Assassination Agnostic

Most moviegoers and history buffs have seen or at least heard of Oliver Stone’s controversial restaging of President Kennedy’s assassination, but his was neither the first nor the most recent re-enactment of this unspeakable tragedy. The assassination sequence has been recreated by a various different parties for an equal variety of reasons. The Secret Service and FBI were among the first to roll camera in Dealey Plaza, as they attempted to determine the origin and timing of the shots. The 1970s and 80s provided viewers a slew of assassination restagings in several television movies made during this time period. Some of these are of rather poor quality, while others stand up quite well to this day. As the pain and shock of the Kennedy Assassination began to fade in the 1990s into the 21st century, the event was restaged for darkly comic purposes. Most recently, the Discovery Channel put together a recreation of the assassination sequence, only to be sharply criticized by several prominent researchers. Here JFK007 lets you compare and contrast the different restagings of the Kennedy Assassination and it’s aftermath in one place. Which is the most accurate recreation, and which the most flawed? Which is the most hokey, and which the most stirring? Decide for yourself and comment.

Agnostic Restagings

These two restagings, the first from the television miniseries Kennedy and the other from the television film The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, are two of the few dramatizations with no clear thesis as to who fired the fatal shots. Kennedy, which features Martin Sheen and Blair Brown as the President and First Lady, focuses on the mayhem which occurred in within the limousine during the shooting, while the restaging from The Trial concentrates on the panic which ensued in the crowd during and after the volley of shots. Note how in the second clip, the camera focuses on witnesses hearing shots from both the Knoll and the Depository.

Conspiracy Restagings

The film Executive Action was the first to stage an elaborate triangulation of crossfire in Dealey Plaza. It also features cutaways to the planners of the conspiracy biting their nails while watching their plan unfold on television.

The conspiracy-themed television series The X-Files restaged the Kennedy assassination in one of their most intriguing episodes. In their take on the assassination, the head shot was fired from a shooter in the storm drains below the motorcade, with Oswald drinking his infamous soda pop at the time.

While the graphic novel The Watchmen only briefly mentioned the Kennedy assassination, the film adaptation featured a disturbingly accurate depiction of the assassination sequence, with the fatal shot being fired by “The Comedian” from the grassy knoll.

Oliver Stone’s recreation of the Kennedy assassination is more than a simple reenactment, it is an incredibly complex dissection of the assassination sequence which evolves over the course of the entire film, as its protagonist Jim Garrison attempts to determine what exactly happened in Dealey Plaza. The film begins with a fairly objective restaging of the event, and then concludes with Garrison comparing his interpretation of the assassination with the government’s.

Dark Comedy in Dealey Plaza

Two of the lesser known restagings of the Kennedy assassination are perhaps the most controversial, because they are portrayed for comic purposes. The first is from the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, and it’s thesis is probably the most brilliant of any video featured here. In their version, the show’s protagonists time travel to Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 and accidentally alter history by preventing Lee Harvey Oswald from killing the President, ironically creating a nightmare version of America. In order to restore the space time continuum, President Kennedy is forced to assassinate himself, and we learn that JFK was actually Badge Man! Despite the comic premise, the show’s producers stage the assassination with a remarkable amount of reverence for President Kennedy, and his tragic murder.

More recently, the consistently unfunny sketch comedy troupe The Whitest Kids You Know produced a skit in which the First Lady is an overweight man in drag and Oswald sings a musical number with the President before he is murdered. Someone with little regard for the historical significance of the Kennedy assassination might find this amusing, but this author finds it a meaningless exercise in abject tasteless.

Murder on MTV

Rock and Roll icon Marilyn Manson loves to play with controversial topics and this little-known music video is no exception. The video features Manson as the President and his former lover Rose McGowan as the First Lady in a goth rock nightmare version of the Kennedy assassination.

Coming Soon: Oswald’s Murder Restaged and the Government’s official recreations