious if, in the latter film, President Michael Douglas had gone on TV and announced that financial contributions would no longer be an acceptable way of wielding influence in Washington. From this point forward, Douglas should have said, the bedroom is where these decisions are being made.
Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay of Sidney Lumet's Network, however, is all about power. And while certain references (Angela Davis, the SLA, Archie Bunker) may be unfamiliar to younger viewers, the fact remains that every major and minor ideological assertion offered by this film has not only come to pass, they have become business as usual.
We've got new idols for the screen today
Although they make a lot of noises
They've got nothing to say.
I try to look amazed but it's an act.
The movie might be new
But it's the same soundtrack.
--Graham Parker, "Passion is No Ordinary Word"
Primary Colors and An American President were moderately pleasant and inoffensive pictures to varying degrees based upon or inspired by the Clinton presidency. The former focuses on the election process as seen through the eyes of a James Carville type character. The latter is a more sensitive approach to the presumed scandal that would occur should a single president have a girlfriend opt to spend the night in the White House, particularly is she happened to be the head of a large environmental concern lobbying for issues over which the President had some authority. Neither film offered any new insight into the political process or into the way power works in the United States or anywhere else. It would, nevertheless, have been hilarious if, in the latter film, President Michael Douglas had gone on TV and announced that financial contributions would no longer be an acceptable way of wielding influence in Washington. From this point forward, Douglas should have said, the bedroom is where these decisions are being made.
Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay of Sidney Lumet's Network, however, is all about power. And while certain references (Angela Davis, the SLA, Archie Bunker) may be unfamiliar to younger viewers, the fact remains that every major and minor ideological assertion offered by this film has not only come to pass, they have become business as usual.
The nightly news anchor of a national network, Howard Beale, learns that he is being dismissed from his twenty-odd year job because of low ratings. He responds by announcing on the next telecast that since his job is his life, he will blow his brains out on the air in one week. The network, which is in the early throes of being bought by a multinational corporation, decides Howard is onto something and they decide to keep him on the air. But instead of killing himself, Howard becomes the mad prophet of the air waves, encouraging his viewers to throw open their windows and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" The purity and humanity of Beale's pronouncements (a personal favorite: "I haven't got any bullshit left. I ran out, you see."), as well as his clarity in expressing mass angst, are the popular elements of Beale's nightly pontifications. Meanwhile, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway have turned the news department into a for-profit enterprise, a situation relatively unheard of in the late 1970s but commonplace ten years later and universal today. In any event, Duvall and Dunaway add all sorts of hokey malarkey to the news line-up and develop "real life" shows which they manipulate. Just as the thrill wears off, Howard Beale learns of the takeover of the network and warns the audience that bad times are coming, as is inevitable when for-profit organizations control the news.
The head of the multinational, a brief role played to brilliance by Ned Beatty, has Howard in for a little chat. During those few minutes, Beatty verbalizes the organic nature or world domination, pointing out that the real countries of the world are ATT, ITT, IBM, Banl of America, and so on. This revelation inspires Howard to go back to his audience and assure them that everything will be alright after all. Once the viewers are reassured, they stop tuning in. So Dunaway and Duvall terminate, as it were, Beale's contract.
The total control of public airwaves by a formidable group of administrators is frightening indeed. But of course the merging of news and entertainment has already been completed and the result is strict control even over the palest slop heaped upon the viewing public, from MTV to Nick at Nite, both of which are owned by the same corporation.
It is this level of control over public information that brings us--at last!--back to 1963 and to the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
The total control of public airwaves by a formidable group of administrators is frightening indeed. But of course the merging of news and entertainment has already been completed and the result is strict control even over the palest slop heaped upon the viewing public, from MTV to Nick at Nite, both of which are owned by the same corporation.
It is this level of control over public information that brings us--at last!--back to 1963 and to the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Because John Kennedy was assassinated while still in his first term as President, it is only possible to speculate on most elements of how the future would have differed had he lived. His National Security Action memo directives 55 and 263, as well as remarks he made to confidants, strongly suggest a reversal in Southeast Asian policy concomitant with a firmer grip on U.S. intelligence operations. Two key points, however, are quite clear. First, with Kennedy alive, Lyndon Johnson would not have appeared before Congress as he did in August 1964, demanding the enactment of the Gulf on Tonkin Resolution. Johnson, it may be recalled, made his appearance following the allegedly unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, attacks which thirty years later the State Department admitted never actually happened. The Resolution, unconstitutional as it was, gave the President--rather than Congress, as the Constitution requires--the authority to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression, and it declared the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia to be vital to American interests as well as to world peace. This law, which explicitly gave the President unlimited authority to wage total war, was not repealed until 1970. And even its reversal has not stopped certain Presidents from pretending it is still in place--Presidents such as Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama.
Second, had Kennedy been allowed to live, J. Edgar Hoover would have been removed as Director of the FBI, allowing the Bureau to devote more work hours pursuing criminal behavior and less to persecuting supposed subverters and seditionists such as Martin Luther King. The civil rights leader was himself assassinated April 4, 1968, suffering the same fate as Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and Malcolm X, leaving the civil rights movement with no central leadership or example. And so instead of being dead, today Reverend King might be bouncing his great grandchildren on his knees, looking back upon happier times.
Second, had Kennedy been allowed to live, J. Edgar Hoover would have been removed as Director of the FBI, allowing the Bureau to devote more work hours pursuing criminal behavior and less to persecuting supposed subverters and seditionists such as Martin Luther King. The civil rights leader was himself assassinated April 4, 1968, suffering the same fate as Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and Malcolm X, leaving the civil rights movement with no central leadership or example. And so instead of being dead, today Reverend King might be bouncing his great grandchildren on his knees, looking back upon happier times.
But these two things did not happen. And as interesting as such speculation may be, the televised execution of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, two days after Kennedy's murder, had an everlasting impact upon the collective psychology of the people of the United States, certainly no less of an impact than the killing of the President. If one can imagine the public response today if the current President were to be shot and killed by a purported lone gunman who himself was executed while in police custody by a lone vigilante right on international television a mere two days later, then one begins to gain a glimpse of the suspicious cover story that was perpetrated.
Initially, Jack Ruby explained that he had murdered Lee Oswald so as to spare the widow Kennedy the ordeal of testifying at the trial of the man accused of committing her husband's murder. Months later, Ruby told Warren Commission Chairman and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren that he had information that would clear up many mysteries of the assassination. Ruby begged to be taken to Washington so that he could testify. Warren declined the invitation. Ruby died in prison a short time later. Yet even without Ruby's revelations, the very fact of his murdering Oswald shocked the nation in ways the death of the President did not. Oswald's assassination made people wonder if he had been silenced to prevent details of a conspiracy from being loosed upon the land. With Oswald alive, the odds of a lone nut versus a conspiracy were even money. But with Oswald murdered, the perceived likelihood of conspiracy soared and loomed.
Initially, Jack Ruby explained that he had murdered Lee Oswald so as to spare the widow Kennedy the ordeal of testifying at the trial of the man accused of committing her husband's murder. Months later, Ruby told Warren Commission Chairman and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren that he had information that would clear up many mysteries of the assassination. Ruby begged to be taken to Washington so that he could testify. Warren declined the invitation. Ruby died in prison a short time later. Yet even without Ruby's revelations, the very fact of his murdering Oswald shocked the nation in ways the death of the President did not. Oswald's assassination made people wonder if he had been silenced to prevent details of a conspiracy from being loosed upon the land. With Oswald alive, the odds of a lone nut versus a conspiracy were even money. But with Oswald murdered, the perceived likelihood of conspiracy soared and loomed.
The murder of Lee Oswald was real in ways the murder of President Kennedy was not. Kennedy's murder had been filmed by several different people, but it would be years before the American public would see it. Oswald's execution was televised live. And that made it real.
Even before he was executed, stories about Oswald had emerged. The simplest of these was that he was an ex-Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union, returned disillusioned to America, drifted to a job at the Texas School Book Depository, looked out a window, saw a President going by, and shot him dead.
Decades later, piece by piece, the "reality" has changed. It is more widely understood today, thanks to the efforts of researchers such as Mark Lane, Sylvia Meager, Penn Jones, Jim Garrison, William Turner and many others, that Oswald's trip to the Soviet Union was part of an ongoing intelligence operation concocted by the Special Operations division of the Central Intelligence Agency. From the day Oswald departed for the USSR until the day he was killed in Dallas, Oswald was and remained an agent and had quite probably tried to prevent the assassination of the President of the United States.
A crisis in confidence began the moment Oswald was gunned down. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, understood that his ability to hold authority lay in his skill in restoring public faith in pluralistic democracy. His response was to form and appoint the Warren Commission.
Decades later, piece by piece, the "reality" has changed. It is more widely understood today, thanks to the efforts of researchers such as Mark Lane, Sylvia Meager, Penn Jones, Jim Garrison, William Turner and many others, that Oswald's trip to the Soviet Union was part of an ongoing intelligence operation concocted by the Special Operations division of the Central Intelligence Agency. From the day Oswald departed for the USSR until the day he was killed in Dallas, Oswald was and remained an agent and had quite probably tried to prevent the assassination of the President of the United States.
A crisis in confidence began the moment Oswald was gunned down. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, understood that his ability to hold authority lay in his skill in restoring public faith in pluralistic democracy. His response was to form and appoint the Warren Commission.
Few documents have been the object of such scrutiny, derision and ridicule. Assassination researchers and Commission critics have spoken with varying degrees of eloquence against the validity of the Commission's conclusions. Pathologist Cyril Wecht summed up the mood of the critics when he suggested that the 26-volume report be moved to the fiction section of the world's libraries.
Had Oswald lived to testify (or even confess, or name names), much of the cynicism and apathy regarding American institutions might not exist today. Jack Ruby's act of violence pushed the American public closer to an emotional and intellectual numbing that it was all too ready to embrace.
One shining example of this comfortably numb state of affairs was the initial national reaction to Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers. Everyone in the movie is feeding like vampires on cheap thrills. No one is safe from the stupefaction of the media: kids, parents, cops, bystanders, and the two killers themselves, Mickey and Mallory Knox, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. By the end of the film, as the celebrated killers prepare to destroy the Australian version of Geraldo Rivera (played by Morton Downey Jr), the audience becomes unpleasantly aware of being manipulated by the media and accepts the on-screen murder as right and appropriate, as does the Wayne Gale character himself. A lot of people walked out on this movie. Some people went to see the movie for the expressed purpose of walking out on it, certainly a new twist on conspicuous consumption. Having been conditioned to reject any kind of media stimulation that involves no gratuitous violence (meaning any kind that offers horror and revulsion on a scale that screams that anyone is presently capable of such atrocities), many audience members rebelled at being lured into consciously examining the ways in which they are being conditioned. A horse will only nudge an electric fence once or twice before accepting that there are boundaries to its freedom. It is doubtful that anyone who did stay for the duration of Natural Born Killers has forgotten the experience, just as the Zapruder film of the Kennedy slaying has staying power, as does Oswald's execution. It is disturbing to consider that anyone might find these things entertaining, although Stone's film suggests that this is just so. The movie might make one wonder about the passions of others in the audience.
Had Oswald lived to testify (or even confess, or name names), much of the cynicism and apathy regarding American institutions might not exist today. Jack Ruby's act of violence pushed the American public closer to an emotional and intellectual numbing that it was all too ready to embrace.
One shining example of this comfortably numb state of affairs was the initial national reaction to Oliver Stone's film Natural Born Killers. Everyone in the movie is feeding like vampires on cheap thrills. No one is safe from the stupefaction of the media: kids, parents, cops, bystanders, and the two killers themselves, Mickey and Mallory Knox, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. By the end of the film, as the celebrated killers prepare to destroy the Australian version of Geraldo Rivera (played by Morton Downey Jr), the audience becomes unpleasantly aware of being manipulated by the media and accepts the on-screen murder as right and appropriate, as does the Wayne Gale character himself. A lot of people walked out on this movie. Some people went to see the movie for the expressed purpose of walking out on it, certainly a new twist on conspicuous consumption. Having been conditioned to reject any kind of media stimulation that involves no gratuitous violence (meaning any kind that offers horror and revulsion on a scale that screams that anyone is presently capable of such atrocities), many audience members rebelled at being lured into consciously examining the ways in which they are being conditioned. A horse will only nudge an electric fence once or twice before accepting that there are boundaries to its freedom. It is doubtful that anyone who did stay for the duration of Natural Born Killers has forgotten the experience, just as the Zapruder film of the Kennedy slaying has staying power, as does Oswald's execution. It is disturbing to consider that anyone might find these things entertaining, although Stone's film suggests that this is just so. The movie might make one wonder about the passions of others in the audience.
Since the end of World War II, and especially since November 1963, when Kennedy and Oswald were murdered, Americans have been deluged with cases of misconduct, law-breaking, and pure evil on the part of people upon whom they have bestowed authority. Complaints to one another are merely public icebreakers and jokes have become cynical sarcasm. Without the summit of salvation (or truth) in sight, faith in one's own people to overcome the barriers becomes a soft platitude. With the murder of Lee Oswald, the mountains began stacking one upon another, and the summit became a long way from home. Aspiring politicos who bray about the need for leadership keenly appreciate this condition. Genuine leadership means battling the armies of cynicism and destroying the weapons of faithlessness. Anyone elected to national public office who behaved as such a leader would inspire his or her own probably demise. Mobilizing people to believe in real democracy endangers the infant orality so painstakingly instilled and installed by those who benefit the most from the cynicism.
Having, I presume, established the killing of Oswald as an event of considerable significance, it may be useful now to examine how such a thing could happen. That examination will involve looking into the life of Oswald's assailant.
Having, I presume, established the killing of Oswald as an event of considerable significance, it may be useful now to examine how such a thing could happen. That examination will involve looking into the life of Oswald's assailant.
Jacob Rubenstein was born in Chicago in 1911. As the fifth of eight children in a tumultuous home, young Jack was extracted from his domicile and placed in various foster homes by the Jewish Home Finding Society. By the time puberty came surging along, Jack was scalping tickets, pushing posies, and selling illegal music sheets to survive. Rubenstein gravitated toward street gangs and by his late twenties was warring against the German-American Bund, an American Nazi organization. Leaving the Army Air Force in 1946, he went into sales with his three brothers. The boys thought their moniker might be holding back their success, so they shortened the last name to Ruby. The following year Jack moved to Texas to operate a nightclub.
Between the time he moved to Dallas and the day he was arrested for killing Oswald, Ruby had developed some curious friendships with local and national mobsters and with some people who would come to be known as anti-Castro Cubans. Students of organized crime and Cuban affairs may recognize the names Bernard Barker, Joseph Campisi, Frank Caracci, Frank Chavez, Josepg Civello, Mickey Cohen, Russell matthews, Chilly McWillie, Nofio Pecora, and Frank Sturgis. During those sixteen years, Ruby was arrested nine times and only convicted once, the single blot on his otherwise pristine record being for ignoring a traffic summons.
Between the time he moved to Dallas and the day he was arrested for killing Oswald, Ruby had developed some curious friendships with local and national mobsters and with some people who would come to be known as anti-Castro Cubans. Students of organized crime and Cuban affairs may recognize the names Bernard Barker, Joseph Campisi, Frank Caracci, Frank Chavez, Josepg Civello, Mickey Cohen, Russell matthews, Chilly McWillie, Nofio Pecora, and Frank Sturgis. During those sixteen years, Ruby was arrested nine times and only convicted once, the single blot on his otherwise pristine record being for ignoring a traffic summons.
Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was winning a revolution against Fulgencio Batista. Miami crime lord Santos Trafficante and his associates were supplying guns to both sides, knowing for certain they would have backed a winner.
The United States, in the early days of the revolution, was eagerly awaiting Castro's victory. Batista had become unmanagble and both the FBI and CIA supported his overthrow. One of Ruby's friends, Frank Sturgis, was acting as a close adviser to Castro while running guns and serving as a contract agent for the CIA under the name of Frank Fiorini. Sturgis later plotted to murder Castro, was involved in the bay of Pigs, is alleged by Martina Lorenz to have taken part in JFK's assassination, and was arrested as a Watergate burglar. In any event, it was through relationships with men such as Sturgis that Ruby helped the Mafia help Castro while also helping the FBI keep tabs on the mob. According to a 1964 memo FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent to the Warren Commission, his G-men contacted Ruby eight times in 1959, "but he furnished no information. . . and was never an informant of the Bureau." Chief Council of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the 1970s version of the Warren Commission), Robert Blakey, later suggested that Ruby was ingratiating himself with the FBI so he could buy leverage if picked up for gunrunning. If true, some of the leverage he hoped to gain may have been related to his financial woes. Although his strip club was quite lucrative, Ruby was in trouble for not paying his taxes. By the time he shot Oswald, he owed the IRS nearly $40,000. This was at a time when a family earning $7,500 a year was doing well.
The United States, in the early days of the revolution, was eagerly awaiting Castro's victory. Batista had become unmanagble and both the FBI and CIA supported his overthrow. One of Ruby's friends, Frank Sturgis, was acting as a close adviser to Castro while running guns and serving as a contract agent for the CIA under the name of Frank Fiorini. Sturgis later plotted to murder Castro, was involved in the bay of Pigs, is alleged by Martina Lorenz to have taken part in JFK's assassination, and was arrested as a Watergate burglar. In any event, it was through relationships with men such as Sturgis that Ruby helped the Mafia help Castro while also helping the FBI keep tabs on the mob. According to a 1964 memo FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent to the Warren Commission, his G-men contacted Ruby eight times in 1959, "but he furnished no information. . . and was never an informant of the Bureau." Chief Council of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the 1970s version of the Warren Commission), Robert Blakey, later suggested that Ruby was ingratiating himself with the FBI so he could buy leverage if picked up for gunrunning. If true, some of the leverage he hoped to gain may have been related to his financial woes. Although his strip club was quite lucrative, Ruby was in trouble for not paying his taxes. By the time he shot Oswald, he owed the IRS nearly $40,000. This was at a time when a family earning $7,500 a year was doing well.
The most likely scenario is that Jack Ruby was under orders to kill lee Oswald. His Cuban and crime contacts prior to 1963, along with eyewitness reports connecting him with conspirators David Ferrie and Frank Sturgis certainly put Ruby in the right company for being so involved. And his behavior during and after the homicide of John Kennedy lends credence to the idea that Jack Ruby eliminated Lee Oswald to prevent Oswald from betraying the plot to kill the President. Indeed, once the Dallas police had apprehended Oswald, Jack Ruby took a manifest interest in the accused assassin. Bearing in mind that Kennedy was shot at 12:30pm, consider Ruby's movements during the forty-eight hours following that murder.
Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre after a man one officer said "looked one hell of a lot" like Jack Ruby told the police what row the man they were looking for was sitting in. This occurred at 1:27pm. At 2:00pm, Ruby was seen leaving Parkland Hospital where the President had been pronounced dead. From 4:00pm until just past 7:00pm, he was at the Dallas Police Headquarters. By 9:00pm that evening he was at his own apartment where he made several telephone calls. He left in time to visit a local synagogue by 10:00pm. Ruby returned to the Dallas PD by 11:00pm, where he brought sandwiches to the officers and killed time awaiting the press conference just after midnight, November 23. the stars of the conference were District Attorney Henry Wade (of the future Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade) and Lee Harvey Oswald. Wade made a reference to a political organization to which Oswald had belonged and from a table in the back of the room, Ruby corrected the error. "Henry, that's the Fair play for Cuba Committee!" At the time no one thought to ask how a local strip club owner would be aware of the correct name of a political group that had as its one and only local member the recently accused murderer of the President.
Less than one hour later, Ruby was buying food and drink for the news staff of KLIF Radio. By 2:00am he was back downtown talking about the previous day's big story with an employee and a friend on the police force. Wrapping up discussions quickly, he delivered a racing form to a local newspaper, picked up his roommate, George Senator, and went back to the Carousel Club. A few minutes after 4:00am, Ruby took a camera and another employee out to the expressway and in an act of future irony, photographed a billboard that demanded the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. At 8:00am, Ruby returned to police headquarters and a few minutes later called a local radio station to ask what time Oswald would be transferred to the county jail.
Shortly after 2:30am, November 24, Ruby called Lieutenant Billy Grammer and told him to change the transfer plans for Oswald or "We're going to kill him right there in the basement." The pronoun choice demonstrates the actions of two or more people. The fact of the warning itself suggests that Ruby did not want to kill Oswald but could only get out of it due to circumstances beyond his control, such as a change of transfer plans.
At 11:17am, Ruby sent an employee named Karen Carlin $25 by Western Union from an office just down the street from the police department.
At 11:20am a car horn tooted and the jail elevator doors opened. Oswald, handcuffed to detective Jim Leavelle, was led out to be slaughtered. One reporter shouted, "Here he comes!" Another newsman moved in close and hollered "Do you have anything to say in your defense?" Oswald glanced at Ruby with a look of familiarity. Seconds later, Ruby bounded forward, shouted the last name of his victim, and rammed his .38 into Oswald's stomach, firing one shot. The bullet punctured the abdomen, pierced two arteries and ripped his spleen, pancreas, liver and right kidney. All this occurred as millions watched on television. Oswald was pronounced dead at 1:07pm.
The days later, Jack Ruby was indicted for first degree murder. On March 14, 1964, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction in October 1966 and ordered a new trial. On December 9 Ruby was moved to parkland Hospital due to a persistent cough and nausea. he died of cancer January 3, 1967.
At 11:17am, Ruby sent an employee named Karen Carlin $25 by Western Union from an office just down the street from the police department.
At 11:20am a car horn tooted and the jail elevator doors opened. Oswald, handcuffed to detective Jim Leavelle, was led out to be slaughtered. One reporter shouted, "Here he comes!" Another newsman moved in close and hollered "Do you have anything to say in your defense?" Oswald glanced at Ruby with a look of familiarity. Seconds later, Ruby bounded forward, shouted the last name of his victim, and rammed his .38 into Oswald's stomach, firing one shot. The bullet punctured the abdomen, pierced two arteries and ripped his spleen, pancreas, liver and right kidney. All this occurred as millions watched on television. Oswald was pronounced dead at 1:07pm.
The days later, Jack Ruby was indicted for first degree murder. On March 14, 1964, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction in October 1966 and ordered a new trial. On December 9 Ruby was moved to parkland Hospital due to a persistent cough and nausea. he died of cancer January 3, 1967.
Researchers have been fascinated by Ruby's testimony to the Warren Commission. Oswald's killer begged for three hours to be taken out of jail and to go to Washington with the Chief Justice so he could testify safely and tell the Commission what he knew about the assassination. earl Warren refused. Exasperated, Ruby declared, "Well, you won't ever see me again. A whole new form of government is going to take over the country and I know I won't live to see you another time." When the Warren report was issued, it asserted that John Kennedy had been killed by Oswald, who had acted alone. According to polls, the majority of Americans have never believed this.
The literal visualization of Oswald's murder--within the context of subsequent events--has had the serendipitous effect of desensitizing Americans to the motivations and consequences of just such violent acts. When reports surfaced in September 1997 that photographers who may have contributed to the fatal car accident that killed Princess Diana and two others crawled onto the car's windshield to photograph the death in process, the public may have been horrified but certainly was not surprised. Cynicism about such monstrous acts is subtle, real and widespread in our culture. The filmed slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald served to condition the public against a need for resolution. A "we'll never know what really happened" attitude became pervasive and was applied to such societal cataclysms as the Vietnam War, Watergate, The October Surprise, Iran-Contra, the Impeachment of Bill Clinton, and the Presidential Election of 2,000. The accused assassin did not stand trial. Ruby died before his retrial. And by 1970, most of the people who could have illuminated crucial details had ceased to exist. And there were very few Howard Beale types urging people to shout.