Week Twelve (Monday 4-21-08)

Both of the films we watched in class this week involved JFK in some way. Ant Farm's Media Burn had a JFK impersonator playing an "artist president". This was much lighter than the second film involving JFK. Bruce Connor's Report was a very odd, yet very intense film about Kennedy's assassination. The film was unconventional throughout. It was essentially a document of the assassination, just done in a very non-traditional way. Probably the oddest section of the film for me at least was when the film didn't actually show us anything at all. It was just blank frames with a black flicker backed up by audio of the actual assassination. We hear a reporter or newsman commentating in terror as the assassination played out. The flicker was very rapid and was difficult to look at for a long period of time. But perhaps this was Connor's intention. Instead of actually showing us the footage of JFK being shot, having this white screen with a rapid flicker is more subliminally unsettling. I mean, obviously, actually seeing the assassination would certainly be disturbing, but I think that this choice to not show anything makes us try and envision the scene for ourselves - which in some cases can be just as disturbing. The second half of the film was equally as odd. We saw several images that had nothing to do with Kennedy's assassination - a bullfight, a 60s refrigerator commercial. The bullfight, for example, could be taken as a symbol for the killing of JFK. The bull, like Kennedy, was essentially innocent and unaware that it would be killed. We see a shot of the bull being speared, and it is visually disturbing. This is a counter-balance to the blank screen from the first half of the film. In that, we didn't see the killing but with the bull, we do see the killing. Also, another violent image was quickly shown in the second half of the film - the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. This could have been inserted for many reasons. I personally think this is some kind of comment of the endless cycle of violence in our culture. The killer himself is killed by someone who thus becomes a killer. Overall, Report, was a very unique document or artistic look at one of the most controversial and iconic events in American history.